I currently have a small VM host with a 1TB HDD, 16GB of RAM, and a 3.3GHz CPU. Today I ordered a second (almost identical) computer. Last night I setup FreeNAS running from a 2GB USB flash drive on an old Pentium 4 PC with a 320GB HDD. Today, configured it as an iSCSI target, to serve as a CSV (cluster shared volume) for my high availability education.
FreeNAS Quick Start Guide
FreeNAS iSCSI documentation
I'd like to see if Jumbo Frames helps me out (with this $18 switch), but will have to wait on that for now. I'd also like to use a pure SSD environment, which would let me saturate a 3Gb network link to my poor-man's SAN. The point of all this is to be able to get MCSE 2012 certified.
How to enable Jumbo Frames in Server Core
I've learned that the GPT partitioning style supports drives over 4TB and more than 4 partitions (if you care about partitions anymore).
