ASRock H77M as the board for a NAS/SAN ?

[stiltner]

I got the board noted in Title with a i3 3rd gen CPU in it and 8GB of memory. Its basically just a VPN machine for my current job.

That job is changing in about a month, so I have a machine that I won't need for its current purposes then.

I'm thinking of cramming as many drives into the thing as I can fit (with a 5.25 bays adapter I should be able to get 10-12 drives inside the case easily).
Should I do 2 x SSD and the rest platters?

Is there a recommended adapter for this style of setup. I'd rather not use SATA2 onboard controllers, I'm looking to maximize the speed of things. I'm looking to do this inexpensive, but I have no qualms with spending a few bucks to get the right thing done right.

I'm still very much up in the air as far as storage options goes as this point, so I'm open to suggestions.

My primary purpose is being shared storage for VMWare Hosts. Currently that is 1, and it will be 2 hosts shortly, both C1100 Dell ebay grabs. I'm looking to do HA on VSphere and buying a license so I can learn the entire lineup as far as that goes.

Thanks for any thoughts and insight you got. If you want to laugh, feel free to point fingers and chuckle. Help me spend my money Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope

 

[malcolmputer]

The only thing I could see going horribly wrong with this set up is the lack of ECC RAM.

 

[stiltner]

The only thing I could see going horribly wrong with this set up is the lack of ECC RAM.

Yeah, I took that into consideration. Its the one thing I thought about when I was going over the #'s myself.

The issue is, really, honestly, its going to be lab environment mostly. I really couldn't care less about the overall integrity of the data (yes I said it). Its more about learning, than production. I might use it to serve up Plex too, but really its overall data is going to be unimportant in the overall scheme of things.

With that said, I already picked up 3TB HD x 2 for the thing, slowly but surely.