HP ProLiant MicroServer

Jonathan · 08-02-2012 5:30pm

vibe666 wrote: »

is it possible that the server is not in a fully powered off state and that it's just in one of the available suspended modes and that WOL isn't supported by the OS in that state?

it might be worth checking your BIOS to see which power off states are available to test, and to power down the server totally and re-try sending a WOL packet to it and see what happens.

as long as the server is totally powered down rather than suspended and WOL is supported by the NIC (regardless of the OS) it *should* (he says, instantly jinxing himself) still power up as the result should be no different than physically buttoning it.

hopefully.

AFAIK WOL requires the NIC to be set to a certain mode before shutdown. FreeBSD probably isn't doing this.

vibe666 · 08-02-2012 5:45pm

Jonathan wrote: »

AFAIK WOL requires the NIC to be set to a certain mode before shutdown. FreeBSD probably isn't doing this.

see, what did i tell you? jinxed! :pac:

spongerobinson · 08-02-2012 6:40pm

yep jonathan is right...the FreeBSD driver doesn't set it into the right mode on shutdown. Plenty of posts about it in the FreeNAS forums...only certain network cards are supported, so if WOL is really a necessity it would be possible to buy a different network card and fit it to the server. Personally I just turn the machine on manually when i need it and shut it down through the web interface.

randombar · 09-02-2012 10:40am

Hi Lads, what's the email address I can email the claim to??

J-blk · 09-02-2012 12:20pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

Hi Lads, what's the email address I can email the claim to??

It's this one:

promotions@out-bound(.)co(.)uk

Got my cheque on Friday, they got my form on 16/12 (via snail mail) so just about 45 days all in... though in fairness, the holiday break was in there so they might be processing them faster now. Delighted with the promotion though, I thought even at €275 it was fantastic value!

randombar · 09-02-2012 12:22pm

Nice one, just got it last night, trying to make my windows server version USB bootable. 1st attempt wasn't great through the mac. BOO!

J-blk · 09-02-2012 12:28pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

Nice one, just got it last night, trying to make my windows server version USB bootable. 1st attempt wasn't great through the mac. BOO!

Sounds like fun

. I just had a DVD drive lying around so installed that and installed WHS 2011 the old school way, unfortunately MS hasn't made USB installation of their OSes as easy as Apple...

BTW, if you have mostly Mac clients (as in my case - the WHS is pretty much the only Windows machine I have) and Lion, there are some conflicts with the built-in Launchpad and the WHS Launchpad cause of the identical name that you should be aware of:

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whs2011/thread/5c609dda-ba3d-42fe-9b7c-460c9a392434

The workaround that is used at the moment is detailed in the 3rd post on that thread. TBH, I can live without the WHS launchpad on my Macs, I find it easier to just RD into it.

randombar · 09-02-2012 12:41pm

How random is that about launch pad, do you need that for WHS? Could you not just remote desktop in? I've been away from windaz for so long I don't know much about em.

Reckon I'll give the usb another go on a windows machine. There's a few usb generators that might do the trick.

J-blk · 09-02-2012 12:45pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

How random is that about launch pad, do you need that for WHS?

It's annoying as hell and neither Apple or MS give a crap TBH. Like I said, I just left off the WHS Launchpad, it's pretty useless IMO. Just remote desktop in for anything you need. And on that note, you may want to try out the excellent CoRD, instead of MS Remote Desktop for Mac, it's far better:

http://cord.sourceforge.net/

Best of luck with the install, the Microserver + WHS 2011 makes a sweet combo. Install Plex Media Server for Windows on it and you're golden

.

spongerobinson · 09-02-2012 1:25pm

another thing to bare in mind if your mainly using macs, is that Samba connections can be very slow on Mac if you've got alot of files/directories, so might be worth looking into AFP, or NFS.

Not sure what the situation is with these on Windows Server, but be worth a Google anyways!

slowlydownwards · 09-02-2012 1:25pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

...Reckon I'll give the usb another go on a windows machine. There's a few usb generators that might do the trick.

After trying out lots of guides and how-tos this seems to be the best and easiest out there IMHO

http://wintoflash.com/home/en/

ixtlan · 09-02-2012 2:18pm

Just FYI, I have Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit on this. WOL is working, though I had to try a few different things to set it up, and now I can't really remember what did it. It's certainly the case that the net card has to be shut down properly in a particular state.

As far as I can see there is no bios wakeup, which is unfortunate, and no S3 sleep, just hibernate. I have the server doing backups of some windows PCs with "backuppc" and that is working very nicely but ideally I'd have it wake up every few hours to check if a backup was needed and then hibernate back.

I tried "rigel" as a media streamer to a remote xbmc session on a mac mini and that worked fine too, though it's not something I'll use much. Mostly I got this as a toy... useful for backups... and maybe if I get some more memory, I might put some VMs on it.

Ix.

machalla · 09-02-2012 3:42pm

J-blk wrote: »

Best of luck with the install, the Microserver + WHS 2011 makes a sweet combo. Install Plex Media Server for Windows on it and you're golden .

I'm curious, how does this plex perform on this setup for transcoding files for remote clients if you have ever tried that on it.

J-blk · 09-02-2012 4:37pm

machalla wrote: »

I'm curious, how does this plex perform on this setup for transcoding files for remote clients if you have ever tried that on it.

It works very well - for the most part. The Microserver has replaced an older WHS v1 HP Mediasmart I had and that was simply not powerful enough for what I wanted (the majority of my library is 720p MKV files and some 1080p ones too). The Microserver with Plex Media Server has no issues at all though - I stream to a Mac Mini with the Plex client and a MacBook. Flawless every time.

