Recommended Proliant Servers
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As I've mentioned before before, I'm building a pfsense box for the first time (slightly different design than last time, eliminating a couple of the extra firewalls). I was building one with a ML350 G2 that I added an array card to give me a bit of redundancy. After trying to install pfsense and having all sorts of trouble, I nearly gave up. I got pfsense installed, but it would consistently freeze. Tested the RAM overnight, it was fine, and nearly gave up until I tried to install Windows server back on the thing and still had trouble. Long story short, after swapping parts in and out of the thing, it appears that either the drive cage or the motherboard is shot – either way, something I don't want to deal with when the system wasn't that spectacular to being with (and had been beaten up by the real estate office that used it before).
So I'm looking to by a replacement, and am looking at the DL380 G2s and G3s that you can find pretty reasonably on eBay (wanted the extra HD and and PCI slots and redundant power supplies you can't find on a DL360). The only reason I'm looking at the Proliants is because I've worked on them for years (have a rack full of G1 ML370s, DL320s and DL360s) and know them and their parts pretty well (and parts are fairly easy to find for them).
Anybody have any opinions/caveats on the DL380s G2 or G3? Or have they had better plug/play luck on other systems? I have a bunch of Intel dual NICs that I'll be throwing in there (as I'll need at least 5 ports -- 3 LAN, 2 WAN, potentially 6 for a 3rd WAN) so I'll need a couple PCI slots along with RAID (RAID1 + spare is fine) and I'd prefer redundant power supplies (as those seem to be the things that fail around here), which is why I'm looking DL380.
Thanks!