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

Tripp · 15 Feb 2013 at 11:53

ok just tried to buy one of these from a certain laptop site, turns out they don't qualify for £100 cash back and despite the server advertised as £198 they charged me £840 for 2.... :eek:

needless to say ive cancelled the order and am looking else where, BUT where? how do I check that a site is an approved seller and qualifies for £100 cashback?

I know competitor links aren't allowed but I need to be pointed in the right direction.

Chronictank · 15 Feb 2013 at 11:59

an example is where you buy servers plus other things

Tripp · 15 Feb 2013 at 12:18

ok all sorted now, hopefully will have it by tomorrow, cant wait

randal · 15 Feb 2013 at 12:35

Well, everything has arrived now. As of this evening spec will be:

N40L
4GB
2 x 3TB WD Reds
1 x OCZ Vertex 2 60GB
Zotac GT610 1GB

Will do for the time being, certainly a step up from the 2TB Time Capsule and HTPC it's replacing.

Started doing the Ubuntu install last night, flashed the BIOS with the modded version to get SATA 3GBPs on all ports and set everything up with the RAID mirroring.

Got into the installer to find the drives presented as 2 x 3TB and the SSD. Bummer. HP's RAID implementation is a bit of a farce, so sacked off the "array" as it's only there by name until you get into the OS and install the driver. Will be using md on Ubuntu to mirror the data storage volumes I think...

Was umming and arring about a hardware RAID card with mini-SAS but really don't think the setup warrants the hassle with 2 drives and the way I'm going to be using it!

Tonight will finish building SabNZBdPlus, Sickbeard, CouchPotato and finally XBMC once the GPU is installed. Then get the data migrated across and do the last few bits and pieces. Oh and setup the console emulation stuff to be accessed via XBMC. Love being able to rock old SNES games from the remote control/360 pad.

Oh need to find some way of mounting the internal MCE remote as well, might lose 2 of the front USB ports and go straight off the header. Or if I can be bothered solder a USB A male plug on the end of the head and plug in to the internal USB socket.

Nice to have options though, incredibly cool little boxes.

Little_Crow · 15 Feb 2013 at 12:45

I'm interested to know how loud the Reds are when installed in the N40L?

I've got 4 old 500GB drives transferred from my ReadyNAS, which were fine in that as it's a real solid bit of kit, but in the much flimsier N40L they are incredibly loud.

randal · 15 Feb 2013 at 12:55

Silent enough, the PSU takes care of the noise.

PicoPSU is on my list.

Little_Crow · 15 Feb 2013 at 13:00

Good enough for me, I'd rather hear a constant fan noise than the skittering of disk heads.

valve90210 · 15 Feb 2013 at 13:04

Uhtred said:
go for it, i've got next week off work

Cool, would very much appreciate it!

MagicBoy · 15 Feb 2013 at 17:00

Tripp said:
ok just tried to buy one of these from a certain laptop site, turns out they don't qualify for £100 cash back and despite the server advertised as £198 they charged me £840 for 2....

needless to say ive cancelled the order and am looking else where, BUT where? how do I check that a site is an approved seller and qualifies for £100 cashback?

I know competitor links aren't allowed but I need to be pointed in the right direction.

There's a list of HP Approved resellers on their website. Buy off that list and you'll be fine with the cashback.

Pieh0 · 15 Feb 2013 at 17:11

Hi all,

Just got my 2nd Microserver and I'm having a bit of a problem getting the HP P410 with the 1GB FBWC to work on it.

If i remove the cache, it works fine, albeit without RAID5, but if i put it in, during post it will sit at Initializing and not detect any drives, then when trying to run the offline ACU, it wont detect the card.

For those of you that have installed this card, was there anything special you had to do to get it working with the write cache installed?

Already been to HP and they have sent out a new cache module (which didn't fix the problem) and now are sending a new card out, so if that doesn't work, I'm not sure what the problem could be.

Thanks for any help,

Pieh0

**EDIT**

Here's a screenshot.

twe · 15 Feb 2013 at 17:43

Caustic said:
I would be surprised if it is up to transcoding. I guess it depends upon how much can be handed off to a GPU, as the CPU in these machines is not amazing. A C2D would be quite a bit faster.

