Soldato
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Anybody know what 2.5 to 3.5 SSD adaptor works with the drive cage or if all off-center type adapters work?
Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD
- Thread starter dragonuk
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Guys, a really dumb VMware question, it's something i'm only just getting to grips with.
People say they boot to VMware using a USB key. Is there a reason for this? Does Vmware need to be booted from? I always recall just loading it up when windows was already installed but is it preferred to have it USB? Can someone explain?
Also, I have an N36L, thinking of an N54L too. What's the main differences..? Searches don't tell me at the mo!
People say they boot to VMware using a USB key. Is there a reason for this? Does Vmware need to be booted from? I always recall just loading it up when windows was already installed but is it preferred to have it USB? Can someone explain?
Also, I have an N36L, thinking of an N54L too. What's the main differences..? Searches don't tell me at the mo!
Soldato
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Can anyone confirm 100% that the BIOS update works with the N54L... Figured I may as well go ahead and do it now as I may eventually want to use 16Gb of RAM and/or the eSATA and extra SATA ports... (Just don't want to brick the microserver!)
I have a N54L and have carried out the Bios Mod, everything works find as far as i can tell
Soldato
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will give it a blast later
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where has the best place for one of these? Off for two days and all of next week so I want to get one asap
Guys, a really dumb VMware question, it's something i'm only just getting to grips with.
People say they boot to VMware using a USB key. Is there a reason for this? Does Vmware need to be booted from? I always recall just loading it up when windows was already installed but is it preferred to have it USB? Can someone explain?
Also, I have an N36L, thinking of an N54L too. What's the main differences..? Searches don't tell me at the mo!
I'm not sure what you mean to be honest, it sounds like you are referring to the vSphere client software, this is what you use to configure and manage your ESXI host. Basically you boot from the ESXI cd and then install to a USB stick, you can install to a hard disk if you like though. At this point you fire up the vSphere client, connect to your host and start creating your VM's
I believe the only difference between N36L and N54L is the cpu, you can check here though http://n40l.wikia.com/wiki/Base_Hardware
I believe he is getting confused being VMWare Workstation and ESXi.
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Deleted member 138126
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Man, that is just too ridiculous to pass up. £85 for a machine of this calibre, running for years... I've had my N36L for almost 3 years, so the N54L will be a nice little upgrade (the CPU is almost 2x as powerful as the N36L, and I'll combine the two RAM for a total of 4GB up from my current 2GB), and the N36L will become my emergency for spares in case something blows up on the N54L after the year warranty expires.
The £7 Quidco is the little cherry on top!
So a few questions... I've been looking at sorting out a home network recently and as this has suddenly become cheap again I think its probably time I jumped at the chance...
I'm looking to use the N54L as a storage device connected to several machines via wifi (no hard connections at the moment), a couple of PCs and a MacBook (so time machine capacity-possibly streaming to an ipad as well). It'll be used to store videos and backup a few hundred GB of photos, with say 10GB added at a time in future. Is this likely to be a better option than a dedicated NAS like the QNap or synology, just as easy to set up?
Ideally I'd like to be able to access it from anywhere via the net, I assume this is pretty easy to do, dependent on software? With regards to the video capability I'd like to be able to stream and view them as network folders, similarly with photo, although I'm guessing opening 20MB RAWS will probably be slow and depend more on the connection rather than the server.
Finally I'm guessing WHA will be the easiest to set up and use for the above? Will I be able to easily set it up to access from the Internet? I'm guessing any OS option will allow me to download via torrent?
Totally finally setup wise I'll probably go for a 120GB system HDD and then a 2TB HDD and a 1TB HDD I have at the moment, with more storage added at a later date, that'll be easy to do with sata cables? There appears to be discussion about upgrading the ram to 8GB, what's the need for that?
Yep, a bit all over the place but I have done some research but not a huge amount of specifics! Thinking I may grab one and then read up the formalities at a later date!
I'm looking to use the N54L as a storage device connected to several machines via wifi (no hard connections at the moment), a couple of PCs and a MacBook (so time machine capacity-possibly streaming to an ipad as well). It'll be used to store videos and backup a few hundred GB of photos, with say 10GB added at a time in future. Is this likely to be a better option than a dedicated NAS like the QNap or synology, just as easy to set up?
Ideally I'd like to be able to access it from anywhere via the net, I assume this is pretty easy to do, dependent on software? With regards to the video capability I'd like to be able to stream and view them as network folders, similarly with photo, although I'm guessing opening 20MB RAWS will probably be slow and depend more on the connection rather than the server.
