HP ProLiant MicroServer

oreillykm · 11-03-2011 4:03pm #1

Just took delivery of one of these (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253305) from eBuyer. The ebuyer cost is 240 pounds - but you get a cheque back for 100 pounds from the supplier directly. So, 140 pounds. 4 bays for drives and no OS - ideal as a NAS maybe? Am gonna throw linux on it.

TheDoc · 11-03-2011 5:07pm

Thats an interesting find alright, must look into it

Saadyst · 11-03-2011 5:41pm

Ebuyer don't deliver to Ireland anymore

machalla · 11-03-2011 5:48pm

Saadyst wrote: »

Ebuyer don't deliver to Ireland anymore

When did that happen? They still list Ireland for delivery.

http://www.ebuyer.com/help/delivery

More info here, confirmed by ebuyer staff. Due to changes in UK(?) Vat laws. Apparently this may affect more than just Ebuyer.
http://forums.ebuyer.com/showthread.php?71163-Ebuyer-stopped-delivery-to-Ireland-why

parsi · 11-03-2011 6:30pm

It's due to a longstanding EU-wide VAT rule - once you reach a threshold in terms of selling to a particular country you have to charge that country's VAT rate on sales to that country rather than your own rate.

That's why Amazon prices change slightly once you actually start to checkout - it applies the Irish VAT rates. Plenty of German sites handle this without issue as well.

machalla · 11-03-2011 6:37pm

Thanks for explanation Parsi. At least it doesn't mean Amazon will cease shipping here completely. Or dabs.ie.

parsi · 11-03-2011 6:38pm

If its worth the retailers while they'll continue to ship. Money talks.

galait · 11-03-2011 6:53pm

the cashback is only applies to the UK,

See point 2 here

http://h41112.www4.hp.com/promo/proliantmicroserver/pdf/PA0023-50off_Microserver_Offer_MAR_2011.pdf

for this reason i got 2 delivered to my bro in london free

oreillykm · 12-03-2011 8:34am

I'm based in Dublin, I used Google Checkout to pay and it was delivered. I got in touch with HP before buying it and they mailed me an Irish claim form, worth €117 or £100 cash back. It's valid 'til end of month - so mail HP, get the form and then buy. If you can't get eBuyer to deliver then check out other etailers to see if they will offer the cash back - it isn't exclusive to them! Hope this helps?

paddydriver · 12-03-2011 11:33am

Says it only does RAID1 or 0 - if it takes 4 drives I would expect it to do RAID5. 200 watt power supply but some reviews talk about it having a low power usage idle.

By the time drives are installed etc then I would recommend just getting a dedicated NAS box - unless there are more things you want to use it for.

Supports virtualization too but likely a software RAID controller so virtual OS likely may not see the RAID config's and would pick them up as a JBOD.

Overall though it looks like a nice little box and well worth a punt if you can get the cash back.

machalla · 12-03-2011 1:11pm

€303 on dabs

Dabs.ie link

No mention of the cashback though but if its through HP directly then it should probably still apply.

Elara are cheaper again if the cashback applies from HP Ireland. €284 less €117 = €167. So tempted...

http://elara.ie/products/detailsfullop.asp?productcode=MME9433D4Y#spec

dingding · 12-03-2011 7:50pm

http://www.hpshop.ie/products.asp?partno=633724-421

On HP site. €283.30

paddyp · 13-03-2011 2:03am

oreillykm wrote: »

I'm based in Dublin, I used Google Checkout to pay and it was delivered. I got in touch with HP before buying it and they mailed me an Irish claim form, worth €117 or £100 cash back. It's valid 'til end of month - so mail HP, get the form and then buy. If you can't get eBuyer to deliver then check out other etailers to see if they will offer the cash back - it isn't exclusive to them! Hope this helps?

What address did you email? Did they send is snail mail or email?

Cheers,

Paddy

BostonB · 13-03-2011 1:56pm

Its neat machine but I can't help thinking a small regular tower would be a better deal.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=&sortby=nameAsc&categoryid=1078

Their Primo line maybe?

oreillykm · 13-03-2011 5:31pm

paddyp wrote: »

What address did you email? Did they send is snail mail or email?

