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

challengedavid said:
ordered that n36l last night as the cashback offer was ending, thought it would e extended but did not want to chance it, but its being offered on the n40l now

the n40l is about £20 more expensive, comes with 1gb more ram, slightly faster processor, but had a 150w psu rather than the 200w in the n36l

is it worth canelling the n36l and reordering the n40l?

what do people think?
Click to expand...

No its not really that much difference, also the N36L latest has a 150w power supply it was the earlier model N36L that had a 200w PSU. The thing is you will prob ditch the memory or some people will as 2Gb for some things like esxi require more. It really depends what your needs are.

Mikehiow look at HUKD and search there if you really want to find out.
 
bremen1874 said:
If your paying 19p per unit then you need to look into changing your energy supplier. I'm currently paying 9.02p per unit (inc. Vat).

Assuming your other calculations are correct this would make it a much more reasonable £0.97 per month.
Click to expand...

I'm on an Economy 7 tariff so it's a bit more complicated. It would essentially be:

16.64p : 7am - 12pm
6.64p : 12pm - 7am

I am also a very low user in general so I am with Ebico who give a flat rate. This is better for me than the other suppliers as they charge x amount for the first x kWh and then drop the price - I'm also paying for not being tied into a contract which is a good and bad thing I suppose.

However, I don't feel £2 a month is an expensive price to pay for 100% available data, anywhere, any time. The other services your server can also offer must be taken into account too. For example website hosting etc... which can be a few quid a month in it'self elsewhere.

The only thing that bothers me is the lack of space in chassis. I know it's small and convenient which is fantastic, but with only 4 official bays (1 being taken by the 250gb hdd) then leaves you potentially a max of 9TB if you were to use 3TB hdd and then add your raid parity that drops to 6TB. I want to use 2TB drives for cost reasons so that would leave me with 4TB which I am already using - so no room for expansion. I would rather have a bigger case which can say hold 6 or 7 drives - is there anything that would be in this price range, quality and power consumption for a similar price?
 
how many drive to yourselves have in? now that the adaptors are eol is there another way to fit 2 drives in the odd bay?

does anyone know if the 40l woudl support 5 x 3tb drives using freenas?
 
jack.mitchell said:
The only thing that bothers me is the lack of space in chassis. I know it's small and convenient which is fantastic, but with only 4 official bays (1 being taken by the 250gb hdd) then leaves you potentially a max of 9TB if you were to use 3TB hdd and then add your raid parity that drops to 6TB. I want to use 2TB drives for cost reasons so that would leave me with 4TB which I am already using - so no room for expansion. I would rather have a bigger case which can say hold 6 or 7 drives - is there anything that would be in this price range, quality and power consumption for a similar price?
Click to expand...

There are several options:

1) Boot from an OS on a USB stick (there is a USB port inside the case for this reason). That will free up one bay.

2) Mod a bracket yourself to fit the two extra drives in the 5.25" bay.

3) Add or more external drives using eSATA either in a single caddy or a powered storage tower (e.g. a tower with 4 drives in it).

4) Build your own server using an ITX based Fusion board in a case of your choice. You could use something more powerful but that will use more power. Either way it will be more expensive than to buy than the microserver but might be cheaper than adding a storage tower.
 
Hades said:
4) Build your own server using an ITX based Fusion board in a case of your choice. You could use something more powerful but that will use more power. Either way it will be more expensive than to buy than the microserver but might be cheaper than adding a storage tower.
Click to expand...

This was my initial idea, but as you say the power consumption and cost are an interesting factor. A mini-itx case such as the Fractal R2 which can hold 7 drives retails for the cost of the whole microserver! More research to be done I think.
 
Hades said:
3) Add or more external drives using eSATA either in a single caddy or a powered storage tower (e.g. a tower with 4 drives in it).
Click to expand...

I've just researched this, if you search for "8 Bay SATA Storage Tower - Software RAID" in google, then a product comes up that connects over eSATA. In standard mode, would it act as an 8 drive extension bay and allow a software raid config controlled by another unit?
 
jack.mitchell said:
I've just researched this, if you search for "8 Bay SATA Storage Tower - Software RAID" in google, then a product comes up that connects over eSATA. In standard mode, would it act as an 8 drive extension bay and allow a software raid config controlled by another unit?
Click to expand...

