HP ProLiant MicroServer

settings

gnolan wrote: »

Would someone mind answering a few questions about this for me?

I've been looking for a 4-bay NAS device to stream 1080p content by ethernet to my XBMC setup. Will this do the job?

The specs say that this has a 150w power supply. Given that i would most likely have it on all the time, is there any way i can limit it to run at close to idle?

Having not ever set up or even used a server before, how exactly to i access it? Is there much setting up to do?

I have tons more questions but these would probably be my main worries. Thanks.

you should have a look at unRAID.
The basic setup is free to use which supports up to 3 harddrives. I am using that at the moment with a cache drive attached for downloading. Once you put the OS on a usb stick you can connect the server to the network and hide it away somewhere cos everything is done remotely from your web browser. Its based on linux but you dont need to know a thing about it and if there is you just follow a step-by-step guide.
you can have a look here, there are lots of good threads on this server online too. Enjoy:)

Power Comsumption based on above thread:
Boot (peak): 115W
Idle (avg): 27W (all drives spun down)
Active (avg): 35W (downloading to cache drive at 20mbps with SABnzbd)
Light use (avg): 36W (unpacking rar with SABnzbd)

I got an electricity monitor and have to say it is very low power comsumption although I never calculated the exact watts

edit: by the way how long were people waiting on their cheque from HP. I got my server over a month ago, got email confirmation a couple of days after sending off the details but no cheque as of yet

God Father

I read that you can put OSX on this. Interesting .

gnolan

settings wrote: »

you should have a look at unRAID.
The basic setup is free to use which supports up to 3 harddrives. I am using that at the moment with a cache drive attached for downloading. Once you put the OS on a usb stick you can connect the server to the network and hide it away somewhere cos everything is done remotely from your web browser. Its based on linux but you dont need to know a thing about it and if there is you just follow a step-by-step guide.
you can have a look here, there are lots of good threads on this server online too. Enjoy:)

Power Comsumption based on above thread:
Boot (peak): 115W
Idle (avg): 27W (all drives spun down)
Active (avg): 35W (downloading to cache drive at 20mbps with SABnzbd)
Light use (avg): 36W (unpacking rar with SABnzbd)

I got an electricity monitor and have to say it is very low power comsumption although I never calculated the exact watts

edit: by the way how long were people waiting on their cheque from HP. I got my server over a month ago, got email confirmation a couple of days after sending off the details but no cheque as of yet

The thing is, i will eventually make use of all four drives and maybe even the 5.25 inch one too. If unRAID only allows three hard drives i'll probably give freenas a go.

machalla

gnolan wrote: »

The thing is, i will eventually make use of all four drives and maybe even the 5.25 inch one too. If unRAID only allows three hard drives i'll probably give freenas a go.

I think you can pay for a license for unraid to allow more drives. Its just the free version thats limited.

Freenas comes in two variants. The older 7.2 edition which was more consumer and home friendly (torrent clients and various other nice to haves) as opposed to the latest 8.2 version which is more commercailly focussed and manly just a nas for file storage. It might be worth experimenting to see which suits you better although ongoing support is for the version 8 series.

settings

gnolan wrote: »

The thing is, i will eventually make use of all four drives and maybe even the 5.25 inch one too. If unRAID only allows three hard drives i'll probably give freenas a go.

As Machalla said the basic version allows 3 drives and then there is plus package which allows up to 6 drives and pro which allows up to 21.

I use unraid as a mediaserver which it is very good as. I put Movies on one disk and Tv on the other (you must have one parity/backup drive). If I am watching tv then the other 2 drives will be spun down, saving power which you mentioned was a concern in your post. The disadvantage to this is the copying speed is not as fast as other raids which spin multiple drives together and spread them across all the drives. The speeds are more than enough to play 1080p content on 2/3 clients at one time. You can also add any drive size to an unraid array, some other raids need same size.
There are pros and cons to every setup, I am not experienced with freeNas
so cant speak for that.

Wcool

Baza210 wrote: »

Anybody?

