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

Amraam · 9 Feb 2016 at 13:14

Cool, cheers guys. I'll give iperf a go tonight. Cabling is all 5e/6. Max length is about 5m so nowhere near hitting a bottleneck due to length.

Drivers are standard. I just installed the one that came with the provisioning tool. I'll see if my Z68 board has a newer driver, and if there is anything in either BIOS I can check.

crinkleshoes · 9 Feb 2016 at 13:23

OK, what switch/router are you using?

It's unlikely that there will be a bios setting inhibiting the speed.

Amraam · 9 Feb 2016 at 13:30

crinkleshoes said:
OK, what switch/router are you using?

It's unlikely that there will be a bios setting inhibiting the speed.

Sorry I was in a hurry and lazily just wrote BIOS. I meant really the BIOS on both ends, as well as the provisioning software on the server etc.

I can't remember the model but it's an HP gigabit unmanaged switch. The only thing I can remember is the 24G at the end, and it was about £150.

crinkleshoes · 9 Feb 2016 at 13:48

OK, that should work OK then - I was just checking as come cheapy switches like TP Link and other ebay specials (not HP, though) can have poor throughput.

When I had Server 2008 on one of my Gen8s, I used the latest driver from the HP website.

Since then though, they both run XPEnology and are using only the default driver - both can easily max out the 1gbit connection.

There won't be any settings in the server bios that are limiting this, other than the option to limit the connection to only 100mbit and of course with that, you would only see 11-12MB/s transfer speeds.

I doubt there is one on your PC either, but it can't hurt to check

Make sure you have the latest drivers on both ends, though

Frozennova · 9 Feb 2016 at 14:15

Mine speed issue was the Z68 board in my workstation rather than the server (Onboard Realtek)

I knew it wasn't disk related due to my drive config

Amraam · 9 Feb 2016 at 14:42

Frozennova said:
Mine speed issue was the Z68 board in my workstation rather than the server (Onboard Realtek)

I knew it wasn't disk related due to my drive config

Did you resolve it? Or would a PCI-E Gigabit NIC be worthwhile?

Frozennova · 9 Feb 2016 at 14:51

Amraam said:
Did you resolve it? Or would a PCI-E Gigabit NIC be worthwhile?

A different driver solved it but I couldn't tell you which one as I've since forgot, and I've not had the issue on Win 10.

It was fine when I tested it with my Intel NIC in there instead of the serve though

q974739 · 9 Feb 2016 at 15:58

Little_Crow said:
The microservers are pretty low power usage by themselves. I would venture that if you're using traditional hard disks they are going to be the biggest power users.

You could have course replace everything with SSD's, but it depends how much you want to spend...

Ideally I'd want to keep the drives and replace the microservers with something more efficient. My concern is that there isn't anything better...

I mean, even if they saved 50 watts, they'd need to cost less than £150 to pay back in less than 3 years. Heck, probably twice that if I factored in the solar panels!

GDL · 9 Feb 2016 at 16:40

You would be hard pressed to find something as low power tbh. I'd look at the Dell T20 and move both into one box either as VM's or just merge their roles.

I went the VM route with 4 NL40's and got the Gen8's in the sig and I've now merged that down to a single unit with some creative thinking.

Ricimer · 9 Feb 2016 at 18:42

Amraam said:
Any other ideas on what I can check to improve my data throughput? I'm copying a 10GB single file from the local HDD and/or SSD to my server via a gigabit unmanaged HP switch. If I write on the server directly I get over 100MBps no bother, and similarly on the local machine.

Is either of them a Windows Server OS and a domain controller? Signing requirements for DCs need to be changed if you don't want to impact smb performance.

nutcase · 9 Feb 2016 at 19:08

Ricimer said:
Is either of them a Windows Server OS and a domain controller? Signing requirements for DCs need to be changed if you don't want to impact smb performance.

Can you give me a hint on where to look for this as it might be something we're experiencing at work. Thanks

Ricimer · 9 Feb 2016 at 19:54

nutcase_1uk said:
Can you give me a hint on where to look for this as it might be something we're experiencing at work. Thanks

Member servers do not have the setting applied to them by default, only DCs

Edit the default domain controller policy to disable the following items. There are security implications with this, but it does help with DC file server performance (and if you built a file server specifically it wouldn't be turned on by default).

Set to disabled:

Microsoft network server: Digitally sign communications (always).
Domain member: Digitally encrypt or sign secure channel data (always)

MS say it only has a small impact, for me, even on new home server it takes smb from 70-80MB/s to a flat 110MB/s.

nutcase · 9 Feb 2016 at 21:21

Thanks I'll do some reading up on that

Amraam · 9 Feb 2016 at 21:56

Thanks, I'll check that out too. Yes, as you suspect, my 2012R2 box is a DC, DNS, DHCP and file store.

Iperf3 checks out fine. Getting a solid 950Mbps connection.

Amraam · 9 Feb 2016 at 22:10

Ok so I've applied those policies and forced a gpupdate on the DC. Copied a 22GB file at 112MBps. Tried it with about 110GB of MKV files and again, got 112MBps for about 45s before it plummeted to 65MBps. It's not back up to 102MBps after about 2 further minutes. Something isn't right... Need to try a new client Nic driver as suggested above.

Kidge · 10 Feb 2016 at 13:34

Thinking about expanding my n54l and have a couple of questions if anyone could help?

- I plan to install vmware esxi on a and then run a couple vm's on an SSD does anyone know what the latest version is that i can run on it? I think i have vSphere Hypervisor 5 downloaded?

- Where can i find the BIOS update for the n54l as i may add some more drives in to it via the esata port

- Would this dock work if i were to put it in to the OD space at the top and would i have enough spare sata port?

EDIT - Oops forgot about the link removed as was competitor

New link - http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=114

Ricimer · 10 Feb 2016 at 15:14

Amraam said:
Ok so I've applied those policies and forced a gpupdate on the DC. Copied a 22GB file at 112MBps. Tried it with about 110GB of MKV files and again, got 112MBps for about 45s before it plummeted to 65MBps. It's not back up to 102MBps after about 2 further minutes. Something isn't right... Need to try a new client Nic driver as suggested above.

You will need to reboot the server after applying, if it's the same afterwards look at the memory usage and see if it goes up while copying, and then down at the end. Windows will cache a certain amount if the disk can't keep up, then slow down again.

Furton · 16 Feb 2016 at 13:27

I'm planning to purchase a Gen 8 for use in my new home network and I want to fit it within a wall mounted cabinet.

All I need in the cabinet is the server, 1 patch panel and 1 switch (both 1u). What size and depth wall cabinet would people recommend? Would a 6u 300mm deep cabinet be too tight?

pepp77 · 16 Feb 2016 at 15:28

You are never getting a GEN 8 in 4U of space.

Little_Crow · 16 Feb 2016 at 15:52

The dimensions of a Gen 8 are 23.24 x 23 x 24.5 cm - 1U is 4.45 cm
So in theory you'll need 6U for the microserver alone, assuming a rack mount shelf consumes a minimum amount of room.

Of course, depending on the cabinet you choose you may be able to just place the Server directly on the bottom panel of the cab. I'm not sure I could recommend that as it'd certainly restrict airflow to the front of the case, and the panels on cabinets aren't generally very sturdy.