HP ProLiant MicroServer

stimpson · 06-06-2015 9:08pm

Nice. Did you buy a licence for ILO?

Danger781 · 06-06-2015 9:12pm

stimpson wrote: »

Nice. Did you buy a licence for ILO?

I'm guessing I need one.. might explain why this isn't working

I had assumed it was part of it.. silly me

How do people manage their servers normally then?

stimpson · 06-06-2015 9:16pm

I use unraid, which is almost fully configurable in a browser, but with some tinkering in a terminal session.

I think ILO just lets you access the BIOS settings and diagnostics remotely. I just hook up a monitor if required. The server had s 6 month uptime until I updated the OS recently.

stimpson · 06-06-2015 9:19pm

Some guy selling licences on eBay according to this thread. At $23 worth a punt. I'd do some reading up first and see if you really need it.

http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6106-gen8-microserver-ilo4-remote-monitoring-license/page-2#

Danger781 · 06-06-2015 9:40pm

stimpson wrote: »

Some guy selling licences on eBay according to this thread. At $23 worth a punt. I'd do some reading up first and see if you really need it.

http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/6106-gen8-microserver-ilo4-remote-monitoring-license/page-2#

I probably don't, just wanted to try it out

It's hooked up with a VGA cable to my monitor anyway so management is fine. I had just assumed people normally went headless so I was curious to try ILO.

No HDDs in it at the moment either so can't tinker much.. I want to play around with it but I don't know what to do without storage space.. From what I have read people install ESXi to a SD card so I can't do that at the moment either..

My credit card is going to hate me.

stimpson · 06-06-2015 11:01pm

Does it have an internal usb? That's what I run unraid from. USB drives are cheap

dunworth1 · 06-06-2015 11:11pm

Danger781 wrote: »

Now I'm trying to figure out how to connect to ILO from my desktop. Just to go over what I've done:

I have an ethernet cable connected to NIC 1 port and from what I can tell this is shared with ILO also. So I assume this is okay.

I have the server IP set to .20 and the ILO IP to .21 static IP addresses. I can see the .20 address entry from my router administration page, but no mention of the .21 address. I can not ping the .21 address but can ping the .20 address.

When I try to access the .20 address in my web browser I get a 'Access forbidden' error. The .21 address just times out.

What am I doing wrong

ILO is a separate port

also as far as i'm aware there is a free limited version of ILO

GekkePrutser · 07-06-2015 12:02am

Danger781 wrote: »

Now I'm trying to figure out how to connect to ILO from my desktop. Just to go over what I've done:

I have an ethernet cable connected to NIC 1 port and from what I can tell this is shared with ILO also. So I assume this is okay.

I have the server IP set to .20 and the ILO IP to .21 static IP addresses. I can see the .20 address entry from my router administration page, but no mention of the .21 address. I can not ping the .21 address but can ping the .20 address.

When I try to access the .20 address in my web browser I get a 'Access forbidden' error. The .21 address just times out.

What am I doing wrong

You probably have Ilo set to use its dedicated port. This is the default. Set it to shared and make sure you select the right network port to share with.

Ps the ilo is limited on this box. You need a license key to unlock everything. I believe there is a time limit on remote control sessions without the license. I got mine from eBay for a tenner or so. However you should still be able to get into it either way.

Edit: oops the others beat me to it! But you don't have to use that dedicated port. You can run ilo off the others as well if you want to. You just have to log in once on the dedicated one and change it.

Danger781 · 07-06-2015 1:18am

Thanks lads!

I'll try and figure out how to set it to shared. I assume by that logic, I could just get another ethernet cable and connect up both ports.. ?

Edit: I can't find any option to change the port configuration..
Edit 2: Found the option to disable 'Use dedicated port' but still no luck.. I'll figure it out

GekkePrutser · 07-06-2015 1:56am

Danger781 wrote: »

Thanks lads! I'll try and figure out how to set it to shared. I assume by that logic, I could just get another ethernet cable and connect up both ports.. ?

