HP ProLiant MicroServer owners' thread

Just waiting for mine to arrive.

Going to install Server 2008 R2

This might be a silly question but as there are 4 plug drive bays, could I use the first with the supplied 160GB as an OS drive and add two drives to bays 2+3 in RAID 0? Saves me mounting the 160GB at the top of the server to the second sata?

What transfer speeds is everyone seeing?

Thanks :D
 
I am looking to replace my WHS setup with something like the microserver. I ordered one a few weeks back but it hasn't turned up yet (they send it to the wrong address).

WHS has worked perfectly for over 2 years now but I have had to turn off backups as I am out of space. Also a few of the drives are probably past it now.

I want to build up a server which will hold at least 10tb of storage to start (I have 2x esata storage cases to hang off the back) but I also want to get rid of my DL server. So I it will need to run Sabnzb, couch potato and sickbeard.

Can anyone suggest a decent setup? Or should I just build another WHS box?
 
oh is ecc ram that cheap? I may have to check out newegg then. I thought it was alot more.

Would anyone have a good link to ram that is a good price in either 4gig or 8gigs?
 
could i put music pics and DVDs on this and then use the ps3 on wireless to watch/listen to them in the front room if i plug it in to my router?


also if I'm at friends house could i have remote access to it for the same purpose or does it not work like that.

would free nas do this or is there any other os i should look at as i can get 1 for 120 quid with cash back.
 
Hi!

I've bought one of this great machines, and I really love it, but:

I wanted to put SRV 2008 R2 64bit on it, and all went fine, until I wanted to DCPROMO it. It hangs.
The problem is that I would have to disable write caching, but it's impossible to do so. Doesn't matter what I choose in the bios, if i try to disable the caching in computer manager - storage, it hangs.
So AD is a no go, if caching can not be disabled. (I want to disable the caching for the drive which is on the single SATA port on the mobo (this is the stock 160GiB HDD reallocated to the ODD bay).

If any of you have any ideas, how can the write caching be disabled, please let me know!

Anyway, for those who have doubts about choosing the RAM for the microserver, I can tell you, that mine is runing without a hickup using nonECC 2x4GiB Kingston RAM-s.
So: KVR1333D3N9/4G non-ecc ram works perfectly in the HP N36L!!!

cheers
 
Probably a very simple question, but without one of these units in hand to look at... for those of you who moved the included 160GB HDD up to the optical disk bay: any pictures and/or description of how you mounted & connected things?

Somewhere I'd seen a reference to putting in one of those trays that can hold four 2.5" drives in one 5.25" slot... not sure where you'd get the extra SATA connections from though?
 
memilanuk said:
Probably a very simple question, but without one of these units in hand to look at... for those of you who moved the included 160GB HDD up to the optical disk bay: any pictures and/or description of how you mounted & connected things?

Somewhere I'd seen a reference to putting in one of those trays that can hold four 2.5" drives in one 5.25" slot... not sure where you'd get the extra SATA connections from though?
Click to expand...

I like the idea of putting two 2.5" drives in the 5.25" bay, mirroring them for the OS, then using the four hot-swaps for data in Raid5.

Problems with this:

Only one SATA on the motherboard (could be overcome with add-in card)
Built-in RAID utility does not support R5 (according to my reading)
 
Not planning on paying the Windows tax, so it doesn't really matter what the hardware fake-RAID supports...
 
i've been eyeing this HP microserver for a while now...i might just get it!

a reviewer on the HP site referred to the following backplane that would allow
connecting 4 2.5" drives into the 5.25" bay:

http://www.lindy.co.uk/sas-sata-back-plane-system-for-4-x-25-hard-drives/21980.html

21980big.jpg


it says it's RAID compatible with appropriate card, so I guess it's
do-able, I wonder if all drives can share the single available SATA cable?


That would be one sweet setup.
 
Here I am just posting an observation.

For home use and simple setup the system should be just fine for file serving.

For those considering very aggressive usage by loading up multiple 2 or 3TB drives, bumping RAM to 8GB, buying add-in to attached additional 4-8 drives, whether 3.5" or 2.5"..., and preparing zillion software options, compression, encryption, deduplication, whatever,

Do note that true test of system is when the services/disks fail, or need aggressive rebuilding, default 4-drives are OK, building 8-12 drives 10-20TB system requires careful evaluation of the CPU cycle in times of emergency, or in the case of standard linux, once a week the OS will background check the software RAID (I think disk check)

When you go down to the detail performance and time needed to disk check 10 to 20TB system, you may appreciate the scale of the issue per stress on the entire system.

Cheers
 
misctwo said:
21980big.jpg


it says it's RAID compatible with appropriate card, so I guess it's
do-able, I wonder if all drives can share the single available SATA cable?
Click to expand...

