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

Thank you all so much for the suggestions, I will see if I can try out all three, unRAID, Windows, and Synology DSM.

I guess my next dilemma and question is this; as my current Synology NAS has the two 2TB hard drives in it full of data I was hoping to be able to transfer this data to the two 3TB's once they have been set up in the microserver. Then once all data has been transferred I want to wipe the 2TB's and put them into the microserver as well. Then my thinking was I could expand the array in the microserver along with the 3TB's, is this possible?

Unless there is a better way of doing it? With unRAID does it allow hard drives to be added at any point? Same applies to Windows (+ stablebit) & XPEnology?
 
FerrariEnzo said:
Thank you all so much for the suggestions, I will see if I can try out all three, unRAID, Windows, and Synology DSM.

I guess my next dilemma and question is this; as my current Synology NAS has the two 2TB hard drives in it full of data I was hoping to be able to transfer this data to the two 3TB's once they have been set up in the microserver. Then once all data has been transferred I want to wipe the 2TB's and put them into the microserver as well. Then my thinking was I could expand the array in the microserver along with the 3TB's, is this possible?

Unless there is a better way of doing it? With unRAID does it allow hard drives to be added at any point? Same applies to Windows (+ stablebit) & XPEnology?
Click to expand...

The beauty of stablebit drivepool is that the data on the disk is not affected when you add drives to the pool.

So You could add the new 2 x 3TB making a 6TB pool...Then add the 2 x TB drives to server with the data on them. All you would need to do is move the data on each 2TB into the hidden poolpart folder on each 3TB disk and voila this data is accessible across the whole pool.

Then just simple add the 2 x TB drives to the pool...

Then if you run out of space in the pool ...You can remove disks and add bigger ones without rebuilding arrays etc..

It really is that simple. No fuss ,

Then once the pool is setup you can set duplication at folder level within the pool at for example x2 x 3 x 4 or whatever. That way it covers you for not only one disk fail but for multiple disk failures.

HP server dies? The disks can be read in any windows machine or USB caddy :D
 
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Stablebit is an awesome place to be on WHS, I've got Drivepool and Scanner, buy both and you get discount pricing..

I like the way it doesnt mess about with the data as well, if you pull a drive the files are still accessible as it doesnt stripe or spread the data around...
 
FerrariEnzo said:
Thank you all so much for the suggestions, I will see if I can try out all three, unRAID, Windows, and Synology DSM.

I guess my next dilemma and question is this; as my current Synology NAS has the two 2TB hard drives in it full of data I was hoping to be able to transfer this data to the two 3TB's once they have been set up in the microserver. Then once all data has been transferred I want to wipe the 2TB's and put them into the microserver as well. Then my thinking was I could expand the array in the microserver along with the 3TB's, is this possible?

Unless there is a better way of doing it? With unRAID does it allow hard drives to be added at any point? Same applies to Windows (+ stablebit) & XPEnology?
Click to expand...

UnRAID works in a pretty similar sense to what easyrider is describing as well... You can just slap in an extra drive of any size whenever you want to (though it has to be smaller than the size of the drive you are using for parity)... Just like Drivepool the data drives are not striped, so they can be read in any* other machine if you take them out should you need to

*They do use the reiserfs filesystem though which I don't think a Windows machine would be able to read if you tried to take it out and read it from Windows

The only slight inconvenience in my opinion with UnRAID (other than the 3 drive limit as you already noted) is that to enable the parity stuff to work you are required to do something called pre-clearing on any drives you want to add to the array. An easy to use script exists which you can use to pre-clear drives at any time before adding them to the array (while keeping the existing array online), but it takes a little while... I think for me it took about 24hrs to pre-clear 2x2Tb drives at the same time

One key advantage to UnRAID (and I expect XPEnology) over Windows is that you won't need a separate OS drive, just a USB pendrive in the internal slot. If you're using ESXi to run your NAS OS alongside some other VMs then this is a bit of a moot-point because you'll need a drive to keep your VMs on anyway, but just thought it was worth mentioning

But by all means give them all a try! I'd say the best thing to do would be if you can grab the 250Gb drive that comes with the Microserver and a couple of other cheapo-crap drives out of an old machine or whatever (ask around, someone you know will have one you can borrow or have I'm sure), then you can try building some arrays and messing about without having to wait around for hours while you pre-clear drives and build arrays. That will give you a chance to see how the interface to the different options feels and you can try things like pulling out a drive or putting a few test files on it and streaming them elsewhere etc. etc.

Good luck!
 
