I would (and have gone) the FreeNAS/zfs route.You do not want a RAID5 (or its ZFS equivalent RAID-Z) with drives of that size, RAID6/Z2 is better. If you can spare the cost, go RAID-X3. If possible i would get two servers so that you can have an offsite replica of the data, something easily done with FreeNAS. On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 11:59 PM, Ryan Coleman <ryan.coleman at cwis.biz> wrote: > 90 days and $17,000 later I have my 13TB array recovered. > > Thank goodness for business insurance! > > So I have the need to build a bigger, better, smarter storage system. Presently I’m looking at 16x3TB drives and a RAID 5 running in ESXi… But it’s time to consider alternatives… NAS, SAN, something. > > I’ve avoided ZFS talk for years because it never applied, and FreeNAS is definitely up my alley with 14 years FreeBSD experience - but what would you do? Primary function is long-term data storage but also serving up many network services as well as development projects. > > I have an LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i with a SAS expander and would be maxing out the 16 RAID drives for that if I go with a RAID but I really want knowledge on personal experiences with various NAS options. > > One requirement: Must be iSCSI capable with ESXi 5.5 (free license). ESXi machine is super-loaded (6 core Sandy bridge Xeon and 32GB) but was design for the future growth. > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list