Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD
- Thread starter dragonuk
- Start date
@TehJumpingJawa - enable your Trust and/or Trust-email me where those drives are that cheap. Thats awesomely cheap!
BTW, you'd still need one drive 2Tb or less to boot from as the uServer doesnt have UEFI. Plus you'll need x64 OS
EDIT: Nevermind, found the source. Its in GERMANY and add £13 for shipping. Plus you'll void warranty when you take the HDD out of the casing
BTW, you'd still need one drive 2Tb or less to boot from as the uServer doesnt have UEFI. Plus you'll need x64 OS
EDIT: Nevermind, found the source. Its in GERMANY and add £13 for shipping. Plus you'll void warranty when you take the HDD out of the casing
Last edited:
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Posts
- 82
@TehJumpingJawa - enable your Trust and/or Trust-email me where those drives are that cheap. Thats awesomely cheap!
BTW, you'd still need one drive 2Tb or less to boot from as the uServer doesnt have UEFI. Plus you'll need x64 OS
EDIT: Nevermind, found the source. Its in GERMANY and add £13 for shipping. Plus you'll void warranty when you take the HDD out of the casing
I'm booting from a smallish 2.5" drive connected via eSATA, and am using Win7 x64; so other than being unable to boot from 3TB drives the microserver is otherwise fully 3TB compatible? (irrespective of firmware version?)
As to the cheap Freecom XS drives from Germany; yeah, lack of warranty is a slight concern, as is the likelyhood it's a misprice.
Not sure I can be bothered with the hassel if they send out 1.5TB/2TB drives that they've mistakenly advertised as 3TB.
Also, even if they are 3TB, I've no idea what drives Freecom uses in these external desktop drives - I believe the smaller capacity models in the XS series use Samsung drives.
:edit:
haha, it was definitely a misprice - the product has now been removed. Damn those efficient Germans!
Last edited:
Associate
- Joined
- 31 May 2011
- Posts
- 11
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Posts
- 82
Cheers, installed & works fine.
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Posts
- 82
Well it's based off a newer firmware; so includes all the official firmware changes. Then ofcourse there's the obligatory rule: newer = better
The modded menus are arranged slightly differently (more straight-forward IMO), and it appears to enable AHCI on SATA5 & eSATA6 by default.
I've just set up a small file server on my home network, a couple of 2TB disks in an HP Microserver running Win 2008 server with 8GB of RAM. And even though it's connected to a gigabit switch (as is my Windows 7 desktop) the file transfer speed (both FTP and copying to Windows shares) is dog slow, but only one way.
From desktop to file server I'm getting around 25Kb/s
From file server to desktop I'm getting around 100Mb/s
So uploading to the file server (from either of the 2 desktops in the house but I'm focusing on one) is impossibly slow, but downloading from it is fast as lightning.
Both machines are using IPv4 and have static IPs on the same subnet and as far as I can see both have exactly the same network settings in the adapter properties -> IPv4.
Attempted fixes:
Not a great deal to be honest, I'm pretty stumped straight out of the blocks.
I've tried disconnecting everything else from the switch in case of a wierd collision problem, and I've tried switching the cables but that's about all.
I'm open to suggestions!
Recent changes:
The entire file server is new. Not had any other network shenanigans. 2 Win7 desktops hare happy transferring files at full speed (~100Mb/s) each way.
--\
Operating system:
Desktop: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
File Server: Windows 2008 Standard 64 bit
System specs:
Desktop:
Home made with,
Motherboard: Gigabit P67A-UD4-B3
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
8GB DDR3
File Server
HP Proliant Microserver with 8GB DDR3
It looks like this is to do with speed and duplex settings. With the microserver's NIC set to autonegotiate I get the behaviour above, but if I set it to 100 Mb full duplex then I get around 1MB/s upload to the server, and on 100 Mb half duplex I get up to 6MB/s; both way better than the 25KB/s I was getting earlier, but still a factor of 10 from what I should be getting.
I've just tried different ports on the switch and even plugging the desktop directly into the microserver instead of through the switch, but the behaviour is still exactly the same: KB speeds for uploads to the server, MB speeds down on autonegotiate.
I've also had a play around with different drivers and found that I can switch between these versions:
10.1000.4.0 - shipped with
14.6.1.0 - HP website
14.2.0.5 - windows update
Again though, same behaviour as before. Although I do now have the option of "1000Mb Full" with the very latest driver, but still when set to that I still get 20-30Kb speeds to the server.
At least that might mean that it's not the fault of the autonegotiation... but I'm not sure what it does point the finger at.
Any ideas?
From desktop to file server I'm getting around 25Kb/s
From file server to desktop I'm getting around 100Mb/s
So uploading to the file server (from either of the 2 desktops in the house but I'm focusing on one) is impossibly slow, but downloading from it is fast as lightning.
Both machines are using IPv4 and have static IPs on the same subnet and as far as I can see both have exactly the same network settings in the adapter properties -> IPv4.
Attempted fixes:
Not a great deal to be honest, I'm pretty stumped straight out of the blocks.
I've tried disconnecting everything else from the switch in case of a wierd collision problem, and I've tried switching the cables but that's about all.
I'm open to suggestions!
