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

DJMK4 · 14 May 2011 at 01:37

DIABLO said:
If you are planning on installing another OS soon anyway, you can download a 3 month trial of Windows Server 2008 from Microsoft and all the drivers are on the HP site fro that that OS.

I got a copy of Server 2008 standard through work for learning, Microsoft download manager was playing up hell earlier, kept refusing to download the thing.

Managed to get it installed though

Just setting up RDP so I can do the rest remotely

Job done

gayleard · 14 May 2011 at 12:16

Matched or unmatched RAM?

Is 2x2GB matched modules noticeably better than one 4GB module?
I haven't found anything concrete about this on the web.

DJMK4 · 14 May 2011 at 13:27

Has anyone else's door fell off and not stay on? I havnt man handled it in any way

DIABLO · 14 May 2011 at 13:31

Make sure it's on properly, to hook the top part of the hinge on you have to take the top off.

gam3r · 14 May 2011 at 13:49

can anyone help me out? I got ubuntu and samba running connected to my gigabit switch. I tried to copy a file and I'm getting about 11mb p/s. Any ideas?

EDIT: just checked, my hp server is connecting at gigaE speeds, but my home PC is only at 100mbps to the giga switch. My home pc has a marvel yukon gigabit ethernet port, any ideas on how i can enable this?

DJMK4 · 14 May 2011 at 14:26

DIABLO said:
Make sure it's on properly, to hook the top part of the hinge on you have to take the top off.

Cheers for this

possibly what I am doing wrong.

cheechm · 14 May 2011 at 14:31

gam3r said:
can anyone help me out? I got ubuntu and samba running connected to my gigabit switch. I tried to copy a file and I'm getting about 11mb p/s. Any ideas?

EDIT: just checked, my hp server is connecting at gigaE speeds, but my home PC is only at 100mbps to the giga switch. My home pc has a marvel yukon gigabit ethernet port, any ideas on how i can enable this?

Make sure that auto-negotiation is set and that on the switch the port is also set to auto.

gam3r · 14 May 2011 at 18:59

cheechm said:
Make sure that auto-negotiation is set and that on the switch the port is also set to auto.

When I set it to auto-negotiation it only connects at 100mbps, the option is there for 1000mbps, if i set this then it fails to connect to the switch.

gam3r · 14 May 2011 at 20:13

Ok I played around and switched some cables around and got it working!

Loving it so far!

This is what I have done:

1) Ubuntu Server Edition with XFce + Remote Desktop Enabled
2) Sabnzbdplus server installed
3) Samba with all my media making my NAS rendunant - streaming to appletv and xbmc around the house

Any other suggestions on what I can do?!

DJMK4 · 14 May 2011 at 21:22

Im guessing it handles HD media streaming well then

good to hear, I heard some people streaming up to 4 HD films from this beauty, if it is true fair play

Didnt go down the linux route as I know I will have a mess up. Nothing stopping me using the USB port on the motherboard to boot to a linux server for testing.

Rudeboy · 15 May 2011 at 02:46

tbz_ck said:
I've installed ESXi 4.1 on mine and stacked it with 8GB RAM. ESXi is installed to an 8GB USB Stick which runs off the internal USB port towards the front of the server motherboard.

I'm running WHS v 1 virtualised and Elastix telephone server on it at the mo and it's not even breaking a sweat.

Running WHS virtualised means I can copy the datastore containing the system partition and therefore have a backup of the WHS system I can restore from.

sweet box

What sort of network transfer speeds are you getting using ESXi?

I've built the same, but have also added an HP P410 RAID controller and after installing WHS2011 on top of ESXi I only seem to be able to get about 30-40MB/s throughput, which eventually drops down to about 13MB/s on large transfers. I need to do a standard install of WHS2011 without ESXi in the mix to see if things are any better. It's definitely not disk related as I get sustained transfer rates of over 250MB/s internally. I've tried all ESXi Network Adapter types and disabled IPV6 on WHS2011 and nothing has made any difference.

tbz_ck · 15 May 2011 at 08:50

Rudeboy said:
What sort of network transfer speeds are you getting using ESXi?