Do multiplexed-over-internal-SATA enclosures exist? I've seen it done over eSATA, but not internal SATA. Most enclosures use mini-SAS, like the N36L.

That said, it's pretty clear that the enclosure you posted isn't one of them — you'll need an SATA cable per drive to your controller.
 
I agree with Tamasrepus. i had also considered building my own server box/htpc from scratch, but realized that not only would it cost much more than a box like the N36L, there would be unforseen hardware conflicts that are a huge turnoff for me. That Li Lian case doesn't look very good start to a server build.

If you are still looking to get serious about your own server, have a look at the Chenbro ES34169

4 Hot swap bays, one 2.5" HDD/SSD bay, outer bay for a dvd/bd slim drive. I would consider this one of the best looking and well rounded mini server cases out there.

I was putting a build list together with this case, but realized that using one machine as server and media center/htpc using vmware etc, would potentially be problematic.

For me the ProLiant is perfect as a NAS and appears to give me enough 'room' to geek out.
 
mephistopoa said:
on a Win 2008 server using SMB 2 it can do 115MB/sec, I've tested already.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm seeing too. I just had to enable drive write cache in bios. Running in AHCI mode.

One thing that I just can't get to work is Suspend. Does the server really not support suspend (S3)? I get:

C:\powercfg /a
The following sleep states are available on this system: Hibernate
The following sleep states are not available on this system:
Standby (S1)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
Standby (S2)
The system firmware does not support this standby state.
Standby (S3)

I'm running the latest Bios 041. Is this what others are seeing? I expected it to be able to suspend to RAM and use wake on lan.

Kaj
 
I've been running mine of about 2 months.

Been real happy with it.
8 GB of non-ECC corsair memory
4 - 2TB HD204UI (with the latest firmware)
2GB USB stick (FreeNAS)
Bought another Low Profile Broadcom NIC from e-bay.

According the the Passmark benchmarks the N36L is faster than the D525 :
AMD N36L Benchmark
Intel D525 Benchmark

With some tuning (Kernel/ZFS(RAID-Z)/Samba), I was getting with my Gig link around 650 - 700Mbps read/write. (Without Jumbo Frames). Testing via my Laptop with a Corsair F120 transferring CentOS 5.5 DVDs. According to the Web interface, the CPU will drop down to 800Mhz when I enable power saving.

Going to have to read up on EON and Nexenta. I'm leaning towards EON when it releases it Luminous port.
 
Last edited:
CRaschNet said:
I've been running mine of about 2 months.

Been real happy with it.
8 GB of non-ECC corsair memory
4 - 2TB HD204UI (with the latest firmware)
2GB USB stick (FreeNAS)
Bought another Low Profile Broadcom NIC from e-bay.

According the the Passmark benchmarks the N36L is faster than the D525 :
AMD N36L Benchmark
Intel D525 Benchmark

With some tuning (Kernel/ZFS(RAID-Z)/Samba), I was getting with my Gig link around 650 - 700Mbps read/write. (Without Jumbo Frames). Testing via my Laptop with a Corsair F120 transferring CentOS 5.5 DVDs. According to the Web interface, the CPU will drop down to 800Mhz when I enable power saving.

Going to have to read up on EON and Nexenta. I'm leaning towards EON when it releases it Luminous port.
Click to expand...

Mind sharing some of your tweaks? I'm running pretty much exactly the same set up, but my throughput is pretty crappy at the moment.
 
I just got mine today and am in the process of setting up FreeNAS 0.7.2.5739..

after successfully installing the embedded OS onto a 1 GB usb stick, I boot up the N36L and the FreeNAS bootup freezes at "trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/md0"

any ideas on how I can fix this?

I did a quick search and looks like it could be a USB issue...just hoping that someone has remedied this problem in the past...
 
I've kinda gone a different way with my server.

Specs...
Boot/OS drive is a 2.5", 250 gig, 5,200rpm.
Data/Storage = Four 2TB Samsung 5,200rpm drives set as two 2TB mirrors
4 gigs mem.

I originally had Server 2008 R2 on it and everything ran great. But the more I used the system in conjunction with my other computers I knew I needed to change. I decided that I wanted *everything* served from this machine including TV. As most of you probably know getting a tuner to work with Server 2008 is not a plug-and-play setup. After fiddling with it for a couple days with minimal luck and even trying to get it to work the way I wanted in a VM with a USB tuner I still wasn't happy. So I said screw it and threw Win7 Ultimate on it along with my Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner. Everything loaded perfectly and the system is surprisingly snappy. Now I can record all my shows and share them out to my other computers with no hassle. By the way, I never really paid any attention to the onboard video and was very surprised when Win7 found it as ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200. I still have my VPN, FTP server, Orb and a few other do-dads I need, so I feel I'm not really missing much. I wasn't really using 2008 for anything I can't do with Win7 except for setting up various streams with Windows Media Service, but to be quite honest WMS is VERY limited and if I decide to get serious with any streaming I'm going to have to look for something better.

