HP ProLiant MicroServer

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??

mik_da_man · 23-03-2011 12:34pm

Looking at this to replace a icybox nas I have for torrents. And media storage.
Would it be suitable?

vibe666 · 23-03-2011 1:10pm

Elara have them now on special for €285 with a €117 cashback if anyone is still looking and wants to save the UK delivery hassle. you could even pick it up from their pickup point if you're in dublin to save on delivery costs.

does anyone know how the athlon neo compares to the dual core atom cpu's?

EDIT: just seen the same thing was posted on page 1 of the thread. bit cheeky of elara adding it to their 'specials' this week when it was already the same price.

just checking passmark and it gives a pretty respectable score for the Athlon Neo CPU, i'm starting to seriously think about getting a couple of these to use as ESX hosts (usb boot with iscsi storage) to play with. hmmm.

AMD Athlon Neo X2 Dual Core L335 - 859
Intel 1300 @ 1.66GHz - 857
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core TK-55 - 855
Intel Core Duo T2350 @ 1.86GHz - 852
AMD Athlon II Neo N36L Dual-Core - 847
AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-58 - 845
Intel Core Duo L2500 @ 1.83GHz - 843
AMD Turion 64 X2 - 837

it's not exactly going to set the world on fire (a Core i5 760 @ 2.80GHz scores 4,530 on passmark), but it should do the job nicely all the same once it's stuffed full of RAM.

Elara: Kin · 23-03-2011 2:19pm

vibe666 wrote: »

EDIT: just seen the same thing was posted on page 1 of the thread. bit cheeky of elara adding it to their 'specials' this week when it was already the same price.

It would be at €289.17 if it was not on special.

imitation · 23-03-2011 2:40pm

I need a Windows machine XP that is going to be on 24/7 and used for logging data. The software is running on a pentium 4 at the minute so I assume this machine would be grand for the job ? It would need to be able to do a wee bit of web browsing as well and word/excel, but nothing fancy.

kumar_aq · 23-03-2011 3:01pm

http://www.pc-planet.de/product_info.php?products_id=238126&refID=preisvergleich/idealo&XTCsid=efc08e609d1630ea64825324ecc6ecef

Costing 229+35(shipping) = 264 - 117 -> 147

howamidifferent · 23-03-2011 3:16pm

Elara: Kin wrote: »

It would be at €289.17 if it was not on special.

No chance you'd throw a freebie my way since I paid 297 for it yesterday from you I suppose? :rolleyes:

Elara: Kin · 23-03-2011 3:25pm

howamidifferent wrote: »

No chance you'd throw a freebie my way since I paid 297 for it yesterday from you I suppose? :rolleyes:

Sorry.

I am guessing that is €297 with delivery though?

howamidifferent · 23-03-2011 3:28pm

Elara: Kin wrote: »

Sorry.

I am guessing that is €297 with delivery though?

Yes.... I'm not complaining...still a good machine for the price...

Elara: Kin · 23-03-2011 3:31pm

howamidifferent wrote: »

Yes.... I'm not complaining...still a good machine for the price...

Yeah I know you are not.

Just wanted to make sure that you were not charged that price for the unit itself. You should have your item tomorrow.

Jurisprudence · 23-03-2011 3:50pm

Just chiming in to say I just took delivery of 2 of these. Very shiny and nicely built. Bit bigger than my Acer H340 but with he 5.25" bay thats to be expected. Ordered from HPShop.ie if anyones wondering. Delivered in 1 day from when they took stock so I'm happy.

Edit: couple of tips from 1st setup. The drive bay caddies are fragile as others have said. Dont pull too hard getting them out, make sure the release clips have gone all the way down. Also when taking the torx screws for the HDD's out from the base of the door take the door itself off (it lifts up and off) instead of risking bending the hinges.

HP ProLiant MicroServer

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