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

Ladies and Gents
Some advice please, just brought the 54l, never had a server before , asking for advice on a few things, operating system should I go with whs2011 , funds a bit tight at the moment , or is there another option, what is the best ram to add to the server, hard drives I was going to with the WD red 2tb

Thank you
 
Hipster said:
Ladies and Gents
Some advice please, just brought the 54l, never had a server before , asking for advice on a few things, operating system should I go with whs2011 , funds a bit tight at the moment , or is there another option, what is the best ram to add to the server, hard drives I was going to with the WD red 2tb

Thank you
Click to expand...

what do you want to do?

i ve bought 2 n54l

one for freenas, have a build to move to it. (works very well in the end)
and the other one, maybe WHS or just win 7. I've put a 6450 useing it as a HTPC. runing xbmc. have a boxee but the thing is great but it can't handle the menus.

i went for WD green drives for the freenas. WD red i skipped main cos i wanted to save power speed was not a must and at least in my head i feel that when the WD G drives are not spinning it less wear. Red drives are geared towards more demanding environment than home. but again it depends what your doing.

hope that answers your drive question. (green drives spin up when you need to access them, takes 3 -6 seconds maybe)

with ram, again depends, the n54l is more forgiving adding up to 16gb, even though hp only officially support 8. there is a list on the net of recommend ram to go to 16. in the freenas i went with Samsung 16GB(2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-10600 ECC Registered CL9 240-pin Server Memory/RAM.

the htpc + i used the what it come with and the spare stick for the other box

I did add an sdd cache to the freenas which solved any issues with streaming from green drives. (freenas 9 will support trim and i read somewhere you can trim manually, although not tried this)

i have a question? any one used a picopsu in the h54l i have a voice in my head telling me to buy one now.

in one i have 4x3TB wd g drives and an sdd and a usb and NIC
the other has 2 250 drives (the std ones that come with it) and a HD6450 with a fan. (using on board nic)

if i can swap them out be great but the 160 w versions are as much as the n54l including cash back. the 120 w are only abit better. could i use a 90w or would that be pushing it?
 
Ok thanks for the extra info, would not worry too much about ram. Just make sure you use matching stuff. I would probably look about as people who are using the n54l for bigger tasks sell the 2 gb it comes with. You may find some cheap stuff. Would not use red drives for the above. If your streaming and not transcoding then I would not worry to much about ram. If you can pick up a second cheap stick it would not hurt.

Good luck with the build
 
Swarfega said:
So what change fixed it?
Click to expand...

I changed so much I'm not 100% but a handful of things I think as follows:

1. Setting discs up as RDM in EXSi (Instead of Datastores)
2. Disabling Security Checking in GPO for file transfers.
3. Enabling "Large Send Offload" on NIC.
4. Processor setting on the VM.

The main four that I noticed larger differences from after changing.

Now averaging 90MB's on transfers.
 
By mistake I added a failing drive to my DriveBender pool and after sitting in the system for two days (and being part of the duplication pool) it failed. However DriveBender has performed as advertised, alerted me to the problem, allowed my go remove the drive, pop in a replacement (differing size), added it to the pool and duplication resumed.

So far impressed. :)
 
I'm thinking of visualizing my server but don't know if I should install Server 2008 R2 or Server 2012 and then install the NAS software and anything else I want to play with as VM's or install ESXi and virtualize everything.

Opinions please.
 
HowardRoark said:
However - between choosing 2TB vs 3TB paintguy commented below:
'...The "server backup" in whs also backs up the OS.I'm pretty sure that whs can only back up partitions up to 2tb so if you go for a 3tb drive it will split it up. I'm going to stick to 2tb drives for that reason.'

Can you/paintguy elaborate?
Click to expand...

This refers to a backup limitation of WHS.
WHS cannot backup any single volume bigger than 2TB. So, if you have a 3TB drive, set as a single partition, WHS cant back that up. (I believe by default, when you format a drive, WHS will split that into a 2TB and 1TB partition, unless you take steps to stop that happening).
There are ways around that limitation though. If you have a 3TB partition that has multiple folders on it, and none of them exceed 2TB in size, you can set up different backup jobs and back them up separately.

2. You mentioned a solution (below) with OS small in size- taking a image right after first install and then periodically. Sounds Good.
If I just 'start' with 250GB and 500 GB (USB external/offline) - I hope I can 'image' the entire OS as well as the data on the 250GB to the 500GB external USB drive periodically? (Do I get it right?) Or I just need to sync the data shares between internal and external periodically. Presume WHS does both?
Click to expand...

WHS has two different backup processes.
Server backup allows you to select drives or folders on the server, including the system drive if you want, and back them up to another drive, usually an external one.

You can do a manual backup (of, say, just the system drive to allow quick restores later), and also automated, recurring backups (of whatever set of drives/folders you want - though not, each individual backup job must be less than 2TB total size).

The second backup thing of WHS is the ability to connect other computers to the server, and back them up to the server, too, on an automatic schedule. I have 3 PCs in my house that have their system drives backed up every night. This uses space very efficeintly - the backup for all 3 drives is only a bit bigger than the largest single drive among the 3.