I've built the same, but have also added an HP P410 RAID controller and after installing WHS2011 on top of ESXi I only seem to be able to get about 30-40MB/s throughput, which eventually drops down to about 13MB/s on large transfers. I need to do a standard install of WHS2011 without ESXi in the mix to see if things are any better. It's definitely not disk related as I get sustained transfer rates of over 250MB/s internally. I've tried all ESXi Network Adapter types and disabled IPV6 on WHS2011 and nothing has made any difference.

I can give it a shot when I get home tonight. Not done any throughput testing yet but it didn't seem noticeably slower with WHS v1 backups.

beavis · 15 May 2011 at 22:10

Rudeboy said:
What sort of network transfer speeds are you getting using ESXi?

I've built the same, but have also added an HP P410 RAID controller and after installing WHS2011 on top of ESXi I only seem to be able to get about 30-40MB/s throughput, which eventually drops down to about 13MB/s on large transfers. I need to do a standard install of WHS2011 without ESXi in the mix to see if things are any better. It's definitely not disk related as I get sustained transfer rates of over 250MB/s internally. I've tried all ESXi Network Adapter types and disabled IPV6 on WHS2011 and nothing has made any difference.

Do you have the battery+cache module?

There's a HP Customer notice that warns "Note: When the Battery Backed Write Cache is not included in the configuration, even moderate disk I/O can negatively impact server performance."
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...Id=110&prodSeriesId=3885791&prodTypeId=329290

I was considering a P212/ZM but the battery+cache module is pretty pricey

beavis · 15 May 2011 at 22:17

gam3r said:
When I set it to auto-negotiation it only connects at 100mbps, the option is there for 1000mbps, if i set this then it fails to connect to the switch.

There is a firmware update for the NIC that may be worth a go?

"This component contains utilities for the online upgrade of NC-Series Broadcom Gigabit Ethernet NIC boot, PXE, UMP and iSCSI code running under Microsoft Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions and Windows Server 2008 x64 Editions."
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...0887&swEnvOID=4064&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=3

tbz_ck · 16 May 2011 at 10:16

Ok

Doing a throughput test over a gig network to the ESXi hosted WHSv1 server I get about 35Mbyte/s (that works out roughly at 280Mbit/s)

Doing a disk throughput check on the local WHS server I get about 70 Mbyte/s on the local system drive (C drive). On the D drive which is where the backups are written to and where drive pooling takes place I get about 56Mbytes/s. I have set up an ESXi datastore of 1TB and a Vdisk in it of maximum capacity (works out at 931MB) as backup space. It is therefore using only 1 disk at the moment in it's drive pool. I'll add more space virtual disk space in due course which may affect the results.

Checked using a piece of software called "Parkdale"

badcompany · 16 May 2011 at 16:03

if I order tomorrow will I still get it in time for rebate?

DJMK4 · 16 May 2011 at 16:17

I am quite surprised at how cool thing thing runs, I have speedfan running which has recognised all the probes, the ambient temp, the core temp and the two hard drive temps, all the probes are pretty much sitting around 28oC/29oC and 30oC, I rarely see it go over 30 or 31oC, and this is in my room which is pretty warm.

For anyone who has all 4 caddy's housing drives, what sort of temps are you getting?

tbz_ck · 16 May 2011 at 17:40

badcompany said:
if I order tomorrow will I still get it in time for rebate?

Yep

Needs to be purchased and invoiced before the 31st

cellpack · 16 May 2011 at 19:10

my micro server has came today! now all i needs the harddrives, what are you guys using? im looking at the 2tb WD20EARS??

also does anyone know if the raidz works okay using freenas 8.0?

Cheers

PiKe · 16 May 2011 at 19:24

Could anyone tell me what idle power consumption is please?