Should be way lower, my disks:
sudo hddtemp /dev/sd?1
/dev/sda1: SAMSUNG HD103SI: 17°C
/dev/sdb1: SAMSUNG HD204UI: 14°C
/dev/sdc1: SAMSUNG HD204UI: 15°C
/dev/sdd1: SAMSUNG HD204UI: 15°C
/dev/sde1: SAMSUNG HD204UI: 15°C

however I spin my disks down:

In /etc/rc.local put something like this:

/sbin/hdparm -S 200 /dev/sda
/sbin/hdparm -S 200 /dev/sdb
/sbin/hdparm -S 200 /dev/sdc
/sbin/hdparm -S 200 /dev/sdd
/sbin/hdparm -S 200 /dev/sde

This will idle your drives after 15 min of non-activity.
If the temperature does not go down I think one of your linux processes is using the disk or the OS is using the disk. It is really hard to stop the OS from using the disk, you will have to change cron jobs and maybe even install a kernel that does not 'tick' (google it). Easier option in that case is to use the internal USB connector for a cheap 2.5" drive or a flash disk and use that for the OS

Brian

It's not the HDD that is at high temp, it's the GPU I installed. Which shouldn't even be running since I'm running Ubuntu Server with no GUI, and am accessing it remotely through ssh.

Jonathan

Baza210 wrote: »

It's not the HDD that is at high temp, it's the GPU I installed. Which shouldn't even be running since I'm running Ubuntu Server with no GUI, and am accessing it remotely through ssh.

So why does it have a GPU installed?

Brian

I put it in in case I ever wanted to use it as an HTPC. I didn't realize it was going to act up like this and it's a lot of hassle to get out..

dahamsta

You should be able to disable it at the command line. It'll slow down your boot either way though, although I've no way of enumerating how much.

druidhill

dahamsta wrote: »

Tip if you have a Dabs4work account: Use Dabs.ie instead, shipping will be free.

Does this work? (tried but it just transfers me to dabs4work site with the shipping added). Very frustrating, as I have ended up paying more on a few occasions now.

Brian

Perhaps I can disable it in BIOS.

dahamsta

druidhill wrote: »

dahamsta wrote: »

Tip if you have a Dabs4work account: Use Dabs.ie instead, shipping will be free.

Does this work? (tried but it just transfers me to dabs4work site with the shipping added). Very frustrating, as I have ended up paying more on a few occasions now.

Worked for me, just had to register again. Even used the same credit card.

garvm

dahamsta wrote: »

Worked for me, just had to register again. Even used the same credit card.

I ordered last week using the normal dabs.ie site and delivery was free - still coming up as free delivery for me now.

vibe666

settings wrote: »

As Machalla said the basic version allows 3 drives and then there is plus package which allows up to 6 drives and pro which allows up to 21.

probably worth mentioning that freenas allows you to use as many drives as you like at no charge whatsoever.

i currently have eight 2tb drives in mine and if i had the room, it *could be* a lot more.

nrb

I have a question about RAID. I picked up one of these hoping to turn it into a NAS server. I'm not sure which raid configuration i want. I have 4 2TB seagate drives which i was hoping to put some kind of software raid with one drive redundant. From my understanding the computer recognizes the four disks as one. Can you simply remove one of these drives and say I have a spare enclose i can put the drive in and give it to my friends to put movies and music on?

just one other thing I saw another poster had the idea of adding extra drives into the ODD slot for another mini raid confi. If was to try this would I need a raid controller or would this Dual 2.5" -3.5" Raid SATA HDD/SSD Converter do the job?

vibe666

in the microserver, with 4 disks you'll probably want to use RAID5 for the best combination of speed, capacity and redundancy, but i don't think it supports RAID5 on the onboard controller, so it will need to be done in software via the NAS OS.

you can install freeNAS onto a USB stick connected to the internal USB connector on the motherboard and leave all the other drive bays free for data.

unfortunately, you can't just pull a disk out of a RAID5 array (even if it was a hot spare) and put more data onto it and plug it back in, although you could set up RAID5 on 3 disks and leave the other disk completely separate for data, you'd be much better off just getting an external USB drive and using that for moving stuff around.

at the moment, with prices for 3.5" disks being so high you'll get a 2.5" USB drive for more or less the same money as a 3.5" drive anyway.

nrb

vibe666 wrote: »

in the microserver, with 4 disks you'll probably want to use RAID5 for the best combination of speed, capacity and redundancy, but i don't think it supports RAID5 on the onboard controller, so it will need to be done in software via the NAS OS.

you can install freeNAS onto a USB stick connected to the internal USB connector on the motherboard and leave all the other drive bays free for data.

unfortunately, you can't just pull a disk out of a RAID5 array (even if it was a hot spare) and put more data onto it and plug it back in, although you could set up RAID5 on 3 disks and leave the other disk completely separate for data, you'd be much better off just getting an external USB drive and using that for moving stuff around.

at the moment, with prices for 3.5" disks being so high you'll get a 2.5" USB drive for more or less the same money as a 3.5" drive anyway.

