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

Actually does anyone have any recommendations of the best place to actually buy from, which will give me the best spec for the price?

EDIT
Just realised for the cashback you have to buy a particular model, so looks like another useless 250gb drive will be heading my way :)

Looking to buy for £177 is that a good price?
 
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chokedoke said:
Actually does anyone have any recommendations of the best place to actually buy from, which will give me the best spec for the price?

EDIT
Just realised for the cashback you have to buy a particular model, so looks like another useless 250gb drive will be heading my way :)

Looking to buy for £177 is that a good price?
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Watch where you're buying from. I believe that you need to use an authorised reseller to qualify for the cashback. Read the T&Cs.
 
Looking at the T & Cs it doesnt seem to say anything about where you can buy the product from as long it is exactly the same configuration and part number and the serials are valid as per hp.

So as long as the website is good i should be able to pick it up for £77.86 which is a bargain.

Of course i may have missed something so if someone knows something that i havent found please let me know. I will be ordering at the end of the week
 
chokedoke said:
Looking at the T & Cs it doesnt seem to say anything about where you can buy the product from as long it is exactly the same configuration and part number and the serials are valid as per hp.

So as long as the website is good i should be able to pick it up for £77.86 which is a bargain.

Of course i may have missed something so if someone knows something that i havent found please let me know. I will be ordering at the end of the week
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T&Cs item 3

This offer can be combined with all other cash back offers but cannot be combined with any special pricing during the promotional period. The promotion is valid only on new units purchased and invoiced directly from HP or a UK HP Preferred Partner. To find a HP Preferred Partner near you please visit...
 
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bremen1874 said:
T&Cs item 3

This offer can be combined with all other cash back offers but cannot be combined with any special pricing during the promotional period. The promotion is valid only on new units purchased and invoiced directly from HP or a UK HP Preferred Partner. To find a HP Preferred Partner near you please visit...
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People have been stung getting it from the rainforest and not being able to claim. Despite no claims by the seller about cash back
 
Okay I need to know if this server is definitely the way to go for me... I currently have a ReadyNAS Ultra 2, but want to upgrade to a 4 bay server, and want it to do a little more than I currently have the ReadyNAS doing...

I need to be able to:

- Run 24/7
- I want it to run XBMC continuously - so all I have to do is change the TV output to the right HDMI input - It would need to be able to watch 720/1080p and be nice and speedy on the interface front and be able to use skins such as Aeon
- I need it to run SABnzbd, Sickbeard and Couchpotato continuously
- I need it to host a small "Coming Soon" page for a domain name which is going to be getting very little traffic (However, I'd be interested in maybe using it for when the full website is released - How good is the online performance?)
- I'd like to be able to remotely access the content on the server

So... Can this server do what I need? Or should I be building one myself? Or looking elsewhere?

Also another question regarding the server... I currently have 2x1TB hard drives, I'll be getting 2x2TB hard drives - but eventually going to 4x2TB - I'll be putting the 2 hard drives in RAID1, but could I just add 2 more hard drives later? Or should I be getting it all out the way and buying 4 hard drives with the server?
 
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All doable.

You'll probably want to replace the stock fans (chassis and PSU) unless it's going to be stowed away somewhere as they aren't the quietest.

On the RAID front, I'd personally get all 4 at once and put them in RAID5
 
Xinn said:
All doable.

You'll probably want to replace the stock fans (chassis and PSU) unless it's going to be stowed away somewhere as they aren't the quietest.

On the RAID front, I'd personally get all 4 at once and put them in RAID5
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Excellent news :) What OS should I be using?

Thanks for the fan advice - I'm looking to have it at the end of my bed, so it would need to be quiet :)

I'm a bit of a newbie when it comes to RAID - I know what RAID 0 and 1 mean, but 5 is completely new - What advantages would I get over using RAID 5 rather than RAID 1?
 
I'll be putting Windows Home Server 2011 on mine when it arrives, it all depends on what apps you will be using and finding an OS that will do what you want. I'm not sure if WHS is capable of hosting websites via IIS or if WAMP is supported. Somebody else will be better to provide you advice here.

Raid 5 will give you more space that Raid 1 (just under 6TB using 4x2TB disks) and the 4th disk is used for parity so if another drive fails you can just replace it and the array will rebuild and you wont lose any data. Better for resilience.
 
Mine should be here this week.
I won't be going raid just normal drives.
Think I'm going for whs2011
 
Marky said:
Ooof this is getting complicated - What's the problem with using a software only RAID?
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With non-parity RAID (0, 1, 0+1, 10) there's no real problem at all.

With parity RAID (5, 6) there's a fairly heavy processing overhead involved. A dedicated hardware RAID card will offload this processing so the main CPU doesn't need to handle it. A dedicated RAID card will also usually provide cache memory that can help to mask the relatively slow writes. For a lightly used home server it probably won't matter.
 
bremen1874 said:
With non-parity RAID (0, 1, 0+1, 10) there's no real problem at all.

With parity RAID (5, 6) there's a fairly heavy processing overhead involved. A dedicated hardware RAID card will offload this processing so the main CPU doesn't need to handle it. A dedicated RAID card will also usually provide cache memory that can help to mask the relatively slow writes. For a lightly used home server it probably won't matter.
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Mmm okay I think I'm going to avoid RAID 5 in that case - I'm not going to be holding much critical data on the drives - Infact, for the last couple of years I've had two 1TB drives in RAID 0 and had no problems (Although, everytime I've mentioned that people jump down my throat and tell me I'm risking it all :p).

If I was to put all four 2TB drives into a RAID 0, if one failed would that mean all four of them would be useless? Or could I just order a new HD and start from scratch?
 
Marky said:
Mmm okay I think I'm going to avoid RAID 5 in that case - I'm not going to be holding much critical data on the drives - Infact, for the last couple of years I've had two 1TB drives in RAID 0 and had no problems (Although, everytime I've mentioned that people jump down my throat and tell me I'm risking it all :p).

If I was to put all four 2TB drives into a RAID 0, if one failed would that mean all four of them would be useless? Or could I just order a new HD and start from scratch?
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If one drive dies (or even coughs badly) you'll loose everything on the array. There'd be not harm to the actual drives, but recreating 8TB of data could be annoying.
 
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