Finally I'm guessing WHA will be the easiest to set up and use for the above? Will I be able to easily set it up to access from the Internet? I'm guessing any OS option will allow me to download via torrent?
Totally finally setup wise I'll probably go for a 120GB system HDD and then a 2TB HDD and a 1TB HDD I have at the moment, with more storage added at a later date, that'll be easy to do with sata cables? There appears to be discussion about upgrading the ram to 8GB, what's the need for that?
Yep, a bit all over the place but I have done some research but not a huge amount of specifics! Thinking I may grab one and then read up the formalities at a later date!
Soldato
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I'd say if you're not against a bit of learning, go for it... But perhaps if you plan to not have a final solution in place for some time and initially just experiment with it (a lot)... One common mistake (as far as I'm concerned) is to get very excited initially at the prospect of having things working then just getting something that sort of works a bit and going "Okay, sweet that's my setup now lets sit back and start using it!!" Once you start relying on it you don't then want to wipe everything and start again (especially if you have filled the storage and don't have enough room to move it aside should you need to rebuild everything).
Spend a good month or so trying out a whole bunch of different setups and OS and really get a good feeling for what can and can't be done, just use a bit of test data when you need to see how things will work. Then you'll see what will work best for you. You may even be able to save a bit of cash if you try out a few Linux distros first (don't be scared!!! Some are quite intuitive to use, I think FreeNAS seems pretty good in my experience) - you might find that will do what you want perfectly and you won't then need to buy WHS...
Just my 2 cents
Good luck!
Edit... Apologies I didn't actually answer any of your more specific questions:
- Microserver vs. an off-the-shelf NAS... it depends what you try to install on it... it could be about the same amount of work, or a lot more, but you can sort of decide that for yourself with what you choose
- Access from the net... Totally possible, you'll have to learn a bit about how to make sure it's secure if you intend to expose it to the outside, but beyond that it's not hard at all
- Torrents: Clients exist for most of the different OS you can install, so no worries there, you can even do fancy things like setting off torrents using an app on your phone (even when away from home)
- The extra RAM discussed has been mostly focused on either use of VMs (Virtual Machines) which require a lot of RAM, or for using something called ZFS, which is a type of filesystem (how the data on the drive is formatted and stored) which happens to benefit from having a large amount of RAM
Spend a good month or so trying out a whole bunch of different setups and OS and really get a good feeling for what can and can't be done, just use a bit of test data when you need to see how things will work. Then you'll see what will work best for you. You may even be able to save a bit of cash if you try out a few Linux distros first (don't be scared!!! Some are quite intuitive to use, I think FreeNAS seems pretty good in my experience) - you might find that will do what you want perfectly and you won't then need to buy WHS...
Just my 2 cents
Good luck!Edit... Apologies I didn't actually answer any of your more specific questions:
- Microserver vs. an off-the-shelf NAS... it depends what you try to install on it... it could be about the same amount of work, or a lot more, but you can sort of decide that for yourself with what you choose
- Access from the net... Totally possible, you'll have to learn a bit about how to make sure it's secure if you intend to expose it to the outside, but beyond that it's not hard at all
- Torrents: Clients exist for most of the different OS you can install, so no worries there, you can even do fancy things like setting off torrents using an app on your phone (even when away from home)
- The extra RAM discussed has been mostly focused on either use of VMs (Virtual Machines) which require a lot of RAM, or for using something called ZFS, which is a type of filesystem (how the data on the drive is formatted and stored) which happens to benefit from having a large amount of RAM
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That's what I didn't want to hear...
I don't really have time to spend hours a month trying to set the damn thing up, however I'm assuming the basics with something like WHs would be fine, however I've just read that WHS has been discontinued... FreeNAS is a possibility but I get the impression windows will be a lot easier to set up sharing and backups etc (having done it on windows before).
I don't really have time to spend hours a month trying to set the damn thing up, however I'm assuming the basics with something like WHs would be fine, however I've just read that WHS has been discontinued... FreeNAS is a possibility but I get the impression windows will be a lot easier to set up sharing and backups etc (having done it on windows before).
Soldato
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True, though FreeNAS seems fairly straightforward to me... Pretty much a hands-off install just plug in the prepared USB stick and wait until it's all installed, and then all of the configuration is handled via a GUI you control through your browser... Seems well documented and fairly easy to get things working (even stuff like adding a torrent client is in there as a default "plugin" you can just activate)...