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

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Mine is on 8.1 and boots in under 10 seconds on an SSD (Crucial M4). I do have the latest modded BIOS and use the SSD in the ODD off the extra SATA port, but it has always been pretty quick regardless.

Check event viewer etc, startup apps.

I tried to update the bios on my 64GB M4 and it wasn't having it, run the Crucial firmware app and it just took forever. Found the Tobi Oo modded HP Microserver bios and installed that, followed the guide below to set the drives up again and lo and behold everything ran as it was before, pretty fast! I was then able to run the Crucial firmware update as it was on 000F. Everything is running spot on now :)

http://terfmop.co.uk/blog/2013/07/3...t-full-speed-on-hp-n54l-proliant-microserver/
 
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If anyone else needs a reason to buy the HP Gen8 Microserver (G1610T) at the moment, I can confirm that HP are very quick at processing the forms for cashback. Only sent the form in the post on Friday, but have already received confirmation of the approval today. Yay!
 
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Anyone happen to be running 2012 R2 on top of ESXi 5.1 on a N54L Microserver?
Mine halts during boot and from what I read I need to enable some option that doesn't exist. I've noticed though on my N36L 2012 R2 works fine.

Related searches:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/11899
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2039596
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2901606

Yes it will most likely be the known issue with the onboard NIC, newer versions of Windows don't play ball with it out the box until it gets the latest drivers for it.

Use the latest modded BIOS, you may have to fiddle around with it, alternatively disable it within the BIOS (IIRC there are 2 areas it needs disabling) and if you have one use a spare NIC card. I have an Intel one I bought due to the issue, however since getting the latest BIOS I've been using the onboard. Win 8.1 had the same issue. It hung the first try of installing with the onboard enabled with the new BIOS but a reboot and retry got it going and it installed correctly.

On a side note I've finally been able to get WoL working on the onboard NIC when the machine is switched off, previously it only seemed to work when the machine was hibernated. I use a scheduled task at 3am to shut it down which is the only difference (shutdown /s /t 0) instead of Start > Shut Down.
 
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Does anyone have any ideas on what you can buy to fit two hard drives in the n54l's ODD bay? Nexus mounts are no longer available :(

There's this one.

Which on the OWC website shows two hard drives.

Ho6uX82.jpg

Looks like there's a lot of upward space required and I'm not sure if there's room, but given 3.5" hard drives are all about the same height and that nexus mount used to work then I wouldn't see why this couldn't?
 

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KIA

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Looks like there's a lot of upward space required and I'm not sure if there's room, but given 3.5" hard drives are all about the same height and that nexus mount used to work then I wouldn't see why this couldn't?

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Does anyone know what the speed on the extra SATA port is limited to?

I'm about to hit my 4 HDD limit so thinking of putting an SSD in the 5.25 bay, what would I need to do to get this working with a sensible speed limit? I don't mind if I'm not getting the full SSD speed, as long as it's reasonable.
 
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Personally I am a huge fan of using the Pi & RasPLEX along with the mobile clients so don't need anything more powerful. That said I didn't think it was possible, or recommended, to use the PMS machine as the client at the same time.

I started out with the N54L with a low profile graphics card running XBMC directly against the media drives, then moved tot he server running Plex, plus a Raspberry Pi with Rasplex

But after spending the last 2 weeks with it, I'll never go back to either of those from my current solution: Plex on the N54L, a Chromecast into the TV, and a phone/tablet as the remote and to choose what to play next. It's neat, it's simple and it really works very, very well. I find it to be far less fiddly and would recommend it to anyone over a HTPC now. I'm a total convert.
 
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Does anyone have any ideas on what you can buy to fit two hard drives in the n54l's ODD bay? Nexus mounts are no longer available :(

Could always use a backplane to fit upto 6x 2.5" disks in the ODD bay too :) I had a 4x bay backplane in both of my Microservers before selling up (the backplanes are still available in the MM ;))
 
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Does anyone know what the speed on the extra SATA port is limited to?

I'm about to hit my 4 HDD limit so thinking of putting an SSD in the 5.25 bay, what would I need to do to get this working with a sensible speed limit? I don't mind if I'm not getting the full SSD speed, as long as it's reasonable.

You'll want to install a custom bios to turn the ODD SATA port into a full one.
 
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I'm reading about the gen8 and specifically iLo4. I've seen that the remote console is not available with the free ilo license. What exactly counts as 'remote', here? Remote from the server, or remote from the network?

If there's something that needs to be done via the console I don't want to have to be attaching kb, mouse and vdu to the server...
 
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Hi guys. Has anyone here converted their server into a ESXII setup before?
Basically I have a windows server 2012 which is all nicely setup but I am about to stop using it for xbmc which was the primary reason for not using esxii previously. I now would like to setup esxii with my existing host "image" as one of the VMs? Any ideas if this is possible or would I have to start from scratch.
 
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Download the P2V (Physical to Virtual) tool from the VMWare website. This will make an image you can then upload into your ESXi system when its up and running.
 
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I'm reading about the gen8 and specifically iLo4. I've seen that the remote console is not available with the free ilo license. What exactly counts as 'remote', here? Remote from the server, or remote from the network?

If there's something that needs to be done via the console I don't want to have to be attaching kb, mouse and vdu to the server...

It means remote from the server, so LAN or WAN. If it's anything like my ilo3, you'll get into the BIOS OK but you'll get booted out pretty quickly once the OS is loading. If it's something you'll need, then it's worth the tiny amount of cash for the advanced license.
 
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