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

Soldato
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Yorkshire
Does the 54L with modded BIOS support RAID10 and/or RAID5? My friend has seen how I use mine for plex and storage and would like the same but essentially somewhere to dump his films and photos etc.

Was thinking use the 250GB (or a small 60GB SSD) as the boot drive with Windows sat in a 5.25" caddy where the CD/DVD drive goes, then pop 4x4TB disks in RAID10 in the hot swap bays - which I believe would offer 8TB of fast and mirrored storage?
 
Associate
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Mansfield, Notts
Does the 54L with modded BIOS support RAID10 and/or RAID5? My friend has seen how I use mine for plex and storage and would like the same but essentially somewhere to dump his films and photos etc.

Was thinking use the 250GB (or a small 60GB SSD) as the boot drive with Windows sat in a 5.25" caddy where the CD/DVD drive goes, then pop 4x4TB disks in RAID10 in the hot swap bays - which I believe would offer 8TB of fast and mirrored storage?

The N54L only has RAID-0 and RAID-1 so you would want RAID-1 and with that yes you would get 8TB with 4x4TB drives.

You could add a raid controller which would give you more options and would probably be better anyway ......we wont talk about software raid :(
 
Man of Honour
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There's nothing wrong with software raid.

In fact I'd go as far as saying you're safer with ZFS in data critical environments than you would be with hardware raid.

Not to mention a well designed ZFS array will easily faster than a hardware raid array
 

Deleted member 138126

D

Deleted member 138126

There's nothing wrong with software raid.

In fact I'd go as far as saying you're safer with ZFS in data critical environments than you would be with hardware raid.

Not to mention a well designed ZFS array will easily faster than a hardware raid array
ZFS has historically been pretty buggy, with plenty of documented cases of catastrophic data loss. At work we have been troubleshooting with Oracle (who now own Sun) a ZFS performance issue on a Solaris box (ZFS was created at Sun, so the Solaris implementation should theoretically be the gold standard) for months, and so far they are not any closer to resolution.

RAID cards are very straightforward, and incredibly mature (I've been working in the industry for a couple of decades and have never had a single case of data loss caused by a RAID card). ZFS is a lot more feature-rich, but I value reliability over features.
 

Deleted member 138126

D

Deleted member 138126

ZFS is also very fiddly (with dozens/hundreds of tweaks, and many different ways of implementing depending on requirements), and people love fiddling. Again, for production use, I value simplicity over complexity every day of the week.
 
Joined
25 Sep 2011
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3,861
Hey Guys,

Can someone recommend me the best current GFX card with HDMI? I have no idea about the AMD cards! £40 max. Will need it to play 1080p on 42" screen with audio.

I've seen the Radeon R5 230, any good?

Also got This one here.. but will that be too big? and does it come with a low profile plate?

Thanks!
 

Deleted member 651465

D

Deleted member 651465

Bro came round and installed Ubuntu onto mine along with Samba and Plex! Just need to get a couple more 3 TB's so I can set up in RAID5......

In fact does anyone know if you can go from RAID 1 to RAID5 on MDADM?
I've only got one 3TB drive atm and would rather buy the next couple in stages rather than all at once so would be handy if there is an easy way of going from RAID 1 to RAID 5 without trashing the array and losing everything on the drive.

I've put my genuine 4GB stick and 2x 3TB drives on the MM, if anyone is interested :)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=26970243#post26970243
 
Soldato
Joined
2 May 2004
Posts
19,946
Hey Guys,

Can someone recommend me the best current GFX card with HDMI? I have no idea about the AMD cards! £40 max. Will need it to play 1080p on 42" screen with audio.

I've seen the Radeon R5 230, any good?

Also got This one here.. but will that be too big? and does it come with a low profile plate?

Thanks!

I would go for a passively cooled one. I guess your server is near the TV? So you'd want it as quiet as possible really.
 
Associate
Joined
9 Oct 2007
Posts
1,532
Location
Mansfield, Notts
Hey Guys,

Can someone recommend me the best current GFX card with HDMI? I have no idea about the AMD cards! £40 max. Will need it to play 1080p on 42" screen with audio.

I've seen the Radeon R5 230, any good?

Also got This one here.. but will that be too big? and does it come with a low profile plate?

Thanks!

I use one of these HERE and it work great.
 
Soldato
Joined
23 Mar 2007
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2,553
Location
Essex
Hi guys

Looking to build an openvpn server on my Server 2012 Hyper V N50L but not sure which OS to go for. Would linux be the best bet? if so any preference to which distro? never really played with linux much if im honest.
 
Soldato
Joined
23 Mar 2007
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2,553
Location
Essex
Thanks for that mate i shall take a look today at this for sure

EDIT

Seems pretty good and not a lot of configuring compared to the standard openvpn server install. If i am reading this correctly you get 2 free client connections which would be fine as i only need 1 but anything over that would need to be paid for?

Anyone else use the Access Server? Would like to run it on port 443 just to be safe and so i now the port wont be blocked by any isp
 
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Man of Honour
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Northampton
I dont use access server I just have the OpenVPN server installed which doesn't give you any of the nice web interface etc which is fine as the VPN is only for personal use.

Yea, only two concurrent users on the access server then its a mininmum of 10 licenses at $96 per year
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
23 Mar 2007
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2,553
Location
Essex
Thanks mate, what OS have you installed your openvpn server on? I was thinking of trying ubuntu as a hyper v vm and putting it on there but its just the config that seems to be a bit of a pain to setup from what i have seen around google. The most annoying part is that every guide i have looked into does something slightly different to another
 
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