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

Hi Folks,

I've done a search but didn't find a lot.
Can these take 16 GB's of RAM on 2008r2? I've seen screenshots of people running 16 GB on ESXi but none with just server OS.

Thanks.
 
Is it just Windows / due to GPT reasons that you cant boot off 3TB drives?

e.g. if I run Linux, and have 4x 3TB drives in one of these, I should be ok if I put /boot onto a USB stick?
 
DiCe! said:
Going to give server 8 a go tonight, anyone had any experiences?
Click to expand...

Im using it currently for the storage spaces feature.

It installs fine (tip: you can use the Microsoft W7 USB tool to drop the server 8 iso onto a memory stick), it installed a generic microsoft driver for all the devices. I wasn't able to get any W7 or server drivers from HP's website to install on it so have left it with the default MS drivers. To be honest it does appear to be running fine at the min so not too worried currently.

I've added it as a DC to an existing 2008R2 domain with zero issues and have also setup a 12TB volume ontop of a storage space which consists of 2x2TB seagate green's. The physical disks are setup to mirror, was originally going to try parity but you need at least 3 drives and I've also read a lot of posts from people stating it's very slow! Interestingly it's a bit different to a traditional raid 1 array in that you see all available space of both disks minus the stored data plus a copy instead of just seeing the total available space of a single disk. So using my setup as an example, I can currently see around 3TB of free space with 500gb used for data and 500gb used for a mirror. I guess the available free space will dissapear twice as fast as and when I add files to it seing as each file is effectively twice as big as it should be (actual data, plus mirror).

I think there is still a slight performance hit using mirroring as opposed to a JBOD setup but it's still faster than my old skool SATA1 Raid 1 array lol. I have all my ripped music, photo's and videos on there currently (totalling around 500gb) which is then shared over the network as a network drive.

I'm going to remove one of the disks and just see what happens to the storage space, in theory I believe it should keep working but complain that a disk is missing.....we will see lol

Downside: I have to re-install it all soon for the new RC and then the final release later this year :(
 
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cokecan72 said:
Im using it currently for the storage spaces feature.

It installs fine (tip: you can use the Microsoft W7 USB tool to drop the server 8 iso onto a memory stick), it installed a generic microsoft driver for all the devices. I wasn't able to get any W7 or server drivers from HP's website to install on it so have left it with the default MS drivers. To be honest it does appear to be running fine at the min so not too worried currently.

I've added it as a DC to an existing 2008R2 domain with zero issues and have also setup a 12TB volume ontop of a storage space which consists of 2x2TB seagate green's. The physical disks are setup to mirror, was originally going to try parity but you need at least 3 drives and I've also read a lot of posts from people stating it's very slow!

I think there is still a slight performance hit using mirroring as opposed to a JBOD setup but it's still faster than my old skool SATA1 Raid 1 array lol. I have all my ripped music, photo's and videos on there currently (totalling around 500gb) which is then shared over the network as a network drive.

I'm going to remove one of the disks and just see what happens to the storage space, in theory I believe it should keep working but complain that a disk is missing.....we will see lol

Downside: I have to re-install it all soon for the new RC and then the final release later this year :(
Click to expand...

Why with the reinstalls? Thats annoying....may still go for unraid
 
well the RC will generally (hopefully) be better than the beta I'm currently using, maybe they've fixed the performance issues with mirroring and parity in storage spaces. I could ignore the RC and wait for the final release but eitherway I believe the licence for the beta's and RC's all stop working after the final release anyway so I'll need to re-install with a proper license then - can anyone confirm this is what happens?
 
cokecan72 said:
well the RC will generally (hopefully) be better than the beta I'm currently using, maybe they've fixed the performance issues with mirroring and parity in storage spaces. I could ignore the RC and wait for the final release but eitherway I believe the licence for the beta's and RC's all stop working after the final release anyway so I'll need to re-install with a proper license then - can anyone confirm this is what happens?
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That would be annoying if you had to rebuild to spaces which I assume you will...hmmm
 
I'm not exactly sure how the spaces are going to work. When you add a disk to the storage space it will format it (no choice here)....but I don't know what will happen if I transfer a disk from one space to another, I suspect it will just prompt to format again.

