Hey I have an old HP ProLiant ML350 server with two P4 xeon processors, 4GB of ram (or 3 75 for 3...

[G+_Will O'Meara]

Hey I have an old HP ProLiant ML350 server with two P4 xeon processors, 4GB of ram (or 3.75 for 32bit), 500W redundant PSU, and 6 hot-swapable Ultra-320 SCSI drive bays. I was thinking about finding a good deal on some HDDs for it or replacing the motherboard, ram, CPU and finding some good SATA or SAS drives for it. Do you guys think that this would make a good freenas box? Also the MB has an IDE HDD port as well so could I just use that as the install drive rather than a USB drive? Cause I have a ton of 100MBish IDE drives laying around.

[G+_Taylor Graham]

Use a flash drive for reliability. theyre cheap. You'll need more ram too, the absolute minimum is 8gb. If your p4's dont support 64bit operating systems, you're kinda out of luck. Freenas wont run well on 4gb or ram. If they do support 64bit OS's, read on.

 

It'll be hard for you to find high capacity 2.5" hard drives to fit in the proliant, but you could go with notebook drives.. i guess. They would probably be slow. If you had 6 of them in a raidz2 array, speed wouldnt be much of an issue though.

You should probably just buy another case, some more ram, and an HP smart array P410 SATA/SAS controller ($90 on amazon). That will give you 8 SATA ports. Provided you get a case that fits your mobo, and has 8 3.5" bays, you'll be able to load it up with your choice of drives and be off to the races. You could also skip the case if you can find a way to fit sata drives in your proliant. Your hotswap bays are probably scsi. My proliant ml350 has a sata bay though, so maybe you'll be in luck.

 

You could do it with scsi drives.. but you'd still need more ram, and you'd need identical drives. If you have six 500gb scsi drives laying around, give it a shot. If you dont, i think its going to be silly/hard for you to get drives. They would be old, possibly expensive, and prone to failure. Your CPU and mobo will run freenas well though, but i suggest you upgrade to sata. If you get some decent drives and go with the HP controller and 8gb+ of ram, you'll easily be able to saturate a gigabit network card.

[G+_bryant thompson]

new hardware would soon be paid for with energy savings with newer technology.     It was hot tech for it's day, but 40 dollars a month to power a dual prescott cpu that cant cpu it way past my dell venue pro win 8 tablet