best tiny zfs board?

Jim Rowan jmr at computing.com
Sat Dec 6 02:05:07 UTC 2014


I’m trying to put together a backup server… and thus I’m looking for recommendations on the best-fit board I can find right now.   It’s going to spend it’s life inside a fireproof safe doing zfs receive, and basically nothing more.

It should have:

- lowest possible power; I’m aiming for 10W (for the board) if possible
- inexpensive
- single sata port, any speed (working on freebsd; supports > 2T drives).  Two ports would be a bonus, but is far from required
- ~1G ram
- wired network
- don’t care about zfs root (it will boot from some flash/usb/nanobsd image)
- zfs needs to work… 

I’m new to freebsd/arm, and not familiar with the current state-of-affairs.  I’m certainly able/willing to run -current on this device, if that helps.

It looks like a minnowboard max would fit, but it’s at the top end of my price and power budget. 

Anyone have comments on these?

Banana pi?  (Is sata supported on the A20, on this board yet?)
cubox i2ex or hummingboard i1ex?

Or other suggestions?

Thanks!
Jim



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