I know putting Win7 on this box may seem like sacrilege to many of you and you're probably thinking "He should have just used an old computer for that", and I could have, I have one in the closet that would do this. But I wanted this box because it's small, quiet, cool running, attractive and very low on power.
 
misctwo said:
I just got mine today and am in the process of setting up FreeNAS 0.7.2.5739..

after successfully installing the embedded OS onto a 1 GB usb stick, I boot up the N36L and the FreeNAS bootup freezes at "trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/md0"

any ideas on how I can fix this?

I did a quick search and looks like it could be a USB issue...just hoping that someone has remedied this problem in the past...
Click to expand...
I recommend the latest stable release at this time: 0.7.2.5543
I've had issues with latest test releases when using the embedded installs.
 
Last edited:
CRaschNet said:
I recommend the latest stable release at this time: 0.7.2.5543
I've had issues with latest test releases when using the embedded installs.
Click to expand...

got it...worked perfectly...thanks man! The N36L is nice and quiet...I'm in the process of starting some more services but seems like everyhing is working as it should!

i'm almost always accessing the freeNAS with wireless devices. I don't get anywhere near the speeds you guys get!

My upload download speed varies from 3-6 MB/s. I was hoping to get more, what could possibly be the bottleneck?
 
I have a FreeNAS box (not a Microserver) connected to the router/gateway via HomePlug, and then have several laptops, etc. that connect wirelessly (802.11g). They run about the same, 3-6MB/sec. I think its more a network thing, and not a fault of the server.
 
I'm looking at getting the ProLiant MicroServer. I want to set it up in the following way:

-get an Areca ARC-1210 card (4 Port RAID card) to set up a RAID 5 storage array of 4x 2TB using the 4 disk HDD bay
-get a mounting adapter to allow me to put both a slimline SATA optical drive and the 3.5" HDD that comes with the server in the 5.25" bay
-Connect the Optical drive to the regular SATA port on the HDD
-Connect the 3.5" HDD in the 5.25" Bay to the SATA Multi-port on the MB and put the OS on this drive.

Is this feasible? What cables would I need to get to be able to do this?

-mclendo
 
Grimham said:
I've kinda gone a different way with my server.

Specs...
Boot/OS drive is a 2.5", 250 gig, 5,200rpm.
Data/Storage = Four 2TB Samsung 5,200rpm drives set as two 2TB mirrors
4 gigs mem.

I originally had Server 2008 R2 on it and everything ran great. But the more I used the system in conjunction with my other computers I knew I needed to change. I decided that I wanted *everything* served from this machine including TV. As most of you probably know getting a tuner to work with Server 2008 is not a plug-and-play setup. After fiddling with it for a couple days with minimal luck and even trying to get it to work the way I wanted in a VM with a USB tuner I still wasn't happy. So I said screw it and threw Win7 Ultimate on it along with my Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner. Everything loaded perfectly and the system is surprisingly snappy. Now I can record all my shows and share them out to my other computers with no hassle. By the way, I never really paid any attention to the onboard video and was very surprised when Win7 found it as ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200. I still have my VPN, FTP server, Orb and a few other do-dads I need, so I feel I'm not really missing much. I wasn't really using 2008 for anything I can't do with Win7 except for setting up various streams with Windows Media Service, but to be quite honest WMS is VERY limited and if I decide to get serious with any streaming I'm going to have to look for something better.

I know putting Win7 on this box may seem like sacrilege to many of you and you're probably thinking "He should have just used an old computer for that", and I could have, I have one in the closet that would do this. But I wanted this box because it's small, quiet, cool running, attractive and very low on power.
Click to expand...


Interesting setup. I had planned to build an HTPC that would do what you're doing...But...

Would it be possible to run W7Ultimate AND FreeNAS(via VMWare)? I'm not even sure if it's worth building and maintaining the FreeNAS server if W7Ultimate is on the machine.

I am planning to get at least one 4GB RAM module, a Zotac ION GPU 512MB PCIe Video Card, and the Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner.

I would expect that the machine would be on 24/7.
 
misctwo said:
Interesting setup. I had planned to build an HTPC that would do what you're doing...But...

Would it be possible to run W7Ultimate AND FreeNAS(via VMWare)? I'm not even sure if it's worth building and maintaining the FreeNAS server if W7Ultimate is on the machine.

I am planning to get at least one 4GB RAM module, a Zotac ION GPU 512MB PCIe Video Card, and the Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner.

I would expect that the machine would be on 24/7.
Click to expand...

