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

nutcase_1uk said:
My preference is always RAID 10 unless there's a good reason otherwise.
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I agree, and I would normally use RAID 10. But the loss of another disk's worth of storage is a bit painful (vs RAID 5).
I've got 4 x 5TB disks that are un-configured at the moment, as I only just received my Gen8. They'll be connected to a P410/1GB.
 
Ricko said:
I agree, and I would normally use RAID 10. But the loss of another disk's worth of storage is a bit painful (vs RAID 5).
I've got 4 x 5TB disks that are un-configured at the moment, as I only just received my Gen8. They'll be connected to a P410/1GB.
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Not as painful as the rebuild time and the odds of a second drive failure during the process ;)
 
nutcase_1uk said:
Not as painful as the rebuild time and the odds of a second drive failure during the process ;)
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Probably true :)

It's a moot point at the moment, as the controller is only picking up one drive out of the four! Will be doing some more troubleshooting for that tonight. :confused:

As for backups, I've got a bunch of 2TB disks that I can use for that and a 2-bay external drive caddy.
 
nutcase_1uk said:
Leaving aside the reasons not to use RAID 0, I don't think the onboard controller is up to expanding arrays?
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To setup the drives on this machine on the onboard controller... you set them each up as a 1 drive raid-0 array...

So the answer to the post you replied to would be yes... as long as he is looking to have independent drives (ie, not expand like you mentioned) and/or is using the operating system to manage the disk array...
 
djkav said:
So for a raid. Its better to get all the drives at the same time, then use 3 disks +1 parity?
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It depends on which controller and software you are using.

If you are using the on-board software raid controller... then there are no expansion options... certainly no option to switch from raid-0 to raid-5 as raid-5 isn't even supported.

If you are using standard Windows/Linux raid... then you will want to buy all first and setup really. Some versions of Linux software raid do allow expansion and conversion but it's not really recommended for the most part... depends how comfortable you are with managing Linux. For Windows, stick to all disks at once... ideally though, avoid Windows raid as it's terribly unstable.

If you are using XPEnology - SHR (Synology Hybrid Raid) - that works well and it's dynamic. You can expand and contract that system really easily to add extra drives or even replace existing drives with larger drives and the interface will do just about everything for you once you've told it to add a new drive.

My recommendation is to only do what you originally suggested... one drive first and more later... if you are going to use XPEnology.

I use XPEnology on both of my Gen8s.
 
crinkleshoes said:
It depends on which controller and software you are using.

My recommendation is to only do what you originally suggested... one drive first and more later... if you are going to use XPEnology.

I use XPEnology on both of my Gen8s.
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Well. I got Server 2012 r2 installed on it. I'm using an SSD as raid 0 on the optical drive raid controller.

So the main 4 bay HDD is empty atm. I just want to know my options before I decide on what to with the main 4 bays.
 
stewski said:
In my case it's all I got :)
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What OS you running?
If you are Windows based, you might be better off running something like Drivepool by Stablebit, essentially gives you JBOD but doesnt touch the file structure, leaves it at NTFS so you might lose a drive, and as such the info on that drive, but the rest of the info on the other drives is still fine as it places complete files on a disk rather than spreading them out over the array.
 
Different topic - bought a microserver during last money-off campaign. Up and running nicely with an SSD in bay 1 running Win 7 and 3 x non-raided 4TB HDDs in bays 2, 3, and 4 (this use suits me - I also back up my photos on a stand alone 6TB HDD).

Quandary - should I buy another with money off to keep as spares + the extra 4GB of HP memory (which is £70 if bought as a "spare") - or will there be something better in a year or 2 when I might need spare parts?

Thanks for your views, Mel
 
"Different topic - bought a microserver during last money-off campaign. Up and running nicely with an SSD in bay 1 running Win 7 and 3 x non-raided 4TB HDDs in bays 2, 3, and 4 (this use suits me - I also back up my photos on a stand alone 6TB HDD).

Quandary - should I buy another with money off to keep as spares + the extra 4GB of HP memory (which is £70 if bought as a "spare") - or will there be something better in a year or 2 when I might need spare parts?

Thanks for your views, Mel"

Looks like I am a bit out of date - money off no longer relevant. Expensive now
 
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