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

I've just had lots of fun getting UnRAID to work with ESXi 5.

For anyone else wanting to do the same - a short walkthough, assuming you've installed ESXi already and created a default datastore separate to your storage disks.

First Install UnRAID on a USB stick as per their own instructions and plug it in to the host.

If you are planning on using RAW devices, this doesn't seem to be possible with the HP microserver as there is no DirectPath I/O support.

You need to login to the Host locally, and under Troubleshooting Support enable SSH and the ESXi shell.

SSH in to your ESXi machine and navigate to /vmfs/volumes/YourDataStore
Code: 
# mkdir UnRAID
# cd UnRAID
Now you need to add all of your disks in the following manner:
Code: 
# vmkfstools -a lsilogic -z /vmfs/devices/[device identifier] mydisk1.vmdk

For example, for me it was:
Code: 
# vmkfstools -a lsilogic -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW1P1C9 mydisk1.vmdk

# vmkfstools -a lsilogic -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW1SFFB mydisk2.vmdk

# vmkfstools -a lsilogic -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____ST32000542AS________________________________________5XW29K4Q mydisk3.vmdk

You can find the device identifier under Configuration -> Storage -> Devices.

Lastly, before creating your VM, you need to download Plop from here.

Unzip it and upload install/plpbtin.iso to your datastore.

Now you can create your VM.
I opted for the following:
Memory 1GB
CPUs: 1 Socket, 2 Cores
Hard disk: 8GB thin provision

Mount the ISO you uploaded earlier under CD/DVD drive (Datastore ISO file -> Browse), ensuring that "Connect at startup" is enabled.

Add each of your earlier created hard disks (add->hard disk->existing->Browse your data store for the earlier created vmdks, creating them as Independent/Persistent.

Add a USB Controller and then the device for your UnRAID USB stick.

And finally modify the SCSI controller to an LSD Logic SAS.

You should now be able to boot the VM, which will boot you in to the plop installer - Install it to your 8GB drive you created earlier (should be default) and reboot.

Upon first boot in to Plop, you need to go into Setup -> Boot Manager, enable timeout, set the default as USB and disable Floppy and CD.

Shutdown here and proceed to boot your VM again. You should now find yourself in your UnRAID installation with no intervention.

I've not tested this fully yet, but UnRAID does boot, I just wanted to get this written down while it was fresh in my memory.

This should also work fine with UnRAID's USB Key GUID licencing model.
 
jamesfreddie said:
If you wanted to have a play you could download the trial and then enter your product key when you get it?

How much RAM are you going to use?

Which homeplugs are you going to use?
Click to expand...

whs2011 just turned up today

have another 2gb from another n40l from ebay so 4gb

not sure about the homeplugs as I am still researching them

so should get it put together in z couple of days
 
Anybody want 2GB from a N40L, I upgraded to 8GB and thought I'd "contribute" it to the thread.

Obviously I wouldn't want somebody to actually "use it" the just get it for free and then sell it on ;)

MikeHiow said:
I made a start with mine last night:
Click to expand...

What Belkin USB hub is that?

HEADRAT
 
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HEADRAT said:
Anybody want 2GB from a N40L, I upgraded to 8GB and thought I'd "contribute" it to the thread.

Obviously I wouldn't want somebody to actually "use it" the just get it for free and then sell it on ;)

HEADRAT
Click to expand...

Stick it on MM and I'll buy it mate
 
HEADRAT said:
What Belkin USB hub is that?

HEADRAT
Click to expand...

I'm not entirely sure. It was the only one Tesco had in stock at 2AM though.

I've actually moved away from the UnRAID thing - the ridiculous write speeds, even with the parity drive turned off just killed it for me. So that USB hub was a waste of money.

I tried FreeNAS, but I cannot get it stable with ZFS under ESXi. Any load of the discs just cause the machine to freeze, with no log or output to help diagnose the issue.

So for now, I've gone with an Ubuntu Server install with the three disks in mdadm softRAID5.

The advantage of this is that I can lift the discs and dump them in just about any linux machine as mdadm writes the array stuff to the superblocks of the discs.