Edit: I can't find any option to change the port configuration..
Edit 2: Found the option to disable 'Use dedicated port' but still no luck.. I'll figure it out

You have to enable the shared port and then set the IP up again under shared port settings.

And yes connecting both ports is fine too.

You may need to reset your ilo now though, if you disabled the dedicated port without configuring the shared one you may have locked yourself out.

Danger781 · 07-06-2015 2:04am

So after rebooting the server everything seems to be working better now. I disabled the option 'Use dedicated network port' but it's still telling me the NIC in use is the dedicated one - Even thought it's not. What I'm confused about is the multiple IP entries throughout the menu. I think this is what confused me originally..

So from the maintenance menu I choose intelligent processing. For the ILO address in here I had it set to .21, but after a reboot that had changed to DHCP. In the ILO config utility under network settings it told me the IP .15 which now works. Under 'Access Settings' in the ILO config utility I have 'Server name' and 'Server IP' which I set to .21 - what is this? This is not the server IP which is still 20..

zom · 09-06-2015 1:55pm

stimpson wrote: »

Does it have an internal usb? That's what I run unraid from. USB drives are cheap

How's reliability of such OS on USB? Can it be used with Windows or there are dedicated OSs for USB?

stimpson · 09-06-2015 3:07pm

zom wrote: »

How's reliability of such OS on USB? Can it be used with Windows or there are dedicated OSs for USB?

Unraid is designed to run from usb - it's small and light and loads itself into memory and runs from there. Never had any reliability issues (probably because it doesn't hit the USB much after boot)

I know you can run Windows from USB too, but I've never done it.

stimpson · 09-06-2015 3:08pm

Oh, and if anyone is upgrading their RAM and wants to sell on the HP 2GB stick then let me know

curranbaz · 09-06-2015 4:36pm

Can anyone recommend reasonably priced RAM for the Gen7 N54L? Looking to get an 8GB stick & possibly upgrade to 16GB down the road.

Danger781 · 09-06-2015 5:46pm

stimpson wrote: »

Oh, and if anyone is upgrading their RAM and wants to sell on the HP 2GB stick then let me know

I might be looking to do exactly that

Went shopping yesterday on Amazon.. added 4 x 4TB WD Reds, 16GB ECC RAM, and a FDD > SATA converter to my cart.. and it went past the €900 mark

So I stepped away from the computer before making any decisions

I really don't think I need anywhere near 16TB of space..

Edit: Turns out I can reduce my bill significantly by using curiua.com for price comparing across different amazon sites

styron · 09-06-2015 6:17pm

https://www.curiua.com/

Danger781 · 09-06-2015 6:22pm

Will this work to connect the FDD power connector to my SSD?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LINDY-0-15m-Power-Female-Adapter/dp/B00HN3NEZU

stimpson · 09-06-2015 6:23pm

Danger781 wrote: »

I might be looking to do exactly that Went shopping yesterday on Amazon.. added 4 x 4TB WD Reds, 16GB ECC RAM, and a FDD > SATA converter to my cart.. and it went past the €900 mark

So I stepped away from the computer before making any decisions I really don't think I need anywhere near 16TB of space..

Edit: Turns out I can reduce my bill significantly by using curuia.com for price comparing across different amazon sites

No need to add all your drives at once. Unless you have 16TB of data to store immediately.

Keep me posted on the RAM.

Oh, you don't have to run ECC ram. Overkill for a home server. Mine isn't and works fine. There is a post of mine here linking to a list of known good RAM.

Danger781 · 09-06-2015 6:26pm

stimpson wrote: »

No need to add all your drives at once. Unless you have 16TB of data to store immediately.

Keep me posted on the RAM.

Oh, you don't have to run ECC ram. Overkill for a home server. Mine isn't and works fine. There is a post of mine here linking to a list of known good RAM.