Cheers,

Paddy

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.

paddyp · 13-03-2011 10:15pm

BostonB wrote: »

Its neat machine but I can't help thinking a small regular tower would be a better deal.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=&sortby=nameAsc&categoryid=1078

Their Primo line maybe?

It would pay for itself over a year or two through electricity compared to running one of those all day.

I currently run a thinclient with usb drive for my homeserver it draws less than 20w peak and as little as 6w when the drive spins down. Most of that is inefficiency in the power adapter. It paid for itself in three months.

Kinetic^ · 13-03-2011 10:53pm

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.

Don't suppose you'd put the form up on rapidshare or something similar?

Cheers.

vibe666 · 14-03-2011 12:49am

Kinetic^ wrote: »

Don't suppose you'd put the form up on rapidshare or something similar?

or even use the "Attach Files" option to add it to his original post (or a new post if that doesn't work).

Valid file extensions: bmp doc docx gif jpe jpeg jpg kmz pdf png psd sc2replay txt xls xlsx zip

i'd have been interested in the HP Proliant ML110 at a good price as they do turn up occasionally, but that would be a little bit underpowered for my needs.

might make a good mini nas tho, or firewall box.

oreillykm · 14-03-2011 11:07am

Rapidshare didn't work for me, so it's attached instead.

gordonl · 14-03-2011 6:10pm

I'd be interested in getting one of these, but i'm a little concerned about the PSU.
Does anyone know if it's a FlexATX or some kind of proprietary HP thing?

paddyp · 15-03-2011 4:41pm

gordonl wrote: »

know if it's a FlexATX or some kind of proprietary HP thing?

http://www.google.ie/search?&q=microserver+flexatx+proliant

Jonathan · 20-03-2011 7:08pm

Has anyone bought this? Any problems buying from a UK reseller, but claiming the Irish discount?

howamidifferent · 20-03-2011 7:44pm

I bought one of these from elara.ie at the start of february.
I added a HP P410 8 port Smart Array raid card and put a 4 x 2.5 inch drive tray where the space for a cd/dvd was. I now have 4 x 2TB in raid 5 setup in the main 4 bays, and 4 x 500GB in raid 5 setup in the optical drive bay space, with another 500GB sitting on top of this tray for the OS. So I have 2 raid 5 arrays of 5.45TB and 1.32TB formatted capacity. I use it to store my media. It replaces a cheap 4TB NAS box I had that had no room for expansion. Great little box.

I also replaced the 1GB of RAM with 2 x 4GB dimms for 8GB RAM. I'm running Win2008 R2 on it.

BostonB · 20-03-2011 7:59pm

Any photos of that especially the 4 x 2.5 inch drive tray?

howamidifferent · 20-03-2011 8:47pm

This is the 4 bay 5.25 inch unit.
SAS/SATA Back Plane System for 4 x 2.5" Hard Drives

KINGSTON KVR1333D3E9S/4G 55euro each. So 110 Total.

EDIT: The link to the RAM above was one I came across but i did not buy that. I bought elsewhere but cant find the link now.
The 4 bay unit I have is the one above.

BostonB · 20-03-2011 9:12pm

Sweet. Why the mini raid. Is it for redundancy or speed or capacity?

howamidifferent · 20-03-2011 9:25pm

BostonB wrote: »

Sweet. Why the mini raid. Is it for redundancy or speed or capacity?

I know I could have used another 2 x 2TB in the optical disk space by using a similar type sled but I wanted to seperate my media array from my personal stuff, pc backups, etc...The capacity is more than enough for that...Plus I still have the motherboard sata connector for another 4 ports which I'm thinking of bringing out to attach to an external 4 bay enclosure when I need to expand...

EDIT: I could use something like this...

machalla · 20-03-2011 9:54pm

I love the 2.5" drive array idea. Puts mine to shame now

Mine is running Vmware Esxi now with Freenas(zfs), server 2008 and Ubuntu.

Nice little box for the form factor and price.

