Server 2012 R2 build questions

[vanwazltoff]

So I bought a used rack mount 1U server, I am currently doing mods to it (removing the internal 40mm fans with 80mm external fans to cut noise down.)

The server has 2x quad core Xeon processors and 16gb of DDR2 ECC, it came with 2x 74gb SAS drives which I am not sure what i'll do with yet, probably use them for virtual machines.

 

5 Pack of 80mm PWM fans

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NTUJG62/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A2T6N244WTLWGU

 

80mm grills

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007PPEPR2/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A1THAZDOWP300U

 

PWM splitter (modding it make standard case fan extentions for my server since it used a proprietary connector but uses PWM wiring)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DYQRFY6/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_4?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=A18K25N425Y52T

 

I have a question about storage, I am thinking about going with RAID-5 (technically its just called parity in 2012 R2)  for redundancy and slightly better speed. I have 2x 2TB drives and I'll get a 3rd to complete the array, but Server 2012 R2 supports tiering with SSDs in a storage pool. So I was thinking that I could possibly use 3x 2tb drives and a 240gb SSD (I have one laying around) and I could partition the SSD to use half for the operating system and half for a higher tier in the storage pool for more frequently used data.

 

Purposes for this server include:

PXE OS deployment (testing and practical applications)

Using it as a file server

Active directory practicing 

Print server

DNS

DHCP

SQL

Virtualization

Server clustering

Remote operation

Learning Powershell server commands

etc.

 

Basically I am going to use this for practicing enterprise level computing...at a very small scale.