HP ProLiant MicroServer owners' thread

IOerror said:
I checked and the BR10i does not support 3TB drives with either IBM or LSI firmware from what I can gather. The official LSI customer support position is that they do not know if or when chipsets that do not support 3TB drives will be updated.
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3TB is supported by the SAS 2008 chipset, in which case I would recommend something like the LSI 9211-8i or a re-branded equivalent.

Edit: To support that comment, confirmation on the LSI site that all 6Gb/s LSI HBA's (ie. SAS2008) do support >3TB disks, while all 3Gb/s LSI HBAs will truncate >2TB disks at 2TB capacity (or in one case of the 82xx controller, 512 bytes! :eek:)
 
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MilhouseVH said:
3TB is supported by the SAS 2008 chipset, in which case I would recommend something like the LSI 9211-8i or a re-branded equivalent.

Edit: To support that comment, confirmation on the LSI site that all 6Gb/s LSI HBA's (ie. SAS2008) do support >3TB disks, while all 3Gb/s LSI HBAs will truncate >2TB disks at 2TB capacity (or in one case of the 82xx controller, 512 bytes! :eek:)
Click to expand...

I just made the same discovery actually. The lack of LSI entries on Hitatchi's list struck me as odd.
 
IOerror said:
Do you have a link regarding Nexenta performance on the N36L? If I recall correctly, I've seen other benchmarks that indicate that Nexentacore and Nexentastor do not perform quite as well as OpenSolaris and OpenIndiana. Solaris Express is out of the question for me as this is a commercial project and I fear that development may stall due to the mass exodus of former Sun engineers and the performance of ZFS on BSD appears questionable.
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No links, it was entirely subjective - I didn't particularly like the GUI which was very sluggish. Storage related performance seemed OK, but nothing particularly special. The uncertain future for OpenSolaris and it's derivatives is also another reason I'm not sure I want to commit long term to something like OopenIndiana, as this is based on OpenSolaris.

ZFS on FreeBSD - certainly FreeNAS 8 - is quite old, v15 (v13 on FreeNAS 0.7.2). I believe they have plans to update to more recent versions of ZFS as quickly as possible, though.

IOerror said:
Once the server arrives I'll see if a stack of 2.5" SSD's and a 3.5' drive can be shoehorned into the optical bay. Alternately I could fabricate a bracket to hold the SSD's somewhere outside of the optical bay given I can find the space. I've long wanted to purchase a small CNC router kit capable of cutting aluminum so this may provide me with an excuse to order one.
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The N36L is incredibly well put together, and I'm pretty confident you should be able to find room inside the case for a whole bunch of 2.5" drives with only a little bit of effort! :)

Getting power to the 2.5" drives is likely to be your biggest challenge, as you only have one spare Molex power connector for the ODD, unless you start chaining on to the HDD power connectors which are already chained (one PSU power connector feeds two disk drives).
 
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IOError said:
I checked and the BR10i does not support 3TB drives with either IBM or LSI firmware from what I can gather. The official LSI customer support position is that they do not know if or when chipsets that do not support 3TB drives will be updated.
Click to expand...

http://www-947.ibm.com/support/entry/portal/docdisplay?lndocid=MIGR-5077837
The IBM Firmware on that page lists

Enhancement:
*Support 2TB LUNS and greater

I read that as supporting 3TB drives - though I haven't tried it.

RE: OS - yeah, if it's commercial than SE11 is out unless you want to pay a support contract. OpenIndiana is probably your best bet - though if you want paid support available Nexenta is there. I've heard the same GUI issues as well - though in some instances it was attributed to a slow boot volume (i.e. moving the nexenta interface to a faster subsystem helped).

If you don't need a graphical GUI but can handle remote admin with a combination of napp-it and ssh then you can go for the lighter weight text mode version of OpenIndiana. It might have better boot performance off of a USB drive (and likely if you pick a higher performance thumbdrive things iwll be better - I just tried ones laying around the house). For a commercial type setup I think a mirror of USB drives (for boot) would give good reliability while making it easy to swap hardware, etc.

