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

TehJumpingJawa said:
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?
Click to expand...

No, a rounded cable is just where the cable is.. err.. rounded. Makes routing it a little easier as its a little more flexible. The connectors are clip in SATA ones. Picked them up on auction site for a couple of quid.

But thanks. 50cm is a standard length for the rounded ones too.
 
For anyone that cares, flash 11 is available and with a GT520 OC the server is at 30% cpu usage for 1080p YouTube video. Impressive :)
 
Anyone running ESXi 5?

Perhaps you might be able to answer some questions for me.

How do you perform backups of data from the VM's on the server (not backing up the VMDK files, but the data itself so it can be mounted on another PC if required)? The Microserver doesn't support VMDirectPath, so I cant directly attach a drive via eSATA to a VM and configuring a datastore and adding that way, means it can never be removed as ESXi appears to want to erase the data when deleting the datastore (in testing this I appear to have hit a bug whereby it won't let me delete a datastore on an eSATA disk, even though it contains no files/folders or hardware mappings (CD ROMS/ISO's etc) on the disk). Turning off the eSATA caddy also appears to cause ESXi to crash and become unresponsive which then requires a hard reboot.

And what about populating data on to the server? If the only way I can add a disk to a VM is by configuring it as a datastore, then that will remove all data on the disk in the process of formatting the VMFS. Am I restricted to connecting to another PC and copying over the network?

Moving over to ESXi is seeming more hassle than it's worth at the moment. Might just move back to a native install of WHS2011 which has worked perfectly for months now.
 
Going to order one of these today. Going to use it as a HTPC and server.

Proliant Microserver
4x 2TB HDD
4GB Ram
Win Homeserver

Going to install on the 250GB and use the 4x2TB in RAID5

I have a Radeon5450 in my current HTPC which I will stick in. Going to grab a USB tuner as well for PVR.

Anything else I need or should do?
 
There is actually a way to make the ESXi to 'see' your additional hard disk directly. Here is a helpful guide to do it.
http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/

I am currently running Ubuntu Server 10.04.03 LTS with ZFS RAIDZ-1. The Ubuntu is virtualised using ESXi 5 and stored in the standard HP 250GB disk came along with the MicroServer, but the ZFS pool is stored directly on to the 3x 2TB disk. I moved these 3 disks from a previous non-virtualise Ubuntu Server directly without having to reformat or configure them as VM datastore.

Rudeboy said:
Anyone running ESXi 5?

Perhaps you might be able to answer some questions for me.

How do you perform backups of data from the VM's on the server (not backing up the VMDK files, but the data itself so it can be mounted on another PC if required)? The Microserver doesn't support VMDirectPath, so I cant directly attach a drive via eSATA to a VM and configuring a datastore and adding that way, means it can never be removed as ESXi appears to want to erase the data when deleting the datastore (in testing this I appear to have hit a bug whereby it won't let me delete a datastore on an eSATA disk, even though it contains no files/folders or hardware mappings (CD ROMS/ISO's etc) on the disk). Turning off the eSATA caddy also appears to cause ESXi to crash and become unresponsive which then requires a hard reboot.

And what about populating data on to the server? If the only way I can add a disk to a VM is by configuring it as a datastore, then that will remove all data on the disk in the process of formatting the VMFS. Am I restricted to connecting to another PC and copying over the network?

Moving over to ESXi is seeming more hassle than it's worth at the moment. Might just move back to a native install of WHS2011 which has worked perfectly for months now.
Click to expand...
 
hiyajac said:
There is actually a way to make the ESXi to 'see' your additional hard disk directly. Here is a helpful guide to do it.
http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/

I am currently running Ubuntu Server 10.04.03 LTS with ZFS RAIDZ-1. The Ubuntu is virtualised using ESXi 5 and stored in the standard HP 250GB disk came along with the MicroServer, but the ZFS pool is stored directly on to the 3x 2TB disk. I moved these 3 disks from a previous non-virtualise Ubuntu Server directly without having to reformat or configure them as VM datastore.
Click to expand...

Thanks, might have to have a look at this.

Can anyone using this method answer me a question?
Once a drive is configured as an RDM device, is this persistent? i.e. If I map a drive and connect it to a VM and perform a backup of data on to the RDM drive, can I reconnect that drive again in the future for the next set of backups and it will still be seen with the previous RDM settings and reconnect without too much hassle or removing the previous backups or do I need to go through the whole process of making the drive an RDM device again from scratch?

I also can't see how (in the event of failure), I could connect this drive to another PC and read the data off of it. Surely it'll have a VMFS filesystem on it.
 
