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

Theres not gonna be a big benefit from moving your OS drive to an SSD. Sure if you're on the server running programs/scripts, them being loaded from a USB device will be a tad slow, but then it'll sit in ram and do it's job.

Personally, I'm running 5 disks on debian stable using ZFSonLinux and it seems pretty nice to me. Don't get ZFS auto mount on boot for some reason, but apart from that, no problems. I also run several KVM instances. Disk access is well slow, but apart from that, they seem OK.
 
dubcat said:
1) would there be a benefit in moving to SSD, if so where is the best place to mount it?
2) whether I go to SSD or simply reinstall on the original HD is there a way to do this without losing my data? If so can someone point me to a guide?
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No real benefit. The operating system should take care of the mount points during OS installation.

Data on the OS drive or RAID array? You could backup the root partition before re-installing. Select manual partitioning and only configure root, swap and boot if necessary. You can edit fstab after the install and add the home mount point & RAID array.
 
It's the raid array I am worried about. Basically I have 2TB data spread across 3 drives in Raid 5. I want to blow out the OS and restart and I want to attach these 3 drives to the new OS while maintaining the data on them. The OS is on a 4thd drive.
 
Would I be right in saying that adding a hardware raid 5 controller to my system, to take over from software raid 5, would result in loss of data and having to recreate the raid system from scratch?

Another question I have is that if I want to add another drive to my raid 5 cluster, which is currently being done in software by ubuntu, the cluster would take many many days to resynch? I read this is the case and if so is the primary driver for me wanting to use a hardware raid 5 controller.
 
dubcat said:
Another question I have is that if I want to add another drive to my raid 5 cluster, which is currently being done in software by ubuntu, the cluster would take many many days to resynch? I read this is the case and if so is the primary driver for me wanting to use a hardware raid 5 controller.
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No, it'll start of slow but will speed up. Id say around 12 hours at a guess, depends on disk size. I have 6x2TB drives running software raid 5, adding 2 drives took around that time using ubuntu server 11.04.
 
Just to confirm for anybody that bought before the offer ended, you can use an old claim for no problem. I used the old one from the start of Dec that stated delivery between 1st Dec and 31st Jan and they have processed it.
 
If I remove an unpartitioned 3TB drive from a WHS 2011 microserver, after installing it using disk management, what happens if I then reinsert it?

Will WHS recognise it, and its content, without it having to be reformatted?

Still trying to work out if I should add my two 3TB drives unpartitioned, or partition them as they're going to be pooled using Stablebit Drivepool anyway.

BTW, I'm not planning on needing WHS to do any drive or partition mirroring, instead using Drivepool to duplicate key folders.

Desk
 
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Desk said:
If I remove an unpartitioned 3TB drive from a WHS 2011 microserver, after installing it using disk management, what happens if I then reinsert it?
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Should do. Remember these boxes are not hot-swap so power down first, but yes, if part of a software RAID it knows it and should resync, if a simple drive or unformatted, then it just picks it up. In that circumstance, unless I've misunderstood what you're doing, reinserting a completely blank drive and inserting a totally new one are the same.
 
Trox and Magicboy - many thanks. I wish I had bought a raid controller in the first place now as then at least I could move the array around. Still, not the end of the world. Those resync times are better than I expected! I am going to research how to move to USB Flash boot and max the disks in the device.
 
I've not actually built mine yet, still transferring data of the disks I'm going to use. Planning on using FreeNAS which is USB bootable and using the software raid/zfs so it's reasonably portable if the Microserver fails at some point.
 
dubcat said:
It's the raid array I am worried about. Basically I have 2TB data spread across 3 drives in Raid 5. I want to blow out the OS and restart and I want to attach these 3 drives to the new OS while maintaining the data on them. The OS is on a 4thd drive.
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Remove them from the system before reinstalling the OS.
 
KIA said:
Remove them from the system before reinstalling the OS.
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This sounds like an extremely sensible suggestion that I had not thought about. Thanks. Can you tell me specifically what might happen if i don't, just for my better knowledge?
 
dubcat said:
This sounds like an extremely sensible suggestion that I had not thought about. Thanks. Can you tell me specifically what might happen if i don't, just for my better knowledge?
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Nothing, as long as you specify the correct drive during partitioning and installation of the bootloader.
 
Trox said:
No, it'll start of slow but will speed up. Id say around 12 hours at a guess, depends on disk size. I have 6x2TB drives running software raid 5, adding 2 drives took around that time using ubuntu server 11.04.
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The problem with physical RAID controllers is that they become a single point of failure. If the RAID controller dies, you lose access to all your data, and if you can't find a replacement, you've effectively lost all your data. So in that sense, it's worse than not having RAID at all.

They are also hot, requiring more cooling (making the computer louder) and more power (costing more money to run). So yes they are nice to have, but there are a few downsides.
 
Since getting my ProLiant MicroServer up and running last week, I've not been able to put it down for a minute. Especially now that I've got it working alongside XBMC so all in all, it's been well worth the money.

Now, I was looking for a little help and advice. I've spent a great deal of time trying to hunt down a solution but for whatever reason, I keep coming up short. When I purchased the server, I also bought myself a 3.5" trayless hot swap SATA mobile rack for the spare 5.25" bay in the front. Well when attempting to hook the primary hard drive up, I couldn't find SATA cables to connect the hard drive to. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Is there a spare there that I haven't found yet? Or do I need to purchase one, and if so, where do I need to hook up and run the cable through?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as always people! :)
 
archy121 said:
3 TB are fine. In fact I came across a posting confirming 4TB are good to go.
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Can someone confirm this one for me? The last I heard, the maximum these machines could handle was 2TB drives. On another note, what hard drives are most people using? We seem to be spoiled for choice with the number of hard disks available.
 
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