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

Got RAID1 up and running on FreeNAS along with SABnzbd, Sick Beard and PS3 Media Server.

Good stuff so far but have a few things not working which I need to figure out, somehow!

Does it have enough power to transcode stuff for the media server? I've not had a chance to try it myself, but assumed it wouldn't have the power for it (don't use the ps3/xbox for media, but some of my house mates do)
 
I've not yet tested the streaming as I missed out the PMS.conf file so the PS3 wouldn't stream anything. Tried it with a conf file last night but the PS3 couldn't see the server, hopefully not a massive faff as I was hoping to have it working for the weekend!
 
How much higher? You're getting roughly between 1/3 and 1/2 of the available bandwidth.

I was expecting it to be in the region of 65+~ - I am happy with it though, not complaining was just wondering if it should be higher.

Depends on the hard disk on your mac

Crucial SSD 120GB

What's the disk configuration on the server?

From my WHS to the Microserver I get:
~57MB/sec copying to C: (160GB drive on internal SATA)
~50MB/sec to D: (4x 1TB drives in Windows RAID5)

From Microserver to WHS I get:
~75MB/Sec (4x 750GB, effectively JBOD)

From my WHS to my Windows 7 workstation I get:
~62MB/sec copying to C: (60GB Vertex 2 SSD)

From this I conclude that:

1. CPU is limiting factor for inbound transfers to RAID5 array.
2. CIFS/SMB performance on Windows Server 2008 is not as good as Windows Server 2003.

There are lots of complaints on the Vail (AKA 'WHS 2.0') beta forum about point 2. It's strange because Windows Server 2008 (and Vista) introduced some auto tuning features that were supposed to improve file copy performance.

Disk configuration in the server is 2 x 2TB Samsung F4EG in RAID 0

Just done a quick test, 10GB file...

Copying from the MacBook to the HP I get around ~35MB/sec
Copying from the HP to the MacBook I get around ~55MB/sec

Btw, thanks for your helpful posts, appreciate your help greatly :D
 
Does it have enough power to transcode stuff for the media server? I've not had a chance to try it myself, but assumed it wouldn't have the power for it (don't use the ps3/xbox for media, but some of my house mates do)

Not tried it with the PS3 but struggled to transcode on the fly to my iPad, file size wasn't much, around 1GB
 
Is the transcoding CPU intensive or RAM? I was hoping to use the server to transcode 720p mkv's on the fly via PS3 Media Server, otherwise the server isn't much use :(

Its normally CPU, but if you use a program called MKV2VOB it does not transcode it just streams.

I have a copy of Gone in 60 in 1080p MKV and used 60% of my current media machine CPU, ran it through this software, and it then used barely any and was just streaming it not transcoding it

Kimbie
 
I seem to have a problem installing Windows Server R2, have the 160GB connected to the second SATA port, detected in BIOS. Tried mode RAID, IDE and AHCI.

Not created a RAID for the 2 x 2TB drives, trying to install Windows to the 160GB and it says Windows can't install to the selected location. Everything seems be connected up right.

Also tried the SATA drivers (AMD website)
 
I seem to have a problem installing Windows Server R2, have the 160GB connected to the second SATA port, detected in BIOS. Tried mode RAID, IDE and AHCI.

Not created a RAID for the 2 x 2TB drives, trying to install Windows to the 160GB and it says Windows can't install to the selected location. Everything seems be connected up right.

Also tried the SATA drivers (AMD website)
Install the drive in one of the bays on the normal controller, get windows installed with all the drivers and then move it to the odd sata port? You'll probably need to change the port to IDE in the bios before you install windows tho.
 
I've got mine set up properly now :) Running Server 2008 Enterprise with 4GB ram, 2x160GB drives in bays 1 and 2 in Raid0 (had a spare 160gb laying about so thought I may aswell bung it in) and 2x2TB drives in 3 and 4 in Raid1.

Got it running ps3 media server and Orb. Nicely streaming Music and transcoding MKV's to my PS3 in the living room, the Joggler in the kitchen and to my iPhone when I'm away from home :) Really happy with it at the moment!

Also running a teamspeak 3 server too :)

Got VM ware going on soon for my studies as soon as I've got some media to install on it.
 
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I've now got W7 Pro x64 installed on the supplied 160gb drive and now have 4 500gb drives plugged in as discrete drives. I also installed all the AMD chipset and SATA AHCI drivers and buy do they slow down copying to and from the hard disks. Ended up reverting back to the MS drivers and now at least the speeds have gone up beyond the previous 10-12Mb/s I was getting.

So probably a stupid question but are there better drivers out there that I should be using?
 
Getting a weird issue with mine where a remote xbmc live box will just stop playing and then resume as though the server stopped streaming for a moment, like sometimes 20 seconds. Didn't happen with my ml115. Need to do some investigation. I get nearly 100Mb p/s when copying files so I can't see it being that.

As with other posters it struggles to do air video transcoding to the iPad. Had to knock it down from 2048kbps to 512kbps to make it work for more than 5 seconds per buffering
 
Getting a weird issue with mine where a remote xbmc live box will just stop playing and then resume as though the server stopped streaming for a moment, like sometimes 20 seconds. Didn't happen with my ml115. Need to do some investigation. I get nearly 100Mb p/s when copying files so I can't see it being that.

As with other posters it struggles to do air video transcoding to the iPad. Had to knock it down from 2048kbps to 512kbps to make it work for more than 5 seconds per buffering

Is the problem with air encoding maybe related to wireless lan throughput? Reason I ask is that streaming wirelessly to the PS3 results in stutter for me but cable the thing in and all is fine. This was with my previous Lacie NAS though, not tried wireless with the Microserver.
 
Is the problem with air encoding maybe related to wireless lan throughput? Reason I ask is that streaming wirelessly to the PS3 results in stutter for me but cable the thing in and all is fine. This was with my previous Lacie NAS though, not tried wireless with the Microserver.

Possibly but all that's changed is the server and it worked fine before. It also works fine if I use the ml115 todo the transcoding on a share on the micro server.

As for my xbmc live box it's wired on a gigabit LAN
 
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