I also had an issue finding an easy (easy is essential for updates, tbh) means to get Plex, Sabnzbd, Sickbeard and Couchpotato all on one "Appliance NAS" package. There are no such issues with having a plain Linux install.

I'm just over half way copying my existing files to the new array at an impressive 50MB/s (I was getting 6MB/s over the Network or USB!) with my NTFS drive plugged in to the spare SATA port and RDM mapped as described in my UnRAID post.

Once that is done, it's pfSense's turn and we're away :)

I need to order 8GB of ram at some point, too. I've chucked 4GB in for now that was being unused, but with the price of RAM at the moment, it would be silly not to simply max it out (without buying 2x8GB sticks at silly money).
 
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Mine was delivered on Friday,not had a chance to open the box yet!

If you want to shift the original am on Mike I am placing a wanted ad in the MM.

Another thing when you say you had slow write speeds in unRaid do you know what was causing it? I was planning to use that myself but having read your reply I am having second thoughts now.Most of what you have written has gone right over my head :p

Might just install WHS 2011 instead :D
 
Mike 6mbps across the network is slow. I'm getting 108 mbps across the network also using Ubuntu Server (with 8mb RAM). But at one point I was also getting similar speeds to you. It turned out my network cable was only allowing 100 mbps until I replaced it with a cat 6 cable.

Take a look at the speed your NIC is running at with (from memory) sudo ethtool eth0. You may need to sudo apt get-install ethtool first though.
 
Having had mine for a few days, I still can't decide how best to utilise it. I need a fileserver, but don't want to waste it *just* on that.

I've played around with ESX5 on it and it's okay I guess, but I can't help thinking there's some overhead there.

Currently, I've just installed a native minimal Debian setup, and plan to rsync backups via cron. This means I can also run sabnzbd+, get_iplayer and several other utilities which I couldn't just drop on (for example) FREENAS. I'm also tempted to try and get Asterisk running on there with a Sangoma a200 FXO/FXS card.

However, I'm wondering if I'm missing a trick not going for WHS2011 - I mean, it seems a crazy idea as windows isn't exactly lightweight and I know how clunky the Acer Revo can be with 7 for anything other than ION-accelerated playback, but WHS does seem very popular...

... is there any reason in particular I should spring for it ?

None of this is essential (though the filestore is very useful) and I'm mostly playing, but I would like to try and utilise it as best I can, considering it did still cost a bit of cash.

Ta.
 
Hades said:
Mike 6mbps across the network is slow. I'm getting 108 mbps across the network also using Ubuntu Server (with 8mb RAM). But at one point I was also getting similar speeds to you. It turned out my network cable was only allowing 100 mbps until I replaced it with a cat 6 cable.

Take a look at the speed your NIC is running at with (from memory) sudo ethtool eth0. You may need to sudo apt get-install ethtool first though.
Click to expand...

bwm-ng is also nice to see a realtime console display of bandwidth/throughput.
 
I went for a Linux distro over WHS because I wanted to learn Linux in a little more depth. Also I am finding Ubuntu Server very lightweight and efficient.
 
Hades said:
Mike 6mbps across the network is slow. I'm getting 108 mbps across the network also using Ubuntu Server (with 8mb RAM). But at one point I was also getting similar speeds to you. It turned out my network cable was only allowing 100 mbps until I replaced it with a cat 6 cable.

Take a look at the speed your NIC is running at with (from memory) sudo ethtool eth0. You may need to sudo apt get-install ethtool first though.
Click to expand...

NIC is running at 1Gbps.

I'm unsure of the write speed issues with UnRAID, but it seems to be a widely reported issue.
 
I've got one of these now.

Very please with it but I'm having a little trouble with getting 3TB drives working as RDM in ESXi. I followed the instructions in the thread and it seems to work, but within the VM's (Windows 7 as an example) it won't convert to a GPT disk as it says it's too small. If I view it in diskpart, it suggests it's only 512 bytes.

Any ideas?
 
hi,

all together now, few questions on whs2011

how or can i have a automatic shutdown timer not a sleep timer
say to automatic shutdown instead of sleep after 60mins?

whats the best free antivirus for it or do you need it?

is it best to give it a static ip address?

thanks
 
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