Heres the Ram I used as an alternative

Crucial

4 x of these drives

WD Caviar Green

howamidifferent · 20-03-2011 10:31pm

Hopefully, by the time I run out of storage space elsewhere, those new 1TB 2.5 inch disks will have fallen enough in price for me to replace the 500GB drives...
May be possible to end up with 8 x 3TB and 4 x 1TB running from that box ( with the use of an external enclosure )...If the power supply can cope with it...Dont see why not...Should last longer than my last NAS hopefully...

howamidifferent · 20-03-2011 11:08pm

For anyone interested in the microserver there is lots of great info and ideas on this thread.

Also more info here.

machalla · 21-03-2011 9:12pm

I just went looking for one of these for a friend but Elara are of stock and so are some of the others that were linked.

Dabs have put the price up by €10 to €313. Does anyone know of anywhere else selling them for about the €284 price that Elara were charging and in stock?

Thanks.

Jonathan · 21-03-2011 9:22pm

IT247 have them, but they only ship to UK mainland. Even rang CS to check.

Works out at about €150 after cash back.

http://www.it247.com/product/1/COMSUK24/633724-421-HP-ProLiant-MicroServer-Ultra-micro-tower-Athlon-II-Neo-N36L-1-3-GHz-1GB-RAM-250GB-HDD-1-yr-warranty.html

If anyone has any way of taking delivery of one in UK and getting to Ireland, I'd be very much obliged.

I also emailed HP, and they confirmed that you can buy in Sterling and receive Euro cashback.

Jurisprudence · 21-03-2011 11:56pm

Ordered 2 of these through HPshop.ie today. Spoke to them in person over the phone. They are out of stock but are expecting more in stock tomorrow so gave them CC details today. If I were anyone here looking for one of these they should keep a very very close eye on the stock updates on HPshop, Elara etc tomorrow or better yet actually ring them in person. This will be the 3rd time I've tried to get my hands on these things, failed on previous tries. 3rd times a charm eh:)

For anyone looking for info, or just for us geeks who like to drool over an in depth review and hi-res gallery of tech check a review here

http://www.tenniswood.co.uk/technology/windows-home-server/review-hp-microserver-for-windows-home-server/

tazzzZ · 22-03-2011 2:03am

so tempted to get one but really cant justify it having just built my own home server bout a month ago! some1 give me a good excuse!! :P

machalla · 22-03-2011 8:56am

tazzzZ wrote: »

so tempted to get one but really cant justify it having just built my own home server bout a month ago! some1 give me a good excuse!! :P

Its new and shiny?

There you go, problem sorted.

Jurisprudence · 22-03-2011 11:07am

tazzzZ wrote: »

so tempted to get one but really cant justify it having just built my own home server bout a month ago! some1 give me a good excuse!! :P

Best way to convince someone they need a new shiny is to make them feel they're been friendly to the planet if they buy it. Whats the power consumption of your home-made custom server. If you dont know list primary components.

machalla · 22-03-2011 11:13am

machalla wrote: »

I just went looking for one of these for a friend but Elara are of stock and so are some of the others that were linked.

Dabs have put the price up by €10 to €313. Does anyone know of anywhere else selling them for about the €284 price that Elara were charging and in stock?

Thanks.

And now its back in stock with Elara I see for €288.

Jurisprudence · 22-03-2011 11:30am

machalla wrote: »

And now its back in stock with Elara I see for €288.

Everyone who wants one honestly call your respective preferred supplier ASAP. Usually quoted stock is linked to central stock with suppliers (in c2000, Sharptext etc), not local, which is shared by large numbers of retailers/etailers often here and in the UK. You snooze, you may loose, I did twice before. Happy hunting.

machalla · 22-03-2011 11:35am

Jurisprudence wrote: »

Everyone who wants one honestly call your respective preferred supplier ASAP. Usually quoted stock is linked to central stock with suppliers (in c2000, Sharptext etc), not local, which is shared by large numbers of retailers/etailers often here and in the UK. You snooze, you may loose, I did twice before. Happy hunting.

I did wonder about some of the quoted stock figures and how fast they tumbled down. Thanks for the pointer on that.

howamidifferent · 22-03-2011 11:52am

Damn you all for pointing out new stock...