FreeNas is neat and all, but I don't see the purpose of putting it a system that already has Win7 Ultimate and hardware RAID. Unless of course you have a special need for it. I'm sure someone can fill me in on what I may be missing and why you may want both. For now, I don't see it though.
Oh, and to answer your question, I don't see why you couldn't have both if you wanted.
 
Grimham said:
FreeNas is neat and all, but I don't see the purpose of putting it a system that already has Win7 Ultimate and hardware RAID. Unless of course you have a special need for it. I'm sure someone can fill me in on what I may be missing and why you may want both. For now, I don't see it though.
Oh, and to answer your question, I don't see why you couldn't have both if you wanted.
Click to expand...

Well I may be ignorant of what's possible and/or of other solutions that may be similar if not better than what I want, but I really like FreeNAS because it's essentially a unified place where I can manage torrents, rsync, etc in one place. Similar to WHS in that respect but for now I really like it conceptually...and so far it seems to work great.

If however the built in hardware RAID is better to go with from a performance point of view, then i'll go that route.

And I am aware that if I were to build this with W7, that I can remotely log in and manage torrents and the like on the server, but I would be left to pick and choose an app for each and every service I want. (And please don't recco WHS, I want to stay away from that for a while...because I'm learning a lot as I go...)

Frankly this is all new to me, and I'm trying to absorb and learn as much as I can as I go...

i'm a n00b!
 
I installed freenas for a test on my box and the array lasted all of 4 days before it started playing up, doing weird thigns and then just gave up the ghost. That was a test for a friends box who wanted something easy. In the end, I gave up on software raid completely and bought a p400 raid controller off ebay for 70$ and found a company that makes SFF8087(f) to SFF8484(f) converters.

Im just waiting for the test unit to arrive but if all is good, Il be able to easily have a decent raid controller in my box and not have to worry about sleeping at night, knowing that the software raid on both freebsd and linux were giving me issues on this server.

If anyone wants one of the adapters, then Ill send on the details of the place in the US that makes them to order.
 
pedigree said:
I installed freenas for a test on my box and the array lasted all of 4 days before it started playing up, doing weird thigns and then just gave up the ghost. That was a test for a friends box who wanted something easy. In the end, I gave up on software raid completely and bought a p400 raid controller off ebay for 70$ and found a company that makes SFF8087(f) to SFF8484(f) converters.

Im just waiting for the test unit to arrive but if all is good, Il be able to easily have a decent raid controller in my box and not have to worry about sleeping at night, knowing that the software raid on both freebsd and linux were giving me issues on this server.

If anyone wants one of the adapters, then Ill send on the details of the place in the US that makes them to order.
Click to expand...

i'm curious, why you didn't use the embedded RAID controller on the MB? I didn't like the fact that it won't allow RAID5 as an option but I'm running the HP RAID now and it works amazingly well, so far..
 
The HP p400 does hardware Raid5/6, has battery backup support and is extremely reliable. Linux raid was givign me issues with the misidentity of disks and Ive used HP controllers for 20 years and rate them extremely high (apart from the e200 which sucks). They also do live expansion/migration for when I put another two disk in my microserver (Ive got a mount that I made that will allow for 6 x 2tb drives in it).

raid5 battery backed up cache, all for $130, bargain. Ill soon have 10tb in my microserver, without the hassle of having to deal with slow OS dependant raid support and migration.
 
Does anybody managed to have the Microserver working with the HW RAID and OpenSuse.

All the installation process (from an USB stick) worked, but at the reboot, it says 'No operating system'

I read that the /boot partition should be on a non-raid disk. Is it possible to reduce the RAID partition to leave a small space (100MB) for the boot partition ? (I did not see any option to do that in the BIOS RAID configuration menu)

Are there any other options to make it work ?


Thanks a lot in advance
Christopher
 
cpot said:
Does anybody managed to have the HP Microserver working with the HW RAID 1 and OpenSuse.

All the installation process (from an USB stick) worked, but at the reboot, it says 'No operating system'

I read that the /boot partition should be on a non-raid disk. Is it possible to reduce the RAID partition to leave a small space (100MB) for the boot partition ? (I did not see any option to do that in the BIOS RAID configuration menu)

Are there any other options to make it work ?


Thanks a lot in advance
Christopher
Click to expand...

Well, after hours of trial and errors, I selected in the Boot Option : MBR + Generic sub-option and it worked , Opensuse 11.3 booted
 
Hi,

I realise this is a complete noob question, but is there any specific trick to removing the mini SAS cable? :eek:

I have tried pulling it out without pushing the silver button on it and with pushing the silver button, but it won't budge. It looked a lot easier on the youtube site, and I don't wish to damage the server board just yet.

Thanks in advance.
 
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