Rudeboy said:
Anyone running ESXi 5?

Perhaps you might be able to answer some questions for me.

How do you perform backups of data from the VM's on the server (not backing up the VMDK files, but the data itself so it can be mounted on another PC if required)? The Microserver doesn't support VMDirectPath, so I cant directly attach a drive via eSATA to a VM and configuring a datastore and adding that way, means it can never be removed as ESXi appears to want to erase the data when deleting the datastore (in testing this I appear to have hit a bug whereby it won't let me delete a datastore on an eSATA disk, even though it contains no files/folders or hardware mappings (CD ROMS/ISO's etc) on the disk). Turning off the eSATA caddy also appears to cause ESXi to crash and become unresponsive which then requires a hard reboot.

And what about populating data on to the server? If the only way I can add a disk to a VM is by configuring it as a datastore, then that will remove all data on the disk in the process of formatting the VMFS. Am I restricted to connecting to another PC and copying over the network?

Moving over to ESXi is seeming more hassle than it's worth at the moment. Might just move back to a native install of WHS2011 which has worked perfectly for months now.
Click to expand...

How about USB Passthrough to a external disk? I've used it OK for WHS 2011 backups although I do think the WHS 2011 server backup method is rather clunky.
 
tbz_ck said:
How about USB Passthrough to a external disk? I've used it OK for WHS 2011 backups although I do think the WHS 2011 server backup method is rather clunky.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I gave up with USB backups a long time ago. Archiving TB's of data over USB2 takes forever. Using eSATA I can perform a full backup in around 20hrs.

I've now decided that ESXi probably isn't the right solution for home. I spend all day using vSphere at work, so spending 2 nights trying to get this working as I want put me off a bit. I've reinserted my WHS2011 hard disk and have booted back up and just about copied all my data back on to the RAID array. If I wasn't worried about backing up my data once a month, then ESXi would be a very usable solution.

Think I'll stay with WHS2011 for a while as it does what I need and just works with minimal input, which is exactly what I want at home after a long day at work.

I don't use any of the WHS2011 functionality (client backups, plugins or WHS console) and just share folders on the network. iTunes, SABNZBD and Crashplan+ (I like my backups) are the only other things running on it.

Other than the time I've spent trying to get ESXi to work with the Microserver, I really can't fault it for what it cost and what it does.
 
After a bit of advice / help please.

I bought my Microserver back in July.

I have so far purchased an ATI 5450 (from here) and 4 GB (2x2GB) of HP ECC ram together with WHS2011. I already have a WHSv1 FS Scaleo home server with 3x1.5TB (pooled) and a 250GB system drive. A 16GB HP usb memory stick.

This is ideally what I want from the box and was hoping someone might provide some guides to achieve this or let me know if I am asking too much:-

Run Windows 7 as base OS or VM (ESXi5?) to enable it to be used as an MCE with my two linksys extenders. I have a playTV dual tuner usb.

Run WHS2011 as a VM and import my 3 1.5TB drives to the microserver possibly adding a 4th 1.5TB

also have a VM with my old WHSv1 on it

Where I need help is how to setup the VM's. Do I run ESXi on the memory stick and have 2-3 VM's as above or do I load Windows 7 and then have the VM's off that. Will the usb playTV work under a VM? Do I need a raid card? I'm really not to sure how to proceed so any help would be fantastic!


Thanks in advance
 
Rudeboy said:
Thanks, might have to have a look at this.

Can anyone using this method answer me a question?
Once a drive is configured as an RDM device, is this persistent? i.e. If I map a drive and connect it to a VM and perform a backup of data on to the RDM drive, can I reconnect that drive again in the future for the next set of backups and it will still be seen with the previous RDM settings and reconnect without too much hassle or removing the previous backups or do I need to go through the whole process of making the drive an RDM device again from scratch?

I also can't see how (in the event of failure), I could connect this drive to another PC and read the data off of it. Surely it'll have a VMFS filesystem on it.
Click to expand...

I believe you only need to do the RDM once because the mapping is based on disk-id. There is also an option in the ESXi to set the RDM drive to be persistent.

The RDM will not have VMFS on it. It's the direct content of your backup data and you can use any file systems. As I mentioned in the previous, I can see all my files stored on the RDM disks when I move them from non-virtualised to virtualised server. I already copied the data into these RDM disk on the previous virtualised setup. In short, this way is to make your virtualised server to 'see' the content of the RDM disk directly.

Just bear in mind this is not officially support but it runs fine on my setup.
 
ramtec said:
After a bit of advice / help please.