Really? I thought only ECC RAM worked..

stimpson · 09-06-2015 6:41pm

My n54l runs non ECC. I'm not 100% about the gen8. Buy from Amazon and return it if you have problems. Kingston value 4gb sticks are up there for £30.

Danger781 · 09-06-2015 6:42pm

stimpson wrote: »

My n54l runs non ECC. I'm not 100% about the gen8. Buy from Amazon and return it if you have problems. Kingston value 4gb sticks are up there for £30.

Cheers. From what I've read about the G1610T Gen8 it seems ECC is a requirement unfortunately.

stimpson · 09-06-2015 7:06pm

Ok that seems to be the case. Bummer. Fwiw, I'm running 8gb and it's overkill for unraid. If I try and transcode 3 streams at the same time my memory usage gets up to about 60%. But I never do that tbh. If you're running multiple virtual OSes you may need more but for media serving 8GB should be fine.

If you're using an OS that supports drive pooling then just buy a couple and add to it as you need em. Look at the price per TB too. 3TB was the sweet spot when I was buying. May be 4TB now.

Danger781 · 09-06-2015 7:09pm

stimpson wrote: »

Ok that seems to be the case. Bummer. Fwiw, I'm running 8gb and it's overkill for unraid. If I try and transcode 3 streams at the same time my memory usage gets up to about 60%. But I never do that tbh. If you're running multiple virtual OSes you may need more but for media serving 8GB should be fine.

If you're using an OS that supports drive pooling then just buy a couple and add to it as you need em. Look at the price per TB too. 3TB was the sweet spot when I was buying. May be 4TB now.

Planning on getting ESXi up and running so going to go the whole 16GB

I'll more than likely only ever have two Plex streams running at once so I imagine the CPU will be the bottleneck there. Until I get myself a Xeon.

EDIT; 3TB is still the sweet spot it seems.. less than €40 per TB before delivery costs

long_b · 09-06-2015 8:21pm

They do say not to order multiple identical drives at the same time as they may all come from the same (potentially bad) batch.
Probably won't be an issue but just to put it out there

styron · 09-06-2015 9:23pm

long_b wrote: »

They do say not to order multiple identical drives at the same time as they may all come from the same (potentially bad) batch.
Probably won't be an issue but just to put it out there

Combine that with Amazon's habit of packing some drives entirely in a shock absorptionless nest of brown paper - knew immediately my 3TB red would fail the diagnostics. Glad it wasn't x4.

ED E · 09-06-2015 10:07pm

styron wrote: »

Combine that with Amazon's habit of packing some drives entirely in a shock absorptionless nest of brown paper - knew immediately my 3TB red would fail the diagnostics. Glad it wasn't x4.

Transit doesnt really matter that much. They do it because they know this. The head is parked, it cant impact the disk or anything else.

Danger781 · 09-06-2015 10:15pm

Fair point. I'll probably order one or two this time around depending on whether or not I want redundancy. Seems like every plan I come up with I end up deciding not to go that route. I had intended to install ESXi and set up a FreeNas VM but it seems virtualising FreeNAS is not recommended. That and the recommended requirements are 1GB RAM : 1TB space so that doesn't leave much for actual VMs. Apparently it is possible to successfully virtualize FreeNAS but it just seems too hackish for my liking. So at the moment it looks like I'm left with either ESXi OR NAS.. Not sure I can do both!

phantom_lord · 10-06-2015 2:00am

Not at home so can't look at mine, but is there a fifth sata connection in the microserver? I have four drives in it, just curious if I can add something like this for storing a small database?

