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

dragonuk

dragonuk

dragonuk

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This thread is for people with the HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY.

This can be got for around £112 as HP are giving £100 cashback at the moment. Which is a really good price.
The HP £100 Cashback ends December 31st so you have to order before then

It has space for 4 Storage Drives and a Optical Drive. Also supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. Has 6 USB Ports and 1 Internal. Comes with 160GB HDD 7200rpm and 1GB RAM. This can all be easily upgraded though. Very Quiet too

Considering a Netgear ReadyNAS is around the same price and only supports 2 storage drives and no optical drive, this is a great deal.

Also you can install any OS you want on this. Like Windows Home Server etc.

Would make a good Home NAS/Media Streamer or a server for a small business.

Here is the Specifications.

Dimension: 10.5 x 10.2 x 8.3 inch (26.7 x 26.0 x 21.0 cm) H x D x W

Power supply:200 Watt

Network Controller:Embedded NC107i PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Server Adaptor

Optical: None shipped standard, optional optical drive

USB: 4 front, 2 rear, 1 internal + 1 eSATA rear

Processor:Dual Core 1.3 GHz AMD Athlon II

Number of processor:1

Cache: 2 MB cache

Memory type: PC3-10600E DDR3, operating at maximum of 800 MHz

Memory slots: 2 DIMM slots

Maximum memory: 8 GB (2 x 4 GB)

Maximum internal drives: 4 pluggable drives

Maximum internal storage: TB (4 x 2 TB 3.5” SATA drives)

Storage controller: Embedded SATA controller RAID 0/1

Expansion slots: 2 PCI Express (x16 and x1)


So what does everything think of it who has it? And what OS you going to install?

Anyone sent away for there cashback yet and got it?
 
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Without mentioning any names how are you getting to your figure of £112?

The normal delivered cost appears to be around £200+Vat (£235 inc. Vat).

Allowing for the HP £100 cashback the delivered cost is going to be around £100 if you’re in a situation where you can reclaim the Vat, or £135 if you can’t.

I’m looking for a box to run GFI WebMonitor on. Allowing for the cashback, and the cost of a 4GB stick of memory, I should be able to get one of these on site for around 180+Vat. My only worry is the processor… I need to find out how it compares to something I've had real experience with.
 
You can get it for exactly £212.82 including vat. And then the £100 cashback.

Type this into google " COMSUK23/612275-421-HP " and click the first link ;)

And there is a 2.5% discount voucher for there if you look around
 
This little box looks like it could fill my needs very well.

The one thing I'm wondering about is their rebate form where they want a company name. I can't see anything in their terms mentioning the offer is restricted to companies.
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I found a review where virtualisation is talked about:
the most glaringly obvious question in all of this is the dual 1.3Ghz CPU Cores up to the job of supporting and running an average vSphere lab environment?

Well, of course the answer to this is… it depends. As no doubt all of you who run a production or lab VMware vSphere environment will in most cases confirm the amount of CPU utilisation is generally quite low with memory being the first ESX/ESXi host physical resource being consumed, meaning that a lowly utilised vSphere lab environment with 4-5 VMs would probably be ok running on the MicroServer in most instances. Though increase the workloads of the VMs running on the server and the CPU performance could quickly change for the worse.

http://www.techhead.co.uk/new-hp-proliant-microserver-a-decent-vsphere-lab-server-candidate
Click to expand...


Here is a discussion thread with lots of useful info including internal/dismantled pics:
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=1126552

And another thread on [H]
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1555868
 
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Just ordered mine; should be here middle of next week. Cost £212.06 including delivery. I'd say the price is pretty good without the rebate, but with the rebate its awesome!

Gonna set it up as a NAS/iscsi box I think, as i've already got an ML115.
 
Gonna get one of these, stick 160gb in optical and then 4x2tb in the regular bays.

2 questions though:

1) how do I mount the 160 in the optical bay, does it require some form of caddy coverter?
2) can you add drives already filled with files to WHS?

Thanks :)
 
Anyone know who this gets delivered by ? Or how to track delivery. Mine is despatched. But dunno tracking number or who its coming by. Any ideas. Throught there might be a way to find it, work it out.
 
Just got on of these the other day, added 2x 1Tb drives, DVD Drive and 4Gb of RAM.

Very quiet and seems fairly quick for the specs, just trying to decide on an OS to install now, may give SBS Aurora a try on it.
 
Haven't had time to check yet but if you are planning on getting one for ESX / ESXi - check to see the inbedded NIC works/is on the HCL otherwise you'll be putting in a PCI NIC
 
Thanks for the heads up, don't really need another server but at that price it would be rude not to buy one :)

Edit:

The site mentioned by dragon seem to get bad customer feedback from searching around, however I have never used them so cant confirm/deny.

I ordered this from another retailer for £222.07, then go via quidco for £10 off and 4% cashback, then £100 cashback from hp :)
 
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The site mentioned by dragon seem to get bad customer feedback from searching around, however I have never used them so cant confirm/deny.

I ordered this from another retailer for £222.07, then go via quidco for £10 off and 4% cashback, then £100 cashback from hp
Click to expand...

Looks like a good deal if you happen to have any existing quidco account.

If you're worried about customer feedback ratings there are sites much nearer to home that score far worse...
 
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