This PC backup is for me the main reason to use WHS over one of the other systems suggested in the thread - nothing else makes PC backup so easy and efficient.
 
MeMeMeMe said:
WHS has two different backup processes.
Server backup allows you to select drives or folders on the server, including the system drive if you want, and back them up to another drive, usually an external one.
Click to expand...

I don't suppose you know if WHS 2011 can back itself up over a network, or even the internet do you, without a 3rd party app? I know the idea of backing up to an external is that you'd probably have a couple and rotate them to a safe off site location, but being able to send it to my main PC or over to my mums would be good. I know I could probably do the former with robocopy, synctoy and the like, and the latter with something like crashplan, but can WHS be tricked into doing the job itself?
 
I'm running Server 2012 Standard on my N40. I've setup NFS shares and can see them on my media streamer in the lounge but the folders are empty despite full of music and movies.
Samba shares work fine.

Any ideas what I've done wrong?
 
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I've ordered a microserver to replace my 5 year old Qnap TS-109 Pro, and I've been playing around with options as to how to configure it when it arrives:

  • Windows Home Server costs money (I'm a cheapskate :p)
  • I can't get FreeNAS to work correctly under VirtualBox, so I've no confidance in it (FreeBSD...nightmares)
  • NAS4Free is too limited (and FreeBSD still gives me nightmares)
  • unRaid only supports 3 hard drives for the free option (cheapskate)
  • Amahi requires payment for some of the plugins I'd want (still a cheapskate)
  • XPEnology looks like it has USB issues with HP microservers

So, it looks like I'll fall back to my default server OS choice and just throw Debian on it. I'll use the included HD for the OS and then configure all my other HDs as one btrfs file system.
That is unless anyone has any suggestions I've not looked at?
 
Just a couple of hard drive questions for this server...

1. I currently have the hard drives power down after a certain time, so they spin up if and when I require the use of them. Is that the best situation for everything involved? I.e. Good for saving on power, and good for the hard drive?

2. I'm looking to expand my storage - Any recommendation for a 2TB drive?
 
Do I really need 16GB ?

Hi,

I've recently bought HP N54L and my question is do I really need 16GB RAM ?

I've bought 2 8Gb Sticks, and have so far installed one of them (8GB Non-ECC). The Server came with 2GB ECC, so now I have a total of 10GB. It seems to be working fine so far, is a mix of ECC and Non-ECC Ram reliable?

My main use for the server is as NAS device. In the future I may also use it as an HTPC, running XBMC with Openelec installed.

I have installed ESXi with xpenology, the memory requirements seem quite low - having allocated 2GB , it seems to run fine. The Memory requirements for Openelec also seem quite modest, starting with a couple of Gbs.

I have no need for ZFS and my work VMs are on another, much more powerful server. With 10Gb RAM, I've may even have enough RAM for another VM (although CPU is probably the limiting factor).

I'm reluctant to return the memory, if there is a requirement which I haven't thought of. However, if its overkill, I can refund the memory and buy an Nvida video card with the cash. Would appreciate any advice/thoughts. Thanks
 
After a little apprehension, I decided to upgrade my BIOS using the modified version to allow full speed in the additional SATA ports. I used the following guide that was well written and easy to follow:

http://homeservershow.com/hp-proliant-n40l-microserver-build-and-bios-modification-revisited.html

I know it's late but I'm now going to add the original drive that came with the server into the bay above using a 5.25" trayless hot swap mobile rack for a 3.5" hard drive. I could be doing with freeing up another slot for a new hard disk! ;)
 
God dammit! Well it turns out that a 30cm SATA cable isn't long enough! I knew when I ordered it that I should have played it safe and gone with something longer. Instead, me being me, decided to go with the shorter cable to try keep things neat and tidy inside. That'll teach me for being a fussy bugger! :rolleyes:

Anyway, I'm going to place an order just now for a 45cm cable. That should be more than enough to connect everything up properly.

On another note, can anyone recommend a PCIe USB 3.0 card? I could be doing with adding one to the motherboard whilst it's out.

As always guys and girls, your help is much appreciated.
 
paintguy said:
I don't suppose you know if WHS 2011 can back itself up over a network, or even the internet do you, without a 3rd party app? I know the idea of backing up to an external is that you'd probably have a couple and rotate them to a safe off site location, but being able to send it to my main PC or over to my mums would be good. I know I could probably do the former with robocopy, synctoy and the like, and the latter with something like crashplan, but can WHS be tricked into doing the job itself?
Click to expand...

I dont think it can backup over the network, but there are addins (3rd party programs) that provide this ability. One called Cloudberry, also Crashplan (but the latter only backs up files, doesn't create an image you can perform a bare metal restore from). Both of those provide internet backup too.

I know one strategy someone used is to have the server do its backup to an internal drive (it could be an external attached drive too), and have robocopy copy changes to that backup to a network drive.
 
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