My plan was to buy another 2tb drive later this year which I can copy all my current data too while I re-setup server 8 and the storage space, copy all the data back to the storage space then add the third new drive to the space and format it
 
Im tempted to install Win7 on this and simply mirror a 2TB drive until server 8 is on full release then go for the drive pools etc think that will work best and I wont have to buy another drive to back up onto before a format of the RC/full release
 
awaybreaktoday said:
Yes in will run 2008R2 with 16GB ram
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How does this work? I thought the max was 8GB. Is it just certain modules that work or any? Mine has 8GB in it and I don't really need more but it would be nice to confirm if 16GB worked. I have 2008 R2 as the OS with Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1066Mhz Memory Kit CL7 1.5V Unbuffered Non-ECC installed at the moment.


rp2000
 
Streaming 1080P MKVs to PS3

As good and informative that this mammoth thread is, having trawled through it (unless I've missed something) I can't find anything that helps me situation.

I have a 40L running WHS 2011 with 8GB RAM and a 5450.

I want to be able to stream my 1080P blu-ray rips to playback on the PS3, including subtitles across a gigabit network.

I've been trying to use PS3 media centre, but playback is very choppy and maxes out the CPU (understandably).

I've used the standard MEncoder and also Avisynth/Mencoder, but I can't for the life of me get it to use hardware acceleration on the GPU (using GPU-Z to monitor the card).

I did look at converting the mkvs with mkv2vob, but this is very hit and mostly miss to get a successful conversion on genuine blu-ray mkvs.

I can stream from a decent desktop PC to the PS3 fine.

What are you guys doing to get this working?
 
darkblade said:
As good and informative that this mammoth thread is, having trawled through it (unless I've missed something) I can't find anything that helps me situation.

I have a 40L running WHS 2011 with 8GB RAM and a 5450.

I want to be able to stream my 1080P blu-ray rips to playback on the PS3, including subtitles across a gigabit network.

I've been trying to use PS3 media centre, but playback is very choppy and maxes out the CPU (understandably).

I've used the standard MEncoder and also Avisynth/Mencoder, but I can't for the life of me get it to use hardware acceleration on the GPU (using GPU-Z to monitor the card).

I did look at converting the mkvs with mkv2vob, but this is very hit and mostly miss to get a successful conversion on genuine blu-ray mkvs.

I can stream from a decent desktop PC to the PS3 fine.

What are you guys doing to get this working?
Click to expand...

Give up on the PS3 and build an HTPC. Then all the microserver has to do is share the files. I think I read that you can put XBMC on a Rasberry Pi and get 1080p playback for £25. There are also plenty of pre-built boxes like the Noontec V7 that you can buy for under £50 with a remote.
 
darkblade said:
As good and informative that this mammoth thread is, having trawled through it (unless I've missed something) I can't find anything that helps me situation.

I have a 40L running WHS 2011 with 8GB RAM and a 5450.

I want to be able to stream my 1080P blu-ray rips to playback on the PS3, including subtitles across a gigabit network.

I've been trying to use PS3 media centre, but playback is very choppy and maxes out the CPU (understandably).

I've used the standard MEncoder and also Avisynth/Mencoder, but I can't for the life of me get it to use hardware acceleration on the GPU (using GPU-Z to monitor the card).

I did look at converting the mkvs with mkv2vob, but this is very hit and mostly miss to get a successful conversion on genuine blu-ray mkvs.

I can stream from a decent desktop PC to the PS3 fine.

What are you guys doing to get this working?
Click to expand...

You could try Plex media Server. It can transcode/stream files to PS3 via DLNA. I have tried this before and it works fine for me from Microserver with 720p files (I don't have 1080p files or a 1080p TV so can't really test your setup).

I am not sure if Plex via DLNA supports subtitles yet (maybe try the beta version in case they have aded support) and it puts my CPU at 70ish percent, will probably max out for 1080p, no idea if it is using my 5450 acceleration either.


rp2000
 
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