Re: the ZIL and SSD - you could pick up the two drives from newegg, evaluate them both for your typical use case, and return the one that didn't perform as desired. I think all the current distros support removable ZIL devices (I think that was added around zpool 14-15?) - so you should be able to remove them without issue.
 
pedigree said:
... 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 ....
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I too have bought a P400 only to realise the SFF8484 to SFF8087 is no good and what I need is a SFF8087(f) to SFF8484(f) like pedigree used, only problem is I can't find anywhere that sells them. Any chance Pedigree or someone else could point me in the right direction?

Thanks
 
Will the actual onboard SATA of the Microserver support 3TB drives (under FreeNAS 8)?

Worrying how some of you are reporting lower perf under FreeNAS 8. I'm not intending to replace the onboard nic or controllers so I'd hope there would be good perf from it.
 
The 200watt model is back in stock at Newegg.

Everywhere else has the 150watt version.

I finally picked one up. :)
 
1. PCIe ethernet adaptor:
I've ordered an Intel Gigabit CT (EXPI9301CT), but I'm not sure if this will come with a half-height backplate.
Can one get the Intel half-height backplate anywhere?
Or can anyone recommend a source for an ethernet adaptor that will definitely fit in the Microserver?

2. RAM:
Is there a noticeable difference between 2x2GB matched modules, and a 4GB module?

I have two MicroServers which I am using as home servers (in two places), runnning CentOS-5.6.
I'm very pleased with them; they fill the bill perfectly.
 
Vengance_01 said:
Hehe. Hope you enjoy it. What OS will you be running on it?
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Will play around with WHS 2011. But I think I will eventually end up using FreeNAS 8. Just need it for file serving and storage.....no fancy server duties or stremaing involved.

Already got 4GB ECC from the forum and an Intel NIC.

320GB F4 for OS
4x 2TB for data
 
I just picked up one of these bad boys and am planning on adding 6x 2tb WD20EARS(four of them already purchased before reading about the 4k sectors) in it for a ZFS RAIDZ2 config. According to here and here, you can modify the bios in-order to get the standalone sata port to work at full-speed. I'm trying to figure out how to keep the sixth drive inside the case and found the Noise Blocker X-Swing or Nexus DoubleTwin (not sure if there is a difference between the two products). Does anyone know if this will work? I'm worried that the drives will get too hot, or that they won't sit right in the slide tray made for a cdrom. Does anyone have a better idea how to accomplish this?

Also, I have a spare 2tb WD20EVDS laying around...is there an issue using that instead of buying another WD20EARS to keep the drives the same? Or will I notice a big performance loss?
 
The only comment I'd make about the 6x2.5" drive bay is that you're limiting yourself to the the thinnest 9.5mm (and therefore likely lowest capacity) 2.5" drives. A 4x2.5" bay such as the IcyDock can take drives up to 15mm thick. The current 1TB 2.5" drives are all 12.5mm (Toshiba) and 15mm (Seagate).

Not an issue if you're planning on using smaller capacity drives or waiting for drives with increased densities, but it is a limit on what drives you can use all the same. If I wanted 6 drives I'd probably go for an IcyDock and velcro a couple of drives into the space under the ODD bay (although nothing to stop you doing that with this 6x bay either!). :)

As for a controller... BR10i perhaps? I'm using an LSI 9211-8i but they're not cheap. :(
 
I am guessing it can, as it uses a laptop chipset and CPU. There is no on-board sound. I have not followed the Hack-In-Tosh scene for a while.
 
cbloss said:
I just picked up one of these bad boys and am planning on adding 6x 2tb WD20EARS(four of them already purchased before reading about the 4k sectors) in it for a ZFS RAIDZ2 config. According to here and here, you can modify the bios in-order to get the standalone sata port to work at full-speed. I'm trying to figure out how to keep the sixth drive inside the case and found the Noise Blocker X-Swing or Nexus DoubleTwin (not sure if there is a difference between the two products). Does anyone know if this will work? I'm worried that the drives will get too hot, or that they won't sit right in the slide tray made for a cdrom. Does anyone have a better idea how to accomplish this?

