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

[uncle_rufus]

Does the N54L support WOL? Going to have a play with AutomateIt on Android and would be interested in setting up a trigger to wake my HTPC when my phone connects to my home network.

Mine seems to work with it by enabling it in the BIOS and then using an Android app I downloaded called "Wake on Lan" so it should work

Another weekend another stage of Microserver fun for me... Here's the plan:

1. Update the BIOS to the one made by "TheBay". Can anyone confirm the details of this for me? I found the download on a thread started by "TheBay" on the avforums, and it says you pretty much just run a little installer that tells you what to do and then boot from it once... Is that the right one? I'm always nervous about BIOS updates I don't actually need the updates the new BIOS brings right now but I plan to use the other ports down the line so may as well get it out of the way

2. Install the free version of unRAID

3. Plug in my 2x2Tb discs and set them off pre-clearing for 1 pass

I guess it's the first step I'm most worried about - can anyone with an N54L definitely confirm that the BIOS update I'm talking about is correct and doesn't screw anything up?

UPDATE:

Okay so last night I flashed the BIOS to the one made by "TheBay"... It was pretty easy to do and I think it's worked (well, from my newly installed unRAID server if I check dmesg it appears to show that 6 full speed SATA ports were initialised at least). I could swear the fans sound slightly louder since changing the BIOS, but it could be my imagination (plus I don't think it's possible for the machine to alter the fan speeds the way I have them connected anyway, is it?)

unRAID was very simple to install and I've set things up as per the lime-tech wiki. The only thing I didn't bother with was setting up the email notifications, because it seemed like it would need me to provide the credentials for my email account in order for it to send the emails, and I'm not sure if I'm comfortable with doing that or not (or have I misunderstood what the details it asks you for mean?)

Then this morning I started the pre-clearing... both 2x2Tb discs at once. They've been running for 3 hours right now and are currently 45% of the way through the first step (pre-reading) - it's going to be a looooong day

 

[uncle_rufus]

Finished!!! The pre-clear took around 24 hours exactly (though it felt more like 23 since the clocks went back )

I'm a bit confused though in the webGUI for unRAID I don't seem to have the options that the configuration guide talks about... How do I get to the part of the settings where I can specify my user shares? I only have "Main" "Users" "Settings" and "Utils" in the main GUI and the huge list of options from unMenu, but none of those seem to let me set user shares... do I need to bring the array online first?

UPDATE: So I let the initial parity sync finish, took most of the day yesterday, and now I see that I just had to temporarily stop the array and go into the settings to enable user shares, and then re-start the array. Next step is to mount the data drive from my old server and copy the data into the new one. I assume doing an internal hdd -> hdd transfer will still result in the parity information being calculated? (i.e. it's not bound to transfers onto the shares or anything?)

 

[hamesy]

Guys looking for a bit of help here. I've got a N40L and I'm trying to install Windows 7 on it however when I go to install it, it complains that the CD/DVD drivers are missing. I'm installing from the USB drive and tried changing the BIOS from AHCI to IDE in case that was causing the issue.

Any ideas?

In case anyone else is having the same problem. When you get to the option that says Install Now, remove the USB drive you're installing Windows 7 from and insert it into a different USB slot. Continue with the install and it will work perfectly.

 

[ultim]

Finished installing my picopsu and I'm loving it. Massive noise difference as you would expect. Definitely recommended if you have it running in your living room.

 

[Carbon]

I'm hoping somebody can help before i put my n54l through a window.

Here’s where I'm at. I've had it a good 6 months now, W7 installed plodding along running Plex Media Sever no problems. I'm now setting up my own home lab to start studying for my MCSE 2012.

I P2V my image of W7 and stored it on my laptop. I then installed ESXi 5.1 to my internal USB drive on my n54l, converted my image of W7 to run on ESXi, sorted. All works as it should.

Now i have a 1TB FAT32 drive with all my media on, i bought another 1TB disk and created a datastore and added it to my W7 VM. All good. VM running fine, new disk sat waiting for my data to come over.

