Shuttle for a BSD file server?

[Maxim Khitrov]

Greetings,

I'm planning to build a new home file server for myself, starting with
about 2TB of RAID6 space, but with room to grow in the future. Most of
that will be on SATA drives, but I may throw in two SAS drives in
RAID1 for the base OS, hence the SAS raid controller and enclosure.
The highest priority for this build is data security, followed by
performance and uptime.

Rather than go for server-grade components, I thought that I should
instead try to separate storage from the server itself. It's cheaper
(sort of), easier to upgrade in the future, and if the server goes
down for some reason, I can just put the raid card into another
machine and once again have access to my data. The other advantage
with this build is that I already have a Q6600 and some DDR2 memory
around, so that will save me money on having to get Xeons and ECC
memory. With that in mind, I currently have the following components
picked out (listed below).

I would like to know whether anyone has used any of these with FreeBSD
7.x, or if you have some other suggestions for what I should look into
(am I asking for trouble by using these parts for a 24/7 file server
in terms of stability)? I know that the 3ware controller should be
supported, but I'm not sure about the Shuttle. How does FreeBSD play
with X48 chipset? The drive enclosure obviously doesn't interact with
the OS, but I'd still like your opinion on it or maybe some
alternatives. Please let me know what you think.

- Max

Barebone:
Shuttle SX48P2 E
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101070

Raid Card:
3ware 9690SA-8E-KIT
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116062

SAS Enclosure:
RAIDAGE iAge840ML2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816702014