I grabbed a HP Microserver a few months ago after my old slow NAS died. One of the best purchases i've made this year.
Initially i tried using Ubuntu Server on it, but there were a few problems with it. I also tried Freenas but beyond the basic "share files and use ZFS" it didn't really offer much in the way of customisation.
So Instead i decided to just put Windows Home Server on it, since all i wanted to do was share files, use basic RAID, and run virtual machines for testing with the minimum of fuss. Windows RDC works fantastically out of the box. For VMs i just used Virtualbox. I stuck Freenas in a VM and left it running for Time Machine - perfect.
I also stuck an SSD i had lying around in the optical bay, so i have 4 drives available in the bays dedicated to storing data.
Despite not using Linux or ZFS, i'm quite happy with this current setup.
Initially i tried using Ubuntu Server on it, but there were a few problems with it. I also tried Freenas but beyond the basic "share files and use ZFS" it didn't really offer much in the way of customisation.
So Instead i decided to just put Windows Home Server on it, since all i wanted to do was share files, use basic RAID, and run virtual machines for testing with the minimum of fuss. Windows RDC works fantastically out of the box. For VMs i just used Virtualbox. I stuck Freenas in a VM and left it running for Time Machine - perfect.
I also stuck an SSD i had lying around in the optical bay, so i have 4 drives available in the bays dedicated to storing data.
Despite not using Linux or ZFS, i'm quite happy with this current setup.