Opinions on HP ProLiant ML115 G5

OCZ Vista upgrade stuff is fine too

As long as it has an SPD that will give timings that work at 1.8v and can be read by the board it *should* be fine. Neither voltage nor timings are adjustable in the BIOS, so it is critical.

I did try some Crucial Ballistix I had spare, and it was no good. The board couldn't read the SPD, or read it wrongly, memtest reprted really strange timings, and I got memtest errors after a while. On the OCZ memtest showed the correct 5-5-5-15 timings
 
I ordered one for around £170... seemed too good to be true.

Got a call 10 minute later apologising as they no longer had stock, but would I accept the 3 year warranty version for the same price (it has a 250gig drive rather than 160, but only comes with 512mb of ram... no problem given i ordered more anyway) - This is listed at over £400 on most websites!

Snapped their hands off and it arrived on Friday. The server no longer shows on their website though - I got rather lucky!!

Got it up and running with 4 GB of ram over the weekend and ordered another 4GB last night which OcUK have just shipped :)
 
I received my HP ML115 G5 on Monday. the 2x2GB Kingston HyperX DDR2-PC26400 CL4 Non-EEC worked immediately and ive been playing with this server all week with ESXi, its fantastic, for what you get, £200 is still an epic bargain. Ive actually just ordered up another 2x2GB Kingston kit as ive already reached my VM limits due to only having 4GB lol.

My main concern when deciding on this RAM was that Kingstons own datasheet (http://www.valueram.com/datasheets/KHX6400D2LLK2_4G.pdf) stated that its SPD setting was 5-5-5-15 667MHz @ 1.95v, which was a bit annoying as its listed as 800MHz and I believe people have mentioned here that the Proliant only supplies a max of 1.8v, but thankfully it was picked up fine by the ML115 with 5-5-5-18 800MHz @ 1.8v and its been nothing but rock solid all week. Hopefully it will be a similar story when I stick the next 4GB in :D

Not everything has went well for me though, in my last order I included 2x 1TB WD Green Power HDDs, and they arrived in the most ridiculously poor packaging. Predictably, both drives were DOA, both had the click of death, absolutely gutted, I needed that disk space pronto! At least im still confident they can package a stick of RAM without it getting killed in transit!
 
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The ML115 has 6 SATA power connectors and 6 on board SATA ports.

As standard 2 of each are used (SATA HDD and SATA DVD drive).

There are 4 * 3.5" bays and 2*5.25" bays.
 
Finally got my ML115-G5 set up as my home server.

Put two extra drives in as a mirrored array. What surprises me greatly is that the box relies solely on that one rear fan for cooling. No cooling for the drives, and when mounted they are so close to each other, almost touching, they are going to run quite hot. I wonder what the lifespan of those drives will be :eek:

In what seems like a strange choice, I chose Windows 7 x64 Release Candidate as the O/S which will run until June 2010 from what I've read. After that I'm not sure, if it has to be free than I will have to go to Linux, with which I'm not too familiar, or splash out the cash for a Windows of some sort. I was impressed that Windows 7 recognised the array and had drivers, very easy install. I have one unknown device in device manager, not sure what it might be, but everything is fine ;)

I intend to keep 2 cores busy 24/7, leaving 2 cores to handle the file server role. Accessed by remote desktop when required.

That is the plan for now..
 
I got a few of these servers at work.
Bought one for a nas server and another for SBS 2008 to run on it.

Purchased 3x 1.5TB hdds to work under the NAS, but after creating the array, when attempting to install windows, it couldn't find the array to install to.

Same thing happens when I try it with 2x 1TB hdds.
Tried it installing Server 2008, Windows XP, Server 2003.

Got it to install using 2x HP 160GB drives that the server came with. Looks like the server only accepts HP drives?

Anyone else seen this?
Is this the limitation of the raid controller?
 
Mine is currently happily plodding along with the 250gb drive it came with, and a spare 160gb (I forget the brand) and a 500gb western digital which I borrowed from a housemate temporarily whilst I wait for a RAID card and more storage to arrive.

This could be due to a 2tb file system size limitation within windows? Try it with just one 1.5 Tb drive.
 
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MarkA said:
Got it to install using 2x HP 160GB drives that the server came with. Looks like the server only accepts HP drives?

Anyone else seen this?
Is this the limitation of the raid controller?
Click to expand...

Got two small Samsung drives in mirrored RAID 1, and Windows 7 had the NVidia driver already, found the array immediately
 
A little... I'd be interested to know if anyone comes up with any innovative cooling ideas.

I'm going to mount an 80mm fan at the front of the case below the HDD's to help with caqse ventilation generally, although this won't directly cool the HDDs. I've just bought some Seagate 7200.12 drives as they aren't as tall as regular 3.5" drives so should allow for slightly better airflow around them. Also being the 500gb version they're single platter so should (I hope) run a bit cooler.
 
That doesnt make sense - it's a server, its designed to run a full compliment of drives, cooling them shouldnt be any concern

I've got boxes at work with 12x15k drives in them, I'm not going to start bodging fans into them :)
 
And that is relevant how? It doesn't matter if it's a server or a small form factor PC. The components inside have the same thermal properties. This happens to be a cheap server in a tower case not a rack mounted server housed in an air conditioned room.
 
The point is the case was designed to house 4 drives so I really dont see any need for further cooling.

Its your choice though although my advice would be not to worry about it
 
Right I have one and had it for a couple of weeks - Thought great cheap machine that I can use to replace my home pc (3years old)

Didnt read this thread before buying which I guess I should have because I didnt notice it didnt have onboard sound card; nor did it have a firewire port. So that was an extra £50 or so.

I started off with 4Gb of RAM but Adobe Pr didnt like that at all so needed to upgrade to 8GB and its started to fly through my rendering clips.

So all sorted with a extra bit of expense.
 
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