Once the virtualization host role got moved off the PowerEdge SC440, it is freed up for other tasks. Naturally, it seemed to make sense to move FreeNAS off the Core 2 Duo E4400 white box to the PowerEdge SC440.

First, a little background information. All of these servers are booting off USB flash drives. I have been using the miniscule SanDisk Cruzer Fit 16GB for the last three years with great success. It makes moving roles around simple and allows me to dedicate the entire disk to ZFS.

To prepare the SC440 for the storage role, I added a LSI SAS 9200-8e HBA and a Broadcom 5709 dual port gigabit NIC to it. Updated the 9200-8e HBA to the latest P21 IT mode firmware because of FreeNAS and ZFS. The 6x 2TB SATA disks go into a PowerVault MD1200 directly attached storage (DAS).

And the first start up. SC440 boots into FreeNAS. The ZFS pool is mounted. All services are available. Look good, but holy shit the MD1200 is loud. The Delta PFC0812DE fans in each power supply just wails. I need to do something about that...

Salvaged some SSD from desktops that were going to be decommissioned. Assigned one each to L2ARC and ZIL role.

Storage

PowerEdge SC440

Core 2 Quad Q6700 2.66GHz

LSI 9200-8e

MD1200 with 6x 2TB SATA disks