Also, I have a spare 2tb WD20EVDS laying around...is there an issue using that instead of buying another WD20EARS to keep the drives the same? Or will I notice a big performance loss?
Click to expand...
OS can run on anything really. Also depends of you are going to use a full blown OS install, or something like ZFS Guru.
 
What's the recommended low power, quiet, reliable 2TB drives to use in this machine?

I thought the Hitachi 5k3000's were the recommended ones but a quick thread search shows nothing.
 
Just got this setup this weekend. FreeNAS is installed on a USB flash drive, 5GB of ECC DDR3, and 4x3TB Seagate drives in RAIDZ1.

Amazing little machine. So far the read/write speeds are around 90MB/second...a lot higher than I thought it would be. Could be due to the extra 4GB of RAM. Boot up from the FLASH drive takes about 2 minutes. Not superb...but this should be on 24/7. .

The system is well-built for the size. The system is pretty much silent. I can't hear it, unless I'm transferring a large file and all the hard drives are all writing at the same time. FreeNAS works well enough for now. I was going to use Nexentastore, but it seems the support community is pretty bitchy when newbies ask a question or two, and forward them to some technical documentation for a simple answer. FreeNAS seemed to be more newbie-friendly, and didn't have the elitist attitude in the support forums. It may not be that way, but that's the way it seemed to me.

FREENAS has so many options, it was slightly difficult to get a share up and running at first. But, after finally figuring out that I needed to reboot the Microserver for one of the network settings to become in effect, the system is fast, stable, and seems quite reliable.

At 90MB/second read/write, this system is a perfect replacement to the crap Sans Digital RAID 4-bay enclosure I had. I hope this system lasts me 5-6 years.
 
DogChainX said:
Just got this setup this weekend. FreeNAS is installed on a USB flash drive, 5GB of ECC DDR3, and 4x3TB Seagate drives in RAIDZ1.

Amazing little machine. So far the read/write speeds are around 90MB/second...a lot higher than I thought it would be. Could be due to the extra 4GB of RAM. Boot up from the FLASH drive takes about 2 minutes. Not superb...but this should be on 24/7. .

The system is well-built for the size. The system is pretty much silent. I can't hear it, unless I'm transferring a large file and all the hard drives are all writing at the same time. FreeNAS works well enough for now. I was going to use Nexentastore, but it seems the support community is pretty bitchy when newbies ask a question or two, and forward them to some technical documentation for a simple answer. FreeNAS seemed to be more newbie-friendly, and didn't have the elitist attitude in the support forums. It may not be that way, but that's the way it seemed to me.

FREENAS has so many options, it was slightly difficult to get a share up and running at first. But, after finally figuring out that I needed to reboot the Microserver for one of the network settings to become in effect, the system is fast, stable, and seems quite reliable.

At 90MB/second read/write, this system is a perfect replacement to the crap Sans Digital RAID 4-bay enclosure I had. I hope this system lasts me 5-6 years.
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Thats great news Dog. So far mine has been perfect. Uptime of about 2 weeks now.
 
I have some of these in the lab...and while my homeserver is not one of these...
its close enough for relevance... for FreeNAS ... would raid 10 on the amd chipset... raidz or raidz2 be faster.... I have 4 x 1.5tb wd black drives.
I have it in raidz2 right now...

amd 890gx board with phenom II 905e 4gb ddr3....much beefier than a neo I know... but I was expecting better than 90mb on start of file and drifting down to 70mb/s ....
so same setup type...just beefier...lol....if raidz and raidz2 are faster than raid 10 I might switch to an amd apu board....save this quad for another purpose...
 
DogChainX said:
Just got this setup this weekend. FreeNAS is installed on a USB flash drive, 5GB of ECC DDR3, and 4x3TB Seagate drives in RAIDZ1.

