I was hopeful to run FreeNAS as a VM to reduce number of systems, power usage, and costs until I read the thread advising against it. If I did FreeNAS as a VM, I would pass through the drives on an HBA to the VM with SSHD or SSD for VMs and HDDs for ISOs datastore, etc. I currently have FreeNAS (8.?) running with 3x 1.5 TB RAIDZ1 on a Core 2 Duo with 8GB (non-ECC) DDR2 and 3x 3TB HDDs available. Obviously, I need to upgrade. And yes, RAID5/RAIDz1 is overall dead. I'm wanting to plan and design the system to take the best avenue for the least cost, if possible.
What benefit does NAS HDDs and Enterprise HDDs have over other HDDs?
I'm also confused on the plethora of available hardware, namely the CPU performance and platform memory limitations. I have several systems: 2x Core 2 Duo (8GB MAX), 2x Core i5 (32GB MAX), 1x X7DVL-E Dual 1.86 GHz QC Xeon (socket 771, with 8GB ECC FB DDR2, 24GB max; currently my VMware ESXi 5.5 box). Xeon for the longest time has been superior over Pentium's, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and Core i3/i5/i7 systems. At this point it seems like Xeon E3 and Core i7 have nearly equal specs and performance, although Core i7 supports greater RAM over Xeon E3, but doesn't support ECC.
Single/Dual Xeon E5-???? up to 1TB of RAM
6-core Xeon X5660/X5670/X5675 Dual CPUs with up to 192GB/288GB/1TB of RAM.
4-core Xeon 5500/5600 series with up to 1TB of RAM.
8-core Xeon D-1540 supports up to 128GB of RAM.
8-core ATOM supports up to 64GB of RAM (32GB more realistic for SO-DIMMs) .
4C/8T Xeon E3-1231 V3 to E3-127? V3 with 32GB of RAM.
$290 - ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Extended mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C224 (4x 240-pin) DDR3 1600/1333 & LSI 2308 -- 14x drives (excluding Xeon E3 CPU)
$330 - SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SRi-2758F-O (8-core 64-bit Avoton ATOM) Mini ITX Server Motherboard (4x 204-pin) DDR3 1600/1333
$460 - (yep, that major auction site) 2U - 12-bay chassis with SuperMicro X8DTN+ 2x ~3.0GHz Hex-core Xeon [X5660/X5670/X5675]
or similar 3U or 4U chassis ($200- $500 more)...
What benefit does NAS HDDs and Enterprise HDDs have over other HDDs?
I'm also confused on the plethora of available hardware, namely the CPU performance and platform memory limitations. I have several systems: 2x Core 2 Duo (8GB MAX), 2x Core i5 (32GB MAX), 1x X7DVL-E Dual 1.86 GHz QC Xeon (socket 771, with 8GB ECC FB DDR2, 24GB max; currently my VMware ESXi 5.5 box). Xeon for the longest time has been superior over Pentium's, Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and Core i3/i5/i7 systems. At this point it seems like Xeon E3 and Core i7 have nearly equal specs and performance, although Core i7 supports greater RAM over Xeon E3, but doesn't support ECC.
Single/Dual Xeon E5-???? up to 1TB of RAM
6-core Xeon X5660/X5670/X5675 Dual CPUs with up to 192GB/288GB/1TB of RAM.
4-core Xeon 5500/5600 series with up to 1TB of RAM.
8-core Xeon D-1540 supports up to 128GB of RAM.
8-core ATOM supports up to 64GB of RAM (32GB more realistic for SO-DIMMs) .
4C/8T Xeon E3-1231 V3 to E3-127? V3 with 32GB of RAM.
$290 - ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Extended mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C224 (4x 240-pin) DDR3 1600/1333 & LSI 2308 -- 14x drives (excluding Xeon E3 CPU)
$330 - SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SRi-2758F-O (8-core 64-bit Avoton ATOM) Mini ITX Server Motherboard (4x 204-pin) DDR3 1600/1333
$460 - (yep, that major auction site) 2U - 12-bay chassis with SuperMicro X8DTN+ 2x ~3.0GHz Hex-core Xeon [X5660/X5670/X5675]
or similar 3U or 4U chassis ($200- $500 more)...