What I want:lets start with what you want and what you NEED.
2U or 3U enclosure with 12 to 16 hotswap bays
renown brand name with proven reliability and compatibility
Capability to add PCIE cards such as HBA's and infiniband
No need for RAID as the OS (FreeBSD) will be installed on a standard 200GB SATA HDD. The P410 controllers are interesting but do I really need them for a simple freebsd install for a storage server? I dont think so..
Capability to deal with SSD's for ZFS ZIL and L2ARC
At least 16GB RAM with possibility to increase to at least 48GB (assuming what I've read on FreeNAS forums or other ZFS forums with at least 1GB of RAM per TB of data)
=> 12x hotswap with current 2TB drives = 24TB raw (not usable in RaidZ2 or Z3) but when I replace failing drives with larger ones (3TB or even 4TB?) then the overall capacity of that storage server will most likely exceed 36TB raw...
(in all honesty I will most likely use heavy redundancy and parity to maintain reliable storage for years to come...)
What I need:
the simplest and most reliable server capable of running a 24 to 36TB zpool (raw).
I currently have a supermicro server.. I love it! just SIMPLE and effective. I've never owned a Proliant or Dell server but Im sure they are just as good, its just that with supermicro I feel the compatibility is just +++++