Amazing little machine. So far the read/write speeds are around 90MB/second...a lot higher than I thought it would be. Could be due to the extra 4GB of RAM. Boot up from the FLASH drive takes about 2 minutes. Not superb...but this should be on 24/7. .

The system is well-built for the size. The system is pretty much silent. I can't hear it, unless I'm transferring a large file and all the hard drives are all writing at the same time. FreeNAS works well enough for now. I was going to use Nexentastore, but it seems the support community is pretty bitchy when newbies ask a question or two, and forward them to some technical documentation for a simple answer. FreeNAS seemed to be more newbie-friendly, and didn't have the elitist attitude in the support forums. It may not be that way, but that's the way it seemed to me.

FREENAS has so many options, it was slightly difficult to get a share up and running at first. But, after finally figuring out that I needed to reboot the Microserver for one of the network settings to become in effect, the system is fast, stable, and seems quite reliable.

At 90MB/second read/write, this system is a perfect replacement to the crap Sans Digital RAID 4-bay enclosure I had. I hope this system lasts me 5-6 years.
Click to expand...

Hello

Are you using the internal NIC?
Did you do any "tricky tunning" in order to get 90MB/sec?

Thanx for your time
 
DogChainX said:
Just got this setup this weekend. FreeNAS is installed on a USB flash drive, 5GB of ECC DDR3, and 4x3TB Seagate drives in RAIDZ1.

Amazing little machine. So far the read/write speeds are around 90MB/second...a lot higher than I thought it would be. Could be due to the extra 4GB of RAM. Boot up from the FLASH drive takes about 2 minutes. Not superb...but this should be on 24/7. .

The system is well-built for the size. The system is pretty much silent. I can't hear it, unless I'm transferring a large file and all the hard drives are all writing at the same time. FreeNAS works well enough for now. I was going to use Nexentastore, but it seems the support community is pretty bitchy when newbies ask a question or two, and forward them to some technical documentation for a simple answer. FreeNAS seemed to be more newbie-friendly, and didn't have the elitist attitude in the support forums. It may not be that way, but that's the way it seemed to me.

FREENAS has so many options, it was slightly difficult to get a share up and running at first. But, after finally figuring out that I needed to reboot the Microserver for one of the network settings to become in effect, the system is fast, stable, and seems quite reliable.

At 90MB/second read/write, this system is a perfect replacement to the crap Sans Digital RAID 4-bay enclosure I had. I hope this system lasts me 5-6 years.
Click to expand...

Hi DogChainX,
Those speeds are pretty damm impressive under freenas can I ask which version of freenas you used and did you do any additional tweaks to it?

Seeing a fair few mixed reports regarding the speeds so far yours are by far some of the better speeds reported.

Most users are reporting between 35MB/s to 50MB/s write
 
Has anyone worked out if the colour of the blue/red "HP" logo can be controlled by software (it lights red at boot, then almost immediately switches to blue). It would make a great "alert" beacon for when a disk needs attention, eg. flashing red! :)
 
golemcito said:
Hello

Are you using the internal NIC?
Did you do any "tricky tunning" in order to get 90MB/sec?

Thanx for your time
Click to expand...


Yes, internal nic. No tunning done.

I really need to go back and test the read/writes...because I was really shocked at the performance of FreeNAS. It was only a simple test, moving one large file over to the NAS and back. I'll see if I can get an Intel NAS Test report done today, but as the only system hooked up to the network via GbE is the HTPC, that'll be in use all day today for the family. Maybe during nap time? ;-)


UPDATE: Retested with Intel NAS Toolkit. It was 74mb read for HD playback. Writes are still around 90mb/second with Windows copy. Still a lot better than what I was expecting.
 
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Plenty for a basic home NAS with solid performance with room to run 3-4 HD streams with ease.
 
DogChainX said:
Yes, internal nic. No tunning done.

