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

[Danny091]

Before I buy one of these can somebody give me a quick idiots guide to sharing it with other people on the internet like I do with my Seagate GoFlex?
Say I put Win7 on it I've been told I need FreeDNS to share it?
How does it work and what would a friend see at their end?

Thanks

You could use No-IP too (Only really needed if you have a dynamic ip address)
They run a little program and when your ip address changes they will update your whatever.no-ip.org address to reflect the change so that people can access you that way.

After that's set up its just however you wish to share stuff really you could set up plex media server or even just run a FTP server and give them username and passwords to connect. Just ensure that the relevant ports are forwarded and your away to go.

Good thing about running windows 7 on them is you can basiclly do anything windows does on them so you can use any of the sharing software on it that uses windows.

 

[GSXRMovistar]

Do you mean between the two machines or between the two O/S's?

Between the two machines, the obvious thing straight away is that the N54l is twice the size of the EX495 due to the optical drive and overall design, truth be told the N54l seems like a lower quality piece of kit (understandable considering the price). Its only advantages over the EX495 are the ease of memory upgrade (and cheapness of DDR3 vs DDR2), on-board RAID, and VGA port (retrofit-able to the EX anyway as it has a header on the board).

By comparison the EX has higher build quality (vibration is less noticeable), a slightly more powerful CPU, tool-less drive caddys and smaller form factor. The disadvantage though is unless you want to retrofit a VGA port and shell out for a big stick of DDR2 (one ram slot) WHS V1/'11 are your only options.


Between the two O/S's (WHS v1 & S2012 Essentials), well for a start one is based on Server 2003 and the other on Server 2012, so the is an obvious difference there (by comparison WHS 2011 is based on Server 2012 R2) as the are a lot of advancements behind the scene. Differences between the O/S's depend what you want to do with them, connecting via RDP works the same*, running a torrent application for acquiring linux .iso's is the same, shared folders and DNLA media streaming works just as well. The big difference though is that while WHS 2011 dropped drive extender (for many the best feature of WHS and the reason 2011 uptake was so poor) the is a new and improved version in 2012/W8 called storage spaces which works great.

Overall I think if you can get S12k Essentials free via Technet or something I would say defiantly do it, but if not your better off saving the pennies and going with WHS v1.



*Something to note is that using the W8/2012 remote desktop app to connect to another W8/2012 machine is flawed as hell as moving the mouse to a corner brings up the local machines effect not the remote machines (it all works fine using the normal RDP program though).

Thanks for the info, hadn't realised the N54L would have been a lower spec than the older ex495. My N54L is replacing a ex470 which I had installed a Athlon Neo X2 6850e into so this newer server should be about 30% quicker.

But agree the ex units seem to have better build quality and I really liked how small they were although I'm sure I'll get used to the N54L.

Just finishing off my WHS2011 install (which with updates has taken flippin ages), now going to install Drivebender.

Oh and for those that may be interested in Drivebender it's currently 50% off so less than a tenner.

 

[ahar]

I've read through and searched as much of this thread as I can, but I can't see what the real world impact of not installing the custom bios would have on a fifth drive using the ODD SATA port. If I use it just for the OS, would I notice a difference if the sata port wasn't running at full speed?

Set up planned to be N54L with 4Gb RAM, using 4 drives in the normal slots and the 250Gb drive that came with it for just the OS (WHS 2011) installed on the ODD port.

 

[ShortWarning]

It's arrived. Yay!

What's the 250gb drive that comes with it like?

 

[OCdude]

Anyone managed to stop the pulsating/humming? It's doing my nut in now!

Hmm mine goes through phases of doing that.... really annoying as it reverberates throughout the entire house!

I thought it was due to the one of the five HDDs i've got installed, but i've set them to turn off when idle and it doesn't seem to have made any difference.

I usually temporarily fix it by giving it a good whack (that's what SHE said)

 

[paintguy]

If I use it just for the OS, would I notice a difference if the sata port wasn't running at full speed?

From what I've read (mine isn't up and running yet) there'll be little to no difference with a regular HDD. You'll probably see the advantage if you ever went SSD on that port though.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Hmm mine goes through phases of doing that.... really annoying as it reverberates throughout the entire house!

I thought it was due to the one of the five HDDs i've got installed, but i've set them to turn off when idle and it doesn't seem to have made any difference.

I usually temporarily fix it by giving it a good whack (that's what SHE said)

Try putting some thick felt pads under the rubber feet.

 

[HarryPainful]

A mouse mat works well.

Almost perfect size.

 

[hooblah]

Delete.

 

[durbs]

Guys ive got a problem! I received my N54L today and I put in my hard drive from my laptop.?

What do you mean 'put in my hard drive from my laptop'? You don't mean that literally do you i.e. expecting the laptop OS to boot on the Microserver?

If not, what OS have you installed on the Microserver?

 

[Attu90]

Just got a N54L delivered today, bought it for £194 so not to bad.

Ive installed a HD5450 and 4gb of ram, I went for the 5450 due to its low power and its fine for HD video, don't intent to play any games.

Ive put windows 7 on along with xbmc and in using akRDC on my android tablet for remote desktop and xbmc remote so I can pretty much control it via my tablet.

still got a lot of playing around though to get it exactly how I want it, I hope to be able to completely replace my WDTV and Synology nas with just this one box.

 

[ShortWarning]

What are you guys using for anti-virus on WHS 2011?

 

[Tobes]

What are you guys using for anti-virus on WHS 2011?

Annoyingly MS security essentials doesn't work on WHS, so I'm using nothing. Will be interested in what people are using. But the firewalls on and I only use it for download from newsgroups and no torrents. Not that it's a excuse but effort lol.

 

[Xire]

Anyone got windows server 2012 running on this? thinking about giving it a go.

 

[kitkat9933]

Anyone got windows server 2012 running on this? thinking about giving it a go.

Yep, works without any problems.

 

[q974739]

Hi All

I'm really unsure if I should buy the N54L. My N40's quietly sat doing the job, I don't know if I need more...

One thing that may sway me - actual power usage. Could someone with a N54L plug in a power meter and just tell us roughly how much power it burns while running windows, sitting there?

(And give details of drive and memory please!)

Also - do people think that the nG8 microservers are going to be better or worse for virtual machines?

Martin

 

[chippie]

Has anyone replaced the fan recently? I've read the guide that has been linked to, but the fan they found that works is no longer available.

Any recommendations of a similar fan that works?

 

[ubersonic]

Manual is here. It's on the HP site somewhere but I can't find the link at the moment, so it's a link to the one I downloaded.

That heatsink looks bigger than this:

Let the modding commence!

 

[ShortWarning]

Annoyingly MS security essentials doesn't work on WHS, so I'm using nothing. Will be interested in what people are using. But the firewalls on and I only use it for download from newsgroups and no torrents. Not that it's a excuse but effort lol.

Yea, I'm trying to find something but none of the big ones are compatible. It's going to be used as my main storage drive (I will have no D: drive on my laptop) so it really needs some sort of protection.

 

[ubersonic]

Annoyingly MS security essentials doesn't work on WHS, so I'm using nothing. Will be interested in what people are using. But the firewalls on and I only use it for download from newsgroups and no torrents. Not that it's a excuse but effort lol.

As this will be a limitation by MS's choice and not an actual limitation can you not hack/trick the security essentials installer to think its on a home O/S? You used to be able to trick the Windows Defender installer into thinking Server 2000 or W2K were Windows XP, surely you can do the same for MSE on WHS v1 (Server 2003 based so compatible with anything XP is) or WHS 2011 (Server 2008R2 based so compatible with anything W7 is)