CD

I installed an AMD 6450, I have Serviio running under Windows Home Server 2011 and streaming 1080p to my LG Home Theater system is fine. To my PS3 it is a bit flaky but haven't really looked into it since they are both in the same room and I get proper audio coming out from the Home Theatre rather than PS3 to Home Theatre or tv etc....

valve90210 · 15 Feb 2013 at 20:31

Uhtred said:
go for it, i've got next week off work

This is the profile I've Added to the profiles.xml file in the config folder of Serviio, which I use for my old Xbox and it works pretty much flawlessly:

Code:

<Profile id="25" name="XBMC" extendsProfileId="1">
	    		<Transcoding>
   <Video targetContainer="mpegts" targetVCodec="mpeg2video" targetACodec="ac3" maxHeight="480">
      <Matches container="*" />
   </Video>
</Transcoding>
   </Profile>

I'm mainly using it with SD mp4 files and it works fine with i5...would be great to see if the HP is up to it.

decto · 15 Feb 2013 at 21:35

randal24 said:
Silent enough, the PSU takes care of the noise.

PicoPSU is on my list.

I tried a pico PSU but no real energy saving worth mentioning.

Also significant difference in noise, most comes from the 120mm fan to keep the drives cool. Fan has custom connection but can be swapped with a little knowledge.

I wouldn't want it next to the bed but it's not exactly noisy.

AD

tbz_ck · 15 Feb 2013 at 22:29

THe N54L microserver is available in the channel now. Expensive though.

Little_Crow · 16 Feb 2013 at 00:24

Pieh0 said:
Hi all,
For those of you that have installed this card, was there anything special you had to do to get it working with the write cache installed?

Only thing I can think is to download the latest SPP, either burn it to DVD or to a USB stick using the HP USB Key Utility.
Boot with that and get your card flashed to the latest firmware.

I immediately suspected the FBWC, but I guess it could be a Firmware issue with the drives you're using

randal · 16 Feb 2013 at 01:18

decto said:
I tried a pico PSU but no real energy saving worth mentioning.

Also significant difference in noise, most comes from the 120mm fan to keep the drives cool. Fan has custom connection but can be swapped with a little knowledge.

I wouldn't want it next to the bed but it's not exactly noisy.

AD

Interesting, most people seem to think it's the other way around and that the PSU is the noisier component. I'll do some testing over the weekend.

Have just about finished building mine now. Mdadm setup mirroring disks with email alerts for any raid failures. Usual Sab/Sickbeard/CouchPotato/Headphones setup with Prowl notifications. XBMC 12 (admittedly using 11's DB because I didn't upgrade and couldn't be arsed to down then upgrade again!) etc.

Just need to wait for the RAID to finish resyncing then it's data copy time, LIRC for the MCE remote setup, controller configs for emulators and a little bit of menu tweaking in XBMC.

Might actually get to use it after that.

Pieh0 · 16 Feb 2013 at 08:23

Little_Crow said:
Only thing I can think is to download the latest SPP, either burn it to DVD or to a USB stick using the HP USB Key Utility.
Boot with that and get your card flashed to the latest firmware.

I immediately suspected the FBWC, but I guess it could be a Firmware issue with the drives you're using

Here's the weird thing, even without drives in, it still takes ages to initialise.

I'm hoping to get the new card from HP today and i will give that a go, cause the only thing left to try is the super cap, and the FBWC's led's show that its charging, then charged.

Just downloading the SPP now, so fingers crossed

Thanks,

Pieh0

covenantuk · 16 Feb 2013 at 14:04

Uhtred said:
I use transcoding with Serviio (hosted in a VM) and it works perfectly

Same here - no problem transcoding at all with Serviio

covenantuk · 16 Feb 2013 at 14:09

randal24 said:
Got into the installer to find the drives presented as 2 x 3TB and the SSD. Bummer. HP's RAID implementation is a bit of a farce, so sacked off the "array" as it's only there by name until you get into the OS and install the driver. Will be using md on Ubuntu to mirror the data storage volumes I think...

Don't understand this - if you go and enable raid in the main BIOS you can set up the array when the BIOS gets to the onboard raid setup during boot? It was certainly presented as an array during my ESX install.

covenantuk · 16 Feb 2013 at 14:11

Pieh0 said:
Here's the weird thing, even without drives in, it still takes ages to initialise.

I'm hoping to get the new card from HP today and i will give that a go, cause the only thing left to try is the super cap, and the FBWC's led's show that its charging, then charged.

Just downloading the SPP now, so fingers crossed

Thanks,

Pieh0

Seems like recently every bit of hardware HP supplies takes forever to initialise. The DL380 G8 can take 5 minutes to get past the BIOS post.