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

MasterPlan1 said:
As I said a few posts up, don't think of a server as a server, they're just trumped up PCs, that in majority of cases (not this one) has got expensive powerful hardware in it. They're not beasts from the black lagoon.

And if you want just a PnP router with gig ports and don't need to do anything super fantastical, give VM a call and for £30 they will come and install a SuperHub which has GbE ports, and also they'll give you a upgrade to 30Mb in the process for no extra monthly cost.
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Is that response to me asking how easy to setup :p

and ok i didnt realise that. I will give them a ring.
Thanks
 
Cheers masterplan and sbradley, I still have a few questions with the main one being

Can you add disks on the fly? as you can with say drobo?

Otherwise I see I would need to get my full assortment of hard drives all in one go.
 
you will need a minimum of 3 disks of the same size to set it up initially, as you'll need to create the array, if you're not wanting to create an array you can just shove them in as and when. The array and partition won't be dynamically expanding, so can cause some issues.

On mine, I've got 2x1Tb and a 2Tb, and another machine which I'm making to have a 3Tb mirror for backing the other box up, this is purely because I have hardware laying around :p
 
audric said:
Thanks Trox, although having read through the earlier posts in here, it seems there were some issues with Ubuntu or is that just when it's not a VM? If not, I might give that a go, although, am totally new to Ubuntu, so should be interesting (then again, am totally new to FreeNAS aswell, so might aswell learn something that will do more...;)). Will def being doing samba aswell. Better read some guides on it...

Never heard of Twonky Media or Webmin and is F@H the distributed protein folding thingy? I've not really done much with linux based OS' tbh, only ever worked with an apache webserver through a control panel.

Yer, will prob be getting the CL7s and the F4s seem a sensible choice for power consumption :cool:
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I didnt have too much trouble getting my Ubuntu server set up, the only problem i had was finding information on setting up a Software Raid.

I've used Twonky media for years on windows systems, this is the first time ive tried it on Linux and so far its just as good and uses the exact same web configuration.

Webmin... I only found out about this after i had set up my server using the CLI, by the look of it this web browser based program will set your whole server up.

Oh and ive only installed Ubuntu :)
 
Right im going to do it, even if I need to wait till next month to get the extra 2x2tb drives ill need, the freeNAS video makes it look easy, the trouble I have is that my data at the moment is on my 2tbh drive DOH and will need to find a way to back that up
 
Taking delivery of WHS 2011 today hopefully. Anyone running it virtualised on ESXi? Was easy on WHSv1 with Drive Extender to separate out datastores, but with RAID required for WHS 2011 I'm wondering how best to do it.

I have 2 x 1tb disks, the original 160GB and a spare 250 in the machine.

Ta
 
Looking at getting one of these this month, but have a few questions:

I'll be using it mainly to serve media to my HTPC and backup various PCs around the house. I'll be using Ethernet to connect to the HTPC and my desktop, but laptops via wireless. I would like to use it as a small web server, as I'll use it for any web development work I do at home.
  • What would be an ideal OS for doing this?
  • Should I upgrade the RAM any further than the stock 1GB?
  • How loud does the unit get when, for example, it is streaming data to the HTPC (Acer Revo)?
 
its certainly not silent stock but not terribly loud.

Regarding software, ubuntu could work for you, but i dont have direct experience in installing it so over to the others for advice.
 
Thanks for the reply adamau5. I've used Ubuntu lightly in the past on desktops and netbooks, so I shouldn't be completely lost!
Anybody know of a good guide for setting up the Ubuntu server for use?
 
Shadows1990 said:
Thanks for the reply adamau5. I've used Ubuntu lightly in the past on desktops and netbooks, so I shouldn't be completely lost!
Anybody know of a good guide for setting up the Ubuntu server for use?
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WHS2011 can be had for around £35, you'd need to upgrade the RAM to 2 GB though if you went this route. The unit is quiet, you can make it quieter by replkaceing the fan with a quieter model if it's too loud for you, there are reports of sopme people getting a noisey PSU fan but this a small monority.
 
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Still waiting for the cheque in the post, they're in no hurry to send them out I imagine!
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I've been waiting since the beginning of July, so emailed them, and got this response this morning.


Dear ** *********,

 Unfortunately we experienced a slight delay in our receipt of funds from HP for this promotion.

 I have just had confirmation that we received the funds this morning and so your cheque will be posted today.

 We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

[FONT=@Arial Unicode MS]Kind Regards [/FONT]
[FONT=@Arial Unicode MS]James W


[/FONT]
 
tbz_ck said:
Taking delivery of WHS 2011 today hopefully. Anyone running it virtualised on ESXi? Was easy on WHSv1 with Drive Extender to separate out datastores, but with RAID required for WHS 2011 I'm wondering how best to do it.

I have 2 x 1tb disks, the original 160GB and a spare 250 in the machine.

Ta
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Just replying to my own post fyi.

I installed WHS 2011 on my ESXi 4.1 on the Microserver and created 2 large 1TB datastores to serve to it. Installed the OS on a spare 250GB hard disk in the machine (250GB datastore) and once the WHS 2011 OS was installed I showed it the 2 x 1TB datastores set aside for it.

Now, since I'm virtualised you can forget about RAID etc on this box, so to add some redundancy I set up one of the 1TB disks for the folders and client computer backup locations, and then set the other 1TB disk as the location for the server OS backup, and the backup of the shared folders.

This way I have all the info I want safeguarding replicated onto both of those 1TB disks. Should one fail then it should be a simple case of recreating the datastore on a new disk, re-adding it to the VM, and presenting it to virtualised WHS 2011 OS. Then I either copy the restored files back, or re-set up the backup location depending on which disk dies (hopefully they wont!)

Hope this helps someone!

Performance of WHS 2011 in ESXi on the Microserver (the VM has 2 vCPU's and 4GB RAM allocated to it) is fine. Sluggish at first whilst it sets itself up but once its done all its set-up processes (and Windows Updates) it works great. Backup performance seems about the same as it was in WHS v1.

Not tried streaming yet, but that's on the list to do shortly.
 
Mad Professor said:
Can anyone please tell me if the keys to lock/unlock the front panel universal?

Thanks for your time.

Best Regards.
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I've got 2 and they are indeed the same, both bought at the same time from the same company and likely out of the same batch, so not 100% confirming they are universal but more than likely so.
 
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