2012R2 Storage Spaces Memory and CPU requirements

Solution 1:

CPU and memory requirements are negligible if you're not using dedupe. Any modern CPU and at least 4GB RAM should be sufficient, assuming we're talking about 1GbE. If you're talking about 10GbE, then hardware matters more, but not because of storage spaces.

Obviously the more memory you can add, the more caching can be done, but for low load usage, you don't need a ton.

Solution 2:

NexentaStor, QuantaStor, Openfiler, FreeNAS... And of course, the prepackaged NAS appliances from Synology, QNAP, Iomega/Lenovo... (some of which also feature SSD caching)

So many options. But really, Windows Storage Spaces isn't a normal part of the home-brew NAS conversation.

What do you plan to store? Flat files? virtual machines? And how much data do you need to store? I think those are big factors.

Typically, ZFS-based solutions (FreeNAS, QuantaStor, Nexenta, ZFS on Linux) will outperform straight hardware RAID solutions due to their ability to leverage the host CPU and RAM resources in addition to the SSD caching options.

For those builds I typically maximize RAM. A modern CPU (Nehalem or newer) provides more than enough horsepower to support storage applications.

All of these software-based storage approaches hinge on proper presentation of the disks. You'll want to use SAS HBAs and avoid RAID controllers. See: ZFS SAS/SATA controller recommendations

These days, I'm recommending QuantaStor for basic storage. It's pretty flexible, offers support for hardware RAID and SAS controllers, has ZFS, a nice web GUI and is under active development. I know you're primarily a Windows shop, but in practice, how often do you need to interact with the storage system's internals?