I'm still researching this subject myself. But the one I've found using your search does have a RAID controller bundled with it (not sure if it is a low profile card so hard to tell if it will fit in the N36L/N40L). I'm guessing you could either see 8 individual drives or one large RAID array. It would probably be worth dropping the retailer or manufacturer an email. It does look interesting though :) Obviously it will draw more power because it's running 8 drives.
 
Methanoid said:
Its HP but they havent updated the site yet. I am not allowed to link to a competitor who has the HP pdf on their site but it seems legit and runs to end Nov.
Click to expand...

This man speaks the truth.
It should be up on the HP site in a couple of days so I have been told.
(It takes 7 to 10 days before something is added to the HP external site)

 
Hades said:
I'm still researching this subject myself. But the one I've found using your search does have a RAID controller bundled with it (not sure if it is a low profile card so hard to tell if it will fit in the N36L/N40L). I'm guessing you could either see 8 individual drives or one large RAID array. It would probably be worth dropping the retailer or manufacturer an email. It does look interesting though :) Obviously it will draw more power because it's running 8 drives.
Click to expand...

I have a 4 bay DAS attached to mine using the supplied PCIe esata HBA, you install the array software as normal and either create one big raid 5 or two say raid 1, or else just use it in passthrough mode.
also the onboard esata port isn't a multiplier so it will only see one disk you will need to use a pci esata controller.

PM if you want to know the manufacturer details or search for " 8 Bay eSATA DAS Enclosure " or " 4 Bay eSATA DAS Enclosure "

This is mine with the unit attached via esata to esata pci controller with a low profile bracket in the 1x sloth ( the other pci sloth I have a NC360T dual port nic installed )
Not to concerned about the performance because all this external device does is synch the data from the microserver to its array


5x 2TB F4's in the microserver and a 320GB disk for the OS.
4x 2TB in the DAS
And another couple of various 500GB/1TB USB disks in on the top and hanging off the back.

The esata controller has another port so I can attach another DAS to it if needs be.
 
Last edited:
Generious said:
I have a 4 bay DAS attached to mine using the supplied PCIe esata HBA, you install the array software as normal and either create one big raid 5 or two say raid 1, or else just use it in passthrough mode.
also the onboard esata port isn't a multiplier so it will only see one disk you will need to use a pci esata controller.

PM if you want to know the manufacturer details or search for " 8 Bay eSATA DAS Enclosure " or " 4 Bay eSATA DAS Enclosure "

This is mine with the unit attached via esata to esata pci controller with a low profile bracket in the 1x sloth ( the other pci sloth I have a NC360T dual port nic installed )
Not to concerned about the performance because all this external device does is synch the data from the microserver to its array


5x 2TB F4's in the microserver and a 320GB disk for the OS.
4x 2TB in the DAS
And another couple of various 500GB/1TB USB disks in on the top and hanging off the back.

The esata controller has another port so I can attach another DAS to it if needs be.
Click to expand...

Thanks, useful info.
 
I've recently purchased a microserver and love it. Seems such a great bit of kit at a great price. No idea if it will be useful but I bought the care pack as well as it was only £55 and I got an additional £30 back.

It's not exactly being tested much. I'm running WHS 2011 on it and am using it mainly to do backups and run itunes for the wifi sync etc. I've also got it running the Zend php server etc so I can play around with it as a web server for some training I'm doing at work

My only issue is I can't get the cd-rom to work. It seems to be connected up OK and the light comes on when I power it up but it never spins up and won't eject. I suspect I've done something wrong but can't find what it is
 
finally got mine , only got a chance to play about with it tonight.

I got esxi 5.0 running atm with freenas v7. I have migrated my drives using rdp( raw disk mapping) the hard drives are now showing up on freenas.

however running freenas within a VM environment seems to have slow performance?

I was getting between 40-70MB/second read/write speeds when i was running freenas on my itx system directly without a vm.

now that i am running freenas from within a vm, my speeds are 2-3MB/second copying to server and 10-20mbps downloading from.

can anyone shed some light please.

thank you
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom