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

Furton · 11 Nov 2016 at 16:37

Has anyone mounted this under a desk? It's currently sat on the floor but would rather have some sort of bracket affixed to the underside of the desk if possible?

JonJ678 · 12 Nov 2016 at 17:06

I'm thinking of replacing a N40 with a gen 8 since it's been going for four years or so and will probably kick the bucket at an inconvenient point.

Gen 8 seems to be readily available for £200 or so, great price. 2x8gb of ecc for this at £100 seems out of proportion though - is 16gb ecc for £50 a realistic proposition? If so, please share brand/part number, it's tough to find out which sticks will actually work with it!

Thanks

Bigbud · 14 Nov 2016 at 10:26

Thinking of picking up the HPE ProLiant Gen8 G1610T 819185-421 4GB RAM MicroServer
that's on offer at the moment, is it much different getting windows 10 onto one of these than a normal PC ?

I've no server experience at all

Thanks

Mel_P · 14 Nov 2016 at 12:34

Bigbud said:
Thinking of picking up the HPE ProLiant Gen8 G1610T 819185-421 4GB RAM MicroServer
that's on offer at the moment, is it much different getting windows 10 onto one of these than a normal PC ?

I've no server experience at all

Thanks

The system will "auto install" Win server OSs but not Win 7 (or Win 10).

I bought one a year ago and there were only Win 7 drivers available. I installed win 7 on an SSD in Bay 1 from a USB DVD, and then added 3 x WD reds in other bays (2, 3, 4) NON-raided. That's what I wanted for photo backup.

If you want to install the OS in the top bay you have to use RAID and set that drive up as a single drive raid, otherwise the system will always look for the OS in Bay 1. I tried this but the USB DVD OS would not install to bay 5.

You will need to look at various web sites - not as simple as installing an OS on an ordinary PC.

I think that I have forgotten some of the set up procedures - dread it going wrong!!!

Mel

Baggins_451 · 15 Nov 2016 at 07:38

Has anyone tried one of these?

Mel_P · 15 Nov 2016 at 10:41

Looks a good idea. No, mine was just dropped in the top space and a power adapter used.

nutcase · 15 Nov 2016 at 13:54

Baggins_451 said:
Has anyone tried one of these?

Yes. Hard part is finding a suitable front plate for it. Note that it's a thinner than normal think drive.

Baggins_451 · 15 Nov 2016 at 14:48

nutcase_1uk said:
Yes. Hard part is finding a suitable front plate for it. Note that it's a thinner than normal think drive.

Page 14 of the HP pdf here says it's 9.5mm drive, the rainforrest place has 9.5mm caddies made by Salcar so I'll let you know tomorrow if it fits

Methanoid · 15 Nov 2016 at 16:34

Are the Schoondoggy brackets still in demand? I can't find prices and have to work out how much to sell some my friend gave me when he emigrated...

valve90210 · 17 Nov 2016 at 14:10

I've just got hold of an N40l and was having a bit of a tinker with it last night. I installed Open Media Vault and got it up and running but I'm not getting the sort of network transfer speeds I was expecting. Copying a film across from my PC to the server it was maxing out at about 20 - 25Mb/s, slower than copying to a NAS I also have which gets to about 40Mb/s. Both are hooked up to gigabit router/switch with cat5e cables.

Before I upgrade my network to gigabit, the NAS was maxing out at about 11Mb/s so things are definitely faster than they were before but I feel like the N40l is more limited by a 100mbit connection rather than going slow on gigabit (if that makes sense).

It did occur to me that when I set up the server, it was hooked up to an older switch which is only 100mbit, could it be that during the setup it was detected at 100mbit and that has been added as a setting somewhere?

Or, having done a bit of reading, is it likely to be because I'm writing to an NTFS hdd?

Trig · 17 Nov 2016 at 16:37

What does the card say its connection speed is?

valve90210 · 17 Nov 2016 at 18:43

Just looked at that it's saying 1000mbps, and I've just tried copying something from the server to my pc and was getting 80Mb/s, will try formatting the hdd to ext to see if that helps speeds

More of an issue though, I now can't log in to OMV despite my user and password definitely being correct...

It was working perfectly last night...

valve90210 · 17 Nov 2016 at 19:03

Hmmm, seems there's something odd going on, just rebooted the server and now I've got two devices on the network with the same IP address... and two different MAC addresses, that's almost certainly my log in issue but i'm not sure why it's happened or what the second device is...

Ricimer · 17 Nov 2016 at 19:08

Baggins_451 said:
Has anyone tried one of these?

I am using something similar, but the official HP bracket to hold it in place cost me £12 (532475-001), and another £12 for the HP mini sata / floppy power cable (683358-001).

I'm not sure they are available now though (not that you really need them, it's just nice and neat with it).

9.5mm is the height, I have a HGST 1TB 2.5 in it, which FYI doesn't work well with the B120i temp readings.

squarepusher · 17 Nov 2016 at 23:21

I am at a bit of a loss setting up a back up scheduled for my main PC using WS2012. I have made a share file on the HP with permissions set to all read/write. When I setup a backup scheduled on the main PC and set the path to network / my shared folder I get a backup did not complete sucessfully notice.

Any thing I need to do specially to get this working?

Snapshot · 18 Nov 2016 at 14:58

Baggins_451 said:
Has anyone tried one of these?

I've just put an Akasa n.stor into mine and it's a perfect fit. There's enough friction from the metalwork in the server chassis that it doesn't really need the fixing plate but, as already mentioned, you do need to sort out the cables. I was lucky as I had a slim-to-standard SATA adapter in stock but I just have to make a short FDD-to-SATA power cable to finish the job properly.

Robi · 19 Nov 2016 at 00:37

Gen 8 or Synology NAS for a beginner using the following:

- Automatic backs up the device from PC & MacBook
- Media streaming to TV/iPhone etc
- Cloud based backups

Which do you recommend?

Baggins_451 · 19 Nov 2016 at 20:44

Well the CD caddy thing was a waste of time, it had a power connector I haven't seen before so ended up fixing my ssd with velcro.

Ah well :/

Ricimer · 20 Nov 2016 at 00:23

Baggins_451 said:
Well the CD caddy thing was a waste of time, it had a power connector I haven't seen before so ended up fixing my ssd with velcro.

Ah well :/

It's a mini sata connector, the power and sata are together. It's designed to plug into laptops that use it, you need a cable like this: http://www.lambda-tek.com/HP-683358-001~sh/B887834

You can get sata+molex cheaper, it's just neater with the floppy power connector as it's in the right place already as that's what HP use if you get one with a dvd drive.

Snapshot · 20 Nov 2016 at 08:36

I used a mini-SATA to SATA adapter plus FDD to SATA power cable. Total cost under a tenner from the rainforest. I tried making my own power cable but the highstreet component store didn't have the right 4-pin connector so the tab stick out a bit.