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

xibinim said:
Any one tried playing games on the N54L. My housemate is keen to get Fifa 14 on; on paper it looks fine but wondered if it differs in the real world.

1GB 6450, 8GB RAM and an SSD.
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I've fitted a Sapphire Low Profile 7750 into my N54L along with 8GB RAM and although I've not given it a thorough workout yet it runs WoW acceptably at 720p. WoW is heavily cpu limited so I would expect other more gpu limited games to run better as well.
 
I used to have the Sapphire 7750 in an old PC and it was a pretty decent card considering it's size and power requirements (or lack there of)
 
Quick question to people running FreeNAS; are you using UFS or ZFS to manage your volumes? I don't want to setup raid in fear of it failing and taking out the whole array but at the same time I dont want parity as the data is media and aint that important.

ZFS seems to be primarily raid but all the plugins and that are tailored for it.
 
Slyman2k4 said:
Quick question to people running FreeNAS; are you using UFS or ZFS to manage your volumes? I don't want to setup raid in fear of it failing and taking out the whole array but at the same time I dont want parity as the data is media and aint that important.

ZFS seems to be primarily raid but all the plugins and that are tailored for it.
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ZFS isn't just a raid solution, it has better. error correction etc as well. You can pool the drives together so they show as one physical volume or present each drive as an individual volume. When you pool multiple drives together one can fail and the pool will continue to operate as normal. The plugins and jails etc don't care what file system you use.

To take slightly off topic has anyone here upgraded they're freenas install to 9.1.1 yet. I tried yesterday and have come across some issues.
 
@Frozennova, I've installed 9.1.1 and found that the buttons (OK or Cancel) don't seem to work on IE10 - works fine on Chrome.

Only just got my n54 and never used FreeNAS very long so haven't found any other issues. Are there any you have foudn that I should look out for?.
 
Frozennova said:
To take slightly off topic has anyone here upgraded they're freenas install to 9.1.1 yet. I tried yesterday and have come across some issues.
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I'd have to check when I'm at home but I only installed FreeNAS recently so unless 9.1.1 came out within the last week or two I've been running it for a few weeks without noticing any problems (using Firefox to access the interface)
 
It's a really weird one. I run freenas from within esx and pass the drives through using rdms it doesn't matter if I do a gui upgrade or fresh install of freenas but it can't find my existing pool

Yet if it create a couple of virtual disks and attach them to FreeNAS 8.3.2 create a pool detach them from that vm and attach them to FreeNAS 9.1.1 it imports fine.

Edit: I've been using freenas for 9 months now and not had any issues other than this. Its not really too much of an issue to be honest and they don't really support running it virtualized so it'd probably a pretty isolated issue.

I'm also not running it on a microserver either so it could be down to my whitebox hardware as I don't have any VT-d or anything.
 
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Frozennova, I've had issues with FreeNAS but they differ to yours...

I use two virtual FreeNAS boxes using 500GB VDMK discs. I use iSCSI to share these non-raided drives to my physical hosts so I have shared storage and therefore can use vMotion. It's been working fine. When I saw 9.1.1 I migrated machines away from one of the NAS VMs and upgraded it. When it came online I couldn't see the storage any more. FreeNAS looked find but complained about a corrupt GPT. I deleted the VMDK's and created new ones. Issue resolved.
My son managed to mistakenly shutdown one of my hosts which took down one of the FreeNAS VM's along with any VM stored on that NAS and VM's running on that host. Sadly the exact same thing happened where the datastore appears as offline yet freeNAS in the GUI shows no issues. I posted on the freeNAS forum as this was the second instance of the same issue but got nothing but **** replies telling me how not to visualise freeNAS. I know its not supported etc etc but nobody was willing to help give some diagnostic help and just blamed VMware for corrupting my discs...
I gave up and just rebuilt a new freeNAS VM and restored my data.

BTW has anyone ran vSphere 5.5 from their Microservers yet? About to try it myself.
 
That first issue you have described is exactly the issue I'm having however there is no mention of a corrupt GPT.

I didn't bother asking in the freenas forums for that exact reason. I'll just stick with 8.3.2 until I've bought some more drives, I'll create a new pool with the 3 drives in raidz then move the data across and reinitialize the two existing drives as a mirror in the new pool.

edit: if it install or upgrade freenas with the two rdm drives attached the pool shows in the storage manager but as a few hundred kb in size and mentions nothing about the pool being degraded.

If install without the drives attached then try and import the pool it can't find it.
 
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Have tried looking through the thread but clearly my search powers are weak!

What is needed to add a hard drive to the top bay guys? Many thanks

DiCe!/Alex
 
Any 5.25" to 2.5" or 3.5" adapter really. Some people use the Nexus DoubleTwin (or similar) to add 2 x 3.5" HDD's. I've just sold one of these in the MM actually lol. There is space under the 5.25" optical drive bay to fit a 2.5" HDD and many including myself have slotted an SSD in there which simply connects up to either the internal SATA header or run a cable to the eSATA connector on the back of the case

You can also get something like the Startech Backplane SAS enclosures that, depending on model, allow you to use up to 6 x 2.5" HDD's in the optical drive bay. Obviously with these you'll need a RAID/SATA/SAS card in one of the PCI-e slots
 
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DiCe! said:
Have tried looking through the thread but clearly my search powers are weak!
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Huh huh huh, you have much to learn of searching my friend ;)

DiCe! said:
What is needed to add a hard drive to the top bay guys? Many thanks
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I've not gone there myself but afaik from the rest of the thread you will need some sort of a 5.25 to 2.5 or 3.5 adapter for the optical bay (for an SSD you could get away without one and just tape it somewhere)... Then you can connect it to either the internal single-SATA port which is meant for an optical drive, OR using an eSATA to SATA connecter plugged into the rear eSATA port and looped back into the case... To make either of these ports run at full speed you need to flash the BIOS to a modded one which enables AHCI on both of them
 
uncle_rufus said:
Huh huh huh, you have much to learn of searching my friend ;)



I've not gone there myself but afaik from the rest of the thread you will need some sort of a 5.25 to 2.5 or 3.5 adapter for the optical bay (for an SSD you could get away without one and just tape it somewhere)... Then you can connect it to either the internal single-SATA port which is meant for an optical drive, OR using an eSATA to SATA connecter plugged into the rear eSATA port and looped back into the case... To make either of these ports run at full speed you need to flash the BIOS to a modded one which enables AHCI on both of them
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Might as well use the internal sata port.

You will also want a Molex to sata power connector.
 
My HPMS 40L is FUBAR = I was hoping to return to store and possible get the 54l or build a AMD A10 based one >300gbp budget but would be ESXI host for Ubuntu Server, Windows home Server, a RouterOS

I'd like 2 LAN INTERNET in and out to a switch then to all computers.

Shame no extra PCIE slots :(

Also SATA is 3GB/s - isnt it wasteful over 6GB/S?

Was thinking main boot 1 or 2 SSD setup as RAID or a 3TB (partition OS / more)
Got 250gb 500gb 3tb 3tb 3tb and 2x 1tb (one is failing) and external 3tb

Hoping to get 2x laptop drivea and RAD for private data? that would mean a 4x 2,5 ssd would be useful
 
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