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

Deleted member 138126 · 21 Jun 2017 at 11:08

F10 to get into Intelligent Provisioning and you configure the RAID from there. You can definitely have ECC RAM. What you can't have is registered/buffered RAM.

In terms of RAID 5, I don't know if the on-board controller supports it, but I would strongly discourage you from using it, even if it is available. The on board controller has no cache, let alone a battery-backed cache, so write performance on RAID 5 will be dreadfully slow. You're better to use either OS level RAID, or avoid RAID altogether and just have backups. For example, I have a 3TB drive with my data on it, a 4TB drive with media, and an 8TB (external, USB 3) that everything backs up to. Data backs up every 4 hours (to allow the backup drive to stay spun down), and media backs up every 12 hours.

Trig · 21 Jun 2017 at 12:45

RAID 5, not out of the box chap..

What are you using the server for and why do you think you need RAID5, bearing in mind that to get RAID 5 you're going to need an addon card, and that RAID 5, or ANY RAID, isnta replacement for actual backups..

crinkleshoes · 21 Jun 2017 at 13:58

Raid 5 not available by default - you would need a new controller card or rely on OS raid.

XPEnology is very reliable and works well with the microserver - but it depends what you want to do with it.

maj · 21 Jun 2017 at 14:50

rotor said:
F10 to get into Intelligent Provisioning and you configure the RAID from there. You can definitely have ECC RAM. What you can't have is registered/buffered RAM.

In terms of RAID 5, I don't know if the on-board controller supports it, but I would strongly discourage you from using it, even if it is available. The on board controller has no cache, let alone a battery-backed cache, so write performance on RAID 5 will be dreadfully slow. You're better to use either OS level RAID, or avoid RAID altogether and just have backups. For example, I have a 3TB drive with my data on it, a 4TB drive with media, and an 8TB (external, USB 3) that everything backs up to. Data backs up every 4 hours (to allow the backup drive to stay spun down), and media backs up every 12 hours.

Trig said:
RAID 5, not out of the box chap..

What are you using the server for and why do you think you need RAID5, bearing in mind that to get RAID 5 you're going to need an addon card, and that RAID 5, or ANY RAID, isnta replacement for actual backups..

crinkleshoes said:
Raid 5 not available by default - you would need a new controller card or rely on OS raid.

XPEnology is very reliable and works well with the microserver - but it depends what you want to do with it.

Thanks all. Seems OS raid with a storage pool might be my best option which is fine just wanted to know my options. I chose RAID5 due to how it works and thought it would give the best performance/maximum space available vs redundancy/potential disk failure. Would 1 or 10 be better then? Its general purpose will be mostly file storage and a few virtual servers hosted on it.

Avalon · 21 Jun 2017 at 15:53

It has a RAID controller built in, however using software or hardware RAID5 in a home environment needs careful consideration. You probably don't have a hot or cold spare, you probably also don't ever want to try and recover a failed array (2 drives).

Decide what you want your server to do and what OS suits your needs best, if it's basic file server/NAS then the 1610T is likely massive overkill, if it's a few light dockers as well then again it may make more sense to use a scratch disk rather than spin up the array all the time. If it's heavy VM usage with lots of RAR/PAR work and transcoding then the Xeon makes sense.

Quartz · 21 Jun 2017 at 16:18

maj said:
What does the Gen 8 support by default without needing something like a RAID controlled card?

My four drives are set up as 2x RAID 1.

I've got a E3-1220L waiting to go in and was thinking next upgrade would be the RAM. I know it needs to be Non-ECC but does anyone have any recommendations for any that they know are compatible?

Actually, the RAM needs to be ECC.

crinkleshoes · 21 Jun 2017 at 16:50

I use 6x 8TB in raid-5 on a hardware controller at home (no longer gen8) but that's for file storage... my VMs sit on separate drives.

R5 is fine for normal home use and read speeds are good but writes can be very slow.

Raid 10 is a good balance of speed & redundancy.

EssexBoy · 21 Jun 2017 at 16:59

crinkleshoes said:
Raid 5 not available by default - you would need a new controller card or rely on OS raid.

XPEnology is very reliable and works well with the microserver - but it depends what you want to do with it.

Love my gen 7 running XPEnology with 6 drives and has been flawless for last 2 years

crinkleshoes · 21 Jun 2017 at 17:04

EssexBoy said:
Love my gen 7 running XPEnology with 6 drives and has been flawless for last 2 years

Yeah, I used to run my 2x gen8s just as fileservers and xpenology was perfect for that.