Thanks for the reply. I will definately look into freeNAS but was also considering trying to get windows home server 2011 do you reckon they would be much of a difference?.

Just in terms of transfering data i was thinking about mounting the 160 gb drive in the ODD space and keeping that separate from the RAID array and simply disconnecting it from the Sever and popping it into the external drive enclosure when ever i need to transfer stuff and give it to my friends and that...

vibe666

you could pick up one of the icybox 5.25" enclosures for the ODD space, either a single 3.5" removable drive with a USB connection for external use, or even a 4x 2.5" disk enclosure if you wanted to boost the internal storage further with 4x 1tb laptop disks.

http://www.raidsonic.de/en/products/backplanes.php?we_objectID=6804



om nom nom!

carbsy

Anyone use any hardware raid cards in the microserver and if so, which? I bought one of these ages ago but have done nowt with it yet cept for testing various OSs / VMs etc.

I think the best way to go is hardware raid for the drives, then install vSphere 5 and get it to see the raid array.Then create a FreeNAS VM and a few others, which maximises the use of the server.

Anyone use it like this? It think just installing FreeNAS on it is a waste on it's own, as it could do much more with vSphere.

*EDIT* Forgot to add, if anyone is using FreeNAS on a VM on this, complete with other VMs on vSphere on a hardware raid array, is there much reduction in network speeds (copying files to and from) with FreeNAS as opposed to running FreeNAS natively? Interested to know! Cheers.

Thor

I don't mean to be a pester, But seeing as the deal is over for good now, Should this thread not be moved(Keep the tech talk open of course) To say the computer hardware section.

Would be easy to find for people looking for this.

How many people would expect to find a thread about the best micro server setup in the bargain alerts section.

mikewest

Thor wrote: »

I don't mean to be a pester, But seeing as the deal is over for good now, Should this thread not be moved(Keep the tech talk open of course) To say the computer hardware section.

Would be easy to find for people looking for this.

How many people would expect to find a thread about the best micro server setup in the bargain alerts section.

Currrent deal expires on 30 Nov 2011!

machalla

carbsy wrote: »

Anyone use any hardware raid cards in the microserver and if so, which? I bought one of these ages ago but have done nowt with it yet cept for testing various OSs / VMs etc.

I think the best way to go is hardware raid for the drives, then install vSphere 5 and get it to see the raid array.Then create a FreeNAS VM and a few others, which maximises the use of the server.

Anyone use it like this? It think just installing FreeNAS on it is a waste on it's own, as it could do much more with vSphere.

*EDIT* Forgot to add, if anyone is using FreeNAS on a VM on this, complete with other VMs on vSphere on a hardware raid array, is there much reduction in network speeds (copying files to and from) with FreeNAS as opposed to running FreeNAS natively? Interested to know! Cheers.

I seem to find freenas as a VM slower than it should. I'm not sure the network interface is running at full speed uder the VM.

I don't have any actual speed tests and remember this could be due to my network layout, hard disks used in the machine and so on.

I'm not sure I'd recommend running freenas under esxi on the basis of my experience with it. One of the things I had been looking at doing was to just leave it converting media files using handbrake on a different VM on the same machine. Not unsurprisingly this didn't prove very speedy at all nor was I expecting it to but it just doesn't have the oomph to do much more than limited basics. I was going to freenas, windows server and ubuntu server on it at the same time but I'm not really sure thats practical even with 8gb of ram in it.

I tried out plex on it under the windows vm and for transcoding on the fly its not really ideal, too much stuttering at times.

Anyway this is all anecdotal your experience may differ.

vibe666

i'm kind of doing it that way on my G6950 based HP ML110 G6, just currently without hardware RAID.

I have a FreeNAS8 VM running on ESXi5 with RDM's to eight 2tb disks which I'm using for data.

transfer speeds could be better tbh, but i made a conscious decision to sacrifice that as maximising space across 8 consumer grade disks of that capacity means having to stump for double parity with ZFS2 unless you fancy playing the lotto with a single disk rebuild.

it means i *only* get 10.7tb of formatted capacity out of all those disks, but at least i know i can make it through a rebuild even if a 2nd disk fell over, without bringing the whole lot down with it.

