Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD

BTW I'm not sure what would happen in this scenario can someone explain.

If I have WHS with drive extender running on my hp microserver and have 2 storage drives in it added to the storage pool. Things I copy will be split into parts and stored over the 2 drives correct ?

Now if both of these are half full and I install a 3rd hdd and add it to the storage pool does none of the existing data get spread over this 3rd hdd ? Is it only new data that will now get spread across the 3 drives?
 
Im running mine as a NAS, RAID1 using CIFS shares to clients. Im using the standard 1GB ram, were I to increase this to 4GB would I see any discernable performance increase bearing in mind its purpose? The ram isnt exactly expensive now, but at the same time Id rather not spend money on something I dont need to.
 
marcus2704 said:
Im running mine as a NAS, RAID1 using CIFS shares to clients. Im using the standard 1GB ram, were I to increase this to 4GB would I see any discernable performance increase bearing in mind its purpose? The ram isnt exactly expensive now, but at the same time Id rather not spend money on something I dont need to.
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Are you running a unix/linux system? Could you let me know what sort of speeds you are seeing?

If anyone is interested, Disabling Nagles (Setting TcpAckFrequency to 1)fixed a lot of my issues with iSCSI speeds, but SMB/CIFS is still down around 50MB/s reads, 30MB/s writes.
 
I've just received an email confirming my £100 cashback from HP.

I used my name as the company, and that's who they're paying the cheque to.

I posted the letter to them on the 16th.
 
Anyone found a full set of WinXP Pro drivers for this?

My current maximum H/D size is 127gb, that can't be right! - Ok, that's an SP1 issue, ignore that, but could still do with a reliable full set of drivers.
 
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This server has really got me curious as I was looking at NAS box for home as I've run out of disk bays/sata ports. But I have some questions as I'm completely clueless on servers! Main usage would have been backup/media streaming to Popcorn player. However, reading through this thread has given me some more ideas but just to clarify, this is what I would like it to do:

1. 2x2tb RAID1
2. 2x2tb JBOD: I want to be able to take them out and be readable on any other machine.
3. VMWare VSphere on internal USB
4. 1 VM as a SQL DB server (very low infrequent usage, for development work)
5. 1 VM as a app server (again, basic web applications, for development work)
6. 1 VM with OS? for file server/backup/streaming to media players (Will be mostly used).


Is this asking too much from the little box? I will be upgrading to 4GB of ram. Also is the above HDD configuration possible?

I may consider software RAID5 on say 3x2tb but I'm worried about being able to recover the files. How transferrable will this RAID5 be? Say if I was to pull the drives onto another machine would I need the exact same OS to read recognise the drives again?

Thanks.
 
Transfers across my Gb LAN to my windows 7 PC are really slow, about 12Mb/s tops. Im using Freenas and Im accessing via CIFS share. Is this to be expected, or can I do anything to improve this sort of performance?
 
marcus2704 said:
Transfers across my Gb LAN to my windows 7 PC are really slow, about 12Mb/s tops. Im using Freenas and Im accessing via CIFS share. Is this to be expected, or can I do anything to improve this sort of performance?
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This will be down to the settings on FreeNAS - you need to boost the send receive buffers in the Samba/Cifs setup.

I can't remember off the top of my head but I'll check when I get in.
 
Was getting around 60Mb/sec when I first set this up, now getting about 22. Also sending files around 10gb has been ok, though slow obviously, but I tried a 17gb one and twice it crashed the little microserver.
Internet search ideas leads to 1) disable ipv6 and 2) dodgy nic drivers. :/

On a good note, cashback claim accepted despite putting N/A in company field, so pleased with that. :)

[Edit] interesting, uninstalled windows search 4 and IE8 and it doesnt seem to crash anymore. Now all I need to do is fix the slow speeds. Perhaps I should uninstall some more updates? :P
 
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A mate of mine got one and I wanted to see how it performs in transcoding to the iPad.

Installed AirVideo which uses FFMpeg for on the fly transcode, a little bit of stutter via WiFi (access point in the same room), CPU at a consistent 98%+

Going to try a few different apps. HP is running Server 2008 R2
 
I like most things about the server but having spent the best part of three hours trying to improve the CIFS transfer speed to and from the server Im starting to doubt my purchase.

As I said earlier, Im using Freenas off USB, Ive only installed 1GB so the option there is to purchase more Ram. I also may try Openfiler, I wanted to install that to USB but the procedure seems somewhat convoluted, will give it a try though. The most I get is around 20Mb/s, I altered the send/receive buffers as mentioned above but didnt see any discernable difference. If I could crack this nut Id be very happy with it, interesting to see others are reporting similar transfer speeds.
 
Im just using the highly technical method of copying large files to and from my windows (2k8, W7) clients :)

I have improved the performance of my cifs shares by adding the following to the auxillery properties of each share -

max xmit = 65535
socket options = TCP_NODELAY IPTOS_LOWDELAY SO_SNDBUF=65535 SO_RCVBUF=65535

I also bumped the send/receive buffer up to 131072.

Performance is better (not great), transfers that were around the 8-10MB/s mark are now fluctuating around 25-30MB/s.
 
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