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

TehJumpingJawa said:
I've bought a 2nd esata->sata cable & that didn't work either =/

Can someone link me to a known working esata->sata cable?
Or if links are not allowed, just the name of the supplier?
Click to expand...

We're not allowed to link or name suppliers unfortunately.

The one I have that's working perfectly is '1.5m SATA External Cable Blue'
 
Help!!!

I'm sooo annoyed!!

I installed ESXi 5.0 on the internal USB (used a 8GB stick) , all nice and simple.

I installed VSphere, could see the 4 HDDs installed internally, plugged a 8gb USB flash disk and...surprise...vSphere can't see it!!

I formated the flash disk NTFS, then FAT32...no joy...


The plan was to use ESXi on the internal USB and the VMs on another USB flash disk...so I can use my 4 HDDs for a software RAID5 on FreeNAS...

I looked online, very little information, but I tend to think that it's not possible...am I right?

Do I have to sacrifice one of my 4 HDDs to store the VMs???

:(
 
blackice8r said:
Help!!!

I'm sooo annoyed!!

I installed ESXi 5.0 on the internal USB (used a 8GB stick) , all nice and simple.

I installed VSphere, could see the 4 HDDs installed internally, plugged a 8gb USB flash disk and...surprise...vSphere can't see it!!

I formated the flash disk NTFS, then FAT32...no joy...


The plan was to use ESXi on the internal USB and the VMs on another USB flash disk...so I can use my 4 HDDs for a software RAID5 on FreeNAS...

I looked online, very little information, but I tend to think that it's not possible...am I right?

Do I have to sacrifice one of my 4 HDDs to store the VMs???

:(
Click to expand...

Use the 5th or 6th port.
 
and for the love of god how do you create a RAID 5 on FreeNAS 8 RC2 ?????

I created datastores on my remaining 3 HDDs , imported into the VM - the FreeNAS VM

Now FreeNAS can see them but how do you imlement RAID5??

I managed to create volumes on the 3 disks imported to the FreeNAs VM...but I don't see an option for RAID5...

The tutorials I've seen on the internet must be from very old versions as the interface doesn't look anywere near that: http://www.freebsdnews.net/2008/08/12/setting-up-raid-5-on-a-freenas-server-video/

Is there something I need to install on top of the FreeNAS image? I saw a web GUI .iso ont their download list...

There was talk of importing RAW into FreeNAS but I think i have to mess with ESXi to get that working (RAW is grayed out curretly in ESXi)


Everyone is saying that FeeNAS is easy...really? It doesn't look like it, and the lack of tutorials and documentation is very annoying...

Any info will be much apreciated!

I'm giving up for tonight :(
 
blackice8r said:
and for the love of god how do you create a RAID 5 on FreeNAS 8 RC2 ?????

I created datastores on my remaining 3 HDDs , imported into the VM - the FreeNAS VM

Now FreeNAS can see them but how do you imlement RAID5??

I managed to create volumes on the 3 disks imported to the FreeNAs VM...but I don't see an option for RAID5...

The tutorials I've seen on the internet must be from very old versions as the interface doesn't look anywere near that: http://www.freebsdnews.net/2008/08/12/setting-up-raid-5-on-a-freenas-server-video/

Is there something I need to install on top of the FreeNAS image? I saw a web GUI .iso ont their download list...

There was talk of importing RAW into FreeNAS but I think i have to mess with ESXi to get that working (RAW is grayed out curretly in ESXi)


Everyone is saying that FeeNAS is easy...really? It doesn't look like it, and the lack of tutorials and documentation is very annoying...

Any info will be much apreciated!

I'm giving up for tonight :(
Click to expand...

Try Solaris Express 11 with napp-it.....
 
Chaos said:
This is the Freenas youtube channel for 8, might get some tips in there

http://www.youtube.com/user/FreeNASTeam
Click to expand...

You're a star! The main tutorial gave me all I needed, easy to fallow, spot on!


It wasn't hard but I was to tipsy last night to get it :D




tonym said:
This is about the best tutorial I found for creating RAW mappings so Freenas can see drives under ESXi

http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/
Click to expand...

Cheers man, I've seen this one, I'll need to enable SSH on ESXi so I can fire up de commands...I'll give it a go

After a week of work and 4 beers I didn't feel up to the challenge last night :o
Things seem a lot easyer now :)

Thankx for all your help!
 
First post, but I thought I finally get in here. I read how someone got 4 3.5" in the top bay, but with modifications etc.

A shame you cannot use names or links here but you can get a 4x2.5" 'Mobile Rack' from company xyz, which fits in a single 3.5" bay. It is connected via a single power cable (which is already there) and 4 SATA connectors.

Now the four 3.5" disks are going to a backplane but is connected via single fanout.

When you use a hardware raid controller for 8 disks (2x fanout), you can easily remove the stock fanout (pain, but doable) and connect all 8 drives to the raid controller.

Getting 4x 3TB 3.5" and 4x 1TB 2.5", gives you 16TB or raw storage .... Not a cheap but clean solution ... Not even using the onboard ODD port.
 
tonym said:
This is about the best tutorial I found for creating RAW mappings so Freenas can see drives under ESXi

http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/
Click to expand...

I had a go and it works!

Note: To enable SSH in vSphere , select the ESXi server > Configuration>Security profile>Services – and click Properties. Browse for the SSH service and start it.
No need for complicated commands in terminal.

I can now add the RDM , and they are seen as Mapped Raw LUN inside ESXi's VMs
 
Had mine delivered a few days ago, i've installed windows 7, ftp, asp.net hosting, sql, itunes library etc and its working great.

fantastic machine for the price definitely worth buying even if you just need a storage device which im also using it for.

utorrent RSS download setup and streaming to my ATV2 with XBMC. i couldn't have bought anything half as good for 4x the costs.

StevenG
 
I'm not impressed with FreeNAS... I'm not sure if it's a normal limitation but it would just freeze while copying data if I allocated both CPU cores...

The transfer speed was about 60-70mb I think..

Changed the settings and gave it just 1 core and it became stable but the transfer speed was cut in half, about 37-40mb max...

Giving Openfiler a go, looks more mature. I'll run some speed tests but I think I'll settle for Ubuntu Server, so I can get SABnzbd and torrents working on it.

Tricky bussines but good experience I guess, too bad my Saturday went on research and testing :(
 
After buying one of these to back up my files on my laptop and having the laptop die before I set it up, therefore losing most of my data. I am now more than ever interested in backup.

So I had two thoughts with this server.

1)Use the 250gb drive as a OS drive keeping only OS files on there as they are more likely to get corrupted. Then buy 2x2tb hard drives and set them up in Raid 1. Therefore if the OS falls over it will not take the array with it? But would it be possible to create a new OS drive and for it to see the old array?

2) Use the 2x2tb hard disks for os and data and re-save important irreplaceable stuff on the 250gb drive removing it from the server after a weekly backup

Would either method work and which in your opinion is better, bearing in mind that irreplaceable items will also be on my laptop so in essence I will have three copies.
 
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