I bought my Microserver back in July.

I have so far purchased an ATI 5450 (from here) and 4 GB (2x2GB) of HP ECC ram together with WHS2011. I already have a WHSv1 FS Scaleo home server with 3x1.5TB (pooled) and a 250GB system drive. A 16GB HP usb memory stick.

This is ideally what I want from the box and was hoping someone might provide some guides to achieve this or let me know if I am asking too much:-

Run Windows 7 as base OS or VM (ESXi5?) to enable it to be used as an MCE with my two linksys extenders. I have a playTV dual tuner usb.

Run WHS2011 as a VM and import my 3 1.5TB drives to the microserver possibly adding a 4th 1.5TB

also have a VM with my old WHSv1 on it

Where I need help is how to setup the VM's. Do I run ESXi on the memory stick and have 2-3 VM's as above or do I load Windows 7 and then have the VM's off that. Will the usb playTV work under a VM? Do I need a raid card? I'm really not to sure how to proceed so any help would be fantastic!


Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

I doubt the ESXi will be able to detect the playTV usb.
You dont really need a raid card, it's totally up to your budget but software raid is good enough.
 
hiyajac said:
I believe you only need to do the RDM once because the mapping is based on disk-id. There is also an option in the ESXi to set the RDM drive to be persistent.

The RDM will not have VMFS on it. It's the direct content of your backup data and you can use any file systems. As I mentioned in the previous, I can see all my files stored on the RDM disks when I move them from non-virtualised to virtualised server. I already copied the data into these RDM disk on the previous virtualised setup. In short, this way is to make your virtualised server to 'see' the content of the RDM disk directly.

Just bear in mind this is not officially support but it runs fine on my setup.
Click to expand...

Thanks, sounds promising.
Perhaps I'll connect up some old disks and have a play before blowing away my RAID array again, to make sure it all works as expected.
 
hiyajac said:
I doubt the ESXi will be able to detect the playTV usb.
You dont really need a raid card, it's totally up to your budget but software raid is good enough.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply and help.

That sounds ok, so software raid and win7 as base OS running the playtv with ESXi running with WHS2011 and possibly WHSV1? Can someone provide a quick overview of the process i.e.

Set up raid for the 3 1.5GB drives

Install W7 on 250GB drive

Install ESXi where

What disk do I put vm's on?

Thanks again
 
Last edited:
ramtec said:
Thanks for the reply and help.

That sounds ok, so software raid and win7 as base OS running the playtv with ESXi running with WHS2011 and possibly WHSV1? Can someone provide a quick overview of the process i.e.

Set up raid for the 3 1.5GB drives

Install W7 on 250GB drive

Install ESXi where

What disk do I put vm's on?

Thanks again
Click to expand...

If you plan to use RAID5 with 3 disks, you cannot use Win7 as it only support RAID 0 or 1.
ESXi need to be installed on usb disk, but it will occupied your whole server as it will boot up your system into a linux based OS, and provide you a screen with IP address only. You need a second PC to connect via network and manage it using the ESXi client.
So you cant have both Win7 and ESXi installed on the same server.
 
Hi

Been looking at these for a while now as they seem great value, the cashback seems to have been extended to the end of this month too :)

Currently i use a synology 109 with a 2tb drive in thats slowly filling up and was looking at getting a 211j or 211 but these seem the better option really. I was thinking of using whs 2011 so any opinions would be welcome on whs.

The only thing i think i may miss from my synology would be the newsgroup reader, so far im not sure if there is a plugin for whs2011 that would do this? I see there is a utorrent plugin but i very rarely use torrents. Other than that it would be for simple file storage and possible ftp access (im sure whs2011 can do this?)
 
hiyajac said:
There is actually a way to make the ESXi to 'see' your additional hard disk directly. Here is a helpful guide to do it.
http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/

I am currently running Ubuntu Server 10.04.03 LTS with ZFS RAIDZ-1. The Ubuntu is virtualised using ESXi 5 and stored in the standard HP 250GB disk came along with the MicroServer, but the ZFS pool is stored directly on to the 3x 2TB disk. I moved these 3 disks from a previous non-virtualise Ubuntu Server directly without having to reformat or configure them as VM datastore.
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks for the link, will have to give this a go at some point as i'm currently on a similar Ubuntu ZFS setup but using datastores. Was planning to upgrade from ESXi 4.1 anyway. Got a pinkscreen issue to solve first though - think it's a RAM problem (noticed it shortly after upgrading to 8GB)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom