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

CPU World quote the TDP of the N54L CPU as 25w vs 15W for the N40L

More speed at the cost of heat and power

I'm hoping for a cash back offer for Jan

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Spokwiththeears said:
Seems not according to Deep who posted earlier in this thread.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=23439316&postcount=5069

Which month's cashback claim form he used I don't know though.
Click to expand...

rofle said:
"All submissions must be received Monday 30 April 2012"

Are they strict with the deadlines?
Click to expand...

The form I used says on the top 1 November - 30 November. I bought mine back in 2011 and they accepted it.

So doubt they're that strict
 
Pretty sure this is the case, but don't want to make mistakes when flashing a bios! All the modded bios filesare described for the N36L, but I have just got an N40L... Am I correct in thinking the same bios is used for both models?

I'm thinking about going for the bios posted on avforums by TheBay... Good choice?
 
Anybody ran any of these servers with a PicoPSU at all? the noise from the PSU is a bit annoying, but im not sure if the PICO 120w will be man enough for 4 hdd and a Radeon 6450?
 
I was just going to order an N40L but noticed the cashback offer seems to have been stopped. I guess I'll wait and see if there's a January offer.

How far off is the new model, N54L?
 
Tinders said:
Anybody ran any of these servers with a PicoPSU at all? the noise from the PSU is a bit annoying, but im not sure if the PICO 120w will be man enough for 4 hdd and a Radeon 6450?
Click to expand...

Just ordered one - the Pico i mean.

I'm afraid it will be a long time before I have 4 drives in there though so won't be able to give you any advice on this one.
 
Well received my microserver the other day, now need to actually do something with it! Currently thinking of using a spare H200 (flashed to an IT firmware) to allow me to run 6 x 2 or 3TB SATA drives in Raid-Z2 with a some SSDs for OS/ZIL/L2ARC.
 
feedtheram said:
Just ordered one - the Pico i mean.

I'm afraid it will be a long time before I have 4 drives in there though so won't be able to give you any advice on this one.
Click to expand...

I've gone for one too, I spotted one on ebay for a tenner (used). Will report back with how I get on.
 
Tinders said:
Anybody ran any of these servers with a PicoPSU at all? the noise from the PSU is a bit annoying, but im not sure if the PICO 120w will be man enough for 4 hdd and a Radeon 6450?
Click to expand...

The general reckoning for a HDD is to allow 15W per drive in your reckoning, due to most drives having a theoretical maximum draw of about 10-15W depending on drive (Samsung F1s are something like 12/13W) based on voltage and maximum current.

In practice, most drives will never draw above about 8-10W max, and you're very unlikely to spin up more than a couple of drives at once, especially while maxing your GPU.

120W might be pushing it, but if the rest of the system draws <100W you should be fine. I'm not sure what the 6450 draws.
 
feedtheram said:
Just ordered one - the Pico i mean.

I'm afraid it will be a long time before I have 4 drives in there though so won't be able to give you any advice on this one.
Click to expand...

Will it be internal tho? If so and its relatively easy to do I might do something similar, i have 3 hdds and one optical drive and would love it to be a bit quieter
 
RockLobster said:
Not sure about new model but the offer is still on see this http://www.avforums.com/forums/18243864-post342.html
Click to expand...

The claim form covering December & January was originally linked from HP's own business offers page. At some point it was pulled and replaced with the version that just covers December.

The terms of the offer state '14. HP reserves the right to amend or cancel this promotion without notice.' so trying to use the older version of the claim form could result in you not getting the cashback. They may honour the claim as goodwill, but there's no guarantee.

According to HP's page there aren't any offers for the Microserver at the moment. They don't appear to have updated the offers yet, so there's still a chance.
 
I contacted them to see about current cashback and using that ROK form, got this response:

Dear Mr xxxxxxxx

I believe that HP are launching a new Microserver in February / March of
this year and another cash back promotion is planned then but I do not
have firm details as yet.

All the HP offers are advertised on the Focus page: www.hp.com/uk/focus
so it is best to keep an eye on this.
 
^^ Cool, thanks for the update! :)

I checked the ROK form and you needed to buy a qualifying OS as well as the server to get cashback, cheapest OS was £149 and you only got £50 back with that anyway. :(

I'll wait till Feb/Mar for the N54L then, sounds like another cashback deal will be offered too.

I ordered a couple of WD Caviar Red 3TB HDDs yesterday in preparation for getting a server, so I'll just stick them in my NAS temporarily. :)
 
Hi all!

Anyone here got any tips on why I would only be getting 12MB/s transfer rates from one internal HDD to another internal one? I have tried Ubuntu desktop 12.04, 12.10 and latest Debian. I have write caching enabled for both using the hacked Bios.

Suggestions?

CD
 
Caustic said:
Anyone here got any tips on why I would only be getting 12MB/s transfer rates from one internal HDD to another internal one? I have tried Ubuntu desktop 12.04, 12.10 and latest Debian. I have write caching enabled for both using the hacked Bios.
Click to expand...

Large files or many small files?
 
Bradmax57 said:
Will it be internal tho? If so and its relatively easy to do I might do something similar, i have 3 hdds and one optical drive and would love it to be a bit quieter
Click to expand...

From the guides i have read it should be pretty easy to fit. The link below is a guide for a few other things that can reduce the noise - which is my main aim. Gonna try the PSU first and then do the fan if required - note the guide suggests you need some extension cables and some other stuff depending on your needs.

http://www.thespicers.net/microserver
 
Has anyone had success getting AirVideo Server running under Linux on one of these with acceptable live conversion?

