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

Cant decide if I want 4x 2tb wd eco green drives or some 7200 rpm ones. Would I actually notice a difference with the latter or not?

Also whats the best raid to have with 4x 2tb and why?

Also...could I get two 2 or 3 tb's now and add 1 or 2 more later or would it mean I'd have to empty the drives again??

Thanks a lot!

Merry xmas!

G
 
Well this is my proposed media build:


LN22357
8 Port Netgear GS108UK Gigabit 10/100/1000 ProSafe Unmanaged Switch

LN34135
3*UTP CAT6 Cable 1.8m, CAT6 RJ45-RJ45 Straight. N18

LN35720
D-Link DSM-380 Boxee Multimedia Streamer Box, Stream, Sort and Play Digital Media on your TV

4*2TB Western Digital WD20EARS Caviar Green, SATA 3Gb/s, 5400+rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms


Will install FreeNAS on the Microserver and see how we go.

Well I've ordered it. My CC is now bulging.
 
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Robert said:
Well this is my proposed media build:


LN22357
8 Port Netgear GS108UK Gigabit 10/100/1000 ProSafe Unmanaged Switch

LN34135
3*UTP CAT6 Cable 1.8m, CAT6 RJ45-RJ45 Straight. N18

LN35720
D-Link DSM-380 Boxee Multimedia Streamer Box, Stream, Sort and Play Digital Media on your TV

4*2TB Western Digital WD20EARS Caviar Green, SATA 3Gb/s, 5400+rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms


Will install FreeNAS on the Microserver and see how we go.

Well I've ordered it. My CC is now bulging.
Click to expand...

Will you not need a different raid controller for that?

Thanks,

G
 
About to drop a bit of cash on one of these and 4x 2TB drives for a raidz1 FreeNAS setup, just a few quick questions if anyone can offer some advice:

1. Would running FreeNAS off a USB stick introduce any noticeable bottleneck, as opposed to either mounting the provided 160GB 7200rpm drive in the 5.25" bay and using the fifth SATA connection (apparently limited to PATA bandwidth?) or connecting it using a PCI Express SATA adapter?

I'm not bothered about boot time, but in terms of everyday usage how I/O intensive is FreeNAS on the boot drive?

2. Ideally I would like to encrypt my hard drives, it seems GELI is the accepted solution for FreeNAS. I have PGP WDE on my MacBook and barely notice the CPU usage, but would using GELI in combination with a raidz1 array cause problems given the CPU limitations of the server?

3. Would the provided 1GB RAM be sufficient for this kind of setup, assuming FreeNAS has a fairly low memory footprint, or would I see a benefit from upgrading to 2 or even 4GB?

Many thanks if you can help with any of these queries! :)
 
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Robert said:
Why? I'm going to use RAID 0.

Not majorly bothered about redundancy.
Click to expand...

Ah I see! I'm massively concerned about redundancy myself as I plan to put all my family photos on there.

I was wondering what raid card I should get and if anyone is able to post a link (or just part number) to one if it's not too expensive.

Got the server sat here begging for some attention, but I've yet to order the 4x 2tb drives and I want to make sure I have everything I need asap.

Thanks,

G
 
If you have never used Freenas before I used these vids a while back for setting up software raid and sharing to windows, they are old now but should give you an idea what to do -


 
Al Vallario said:
1. Would running FreeNAS off a USB stick introduce any noticeable bottleneck, as opposed to either mounting the provided 160GB 7200rpm drive in the 5.25" bay and using the fifth SATA connection (apparently limited to PATA bandwidth?) or connecting it using a PCI Express SATA adapter?

I'm not bothered about boot time, but in terms of everyday usage how I/O intensive is FreeNAS on the boot drive?



3. Would the provided 1GB RAM be sufficient for this kind of setup, assuming FreeNAS has a fairly low memory footprint, or would I see a benefit from upgrading to 2 or even 4GB?

Many thanks if you can help with any of these queries! :)
Click to expand...

1) ubuntu boots from a 8gb £12 memory stick in about 30seconds so free nas should be up in a quater of that.
3) 1gb will be fine for free nas
 
edscdk said:
1) ubuntu boots from a 8gb £12 memory stick in about 30seconds so free nas should be up in a quater of that.
3) 1gb will be fine for free nas
Click to expand...
Thanks, all sounds good so far! Having done a bit more reading it seems FreeNAS really does have a small footprint...

Guess I'm just wondering about encryption now. Has anyone got theirs set up with FreeNAS, raidz1 and GELI? I've heard talk of a ~50% overhead on write speeds with this setup on similar dual core mobile CPU setups, which has me a little worried.
 
cottoneye said:
Don't the WD20EARS have an issue with LCC, high count or something. I can't make my mind up on what hdd to install.
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I seem to recall that they are 4K sectors, with crappy emulation that kills speeds if it's used. Samsung also emulate 4k but the emulation is much faster. On windows it's not an issue, but it's worth bearing in mind if you are planning a ZFS setup (Due to the emulation, the drives report themselves as being 512k, so the zpools are created with 512k sectors) It can be worked around to force 4k but it's not pretty.

Another issue with them is that they apparently like to park the drive heads after a relatively short period of idle time, which can introduce quite a lot of latency on file accesses (and causes extra wear+tear)

The Hitachi 2TB's are meant to be a good choice.
 
stuartmanton said:
Is the supplied 160Gb drive 2.5"? Anyone recommend a bay converter so it can be moved it to the 5.25" bay?

Also will I just need a standard SATA cable and the molex adapter?
Click to expand...

It's 3.5" and you will need a Molex to SATA for the 5.25" bay, standard SATA cable should be fine but use a short one as there isn't much room for managing longer cables in there.
 
NightShadow said:
It's 3.5" and you will need a Molex to SATA for the 5.25" bay, standard SATA cable should be fine but use a short one as there isn't much room for managing longer cables in there.
Click to expand...

Great thanks.....I had a rummage and found a Molex to SATA and also a spare short SATA cable. Just need to dig deeper and pull out a bay converter. Sure I have seen one somewhere
 
I've installed debian on this, but when I reboot it says monitor is out of range :( I'm a complete linux noob so I don't know how I'm going to get round this blind lol
 
davidtan said:
Does the ram have to be paired in this machine? Or can I add a Crucial 2Gb stick to make it 3Gb ram in total?
Click to expand...

I've not tried uneven pairs, but the 1gb stick that comes with is ECC+registered. If you are adding another stick it will also need to be ECC+registered. It will work out cheaper to remove the 1gb and pick up some normal DDR3 1333.
 
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