My new toy arrived yesterday. Have spent a few hours with it trying out all the different settings and just thought I'd post some initial thoughts.
- Very well built and I couldn't have put together anything this nice for the same money. Screams of quality throughout although it has some annoyances and quirks to be aware of.
- The Kingston PL318E/8G memory runs fine. I know this is fairly obvious given it's sold as HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 specific memory and not an ideal configuration to run alongside the 2GB stick but this is fine for now.
- As someone used to building my PC's from parts it took some getting used to iLO, Self Provisioning and the BIOS settings. It's certainly very slow at start-up but I appreciate this is a fully fledged server.
- Came with the latest Firmware installed already.
- UnRAID ran straight away out of the box. Within minutes I could setup the array and start using it, although the array being built obviously takes a long time. Strikes me as an almost perfect small UnRAID box.
Noise levels:
When you first start it up or choose to run using the embedded RAID 120i controller (Ubuntu doesn't include the drivers...great) the main fan runs at 6%. It's near silent and absolutely acceptable within a lounge or as an HTPC at this level. However running AHCI seems to raise the fan speed to 11-13% from what I've seen so far. This makes the main fan more audible and the fan far more noticeable. It's louder than my current Linux Server (self-build) but I do need to spend some more time monitoring this. I understand from reading all the various HP and HSS forum threads that the noise on AHCI mode is a lot better now than it was before the newer firmware. Certainly when the unit is starting up the fans spin quite fast and it does sound like a hairdryer or original Xbox 360.
Annoyances (aware of some of these before purchasing):
- Can't run Ubuntu Server with the embedded RAID controller. At least without downloading a driver that's not included in the kernel. And using the RAID controller (as mentioned) doesn't spin down drives.
- Can't boot easily from the ODD port and it takes some adapters to get power to the SATA port (molex splitter or FDD power to SATA, although the latter is about £23). You can buy a separate SATA controller card but again around £20+ pounds.
- I wish it had HDMI on it, rather than the VGA port. Although it seems allow a PCI-E card to be the primary display this is obviously an extra cost. I realised I've only got one screen in the house left that has a VGA input.
- No spare HDD screws or Torx tool included. Minor complaint but seems a bit cheap to me.
Still to do:
- Want to play with Ubuntu Server on it.
- Want to work out how best to install an SSD to run Ubuntu Server. My current thinking is to buy an 2.5" to 3.5" adapter that's about £8/9 and plug my existing SSD into one of the 4 main bays. I think the most storage I'll run is 3 x 4TB REDs in RAID5 so this seems a workable solution.
One possible stupid question. I've seen screenshots of being able to view the Microserver rebooting through a console. How is this done, or can you not do this via iLO standard and require an advanced license?
EDIT: please ignore - answered.
So a bit of work to do before I can decommission the old Synology/Linux setup. I can appreciate this is a fantastic machine for running virtual-OS's though but not really wanting to try this yet, but a possible no-brainer if you are into that. Anyway hope that helps becuase I know these are very tempting at the current price.