Trig · 21 Jun 2017 at 19:57

What are you going to be using the server for?
I've been more than happy running mine on Server 2012r2 and server 2016, add the Essentials Role and it fits well into the home environment, then add Hyper-V and spin up VM's for Plex, Sophos UTM etc and you're on to a winnner, or go down the Hyper-V route as a standalone headless unit, or VMWare if thats more your thing.
Personally I stuck to Windows Server, then used Stablebits Scanner and Drivepool as a combo, Scanner watches the SMART tables on the disks to make sure they're ok and Drivepool allows you to add multiple drives and have them all appear on the OS as a single drive, you can also use Drivepools duplication option to make sure your important stuff is on multiple disks in case of failure, but saying that Scanner will watch for SMART errors and evacuate data from a drive if it starts to error.

RAID will cost you more, and if your array dies for whatever reason, you best be making backups.
Drivepool uses NTFS/ReFS so any drive you pull from your server can be plugged into another machine and theres your data..

Quartz · 23 Jun 2017 at 13:22

My Xeon CPU has arrived. It looks like I'm going to be busy on Monday.

doodah · 28 Jun 2017 at 10:04

My trusty N54L has been gathering dust as Sky does pretty much everything these days. In terms of the future - I was thinking of repurposing it as a server, and replacing its HTPC function with a new build from my 3570K/16GB spare parts when I complete my Ryzen upgrade. Plus with a 1050Ti mini, the new HTPC should be good for 1080p gaming. The N54L currently has Windows 8 on it, I assume it would be better to use a server OS if I go down this route? Server 2012 the best option as I only really have experience with Windows.

Deleted member 138126 · 28 Jun 2017 at 10:08

doodah said:
My trusty N54L has been gathering dust as Sky does pretty much everything these days. In terms of the future - I was thinking of repurposing it as a server, and replacing its HTPC function with a new build from my 3570K/16GB spare parts when I complete my Ryzen upgrade. Plus with a 1050Ti mini, the new HTPC should be good for 1080p gaming. The N54L currently has Windows 8 on it, I assume it would be better to use a server OS if I go down this route? Server 2012 the best option as I only really have experience with Windows.

Server 2016 all the way.

dtokez · 28 Jun 2017 at 12:14

guys, quick question. What advantage is there in running a dual network card in a microserver? Surely one is enough?

meandu229 · 28 Jun 2017 at 12:18

dtokez said:
guys, quick question. What advantage is there in running a dual network card in a microserver? Surely one is enough?

I think a few people use them as a firewall with pfsense which is better with 2 NICs.

Quartz · 28 Jun 2017 at 13:11

After assorted delays, I upgraded my Microserver with the Xeon earlier this week. I'll be installing WSE 2016 next week.

Deleted member 138126 · 28 Jun 2017 at 14:19

dtokez said:
guys, quick question. What advantage is there in running a dual network card in a microserver? Surely one is enough?

You can do teaming to increase bandwidth and resiliency. Or as mentioned for a firewall. For home use it's pretty much a luxury, for work use it's essential.

dtokez · 28 Jun 2017 at 15:04

rotor said:
You can do teaming to increase bandwidth and resiliency. Or as mentioned for a firewall. For home use it's pretty much a luxury, for work use it's essential.

thanks guys. In theory could you get 2x gigabit speeds? but then I suppose you would also need a dual card in the machine at the other end too

Deleted member 138126 · 28 Jun 2017 at 15:21

With teaming you get 2 Gbps in aggregate, but the speed between any given machine and the server will only be 1 Gbps. In other words, it spreads the traffic across the 2 NICs, but any given flow (between a client and the server) will only flow across one NIC.

Quartz · 3 Jul 2017 at 11:01

I'm having a PEBKAC moment here. I've physically added a SSD to my Microserver (GEN8), but it's not showing up automatically, so I've tried to go into the B120i setup by pressing F5 when the Microserver boots. But while the F5 keypress is acknowledged, ILO comes up with an error and asks me to press F8. If i press F8, I go into ILO setup and if I press F5 or nothing, the boot continues as it would if I had not pressed F5. All this happens if I use ILO or have keyboard, monitor, and trackball physically connected. Now, I've manually run SSA on the server and added the drive, but I'm wondering how I would get in if I didn't have an OS and SSA installed?

Also, I similarly cannot get into Intelligent Provisioning, which is going to make installing Server 2016 interesting.

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

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