Now i need to get my data from my full TB disk to the nearly created disk on my W7 VM..This is where I'm getting problems.

I've tried to RDM the disk but it wouldn’t play, i don’t remember the error exactly but it said something about the disk not supporting large files. I'm assuming its because the disk is FAT32?

I've added the disk to an external enclosure and connected it to the VM. The transfer rate is so painfully slow I've tried other external disks and it’s the same.

I've also noticed that copying data on this VM isnt the best either, it starts off at a normal transfer rate than gradually gets slower and slower.

Does anyone have any ideas what the problem could be, do you think the image could just be screwed up from the P2V?

What is going to be the best way to transfer over my data?
Cheers


EDIT - I'm currently transferring 11gb from my external disk to new 1TB disk and getting a speed of 6MB/second and its getting slower as the transfer progresses

 

[Kidge]

@UncleRufus What are the Toshiba disks like bud, I'm thinking of getting the 2Tb ones myself but don't know whether to go for the 5700rpm or 7200?

 

[uncle_rufus]

@UncleRufus What are the Toshiba disks like bud, I'm thinking of getting the 2Tb ones myself but don't know whether to go for the 5700rpm or 7200?

Obviously I can't comment on lifespan because I've not had them long enough to find out, but... I've got the 5700rpm ones and they seem pretty good - not particularly noisy, transfer speeds it's hard to tell as I believe they are artificially limited by UnRAID as it writes the parity... I say go for it anything else you want to know?

 

[sportq]

Has anyone successfully used a PCI-e RAID card (or HBA) and been able to access the configuration utility in the N40L or N54L?

I've got a couple of LSI SAS3041 HBA raid cards but I cannot get the configuration utility to display. It asks me to press CTRL-C, then loads it, flashes up a message stating it's successfully installed then just continues to boot the microserver.

A bit of searching has suggested there may not be enough Option ROM space available for it and that disabling onboard devices may help. So far it's not looking good

I've got an OEM version of the Adaptec 5805 SAS/SATA HBA and I can access the option ROM BIOS with Ctrl-A before the OS boots.

I haven't disabled anything in the Microserver BIOS, I am using the modded version though for full speed SATA ports.

Peter

 

[.temp]

Confirmation of cashback came through

NOW I WAIT

 

[gavind]

@UncleRufus What are the Toshiba disks like bud, I'm thinking of getting the 2Tb ones myself but don't know whether to go for the 5700rpm or 7200?

I'm not really a fan of Toshiba but their prices looks really tempting. I haven't seen a lot of negative feedback from them though. Go for it and we'll ask you after 5 years?

 

[uncle_rufus]

I'm not really a fan of Toshiba but their prices looks really tempting. I haven't seen a lot of negative feedback from them though. Go for it and we'll ask you after 5 years?

The label/guid on the drives actually comes up as Hitachi rather than Toshiba so not sure what that's all about... as far as I know they're not the same company, but maybe they share a manufacturer or whatever sub-component has the drive name set or something

 

[MagicBoy]

I'm not really a fan of Toshiba but their prices looks really tempting. I haven't seen a lot of negative feedback from them though. Go for it and we'll ask you after 5 years?

Toshiba bought the IBM/Hitachi desktop drive business.

I've got 4x1TB Hitachi in my Microserver.

 

[doodah]

Someone over at Home Server Show lodged a query about the NIC issues with WS 2012/8.1 and this was their response:

This is with reference to the Windows OS 2012 R2 installation for your product HP Proliant N40L G7 MicroServer.


I checked my internal resources and found the information about the drivers for 2012 R2. The driver for Windows 2012 R2 is still in a testing phase and full functional drivers are expected to be released sometime in December of this year.


However, I see the server you have is a G7 server and as per the OS support matrix G7 server is not tested for MS Windows 2012 installation.

Please check the OS support matrix from the below link-
http://h18004.www1.h...dows/index.html.

For HP Proliant N40L G7 MicroServer So 2012 R2 may not be tested as it is not a recommended OS for this model.