Trig said:
Stablebit is an awesome place to be on WHS, I've got Drivepool and Scanner, buy both and you get discount pricing..

I like the way it doesnt mess about with the data as well, if you pull a drive the files are still accessible as it doesnt stripe or spread the data around...
Click to expand...

Indeed...I have both drivepool and the scanner and quite frankly its the nuts:D

It will also work on windows not just WHS or server 2008/12 or R2

As I said I have drivepool running on my back up server running 8.1 pro and this pool mirrors the server pool.

Whats cool aswell is that you can have multiple pools on the same machine. So you could have one pool for you data and another pool created with USB disks as a backup pool and this can be taken offsite.

Want to read this pool in any machine? No problem

Crashplan works with the pool...The pool can be mapped etc...And its rock solid :D
 
Right, im abit confused on what to do, I currently use storage spaces on my home build server, but im ready to migrate everything over to the microserver (everything backed up to an external hdd).

I run esxi and store my VM's on an ssd. So far I have been messing around with XPenology and I have a windows 7 VM installed. The XPenology has 2x500gb with rdm for testing while the windows 7 has the 250gb drive rdm

When it comes to moving the hard drives over, I plan on removing the above drives, then re-adding my larger ones from the old server. What I need t know is if I want to add more drives to the XPenology, will I need to rebuild the full array everytime, or does it allow me to just add more drives to the pool (running in jbod config), or am i better off getting stablebit and installing that on windows 7? I'm right in thinking I can add more drives to the stablebit pool at any time?
 
Soooo, having checked some MD5s this evening, I've discovered hundreds of GBs of corrupt data. I have a feeling this is due to the OS(?) not properly detecting my HDDs (connected via eSATA) when it powers them up after being idle, then screwing up data during the subsequent transfers.

Deep joy!
 
quickshot89 said:
Right, im abit confused on what to do, I currently use storage spaces on my home build server, but im ready to migrate everything over to the microserver (everything backed up to an external hdd).

I run esxi and store my VM's on an ssd. So far I have been messing around with XPenology and I have a windows 7 VM installed. The XPenology has 2x500gb with rdm for testing while the windows 7 has the 250gb drive rdm

When it comes to moving the hard drives over, I plan on removing the above drives, then re-adding my larger ones from the old server. What I need t know is if I want to add more drives to the XPenology, will I need to rebuild the full array everytime, or does it allow me to just add more drives to the pool (running in jbod config), or am i better off getting stablebit and installing that on windows 7? I'm right in thinking I can add more drives to the stablebit pool at any time?
Click to expand...

If your using storage spaces currently why not continue to use them? You can literally remove the drives from your old home server, plug them into the microserver and the storage space will keep on working providing you have W8/8.1 or Server 2012/2012 R2 installed. The only thing you might have to do is initialize the disk and mount it :)

And of course, if you want to expand just add a new drive to the pool or replace one of the existing drives (assuming you are mirrored/parity?)
 
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I've just ordered one of these while the £50 cashback offer is still on and got a 2tb disk to go in for now.

It will be replacing my buffalo livestation nas which has been good but I want a bit more flexibility and after reading through (most) of this thread I couldn't resist :)


Question is, if I'm only using it for media sharing throughout the house is there any need to use anything 'better' than win7? (I've got a spare retail license here so would be 'free' so to speak). I like the idea of stablebit so will go down that route as I add more HD's.

I would, perhaps, like the idea of automated backups from 3 other pc's in the house so what would suggestions be for the best way to do that?

Thanks in advance

Lumey
 
Lumeycom said:
I've just ordered one of these while the £50 cashback offer is still on and got a 2tb disk to go in for now.

It will be replacing my buffalo livestation nas which has been good but I want a bit more flexibility and after reading through (most) of this thread I couldn't resist :)


Question is, if I'm only using it for media sharing throughout the house is there any need to use anything 'better' than win7? (I've got a spare retail license here so would be 'free' so to speak). I like the idea of stablebit so will go down that route as I add more HD's.

I would, perhaps, like the idea of automated backups from 3 other pc's in the house so what would suggestions be for the best way to do that?

Thanks in advance

Lumey
Click to expand...

I would buy WHS 2011 for 35 quid and install stablebit. You then can backup client machines and it offers more flexibility.
 
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£35? didn't realise it was that cheap. makes it a no brainer I guess :)

Off to do some googling to find it then!


edit - will it run with 2gb of ram? wont be taxing it much really, I see the minimum is 2gb
 
Can anyone recommend some RAM to get for this machine? At least 4GB, 8GB maybe overkill for what I plan to do with the server.
 
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