Recent changes:
The entire file server is new. Not had any other network shenanigans. 2 Win7 desktops hare happy transferring files at full speed (~100Mb/s) each way.
--\
Operating system:
Desktop: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
File Server: Windows 2008 Standard 64 bit
System specs:
Desktop:
Home made with,
Motherboard: Gigabit P67A-UD4-B3
CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K
8GB DDR3
File Server
HP Proliant Microserver with 8GB DDR3
It looks like this is to do with speed and duplex settings. With the microserver's NIC set to autonegotiate I get the behaviour above, but if I set it to 100 Mb full duplex then I get around 1MB/s upload to the server, and on 100 Mb half duplex I get up to 6MB/s; both way better than the 25KB/s I was getting earlier, but still a factor of 10 from what I should be getting.
I've just tried different ports on the switch and even plugging the desktop directly into the microserver instead of through the switch, but the behaviour is still exactly the same: KB speeds for uploads to the server, MB speeds down on autonegotiate.
I've also had a play around with different drivers and found that I can switch between these versions:
10.1000.4.0 - shipped with
14.6.1.0 - HP website
14.2.0.5 - windows update
Again though, same behaviour as before. Although I do now have the option of "1000Mb Full" with the very latest driver, but still when set to that I still get 20-30Kb speeds to the server.
At least that might mean that it's not the fault of the autonegotiation... but I'm not sure what it does point the finger at.
Any ideas?
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Posts
- 82
@Jiblet
Are the HDDs in the microserver in a RAID array? if so is it hardware or software?
Also, what brand are the drives?
Are the HDDs in the microserver in a RAID array? if so is it hardware or software?
Also, what brand are the drives?
So after a lot of work and a number of visits to my local PC part shop my N36L is finally up and running.
I have
Data: 6 x 2TB SATA
OS: 1 x Seagate 2.5" 320GB drive (small so I can hide it in the case)
ATI 5450
A dual port SATA hub to give me a few extra ports.
4GB Ram
Some questions:
Anyone else using software RAID 5? How long did it take you to resync? Did you start loading files whil eit was resynching?
Also, one I should know the answer to but i'm not a server guy! What happens if my OS drive dies? Will the data still be there once I get a new OS drive and reinstall?
I have
Data: 6 x 2TB SATA
OS: 1 x Seagate 2.5" 320GB drive (small so I can hide it in the case)
ATI 5450
A dual port SATA hub to give me a few extra ports.
4GB Ram
Some questions:
Anyone else using software RAID 5? How long did it take you to resync? Did you start loading files whil eit was resynching?
Also, one I should know the answer to but i'm not a server guy! What happens if my OS drive dies? Will the data still be there once I get a new OS drive and reinstall?
They're "Samsung 2TB SpinPoint EcoGreen F4EG SATA3 32MB" in software RAID1, so not the speediest of drives but I reckon they're capable of more than 25KB/s
Just in case though, I've just tried it with an FTP share on the 250GB drive that it shipped with and that behaves exactly the same - "Autonegotiate" or "1000MB Full" result in KB/s speeds, while 100MB Half Duplex runs at 10-15MB/s
Do people think this sounds like a feasible idea?
Having 2 HDDs installed, the one that comes with it, and another one.
Having ESXi installed on a USB stick, using the existing 250GB drive as a datastore for VMs, and having the other HDD untouched by VM and as another OS (I'm thinking XBMC live) so I can boot the Microserver into that unless I stick the USB drive in.
Do you think that'd work? I havn't got one but fancy one if I can do the above!
EDIT: or having XBMC installed on one USB stick, referencing my external hdd as the storage for media, and ESXi installed on another USB stick, which uses the internal 250GB drive as it's datastore, so when I boot I choose which USB stick to put in.
Having 2 HDDs installed, the one that comes with it, and another one.
Having ESXi installed on a USB stick, using the existing 250GB drive as a datastore for VMs, and having the other HDD untouched by VM and as another OS (I'm thinking XBMC live) so I can boot the Microserver into that unless I stick the USB drive in.
Do you think that'd work? I havn't got one but fancy one if I can do the above!
EDIT: or having XBMC installed on one USB stick, referencing my external hdd as the storage for media, and ESXi installed on another USB stick, which uses the internal 250GB drive as it's datastore, so when I boot I choose which USB stick to put in.
Last edited:
Me too, but I've tried three different drivers and I don't hear anyone else here having a similar issue?
Permabanned
- Joined
- 15 May 2006
- Posts
- 4,107
- Location
- London
1. Can take a few hours and yes you can start putting data on it while this is happening..
2. Yes your data will remain and you can add it back to the new install..
Good to know I can start putting data on, as I said above I got to about 90% done and the thing rebooted! Back to zero!
At the moment my RAID 5 seems to be syncing at 50-60mb's read and 10-12mb write. Is this an indication of my final performance or just the Sync?
I'm concerned i'm building a RAID set that isn't performing and will have to blow it away at some point!
Associate
- Joined
- 14 Jan 2010
- Posts
- 82
ODD bay to ODD SATA port is ~0.50m (standard internal SATA cables are just the right length once routed around where they need to go).
Though not sure what you mean by a 'rounded one'?
Do you mean one with a right-angled connector at one end?