I've just pulled the trigger on a second one of these. Had been debating it as a backup since after rebate the cost is only 170 Euro and I can now bung in the 1GB ram and the 250GB drive I removed from my first one...

The missus wont be amused...:p

paddydriver · 22-03-2011 1:39pm

howamidifferent wrote: »

I bought one of these from elara.ie at the start of february.
I added a HP P410 8 port Smart Array raid card and put a 4 x 2.5 inch drive tray where the space for a cd/dvd was. I now have 4 x 2TB in raid 5 setup in the main 4 bays, and 4 x 500GB in raid 5 setup in the optical drive bay space, with another 500GB sitting on top of this tray for the OS. So I have 2 raid 5 arrays of 5.45TB and 1.32TB formatted capacity. I use it to store my media. It replaces a cheap 4TB NAS box I had that had no room for expansion. Great little box.

I also replaced the 1GB of RAM with 2 x 4GB dimms for 8GB RAM. I'm running Win2008 R2 on it.

Nice setup! What cabling did you use from the P410 to back of the tray? - Did you go with the HP P/N or something else. P410 - Expensive controllers... I have looked about and don't have any spare HP DL's that I could "relocate" one from:p I have customers running VM's with 10 hosts off these controllers - supporting hundreds of users!

Also - what's the noise like off this setup? My home office is above our kitchen and I seem to get a lot of noise/vibration coming thru ceiling no matter what I use. Think I need to get them up off the floor.

Thanks for any help
Paddy

howamidifferent · 22-03-2011 1:56pm

paddydriver wrote: »

Nice setup! What cabling did you use from the P410 to back of the tray? - Did you go with the HP P/N or something else. P410 - Expensive controllers... I have looked about and don't have any spare HP DL's that I could "relocate" one from:p I have customers running VM's with 10 hosts off these controllers - supporting hundreds of users!

Also - what's the noise like off this setup? My home office is above our kitchen and I seem to get a lot of noise/vibration coming thru ceiling no matter what I use. Think I need to get them up off the floor.

Thanks for any help
Paddy

The existing cable in the HP server to the 4 bays was one of this type:

http://www.xpcgear.com/multi-lane-sff-8087-mini-sas-to-4x-sata-straight-internal-data-hard-drive-forward-break-out-cable.html

So I just disconnected it from the motherboard and plugged it into the P410 card. The card came with one of those cables also so I attached the second to the card and routed up the left to the 5.25 inch bay. It was plenty long enough. I had to extend the molex power cable that was there for a DVD drive by another few inches as that was too short for the bay I put in.

So the multilane sata connector on the motherboard is now unused.

As for noise, I've seen reviews to say it is whisper quiet. It's not.
I had it upstairs lying on the wooden floor for a few days while I played with it and the ceiling kitchen vibrated from it...

It's now in the living room near the TV, sky box and all the other usual stuff and I dont notice the noise when its on with all that other gear . BUT when I shut it down the silence is very noticable. :rolleyes:

I plan to put it into another room once I get proper cabling in place for networking.

BostonB · 22-03-2011 2:12pm

You might want to look at some of the ideas here.
http://www.silentpcreview.com/

nialo · 22-03-2011 2:26pm

anyone using this for a media server? or just for storage? looking for something to stream videos to a ps3, and act as a storage unit for all vids and downloads.

paddydriver · 22-03-2011 3:34pm

howamidifferent wrote: »

The existing cable in the HP server to the 4 bays was one of this type:

http://www.xpcgear.com/multi-lane-sff-8087-mini-sas-to-4x-sata-straight-internal-data-hard-drive-forward-break-out-cable.html

So I just disconnected it from the motherboard and plugged it into the P410 card. The card came with one of those cables also so I attached the second to the card and routed up the left to the 5.25 inch bay. It was plenty long enough. I had to extend the molex power cable that was there for a DVD drive by another few inches as that was too short for the bay I put in.

So the multilane sata connector on the motherboard is now unused.

As for noise, I've seen reviews to say it is whisper quiet. It's not.
I had it upstairs lying on the wooden floor for a few days while I played with it and the ceiling kitchen vibrated from it...