I'm actually in the middle of setting up iSCSI for ESXi via the FreeNAS VM to move all my other VM's onto, so I'll let you know how that goes and if there's any increase (or decrease, although hopefully not) in performance on iSCSI versus a single local datastore. I'll need to keep the VM files for FreeNAS on the old disk though, for obvious reasons.

one thing i would say is that if you plan on using the softRAID built into FreeNAS8, don't go with ZFS2 unless you have a fairly powerful CPU as it was lagging even with 1CPU and 4gb RAM in ESXi when i was copying files over from my old NAS, so I had to add another CPU and boost the memory to 8gb to speed up the transfer. i guess it's mostly down to the double parity calculations in software.

Also, don't be tempted to go with the 32bit version of FreeNAS8 if you know that the CPU in your ESX server supports 64bit as even if you configure the FreeNAS VM as 32bit, the OS itself can still detect that it's running on underlying 64bit hardware and will cause you all sorts of problems (google for "freenas kernal panic") the minute you start copying a large amount of files to it, as a found out.

I actually have my eye on a 3Ghz quad core Xeon to replace the Pentium G6950, but i'm moving house next week, so the purse strings are a bit too tight this month to get it.

carbsy

vibe666 wrote: »

i'm kind of doing it that way on my G6950 based HP ML110 G6, just currently without hardware RAID.

I have a FreeNAS8 VM running on ESXi5 with RDM's to eight 2tb disks which I'm using for data.

transfer speeds could be better tbh, but i made a conscious decision to sacrifice that as maximising space across 8 consumer grade disks of that capacity means having to stump for double parity with ZFS2 unless you fancy playing the lotto with a single disk rebuild.

it means i *only* get 10.7tb of formatted capacity out of all those disks, but at least i know i can make it through a rebuild even if a 2nd disk fell over, without bringing the whole lot down with it.

I'm actually in the middle of setting up iSCSI for ESXi via the FreeNAS VM to move all my other VM's onto, so I'll let you know how that goes and if there's any increase (or decrease, although hopefully not) in performance on iSCSI versus a single local datastore. I'll need to keep the VM files for FreeNAS on the old disk though, for obvious reasons.

one thing i would say is that if you plan on using the softRAID built into FreeNAS8, don't go with ZFS2 unless you have a fairly powerful CPU as it was lagging even with 1CPU and 4gb RAM in ESXi when i was copying files over from my old NAS, so I had to add another CPU and boost the memory to 8gb to speed up the transfer. i guess it's mostly down to the double parity calculations in software.

Also, don't be tempted to go with the 32bit version of FreeNAS8 if you know that the CPU in your ESX server supports 64bit as even if you configure the FreeNAS VM as 32bit, the OS itself can still detect that it's running on underlying 64bit hardware and will cause you all sorts of problems (google for "freenas kernal panic") the minute you start copying a large amount of files to it, as a found out.

I actually have my eye on a 3Ghz quad core Xeon to replace the Pentium G6950, but i'm moving house next week, so the purse strings are a bit too tight this month to get it.

Ah yeah.. I bought the ML110 G6 too.I remember you asking me some questions about it before you bought yours.I'm using it for my study lab with nested ESXi hosts ala vTardis.Only just started this project so gonna be next year by the time it's finished as I'm only using the supplied 250GB SATA HD atm so need to get a hardware raid card for this too and lots of disks.

Or maybe I should use the Microserver as my study lab and use the ML110 for FreeNAS VM etc ... doing my nut in tbh as I keep changing my mind and can't decide on which to use for what!

vibe666

well, there's definitely more room for disks in the ML110.

I managed to cram nine 3.5" drives into it with little shoehorning.

diggerdigger

Anyone have a copy of the November form for Ireland. Emailed HP and didn't get a response and cant find online.

dahamsta

I linked it earlier in the thread.

garvm

diggerdigger wrote: »

Anyone have a copy of the November form for Ireland. Emailed HP and didn't get a response and cant find online.

http://goo.gl/5d5xZ

vibe666

i keep expecting this thread to be more interesting than it is. can we turn it into a "show us yer box" thread to spice it up a bit?

just want to see what people are doing with theirs.

if you show me yours, i'll show you mine. but i should warn you, mines much bigger.

dahamsta

I'm doing Amahi, with the OS on a 16GB Sandisk Cruzer Fit. Took about 3 tries to get it on there, but it's running away happily now. Can't afford disks with the prices at the moment though, so my old Dell cheapie server will have to plod away with it's nasty 500GB softraid for now. The project will continue anon.

machalla

Vibe

Theres a few usage ideas for these boxes here.

http://confoundedtech.blogspot.com/2011/05/hp-proliant-microserver-hp-n36l.html

It seems to be mostly NAS and media server that it gets drafted into.

