I'm replacing an old system that resembles Frankenstein's monster, one that I have been using as a FreeNAS server off and on for a few years.<p>I want to modernize the system, and so far my top pick is a Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 70A4001LUX which nets me a system using ECC memory and 4 drive bays (OS would boot off an internal usb connector). The drive bays are not hot-swappable, and a bit awkward, but I can live with that. All for only about $350.<p>I'm looking for a home FreeNAS box, something with ECC memory, minimum of 4 drive bays (more and hot swappable would be nice-to-haves), quiet operation, enough power to transcode video on demand when using Plex media server.<p>What are your favorites?
HP N54L.<p>4x 3.5" internal drive-bays with trays (no hot-swap), 1 External 5.25" bay, 1 internal 3.5" bay, 2 PCI-E, 8 GByte ECC, takes 4 TB drives, 6 external USB2, 1 external E-Sata, 1 GB/s NIC. There is an HP-ILO Card for out-of-band servive - access to bios, power down. 1 internal usb (could boot OS from USB...)<p>excellent VPN / and storage server (VPN ~ 340 MBit/s AES 256 throughput) (put VPN Server in virtual machine)<p>mini-server ist suff. powerful to run data server at high speed. 5x4 TB raw ~ 16 TByte Raid 5 storage size, 1 additional external hot spare possible.
In short... Proliant Micro Servers (the black "g7" not the silvery g8's)...<p>Cheap, 4 bays, ECC mem and an (optional) mangement card... but I don't know if it is fast enough for you (probably not....)
For reference: the google results -- <a href="http://google.com/search?q=%22small+server%22+%22hot-swappable%22" rel="nofollow">http://google.com/search?q=%22small+server%22+%22hot-swappab...</a>