Nick7

You get what you pay for. Cheapest SSD's are like this. More expensive ones are fast, even under sustained write loads.

To avoid GPU passthrough 'fun', stick with Windows as main OS, and also since it's also your environment. However, if you want to use TrueNAS - create it within Hyper-V. Passthrough whole drives to TrueNAS VM, and there you go....

As few have said. Use proxmox. Setup ZFS there, it's easy even from command line, also same for dedup. For iSCSI I use SCST, as for me it performs better than LIO. You can easily edit config, and add disks as needed. It really ain't rocket science. This way, you have proxmox with KVM as hypervisor, native ZFS, native iSCSI, no need to nested virtualizations or other questionable things. Proxmox is based on debian... so it's easy to add stuff.

There is a wonky way to do it. Boot some other OS, and create VM with using that whole drive in VM. Install. After that, you can boot it by selecting boot disk in BIOS.

I'm sorry... but you talk about 40Gbit/s, which is a LOT. Rarely who needs such speeds. Nice to have a brag about it, yes. Needing it? Well.. different story. Feeding 40Gbit/s from drives, any drives (including NVMe), is a lot.

With 5 drives you can get good speeds with SS and Parity. I tried it myself, and it's on par by using SAS HW RAID card. Speaking of that - I still do not like SS much for Parity, and I would myself rather get cheapo SAS RAID card (LSI), and use that for RAID5. Bonus is also that you actually get good performance with odd number of drives when using RAID, and you can actually expand RAID field (though backup is a must for important data when doing this). If you were to use Linux, I'd advise to simply go ZFS route, but this is different story

Two things: 1) URE's are usually blown way out of proportion on forums - it's like if you use PARITY (aka RAID5), you are doomed to lose data if one drive fails during rebuild. 2) PARITY with Storage Spaces is... tricky. You need ideal setup to have good write performance. Generally, it will suck horribly (writes in range of 10-20Mbytes/sec). If you stick to PARITY, check these links, which explain how to keep performance: https://wasteofserver.com/storage-spaces-with-parity-very-slow-writes-solved/ https://storagespaceswarstories.com/storage-spaces-and-slow-parity-performance/

Which OS are you running? If linux, check with 'ethtool' if it's supported. You should get a lines like: Supports Wake-on: pumbg Wake-on: g If it's missing 'g' for 'wake-on', it will not work. I had to add udev rule with following line to enable wake on LAN on my Linux server: ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="net", NAME=="enp*", RUN+="/usr/bin/ethtool -s $name wol g" After that, you can wake Linux server with WoL (magic packet).

It is 'fun' to use that old HW, and plug in (cheap) RAM, etc... But if buying stuff now, for something with purpose, it's not really advised, as you say it too. I used to own x79 mobo.. and was fun - having 6 16x PCIe slots (OK, not all are 16 lanes), but lots of stuff to plug in (FC adapter, SAS adapter, 2x GPU, etc...)

Comparing eggs and oranges. Not even apples and oranges. Check OP's link for x99 motherboard he linked. What you shown is server grade mobo (that does NOT fit standard ATX housing), dual socket, but is proprietary build for specific server. It does not fit ATX housing, you cannot use regular ATX PSU, you need SAS backplane, etc...

Newer gen 'non-server' will blow away that config for less $$$ and less cores, and much less power draw. Basically, only reason to use these days X99 socket is if you need lots of PCIe lanes and lots of PCIe slots for I/O.

Depends on what equipment you are connecting. Not every equipment supports every SFP, so it depends what you are connecting.

You are missing the point. On you 'server' you have installed Windows VM with all the SW you need. On client (laptop), you boot Linux, and when booted up - use RDP to connect to VM with all the Windows goodies.

Why not use RDP simply, as said? But - instead of using Windows - use Linux to boot laptop, and RDP from there.

For backing up Windows you are better of using Macrium Reflect, or Veeam (free edition supports incremental backups). This way, you can easily also restore whole drive in case of drive failure on your PC. Way you want to do it is generally for file level backup, which is not same as image backup. Don't over-complicate things where where is no necessity for. You know the saying - don't fix it if it ain't broken.