Hmm, how about it as an odd Christmas present. "Here ya go, your very own media server!"

mikewest

Can anyone find the December offer? I can only find th UK version........

J-blk

I bought one of these from Dabs.ie in late November for €275 - Dabs was only linking the UK rebate form so I thought the offer was not available in Ireland but from this thread it seems it is, which is great news! I assume I can use the form earlier linked here:

http://h40055.www4.hp.com/docs/focus-pack/nov11/EURO-Microserver-Offer-IRE-Nov2011.pdf

Does it matter that this was not a company purchase but bought for personal use? I thought €275 was a great price, but if I end up getting it at €155 instead, it'll simply be amazing! Has anyone had a November claim accepted already (confirmation email from HP at least)?

BlackWizard

I have had my November claim accepted. I sent them the wrong number and they got back to me asap and accepted the right service tag.

I bought as a personal purchase too. It's a really nice machine. So small and compact. I love how modular it is.

J-blk

Thanks BlackWizard - I'm replacing my aging WHS V1 HP Mediasmart EX475 with this (got WHS 2011 on it). The EX475 was smaller overall but sounds like a hoover and has no PCI slots/optical drive bay so happy with the Proliant. It's really quiet IMO and has no problem streaming HD content to my iPad/iPhone (which the Mediasmart chocked on) so very happy even at the full price. Getting the €120 rebate will make this the best purchase of the year for me .

Inspector Gadget

So, are we sure there's no December offer? I discovered I needed to build a NAS box for someone on December 1st, and if this offer was viable it would be epic...

NeoRox

Yeah there is a December offer. Clicky linky for form

Inspector Gadget

Brilliant, NeoRox - much obliged!!!

MartMax

Took about 5 weeks to receive the cheque. I didn't send in the post by instead emailed them a scanned copy of the claim and invoice. AIB charged €4.20 to lodge the cheque. Immediately cleared thou.

davoxx

is this in stock anywhere atm?

vibe666

davoxx wrote: »

is this in stock anywhere atm?

yup.

http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=WCE658553421

sesswhat

€275.55 at Dabs.

vibe666

sesswhat wrote: »

€275.55 at Dabs.

fingers crossed that should (hopefully) get fixed soon enough.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=75974788#post75974788

sesswhat

vibe666 wrote: »

fingers crossed that should (hopefully) get fixed soon enough.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=75974788#post75974788

Not looking very likely.

vibe666

sesswhat wrote: »

Not looking very likely.

ah well, it was worth a go.

still, at least we know that they're not making huge profits at our expense.

TheCaveman

MartMax wrote: »

Took about 5 weeks to receive the cheque. I didn't send in the post by instead emailed them a scanned copy of the claim and invoice. AIB charged €4.20 to lodge the cheque. Immediately cleared thou.

MartMax, any chance you can post the email ad you sent it to, as i would like to email them as well?

thanks

MartMax

it's promotions (at) outbound (.) co (.) uk same as the email on the claim form.

PCDub

Just ordered from dabs and used code IE10SAVE to get 10e off, so 265e delivered not bad especially if i get the 120e cashback.

SlipperyPeople

I've been waiting to set this up for a while as i waited for HHD's to arrive for america. I'm looking for advice on the best OS to install as I would like to use this primarily as a NAS Server.

I would like to use it for: FTP download for music and movies/rapidshare downloads/streaming movies and music to xbox/laptop/touchpad. I'd like to be able to let my friends access the server aswell. The ones iv'e been thinking about are freeNas, WHS (although i read on here it will only recognise 4gb ram while i have 5gb installed) I'm not opposed to using a linux server as ive ubuntu installed on it now just to play around with while waiting for the disks. I haven't decided on what raid array to run. I have 2 TB drives in the bays and had an extra 2TB at home which i'm going to mount in the ODD slot with a usb external drive for giving to my friends for stealing their media. I was thinking about raid5 but havent made up my mind yet...

just wondering is it just a preference thing or would most of the OS's do the job for me.

What do people think?