I also stream to the iOS clients on an iPhone and iPad and there I'm having issues with a small number of files, which seem to get transcoded on the server and the CPU usage goes to 100%. I'm not sure why this is yet since the Mac clients have no issue but obviously the bottleneck is happening server side. It could be the fact that I have the stock 2GB of memory and Plex Media Server recommended is 4GB.

But even so, this happens with a small number of files, e.g one out of every 6-7 things I watch. I'd definitely recommend the Microserver with Plex, it wipes the floor with my old server which cost over 3 times as much!

machalla · 09-02-2012 6:14pm

Thats interesting. I think I overdid it with the microserver and plex when I last tried it, tryin to run a couple of vms and plex server. I think I might reestablish it as a pure ubuntu box running plex and see how it fares now. If its able to run happily under WHS with 2Gb of Ram, I imagine my own set up should work reasonably well. Failing that WHS might be an option but I don't really want to spend more on it than I have to at this point.

Thanks for the followup on this.

J-blk · 09-02-2012 6:35pm

machalla wrote: »

Thats interesting. I think I overdid it with the microserver and plex when I last tried it, tryin to run a couple of vms and plex server.

I don't think I'd risk the VMs TBH, especially with only the stock 2GB RAM. Even with the files that don't give any issues on the iOS clients, the CPU usage can start hovering around 50-60% at certain points. I keep nothing else running when streaming from Plex, to ensure the best results.

A friend of mine got the Microserver as well but upgraded to 4GB so I'm going to try streaming some of the problematic files from his server to the iPad and see if it fares any better. I'll post back if it does.

mcgovern · 09-02-2012 8:37pm

Just a note for anyone else thinking of putting FreeNAS on it, FreeNAS 8 doesn't have bittorrent, DLNA etc that FreeNAS 7 does.

randombar · 09-02-2012 11:24pm

So got W2008 installed ok after, I'll post the link tomorrow but was very straight forward after. Had to fetch the network driver all right but was easy to find. Should have my HDs ready tomorrow to install the raid.

Quick one, can't seem to find any info on a hardware Raid 5, is the possible or does have to be sw?

Jonathan · 09-02-2012 11:26pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

Quick one, can't seem to find any info on a hardware Raid 5, is the possible or does have to be sw?

Software only.

randombar · 10-02-2012 1:09pm

Boo. Any recommendations on the best SW to use so, sorry for the questions I can't run the disk supplied as I don't have a dvd drive on a windaz machine

Or am I better off going the raid card route? Those Raid 5 cards look feicin pricey!

Raiser · 12-02-2012 1:29pm

Hey Folks,

Can someone please let me know what model (or models) are currently available with the rebate etc and how it compares to original deal? What's the best one to go for as of now on price and spec and from where?

Thanks!

dahamsta · 12-02-2012 1:37pm

There's only one model, the N40L, which replaces the N36L from the previous offer. Some retailers offer them more memory or bigger disks, but the rebate is the same.

km991148 · 13-02-2012 9:13pm

Hey, I am looking at one of these, but from a UK seller (as part of a package). Does anyone know if I can still claim the cashback on it?

The UK claim seems to indicate otherwise, but I am sure its been asked in this thread somewhere... but I can find it (maybe just too tired!)

vibe666 · 14-02-2012 9:54am

mcgovern wrote: »

Just a note for anyone else thinking of putting FreeNAS on it, FreeNAS 8 doesn't have bittorrent, DLNA etc that FreeNAS 7 does.

most of the stuff that is available for freenas 7 is also available in freenas 8, just not out of the box. there are guides on the freenas forums on how to get most of the useful stuff that is missing working again.

mcgovern · 14-02-2012 12:44pm

vibe666 wrote: »

most of the stuff that is available for freenas 7 is also available in freenas 8, just not out of the box. there are guides on the freenas forums on how to get most of the useful stuff that is missing working again.

I had a quick look at it and the guides I seen at least looked pretty complicated, enough to put me off anyway!

vibe666 · 14-02-2012 12:46pm

mcgovern wrote: »

I had a quick look at it and the guides I seen at least looked pretty complicated, enough to put me off anyway!

there's a noobs guide here, it's a pretty straightforward case of just following the instructions.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freenas/viewtopic.php?f=104&t=10959

km991148 · 15-02-2012 2:51pm

km991148 wrote: »

Hey, I am looking at one of these, but from a UK seller (as part of a package). Does anyone know if I can still claim the cashback on it?

The UK claim seems to indicate otherwise, but I am sure its been asked in this thread somewhere... but I can find it (maybe just too tired!)

Doh - on the first few pages.. was knackered when I wrote that!

km991148 · 15-02-2012 7:01pm

oreillykm wrote: »

It was email, but it is a person's email and i don't think he would thank me for putting it on a public site. I'll PM it to you.

Hey.. so the form posted in this thread is for last years offer.. does anyone have a HP Ireland contact to obtain an Irish for for (when bought via a UK supplier)?

I found a great deal in the UK, which is the same as the post cashback price in ireland.. but calling HP results in being passed around many suppliers!

thesteve · 20-02-2012 2:08pm

Note freenas 8 also doesn't support WOL on the Microserver

That alone is making me gonna try WHS

settings · 20-02-2012 5:34pm

km991148 wrote: »

Hey.. so the form posted in this thread is for last years offer.. does anyone have a HP Ireland contact to obtain an Irish for for (when bought via a UK supplier)?

I found a great deal in the UK, which is the same as the post cashback price in ireland.. but calling HP results in being passed around many suppliers!

Im pretty sure it doesnt matter if you bought it in the uk or here you can get 120e or £100 - whatever you like.
You need to send it off to the UK i think so the forms should be identical.
I bought mine here and my mate got his in the UK, both got the cash back.
Can you link the deal you got?

They are amazing machines.

HP ProLiant MicroServer

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