It's now in the living room near the TV, sky box and all the other usual stuff and I dont notice the noise when its on with all that other gear . BUT when I shut it down the silence is very noticable. :rolleyes:

I plan to put it into another room once I get proper cabling in place for networking.

Thanks for the info. I suppose if its pure headless storage then no need to sit it upstairs - just anywhere that its on the network.

Totting up all the costs for the extra controllers, drives etc it coming in pricey - but less than what I was considering - one of these guys:

http://www.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=162

Me too has to run it all past the lady of the house:)

Jurisprudence · 22-03-2011 3:51pm

nialo wrote: »

anyone using this for a media server? or just for storage? looking for something to stream videos to a ps3, and act as a storage unit for all vids and downloads.

I'm currently using an Acer H340 WHS for streaming to 3 macs, 3 pc's, 2 PS3's, a Popcornhour etc. If you look at the link I posted earlier to the tenniswoodblog review you'll see the H340 taking a hammering in terms of CPU performance. You may know this already but if your transcoded streaming this is the figure you should be concentrating on, not GPU or HDD performance (RAM may be good to bump to 2gb or more later).

With a server like this streaming to a PS3 its the CPU's ability to transcode on the fly thats matters. If its no good your left with either playing only content that the ps3 supports (no MKV's etc) or stuttering. My H340 can do 720p transcoded streams, this Microserver should have no issue streaming transcoded 1080p to a PS3.

Do bear in mind that transcoding will always always result in higher power usage than direct non-transcoded streams but how much I haven't measured. Look at forums for a free OS to put on it that suits your needs, there are loads coming out of the woodwork lately and many look clearly superior to WHS for media serving. Hope that helps.

tazzzZ · 22-03-2011 6:25pm

Jurisprudence wrote: »

Best way to convince someone they need a new shiny is to make them feel they're been friendly to the planet if they buy it. Whats the power consumption of your home-made custom server. If you dont know list primary components.

Hmm can't member the mobo I have but it's a m-atx Asus one I believe.
CPU: and athlon x3 450 with unlocked 4th core
4gb generic ram
2x 2tb wd green hdd
This is running windows home server 2011 rc

ATM I was thinkin of just trying to set up a Linux server to play with. I have no experience with it so I was gonna use the mini server just as is to get used to it and eventually using it for the extra storage and back up of the original server

Jonathan · 22-03-2011 6:44pm

Bought one from HP shop today. Should work out around €175 after cash back.

Oracle · 22-03-2011 6:45pm

Has anyone actually got the cashback though?

P.S. Scrap that just seen the link for the cashback form, it's within 28 days but from HP UK, looks legit: https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/61111/151565.pdf

Jurisprudence · 22-03-2011 8:56pm

tazzzZ wrote: »

Hmm can't member the mobo I have but it's a m-atx Asus one I believe.
CPU: and athlon x3 450 with unlocked 4th core
4gb generic ram
2x 2tb wd green hdd
This is running windows home server 2011 rc

ATM I was thinkin of just trying to set up a Linux server to play with. I have no experience with it so I was gonna use the mini server just as is to get used to it and eventually using it for the extra storage and back up of the original server

I'm gonna do something similar. The H340 is running the show so far. Gonna put 4 older Hdd's in the HP each with different OS's to decide which is best for my needs. Cant wait to try Vail for comparison.

Ok as your setup (nice choice of WD Green BTW) the AMD Neo in the HP is a 15W package and your X3 appears to be a 95W package, although I'm not sure how much extra your 4th unlocked core will add to that. However, having gone to the ESB calculator and taking 15W from 95W, making the assumption the server is always on, thats 168hrs PW), 80W = €18.74 per 2 months, or €112.44 per year. So if you ran just the HP rather than your custom server thats your saving, €112.44 or about 65% the cost of the HP rig to buy. Other savings may be related to fan efficiency and mobo usage but I cant determine that without knowing the models.

tazzzZ · 22-03-2011 8:58pm

Is there any problem getting the money back as a personal buyer or can only companies claim it back??

HP ProLiant MicroServer

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