Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD
- Thread starter dragonuk
- Start date
Worried of Maidstone!
I have been running my Gen 8 ProLiant microserver for as a back up device for all of my photographs for several years. I installed Windows 7 when I set it up. I have an SSD in Bay 1 and 3 "RED" NAS hard drives in the other bays (1 x 6TB, 2 x 4TB). It runs very happily. I just copy all my new photos to the HDDs which have a replicate folder structure to my main PC. I only need to copy them once as they are then backed up. I also keep a back to the photos on a standalone 6TB USB "RED" HDD stored "in a garage" in a dry location.
I am wondering what to do when win 7 stops being supported? I am not sure if I can upgrade the Gen 8 to win 10 - does gen 8 have all of the drivers etc and will LILO still work?
I don't leave the Gen 8 on all of the time - just the day I do the back up. then switch it off for a week or 2, etc.
Perhaps I should just leave win 7 "as is" and run the Gen 8 on win 7 for a minimal period "on line" to reduce any risk??
Any advice please? Thanks Mel
I have been running my Gen 8 ProLiant microserver for as a back up device for all of my photographs for several years. I installed Windows 7 when I set it up. I have an SSD in Bay 1 and 3 "RED" NAS hard drives in the other bays (1 x 6TB, 2 x 4TB). It runs very happily. I just copy all my new photos to the HDDs which have a replicate folder structure to my main PC. I only need to copy them once as they are then backed up. I also keep a back to the photos on a standalone 6TB USB "RED" HDD stored "in a garage" in a dry location.
I am wondering what to do when win 7 stops being supported? I am not sure if I can upgrade the Gen 8 to win 10 - does gen 8 have all of the drivers etc and will LILO still work?
I don't leave the Gen 8 on all of the time - just the day I do the back up. then switch it off for a week or 2, etc.
Perhaps I should just leave win 7 "as is" and run the Gen 8 on win 7 for a minimal period "on line" to reduce any risk??
Any advice please? Thanks Mel
Soldato
Just dug out my old N40L to use as a FreeNAS, managed to get it all up and running fine apart from the main fan sounds like it's on deaths door. I take it I can just pop in a standard 120mm fan in ???
Pretty sure you need to change the pin-out on the fan if it’s PWM, also need to check it’ll hit the BIOS expected minimum speeds.
dont know if this has been mentioned before, but a heads up for you guys anyways. the gen7 microserver drive bays actually use a sas back plane connector for sas drives but the motherboard cant support sas drives. if you put in a sas controller card you can plug in the sas cable that comes from the backplane into the sas card and then shove some 15k rpm drives in there for some serious mechanical disk speeds. will get a bench up if anyone is interested.
Unless you have a fetish for hot/noisy/power hungry drives and controllers in a small chassis with limited power/cooling, that may not be the best idea.
Soldato
I'd be interested to see what the numbers for 15k drives come out as. I've got 146GB ones some in a box somewhere.
Might get another Microserver and give it a try for running VMs off.
Might get another Microserver and give it a try for running VMs off.
Just use an SSD and stop living in the past, 146GB 15K drives are obnoxious, an SSD will obliterate them in every single desirable metric and cost a pittance.
Soldato
Wow, someone got out the wrong side of bed this morning.
No, just when I see someone considering doing something utterly stupid, I like to think that if I was them and about to do something like that, that someone would take the time to at least try and steer me in the right direction rather than standing back and laughing. Happy to go with the second option if you insist though
Soldato
The comment came off as arrogant and entitled. Words like obnoxious, obliterate and pittance aren't steering in the right direction "you sure that's a good idea" language. It's Inflammatory.
Lets keep it in some sort of proportion, I wouldn't be blowing £thousands on it - nothing more than an interesting experiment that'll cost the same as a round of beer.
Lets keep it in some sort of proportion, I wouldn't be blowing £thousands on it - nothing more than an interesting experiment that'll cost the same as a round of beer.
use the drive for security cameras recording. how long do you think a ssd would last seeing how drive is 99% full all the time and rewriting over and over itself.
feeling dum now arent you?
Not at all - Clearly I understand how over provisioning works and you don't. Also who would use a small 15K drive for CCTV recording.
here you go: HP rebranded drive, its actually a hitachi 15k600 series, 600gb drive:
beats my velociraptor 300gb by a lot.
spindle noise is low seek noise is audible but not too bad since case has rubber grommits through screws. drive runs at 45c which is hotter than my velociraptor. this is a 3.5inch drive.
wondering how a 15k 900gb 2.5inch drive would be mounted into a velociraptors heatsink.....
yet you dont understand how nand wear works. if a ssd is constantly written to it wont work out well for the long term.
sas drives are super cheapo these days. my 600gig one cost 12 quid delivered. 2.5inch ones will probably be quieter, cooler, faster and consume less power.
im not saying mechanical sas drives will beat ssd's thats nonsense. but each still has its benefits in this day and age.