I really need to go back and test the read/writes...because I was really shocked at the performance of FreeNAS. It was only a simple test, moving one large file over to the NAS and back. I'll see if I can get an Intel NAS Test report done today, but as the only system hooked up to the network via GbE is the HTPC, that'll be in use all day today for the family. Maybe during nap time? ;-)


UPDATE: Retested with Intel NAS Toolkit. It was 74mb read for HD playback. Writes are still around 90mb/second with Windows copy. Still a lot better than what I was expecting.
Click to expand...

Gave freenas another try earlier today with a single disk WD 2TB green drive & 4GB of ram, waiting on my 5 Samsung F4's to come in later this week :/

Test Name Throughput(MB/s)
HDVideo_1Play 58.445
HDVideo_1Record 49.326
HDVideo_1Play_1Record 38.693
FileCopyToNAS 25.583
FileCopyFromNAS 61.47
DirectoryCopyToNAS 4.064
DirectoryCopyFromNAS 11.964
PhotoAlbum 7.246

I have another couple of Western Digital drives I will install them later and setup a stripe and test again and a mirror set and do it again.
The figures above and below are from HP Microserver with 4GB of ram & NC360T nic attached at a procurve 1810 24Port switch.
The client I ran the test from is a i7 920/12GB/Ocz Vertex 2 64GB system using a dual port intel pro 1000 mt server adapter.

Some numbers when I had WHS2011 installed on it ( still single drive ) and the OS on the crappy seagate disk

No Jumbo Frames
Initial copy of a 2.2Gb ISO to whs2011 @ 72MB/s(non write cache)

Jumbo frames
copy @ 2.2Gb to whs2011 with 9k jumbo frames(broadcom) 78MB/s
copy @ 2.2Gb to whs2011 with 9k jumbo frames(nc360t teamed) 87MB/s

Really need these new disks to come in so I can take a better look at it :(
 
generious said:
Gave freenas another try earlier today with a single disk WD 2TB green drive & 4GB of ram, waiting on my 5 Samsung F4's to come in later this week :/

Test Name Throughput(MB/s)
HDVideo_1Play 58.445
HDVideo_1Record 49.326
HDVideo_1Play_1Record 38.693
FileCopyToNAS 25.583
FileCopyFromNAS 61.47
DirectoryCopyToNAS 4.064
DirectoryCopyFromNAS 11.964
PhotoAlbum 7.246

I have another couple of Western Digital drives I will install them later and setup a stripe and test again and a mirror set and do it again.
The figures above and below are from HP Microserver with 4GB of ram & NC360T nic attached at a procurve 1810 24Port switch.
The client I ran the test from is a i7 920/12GB/Ocz Vertex 2 64GB system using a dual port intel pro 1000 mt server adapter.

Some numbers when I had WHS2011 installed on it ( still single drive ) and the OS on the crappy seagate disk

No Jumbo Frames
Initial copy of a 2.2Gb ISO to whs2011 @ 72MB/s(non write cache)

Jumbo frames
copy @ 2.2Gb to whs2011 with 9k jumbo frames(broadcom) 78MB/s
copy @ 2.2Gb to whs2011 with 9k jumbo frames(nc360t teamed) 87MB/s

Really need these new disks to come in so I can take a better look at it :(
Click to expand...

I am waiting for you review.
What are you going to do in order to solve "the alignement problem" under freenas?

Thanx for your time
 
cbloss said:
I just picked up one of these bad boys and am planning on adding 6x 2tb WD20EARS(four of them already purchased before reading about the 4k sectors) in it for a ZFS RAIDZ2 config. According to here and here, you can modify the bios in-order to get the standalone sata port to work at full-speed. I'm trying to figure out how to keep the sixth drive inside the case and found the Noise Blocker X-Swing or Nexus DoubleTwin (not sure if there is a difference between the two products). Does anyone know if this will work? I'm worried that the drives will get too hot, or that they won't sit right in the slide tray made for a cdrom. Does anyone have a better idea how to accomplish this?
Click to expand...