Original post

 

[SaltandSauce]

Is anyone running two Proliants coincide with one another? The reason I ask is that I'm considering purchasing a new server since I've ran out of hard drive space on my current server. Rather than delete my data, I'd rather pick up a new one as another media server.

If I was considering this option, can someone recommend how I should set it up? I'd really only be using it as a NAS. Is an HP Proliant server my best option here or does it seem like wasted hardware for something as simple as NAS? If you think it's suitable, how do you recommend I have it configured? I must admit, after doing some quick reading about unRAID from uncle_rufus, I quite like the sound of it.

Any input from you guys (and girls) would be much appreciated!

 

[Bradmax57]

What O/S are you running on the current one?

 

[uncle_rufus]

Is an HP Proliant server my best option here or does it seem like wasted hardware for something as simple as NAS? If you think it's suitable, how do you recommend I have it configured? I must admit, after doing some quick reading about unRAID from uncle_rufus, I quite like the sound of it.

Any input from you guys (and girls) would be much appreciated!

Well mine is still running at the moment and I'm pretty happy with it, although time will tell really once I have had to contend with the various situations that might arise! (Hopefully with non-disastrous results )

I would say it's not overkill to have one just as a big NAS - technically it may be slightly more powerful than it needs to be - you could always set it up with the NAS part as a VM (I didn't do this in the end because I felt that extra layer of complexity introduced to many more opportunities for problems - plus I didn't want to upgrade the RAM if I didn't have to)

One downside I've discovered with UnRAID (well, not so much a hard downside more like a limitation) is that since the OS effectively re-installs itself each time you power off and on again, none of your files on the root of the system survive - so if you want to install other applicaitons to run under UnRAID they have to be on a drive or USB

 

[cokecan]

You could setup Windows Server 2012 on both to take advantage of the Storage Spaces and then create a DFS namespace to share the storage pool's in both boxes as one single network share.

I've been using Storage Spaces since the beta's of 2012 and have been quite impressed with it. I know that in terms of raw throughput there may be some issues but for general home-based NAS storage it's fine. Honestly I regularly peak at around 80MB/s when copying data from it over a gigabit LAN. I like how flexible it is being able to add more disks at any time in the future to expand it. Plus you can plug the disks that are part of a pool into any Windows Server 2012 build and simply enable the pool without loss of data.

 

[SaltandSauce]

What O/S are you running on the current one?

As it stands, I'm currently running Windows Server 2K12.

I would say it's not overkill to have one just as a big NAS - technically it may be slightly more powerful than it needs to be - you could always set it up with the NAS part as a VM (I didn't do this in the end because I felt that extra layer of complexity introduced to many more opportunities for problems - plus I didn't want to upgrade the RAM if I didn't have to)

Like you stated already, if the sole purprose of running another Proliant is simply to use it as a NAS box, I'd rather put the cash towards hard drives instead of having to purchase additional RAM. For that reason, I'd just cram as many drives in as possible.

You could setup Windows Server 2012 on both to take advantage of the Storage Spaces and then create a DFS namespace to share the storage pool's in both boxes as one single network share.

This sounds like it could be a real good option. I can't say I know a great deal about the technology but I'll certainly do some reading over the weekend to try get a better understanding. It certainly sounds promising though if I'm able to copy at speeds as impressive as 80MB/s across my home network.

If you have any links to anything of real benefit to help get myself started, it would be great if you could help me out.

In the mean time, I'll try do some silent reading in the background and hope the missus doesn't catch onto my plans. If she does.. well.. this might be the last you hear from me!!

 

[badcompany]

These still on offer?

 

[uncle_rufus]

This sounds like it could be a real good option.

Just remember that as far as I know Windows Server can't be run from a USB stick so you're always going to lose 1-bay (out of a maximum of 6) to the OS. UnRAID or FreeNAS or most of the Linux distros can run from a pen-drive plugged into the internal-external USB port (it's weird but exactly what it sounds like)