You can get an adapter which allows you to put it in the optical drive bay.
So your major objection to me presenting establish facts is to attack the terms used and brand me arrogant, entitled and the statement inflammatory? Butt-hurt much or did you just sink your life savings into 15K mechanical drives? 15K drives were obnoxious decades ago, they were loud, hot and power hungry, once NAND became a thing at reasonable capacity, 15K spindles were dead. SSD’s do obliterate them in pretty much every conceivable desirable performance metric (other than highest power usage, most heat generated, highest noise output etc) and at the capacities being discussed they do cost a pittance, likely less than that round of drinks you mention (unless you have no friends or they all drink tap water). I really wouldn’t expect anyone to get bent out of shape when that’s pointed out using those terms, it’s not a personal attack unless you have decided to identify in life as a 15K drive, you can’t be offended on the drives behalf, you’d be more credible if you whined about me not using spoiler tags so as not to ruin your 'experiment'
If you want to use power hungry/hot/small/noisy/inefficient drives that are slower than inexpensive SSD's and do it all in a small power constrained box with a controller that will run hot and is designed for high airflow environment in the interests of proving what anyone else can see a mile off, then feel free, you can reinvent the wheel while you're at it.
as for the controller running hot i have a thread on here with pics showing a modified heatsink on the controller which keeps temps in line. avalon seems to be afraid of 15k drives. there is no need to fear them if you know how to tame the beasts. microserver can be modded very easily, bigger fan and 300w psu are easy additions, just check the homeservershow forums plenty of people modding away.
also ssd's are not cheap. point me in the direction of a 600gb ssd for 12quid second hand and im all over it.
also ssd's are not cheap. point me in the direction of a 600gb ssd for 12quid second hand and im all over it.
The problem is you've focused on initial purchase price and totally ignored the TCO. As you seem interested, I played with 7.5/10/15K drives for years on SCSI, same on SAS and even the WD Raptors, same with SAS controllers, flashing them to IT mode and dealing with improving the cooling and running large SAS/SATA pools. I ran 7 drive N36L/N40 mods from very early on and was one of the first to convert them to external SAS cages, I own four of them (N36L, N40L, 2x N54L) and am reasonably familiar with what you can do with them modification wise. Times change, since I got my hands on my first 64GB SSD 15K SAS was dead to me. Now back to your example, you're right that the initial up-front cost does favour SAS, but the ongoing cost is the opposite and that's why people do silly things like buy 'cheap' ex server hardware, I used to run a business next-door to an IT recycling place, they would generally give me whatever I wanted from the old gen stuff as it usually cost them more to separate the metal/shielding than they got out of it and no sane person would pay actual money for it as a server/workstation.
I paid £149 for a 2TB NVMe drive, it's max power draw is 4w, down to 4mW, you'd pay £48 for 4x600GB giving 2.4TB, clearly you win.... until you use your drives. My power unit cost is 13.06p/KWh, based on a quick google the estimated power usage for 4xSAS 15K drives is 65-77w (idle/load), for simplicity lets go in the middle and call it 71w
Y1: £48 (drives) + £81.22 (power) = £129.22
Y2: Y1 + £81.22 (power) = £210.44
Y3: Y2 + £81.22 (power) = £291.66
Now do you see why they are £12? It's because it's better than having to pay to recycle them.
SSD looks like this (i'll use 4w as frankly it's already a one sided argument)
Y1: 149 (drive) + £4.57 (power) = £153.57 (£24.35 more expensive)
Y2: Y1 + £4.57 (power) = £158.14 (£52.30 saving)
Y3: Y2 + £4.57 (power) = £162.71 (128.95 saving)
So, you pay £24.35 more in Y1 for an NVMe SSD, but get better massively better performance and realistically the power figure I used is probably twice what it should be for the NVMe, by the time you've got to the end of Y2 SAS is more expensive and by Y3 is just an embarrassment. If you happen to be deaf and your heating is broken then I suppose you could argue they are less awful, but that's pretty niche. Obviously if you sourced a used SATA SSD you'd likely pay less and it'd be a win for SSD in Y1.
Also as to your point about NAND wear, please educate me - I have SSD based boxes doing 15TB of writes per day for several years, what exactly is it that you think i'm not aware of? The key is to use the correct type of NAND and to make sure that the wear is spread appropriately eg i'm not writing 15TB/day to a 64GB QLC SSD, that would be silly.