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

encephalopathy · 16 Dec 2022 at 16:53

slightly stupid question - a drive has died in my microserver - in the bios startup it is ahci 4, and when i look in windows disk manager it is disk 4. I think i have 6 drives in the microserver, does disk 4 in bios/windows relate to bay4 of the HP? don't want to pull the wrong drive!

Armageus · 16 Dec 2022 at 16:54

encephalopathy said:
slightly stupid question - a drive has died in my microserver - in the bios startup it is ahci 4, and when i look in windows disk manager it is disk 4. I think i have 6 drives in the microserver, does disk 4 in bios/windows relate to bay4 of the HP? don't want to pull the wrong drive!

Check the serial numbers of the drives you can still see in windows

encephalopathy · 16 Dec 2022 at 17:58

cheers. will do!

Mel_P · 16 Dec 2022 at 21:17

encephalopathy said:
slightly stupid question - a drive has died in my microserver - in the bios startup it is ahci 4, and when i look in windows disk manager it is disk 4. I think i have 6 drives in the microserver, does disk 4 in bios/windows relate to bay4 of the HP? don't want to pull the wrong drive!

Says "Microserver 4 bay" ??? so surely the drives are 1 to 4 (+ 1 more in "CD" space?). Where is 6th ?
Mel

Armageus · 16 Dec 2022 at 21:52

Mel_P said:
Says "Microserver 4 bay" ??? so surely the drives are 1 to 4 (+ 1 more in "CD" space?). Where is 6th ?
Mel

There is an esata port you can repurpose, and you can wedge a 2.5" drive underneath the optical drive bay

Mel_P · 17 Dec 2022 at 12:33

Armageus said:
There is an esata port you can repurpose, and you can wedge a 2.5" drive underneath the optical drive bay

I knew about the optical drive bay connection. Didn't know about the e-sata. Mel

smallstool · 11 Jan 2023 at 10:41

Does anybody still run the original N36L?

niggyg · 11 Jan 2023 at 12:47

smallstool said:
Does anybody still run the original N36L?

N40L here.

Showing it's age maybe but still going strong. Running a modified bios with an extra SATA port. OS on an SSD. Used for Plex and has a BGT3620 TV card in (which I can't get working in Plex).

smallstool · 11 Jan 2023 at 13:20

I have a couple of N36L's and a N40L sitting in a corner of my hobby room - should get them going again!

niggyg · 11 Jan 2023 at 14:45

What is the upgrade path from my N40L? Thinking of power consumption too.

Steveocee · 11 Jan 2023 at 18:35

niggyg said:
What is the upgrade path from my N40L? Thinking of power consumption too.

N54L

I’ll have 2 in MM in days.

niggyg · 11 Jan 2023 at 18:41

Steveocee said:
N54L

I’ll have 2 in MM in days.

I was meaning a more substantial upgrade really. Thanks though.

DeathStorm · 12 Jan 2023 at 10:57

niggyg said:
What is the upgrade path from my N40L? Thinking of power consumption too.

N40L here too, it appears I haven't powered it on in 4 years though lol...

Funnily enough first boot went fine but the second time the red LED remained on, turned out the rear fan stopped reporting which is weird because checking the event log it's been complaining about that since 2014 without preventing the system from booting. As it's not really worth anything and still chugging along I plan to just use it for weekly backups.

Anyway to answer your question, the latest Microserver is the Gen10 Plus. Not sure how liberal HP is with the cash rebates these days but there's lots of reasonably priced used options especially if you also consider Gen8 or older (I think Gen8 is also the latest version with ILO included at no additional cost).

smallstool · 12 Jan 2023 at 11:33

DeathStorm said:
N40L here too, it appears I haven't powered it on in 4 years though lol...

Funnily enough first boot went fine but the second time the red LED remained on, turned out the rear fan stopped reporting which is weird because checking the event log it's been complaining about that since 2014 without preventing the system from booting. As it's not really worth anything and still chugging along I plan to just use it for weekly backups.

Anyway to answer your question, the latest Microserver is the Gen10 Plus. Not sure how liberal HP is with the cash rebates these days but there's lots of reasonably priced used options especially if you also consider Gen8 or older (I think Gen8 is also the latest version with ILO included at no additional cost).

Going to fire up my old microservers and see what's on them

Gundam God · 12 Jan 2023 at 12:08

smallstool said:
Does anybody still run the original N36L?

Still going strong here.
Check out the power on hours for my samsung 2TB drives (4 of them), 12 years!

imgur.com

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smallstool · 12 Jan 2023 at 17:01

Fantastic!

Mel_P · 12 Jan 2023 at 19:28

Armageus said:
Check the serial numbers of the drives you can still see in windows

the drives in the front bays are 1 to 4 in my microserver

Cyber-Mav · 1 Feb 2023 at 15:35

Fired up the microserver to do some testing today. 1 ssd and 2 mechanical drives in it. Windows server 2022 doesnt support drive spin down but looks like server 2016 does so will be using windows server 2016 from now on. I still got server 2008 r2 on one machine so will update that too. Id still stick with server 2008 for my use case but need support for 4kn drives so got to upgrade to 2016 and live with that forever

steinooo · 6 Feb 2023 at 09:23

niggyg said:
I was meaning a more substantial upgrade really. Thanks though.

My N40L has been running 24x7 since 2009 I think, but am also curious as to this question. E.g. I have a fancy nvme in the microserver crippled by sata rate

ultim · 12 Feb 2023 at 19:18

Anyone running the latest ilo 4 firmware 2.81 on gen8? I'm currently running 2.7 and itching to upgrade but being cautious