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

thiggo · 1 Jun 2011 at 00:05

howamidifferent said:
Attached to the eSata port I have a Startech 4 bay raid enclosure with 4 x 2TB WD20EARS in raid 5 for another 5.45TB . No problems using eSata at all.

Very interesting. I was under the impression that this device didn't support port multiplication? I haven't tested it, just what I have read from users on other forums.

Is there anything special you need to do to enable this? (I have done the BIOS mod to get the two sata ports running at full speed)

Rudeboy · 1 Jun 2011 at 02:51

thiggo said:
Could be, symptoms of a badly-behaved Broadcom. Download HP's Network Configuration Utility, use it to change some settings on the Broadcom NIC to anything-but-default, save the settings, then change them back to default and save them again. For some reason, this seems to make the onboard NIC behave a lot better. http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...kId=135&swItem=MTX-d92400e70c234b23a8eb330860

Thanks for the help, but in the end the problem turned out to be IPv6. As soon as I turned it off on all machines on my network, NIC speed increased to 100-120MB/s for large file transfers using WHS2011.

One final test of ESXi to make sure I can hit 100MB/s with WHS2011 and IPv6 turned off in that too and then I have to decide on whether to go with a permanent ESXi or a native install before migrating all my data over to the Microserver.

AbsenceJam · 1 Jun 2011 at 05:30

Al Vallario said:
Yep, that's what I'm wondering.

howamidifferent, if I understand correctly you have four of the internal SATA ports free? It seems to me the system can only handle 5 SATA devices at once, unless using a SATA->eSATA adapter changes things?

I've had 6 drives running without any problems.

howamidifferent · 1 Jun 2011 at 09:12

Al Vallario said:
Yep, that's what I'm wondering.

howamidifferent, if I understand correctly you have four of the internal SATA ports free? It seems to me the system can only handle 5 SATA devices at once, unless using a SATA->eSATA adapter changes things?

I disconnected the mini sas cable for the 4 drive bays and hooked it up to the P410 Raid controller so the multilane 4 port controller on the motherboard is now free. The single sata connector on the motherboard I took to a 2.5 inch disk for the OS, which I placed ontop of the 4 bay dock in the ODD space using electrical tape to keep it in place.
The 4 drives in the ODD bay are controlled also by the P410. So the only other port of the 6 on the motherboard is the eSata at the rear which hooks to the Startech Raid enclosure. So 3 Raid 5 arrays and 4 ports free....

howamidifferent · 1 Jun 2011 at 09:17

thiggo said:
Very interesting. I was under the impression that this device didn't support port multiplication? I haven't tested it, just what I have read from users on other forums.

Is there anything special you need to do to enable this? (I have done the BIOS mod to get the two sata ports running at full speed)

I have done nothing special just hooked up a single eSata cable from the rear of the Microserver to the rear of the Startech 4 bay raid enclosure. The 4 disks in that enclosure are in hardware raid 5 since the Startech is a raid box. Presents to the system as 5.45TB usable single disk. On a side note, that Startech box allows raid 0, 1, 5, 01, 50. It does not support raid 10 although the package claims it does. Raid mode is selected by dip switches on the unit. Also has USB 2.0, firewire 400 and firewire 800 as well as eSata interface.

EDIT: This is the Startech enclosure I'm using.

PiKe · 1 Jun 2011 at 09:18

Startech kit is pretty inexpensive but good

TurGe · 1 Jun 2011 at 09:38

just had confirmation off one company that the offer is extended to the end of June

Ill be placing my order now then

Al Vallario · 1 Jun 2011 at 10:11

AbsenceJam said:
I've had 6 drives running without any problems.

Which BIOS hack and operating system are you using, may I ask? The only detailed report I've heard of the eSATA port working to provide 6 drives is from someone using a Windows installation who configured it on the off-chance using device manager :confused:

Having tried pretty much everything to get this working, I've now given up and splashed out on a cheap SiL 3132 chipset PCIe RAID card to run my boot drive off. Will update, hopefully with great success, when I receive it

TurGe · 1 Jun 2011 at 11:26

Ok I have the little beast on Order.
I have read all the threads and am a little confused with which OS to go with.
If one of you kind people would mind suggesting a set-up to achieve the following I would really Appreciate it.
I want to use the Box as NAS Storage for
Photo's
Movies
MP3's
ITUNES
Also have the ability to access this data from any PC in the house as well as XBOX360 (DLNA)
I have a copy of 2008R2 Standard if that is suitable?