I think I've worked out how to fit 4 (yes, 4) 3.5" drives in the 5.25" space. You can also fit 1x 2.5" drive in the shelf below -- for 9 drives total.

I think cooling may be an issue, but the case would act as a heatsink for most of the drives, so it might be worth trying this out.

From my post on the limetech forum: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11585.msg117706#msg117706


Some pictures:

2hp7qqs.jpg


This is the "bottom layer" -- the drive on the left (back of the case) has the connectors exposed at the rear, and the other drive has the connectors positioned down the groove in the case where the 5.25" drive would normally slide.




70x8g2.jpg

Here you can see the SATA and power connectors down that groove.




jhe9p0.jpg


The "top layer" of drives. I believe there's plenty of room for cables, although i haven't tried hooking them all up yet. There's more headroom at the top of the case than appears at first glance.




33tjwus.jpg


Another angle.




24qo50p.jpg


It's not so pretty with the top back on. The drive is not quite flush with the front of the case, but it's only by 1mm or so. I may trim the SATA plug slightly with a knife to get it further in the groove so the drive is flush and hide the hole with a blanking plate.
 
I think the most I would want in there is 1-2. Anything more and the vibrations would be killer.
 
I have one of these on order and am looking to set it up as a basic NAS device using FreeNAS to manage to x4 2TB disks. I think I'm going to go with FreeNAS 7 with the disks formatted as UFS. Version 8 and ZFS sound like they'll need more memory installed to get decent performance, so don't think I'll bother as my needs are simple.

Any views on setting up FreeNAS to give best performance on this little box as standard (ie, 1GB memory)?

Thanks
 
You really want to use Version 8 and ZFS. It seems people are getting much better performance with 8 vs the old 7 version. Ram is cheap. Just get a 4GB kit for like 35$
 
Grimham said:
I've been looking at this rig and can't decide if it will fill my needs. First thing - is this box quiet? And when I say quiet, I mean SILENT. Obviously you'll hear some HDD activity, but other than that I don't want to hear a thing when the drives spin down. Has anyone put WHS on one of these and can you tell me how it performs? Basically I want to use this box for streaming and backups, but like I said, I need to know more.
Click to expand...


I have WHS 2011 installed.

The box is much more responsive than my old Intel D510 Atom.

I have an Intel Gbit NIC installed. That should help somewhat.

I share files with 2 WDTV Live players. I am NOT streaming....but the WDTV Live's are pulling 1080p mkv's without a hiccup.

Backup shouldn't be a problem. The OS just feels so much smoother and refined than WHS v1.

It's quiet enough, if you have it under a desk, it will be silent. The fan is quiet. You can go to SPCR for instructions on changing the fan to a quieter fan. Like SPCR reports, the fan is actually spinning faster than it needs to. My drives aren't even going above 40C.

I have a 320Gb F4 for the OS drive, suspended on the OD slot. I can't hear it.

I have 2x F4s in the drive rack below. Installing 2x 2T F3 later this week.

I'm really happy with this box.
 
Can you get the hardware AMD raid to work under freenas or is it only software raid that works?

/M
 
There's a new BIOS out. It sstill 041, but Revision A. Not much use flashing unless you are using SBS 2011.

HP ProLiant MicroServer system ROM O41 (04/02/2011)
_____________________________________________
Added support for Microsoft Small Business Server 2011.

Problems Fixed -
HP ProLiant MicroServer system ROM O41 (04/02/2011)
_____________________________________________
Resolved an issue where there was no error logged to the System Event Log (SEL) after entering the incorrect password 3 times.
 
From the Manual:

I/O subsystem • One PCI-e x16 slot, which support one PCI-e x16 card (25W Max)
• One PCI-e x1 slot, which support one PCI-e x1 card
• One PCI-e X4 slot, which support one IPMI card


Does anyone know if the PCI-e X4 slot can be used for a PCI-e X4 Sata card or is it exclusively hardware setup to be used only with the IPMI card?
My question is PCI-e X4 universal to any X4 card or just "that" card. :confused:
 
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