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

[liamcrane]

is it possible to pass a usb hard drive to a VM in esxi? Would like to pass my external hd through for backing up some files and i would also like to plug my iphone in to sync with my itunes media server if its actually even possible

 

[Lumeycom]

Sorted, woudlnt update with the hard drives in for some reason?

 

[tbz_ck]

is it possible to pass a usb hard drive to a VM in esxi? Would like to pass my external hd through for backing up some files and i would also like to plug my iphone in to sync with my itunes media server if its actually even possible

Yes. Dead easy for HDD, not sure about iPhone

 

[xdcx]

Thanks for that mate, how much ram and cpu cores do you normal allow for each VM? I just setup ESXi again for a play around and for a standard win 7 VM i just allocated 2gb of ram and 1 vcore. Would that be about right do you think? I'll leave the extra network card for now and see how things go, i was gonna add a couple more VM's but just wasn't sure if having them all use the same network port would cause issues

For Win7 and not stripping out the OS I would allocate 2GB minimum like you have, that will run fine on 1 core also and with that much RAM allocation if it's not doing anything intensive.

Won't cause any issues, 2 of the VM's I have on my 2k8 box are Linux machines running Squid and Privoxy, thus all of the traffic going out of my home goes via these VM's running on my host and it handles that perfectly. So you will not see any networking issues running multiple VM's over one onboard NIC on the microserver.

 

[uncle_rufus]

I'm curious - I like the idea of using a VM to route the traffic into/out of my network, as presumably it allows you to implement some nice security and control features... But doesn't forcing all communications to go through a single host like that really limit your speeds or cause problems once you have several devices? Or am I not understanding how it works

 

[Swarfega]

Is your internet connection faster than 1GB? If not I'm sure the Microserver can handle it

 

[uncle_rufus]

Haha that sounds like a good answer to me!!! I am meant to be getting a 200 meg connection in my new house, but I guess I was stupidly assuming:

"If each device is using 200 meg then I can only have five devices before the microserver hits its maximum throughput!!!"

I didn't consider that if the connection at the otherside can't be above 200 in the first place then there is plenty of redundancy DERP

Edit: And of course devices communicating with each other won't have to go through the Microserver so they can hit whatever speeds they like without worrying about hitting a limit

 

[xdcx]

Bingo!

Having a web/proxy server at home is a great idea, caching speeds up page load times for people in the house accessing similar content daily (which most people do) plus I can direct any traffic any way I want via Privoxy, so any ISP nonsense filters forced on a URL request can completely bypass so it's transparent access to sites that are filtered at ISP level. Plus all the header removal and requests going out from your connection can be manipulated for anonymity reasons etc.

If you have kids for example also you can easily setup content filtering and access controls etc.

 

[covenantuk]

Yes. Dead easy for HDD, not sure about iPhone

I think that USB passthrough for VM is disabled in the free version.

 

[quickshot89]

I think that USB passthrough for VM is disabled in the free version.

USB passthrough works fine in the free version of esxi

 

[uncle_rufus]

Bingo!

Having a web/proxy server at home is a great idea, caching speeds up page load times for people in the house accessing similar content daily (which most people do) plus I can direct any traffic any way I want via Privoxy, so any ISP nonsense filters forced on a URL request can completely bypass so it's transparent access to sites that are filtered at ISP level. Plus all the header removal and requests going out from your connection can be manipulated for anonymity reasons etc.

If you have kids for example also you can easily setup content filtering and access controls etc.

This is just what I was thinking of I'll be sure to post a thread with any questions I have once I get around to putting something together

 

[.temp]

i havent really touched my N54L since before christmas, been busy with work and looking at getting a new job.

im thinking of throwing out the idea of FreeNAS and putting WHS2012R2 on the supplied 250gb and running 4x2TB WD Reds, with the RAM upgraded to 8-16gb.

Would initallly be used as a file server and media storage (with raspberryPi's used as the front end with OpenElec installed). However, I do want to learn more about virtualisation.

Why do you guys run Virtal Machines? What are the benifits of it?

 

[Swarfega]

My MicroServer becomes a Linux server, Linux Desktop, Windows XP client, Windows NT4 Server, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 7 client, Windows 2008 R2 server whenever I want and if I want... all at the same time!

Virtualisation is a no brainer but it depends what you want from your server. If you just want a file server just stick to using a OS on top of the hardware.

 

[uncle_rufus]

Indeed... I've gone the simple NAS route with my N54L mostly because I didn't have the cash to shell out for enough RAM to make Virtualisation worth it. I think my longer term plan is to either get a second Microserver in the future and use it as a counterpart virtualisation box where my VMs are able to access the NAS on the other Microserver, or possibly just get some other server machine for virtualisation

 

[Swarfega]

I have two Microservers in a vCentre cluster. Shared storage is done by a FreeNAS VM. It's in no way a decent or fast solution but for playing about with vCentre and vMotion it works fine.

 

[uncle_rufus]

Interesting, I sort of figured it might just be safer/less hassle to have my main data storage area (which stores backups and media and things for all my other devices as well) being a nice simple single OS install, and then have a separate machine with all the VM stuff to mess about with. I guess maybe I just don't trust myself not to screw up a NAS VM somehow

 

[Swarfega]

Indeed. Been there done that. I shutdown my FreeNAS VM's one day. After starting them back up it refused to mount the virtual disk where my VM's where stored.
It didn't bother me as they were test but still, annoying. I now take backups of the VM's just so I can restore them rather than having to rebuild from scratch.

If your storing sensitive data in this dodgy setup then your going to have a bad time

 

[uncle_rufus]

Glad to here someone who's tried it confirming my concerns! I am keen to try VMs though, so I expect it won't be long until I pick up another server

 

[GSXRMovistar]

Quick question, I had an upgrade DIMM (8Gb) delivered today. Once installed does anything need to be changed in the bios or should it auto detect fine?

Reason I ask is I run my server without a monitor so need to know if I have to dig one out of the garage for the upgrade.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Should auto-detect.