I have an N40L with internal disks that stores all of my media, but even a 2GB mkv constantly buffers, logs look like this

Code: 
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=   10 fps=  0 q=0.0 size=       0kB time=0.70 bitrate=   0.0kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  139 fps= 24 q=33.0 size=     337kB time=4.09 bitrate= 675.9kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  237 fps= 21 q=35.0 size=     787kB time=8.17 bitrate= 789.1kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  341 fps= 21 q=32.0 size=    1244kB time=12.51 bitrate= 814.7kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  438 fps= 20 q=26.0 size=    1662kB time=16.56 bitrate= 822.4kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  533 fps= 20 q=25.0 size=    2067kB time=20.52 bitrate= 825.2kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  622 fps= 19 q=26.0 size=    2490kB time=24.23 bitrate= 841.8kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  722 fps= 19 q=31.0 size=    2996kB time=28.40 bitrate= 864.1kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  820 fps= 19 q=27.0 size=    3419kB time=32.49 bitrate= 862.1kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame=  904 fps= 19 q=26.0 size=    3773kB time=35.99 bitrate= 858.8kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1003 fps= 19 q=28.0 size=    4256kB time=40.12 bitrate= 869.0kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1101 fps= 19 q=28.0 size=    4717kB time=44.21 bitrate= 874.1kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1189 fps= 19 q=32.0 size=    5126kB time=47.88 bitrate= 877.0kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1283 fps= 19 q=29.0 size=    5558kB time=51.80 bitrate= 878.9kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1384 fps= 19 q=29.0 size=    6008kB time=56.01 bitrate= 878.6kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1480 fps= 19 q=29.0 size=    6463kB time=60.02 bitrate= 882.1kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1575 fps= 19 q=31.0 size=    6897kB time=63.98 bitrate= 883.0kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1677 fps= 19 q=22.0 size=    7314kB time=68.23 bitrate= 878.1kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1782 fps= 19 q=23.0 size=    7769kB time=72.61 bitrate= 876.5kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1885 fps= 19 q=24.0 size=    8255kB time=76.91 bitrate= 879.3kbits/s
DEBUG: SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1984 fps= 19 q=28.0 size=    8744kB time=81.04 bitrate= 883.9kbits/s

I have an I7-920 desktop running Win7 as well which reading the same file over the network (via 200Mbps homeplugs) can live convert the file just fine, logs from that look like this

Code: 
2013-01-04 15:34:31   SegmentedEncoder: frame=    1 fps=  1 q=0.0 size=       0kB time=0.41 bitrate=   0.0kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:34:38   SegmentedEncoder: frame=  229 fps= 29 q=33.0 size=     700kB time=7.51 bitrate= 763.5kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:34:43   SegmentedEncoder: frame=  451 fps= 33 q=26.0 size=    1656kB time=16.77 bitrate= 808.9kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:34:50   SegmentedEncoder: frame=  653 fps= 32 q=27.0 size=    2539kB time=25.19 bitrate= 825.5kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:34:57   SegmentedEncoder: frame=  882 fps= 32 q=24.0 size=    3590kB time=34.74 bitrate= 846.5kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:03   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1095 fps= 33 q=28.0 size=    4586kB time=43.63 bitrate= 861.0kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:10   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1297 fps= 32 q=30.0 size=    5511kB time=52.05 bitrate= 867.2kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:17   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1502 fps= 32 q=30.0 size=    6437kB time=60.60 bitrate= 870.1kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:24   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 1762 fps= 33 q=24.0 size=    7571kB time=71.45 bitrate= 868.0kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:30   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 2000 fps= 33 q=32.0 size=    8667kB time=81.38 bitrate= 872.5kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:35   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 2187 fps= 33 q=29.0 size=    9508kB time=89.18 bitrate= 873.4kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:41   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 2353 fps= 33 q=28.0 size=   10257kB time=96.10 bitrate= 874.4kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:48   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 2561 fps= 33 q=33.0 size=   11231kB time=104.78 bitrate= 878.1kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:35:55   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 2760 fps= 32 q=34.0 size=   12157kB time=113.08 bitrate= 880.8kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:36:01   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 2942 fps= 32 q=35.0 size=   12990kB time=120.67 bitrate= 881.9kbits/s    
2013-01-04 15:36:07   SegmentedEncoder: frame= 3128 fps= 32 q=34.0 size=   13811kB time=128.43 bitrate= 881.0kbits/s

The network setup looks something like this

Virgin Superhub has the I7 hardwired, with a linksys router hanging off it handling the wireless.
N40L is connected to the superhub via homeplugs.

Even with offline conversion, the N40L is taking nearly an hour to convert this file, is it just that it doesnt have the grunt to keep up with live conversion or is there anything that can be tweaked to improve performance?

If the homeplugs were the bottleneck then I would have thought i'd see the problem on both systems, since the N40L has to pass the data back up the homeplugs to the wireless router, and the I7 has to go through them to access the file in the first place.

Any help appreciated!
 
Quick onboard RAID question.

I have 4 x 2TB drives. I would like to make on big RAID 1 group.

Will it allow me to make a single 4TB LUN or would I need to make 2 x 2TB LUNs? I try to assign all four drives to a RAID 1 group but it says max 2. Wondering if i'm doing something wrong or if I just need to make 2 separate LUNs!

Thanks
 
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