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

Does anyone know how much the HP N54L idles at (power watts?) and also when its using say 4 large hdds when its downloading/streaming ?

Would be nice to gauge the power wattage and is WOL fully working ?
 
jake9891 said:
Mine arrived couple days ago, but didn't have enough RAM and SSD to do much with it. Now upgraded:

kQF4U37l.jpg


Note: This is running on modified BIOS, not sure if 16GB would work on stock. Bought same as easyrider, Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G for £119 (almost the same price as the server :/)
Click to expand...

I don't know why anyone would upgrade to ESXi 5.5 on a Microserver. Since you have to use a vCenter server to manage most things on it (and a vCenter server requires at least 8GB RAM) it is a total waste for not much benefit. The only desirable thing for that platform is datastore sizes bigger than 2TB.
 
R3X said:
Does anyone know how much the HP N54L idles at (power watts?) and also when its using say 4 large hdds when its downloading/streaming ?

Would be nice to gauge the power wattage and is WOL fully working ?
Click to expand...

On my UPS device there is a power load indicator and it is protecting my N36L with 4 Disks in it. Currently it is sat at 42W with 1 VM running on ESXi 5.1 (the VM is WHS 2011)

Gives you an idea hopefully
 
My N54L, with 1 x 64GB Crucial C300 SSD and 2 x 3TB WD Red drives, idles at 38W. That is £30 per year @ 9.09p per kWh.
 
jake9891 said:
Mine arrived couple days ago, but didn't have enough RAM and SSD to do much with it. Now upgraded:

kQF4U37l.jpg


Note: This is running on modified BIOS, not sure if 16GB would work on stock. Bought same as easyrider, Kingston KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G for £119 (almost the same price as the server :/)
Click to expand...

I hear the KVR16N11K2/16 kit also works which is slightly cheaper at £92.15
 
Excuse the dodgy photo but these are where my two are now up to

hp_server.jpg


They now live in a cabinet rather than on a dodgy shelf!

Left is:

N54L - 8GB ECC RAM - 256GB Sandisk SSD - 5 x 2TB WD - Additional Dual Port Intel NIC

Running ESXI 5.1 U1 with various VM's

Right is:

N36L - 8GB ECC RAM - Original 250GB - 4 x 3TB Toshiba - Additional Intel NIC

Running NAS4Free with the Toshiba's in a ZFS array for storage and the 250GB drive used as a random dumping ground and ISCSI target when needed.
 
tbz_ck said:
I don't know why anyone would upgrade to ESXi 5.5 on a Microserver. Since you have to use a vCenter server to manage most things on it (and a vCenter server requires at least 8GB RAM) it is a total waste for not much benefit. The only desirable thing for that platform is datastore sizes bigger than 2TB.
Click to expand...

I only did it because I had 5.5 at hand. Can always use second USB stick and revert back to 5.1.

It's running great and so far I could do everything without vcenter
 
DiscoDave said:
Do you need ECC ram to go 16GB in these things? I know some of the non ECC Ram worked in a 2x4GB configuration if memory serves me.
Click to expand...

Just to note, if you go the ECC route, make sure you buy ECC Unbuffered and not ECC Registered as it won't work :)

I've got 2x4GB Samsung ECC ram in both of mine and they've been running perfectly
 
tbz_ck said:
On my UPS device there is a power load indicator and it is protecting my N36L with 4 Disks in it. Currently it is sat at 42W with 1 VM running on ESXi 5.1 (the VM is WHS 2011)

Gives you an idea hopefully
Click to expand...

Sounds about right. My plug-in consumption meter thing is reporting an average 35W for an N40L running FreeNAS with 4x 7200RPM 1TB drives in it. It's similar to the same drives in a pair of firewire exclosures.
 
I've been wondering how do you guys have file server set up on this box?

I am using esxi 5.5 and wondering whether I should just create a datastore on each hard drive and attach it to a VM, such as OpenMediaVault or pass them through, using RDM to the VM? I am planning on using 2x2TB for storage and 1x2TB for backup, not going to bother with RAID (I think). Just do backup of the most important files, by using something like FileSync or equivalent.

It would be nice to pull out the hard drives if needed and attach them to another Windows PC. If I use datastore and attach it to a VM, I assume there is a risk involved that if something would happen to the VM this datastore is attached to, then I might not be able to recover data from the drive, right?

In that case what are the options for backing up VMs?

BTW, if there is a better way to do this, please tell me, I am a newbie when it comes to these kind of setups.

Thanks, appreciate your input on this!
 
Finally think i'm going to jump on board and get one of these little microservers.

Currently clearing out the loft so that I can make a bit of a music studio in there and as such looks like my current machine will be going living up there now which means i'll be machineless in my bedroom.

Ive been meaning to get one built up as a HTPC for a while so looks like now could be the time. I'll probably use it to catalog all my film, music, TV shows etc so even though it will effectively be a download box I'll be occasionally using it to browse the web or watch a bit of catch up TV as the machine will be hooked up to my TV.

Does anyone forsee any problems with this? All of my music stuff and the occasional gaming will be done on my other machine in the loft.
 
R.O.S.S.I said:
Finally think i'm going to jump on board and get one of these little microservers.

Currently clearing out the loft so that I can make a bit of a music studio in there and as such looks like my current machine will be going living up there now which means i'll be machineless in my bedroom.

Ive been meaning to get one built up as a HTPC for a while so looks like now could be the time. I'll probably use it to catalog all my film, music, TV shows etc so even though it will effectively be a download box I'll be occasionally using it to browse the web or watch a bit of catch up TV as the machine will be hooked up to my TV.

Does anyone forsee any problems with this? All of my music stuff and the occasional gaming will be done on my other machine in the loft.
Click to expand...

If it's any help my n40l is being used as a Windows 8.1 desktop and running Server 2012r2 in VM as DHCP/routing server right now, connected to a 32 samsung TV via HDMI.
also has my music and life on it.

I think you'll be fine
 
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