Thanks
TurGe

strelly · 1 Jun 2011 at 11:39

TurGe said:
just had confirmation off one company that the offer is extended to the end of June
Ill be placing my order now then

Hey TurGe

I missed the boat on the deal too! Would you mind giving me some of the details you found about the offer extension? email is in trust.

Thanks

TurGe · 1 Jun 2011 at 12:01

strelly said:
Hey TurGe

I missed the boat on the deal too! Would you mind giving me some of the details you found about the offer extension? email is in trust.

Thanks

Mail Sent

TurGe · 1 Jun 2011 at 12:10

Just in case anyone else is interested this is the new Claim form that I was Directed to which shows the new extended date to the 30th June
I downloaded it and uploaded to my own webspace as linking would have been a competitor infringement.
HP Form

Simpic · 1 Jun 2011 at 12:42

Al Vallario said:
Which BIOS hack and operating system are you using, may I ask? The only detailed report I've heard of the eSATA port working to provide 6 drives is from someone using a Windows installation who configured it on the off-chance using device manager

Having tried pretty much everything to get this working, I've now given up and splashed out on a cheap SiL 3132 chipset PCIe RAID card to run my boot drive off. Will update, hopefully with great success, when I receive it

Hi,

Maybe I have been lucky.

I just followed the instructions on that thread with regard to flashing the BIOS and all works fine with 6 HDD at full speed.

4 * 2TB Samsung F4's in the cage on the SAS connector
1 * 2TB Samsung F4 in the Icybox connected to the onboard SATA connection
1 * 320GB Samsung 2.5'' 5200 HDD connected to the eSATA external port via a SATA to eSATA cable and using a Molex to 2*SATA power shared with the Icybox drive.

I am running UnRAID 5. All the drives are reported as running at full SATA 3 speeds.

Regards,

Simpic

StevenG · 1 Jun 2011 at 12:48

this looks like an amazing deal, a lesser specced nas drive with 4 bays would easily be way more than this and not as good i would think.

will have to have a look through the thread for performance figures.

StevenG

DJMK4 · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:02

TurGe said:
Ok I have the little beast on Order.
I have read all the threads and am a little confused with which OS to go with.
If one of you kind people would mind suggesting a set-up to achieve the following I would really Appreciate it.
I want to use the Box as NAS Storage for
Photo's
Movies
MP3's
ITUNES
Also have the ability to access this data from any PC in the house as well as XBOX360 (DLNA)
I have a copy of 2008R2 Standard if that is suitable?

Thanks
TurGe

I am using Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard with no issues

Simpic · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:16

hdparm results for the drive on the eSATA cable...

root@Tower:~# for i in 1 2 3; do hdparm -tT /dev/sde; done

/dev/sde:
Timing cached reads: 2224 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1112.21 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 250 MB in 3.01 seconds = 82.96 MB/sec

/dev/sde:
Timing cached reads: 2140 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1069.92 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 250 MB in 3.01 seconds = 82.98 MB/sec

/dev/sde:
Timing cached reads: 2302 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1151.19 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 250 MB in 3.01 seconds = 83.07 MB/sec

hdparm -I /dev/sde | grep -i speed
* Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
* Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)

dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/output.img bs=8k count=256k
262144+0 records in
262144+0 records out
2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB) copied, 2.10321 s, 1.0 GB/s

TurGe · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:21

Being a complete Noob to Raid
If I were to buy 4 * 2TB disks which would be the best Raid Set up to use also could I use the disk that comes with the unit as the OS drive in the CD rom Drive Space

moss · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:34

Depends on what you want to achieve with the RAID setup, you can go for speed, redundancy or a bit of both. The server does not support all RAID types by default.
RAID should not also be considered a true backup method either.

ubern00b · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:35

TurGe said:
Just in case anyone else is interested this is the new Claim form that I was Directed to which shows the new extended date to the 30th June
I downloaded it and uploaded to my own webspace as linking would have been a competitor infringement.
HP Form

Thanks so much for this! Just ordered one now

TurGe · 1 Jun 2011 at 13:49

moss said:
Depends on what you want to achieve with the RAID setup, you can go for speed, redundancy or a bit of both. The server does not support all RAID types by default.
RAID should not also be considered a true backup method either.

Preferable a bit of both, I want it to act as a file server for speed but also the main intention of use is that the photo's are protected if a drive dies.