KeRbDoG · 10-06-2015 6:11am

Danger781 wrote: »

Will this work to connect the FDD power connector to my SSD?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/LINDY-0-15m-Power-Female-Adapter/dp/B00HN3NEZU

Yes

stimpson · 10-06-2015 8:00am

There is a fifth sata for the optical drive. It runs at sata I speed though. If you're running the custom firmware you can bump it to sata II speed. I bought this instead: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003GS8VA4/ because you may as well go the whole hog. It comes with a half height bracket so fits perfectly. I have a fifth spinner in the optical bay connected to it and I used a 3M sticky pad to mount the SSD to the back of the chassis - there's just enough room.

johnybean · 10-06-2015 10:50am

Anyone tried putting on of these in the optical drive bay?

stimpson · 10-06-2015 11:39am

johnybean wrote: »

Anyone tried putting on of these in the optical drive bay?

Easier to get one that has a SAS port and get a SAS card - just one cable to connect then. Have you not got enough storage yet?

johnybean · 10-06-2015 11:48am

No such thing as enough storage :pac::pac::pac:
I'm just planning ahead at the moment, have 2 drives in the enclosure I ogt off you and 2 more going into it in a couple of weeks, one of which will be a parity drive so not included in overall storage per se. Just looking at options for when I fill the HP, dont know whether to go all out and do a dedicated server build with a large capacity case or to see what more I can squeeze out of the HP. If I could use the 6 in 1 or 4 in 1 enclosure in the ODD bay then that would get me 8 to 12 more TB which would see me out for another while.

stimpson · 10-06-2015 12:11pm

Have you considered 6TB WD reds?

howamidifferent · 10-06-2015 12:17pm

johnybean wrote: »

Anyone tried putting on of these in the optical drive bay?

I bought one of these guys 3 years ago and never used it. For sale if your interested. Still in original packing.

EDIT: Also bought and used the 4 in 1 which still has 4 x 500GB drives in it.

ED E · 10-06-2015 12:25pm

stimpson wrote: »

Have you considered 6TB WD reds?

WD Reds are where its at.

johnybean · 10-06-2015 12:30pm

Dam you howamidifferent! I would be interested in that (this thread is costing me a fortune!) Just wondering though, how will I power the unit if I have already used the spare power connector when I moved the OS drive to the ODD bay? is there another spare power connector or can that power connector be split?

Stimpson, I have nearly all WD Reds in the server, 6TB drives are a bit outside the budget at the moment, I am getting a 4TB parity drive so that I can swap some of the smaller drives in the server for 4TB drives down the line, this would give me 8 x 4 = 32TB RAW less 8TB parity leaves 22TB. Problem is, I dont really want to swap out 3TB drives for 4TB ones as you are paying €150 ish for 1TB of storage

howamidifferent · 10-06-2015 12:39pm

johnybean wrote: »

Dam you howamidifferent! I would be interested in that (this thread is costing me a fortune!) Just wondering though, how will I power the unit if I have already used the spare power connector when I moved the OS drive to the ODD bay? is there another spare power connector or can that power connector be split?

I just split the existing connector and it worked just fine for the 4 in 1.
Just discovered it was 4 years ago I got the 6 in 1.

Info on the 6 in 1..
Shipping Method: Priority International Courier
Shipping Preference: Group my items into as few shipments as possible
Subtotal of Items: EUR 51,38
Shipping & Handling: EUR 28,60

Import Fees Deposit EUR 16,79

Total for this Order: EUR 96,77

Delivery estimate: May 18, 2011 - May 20, 2011
1 "Thermaltake MAX-1562 Backplane HDD Cage Hot Swap Removable Hard Drive Kits 2.5-Inches SAS/SATA RAID Ready RC1600101A"
Electronics; $70.00
In Stock
Sold by: Amazon Export Sales, Inc.

johnybean · 10-06-2015 12:40pm

howamidifferent wrote: »

I just split the existing connector and it worked just fine for the 4 in 1.

And how did you connect all of the drives to the motherboard (Sorry for all the questions)

howamidifferent · 10-06-2015 12:43pm

johnybean wrote: »

And how did you connect all of the drives to the motherboard (Sorry for all the questions)

I had an 8 port HP 410 Raid card so four ports for the large sleds and 4 ports for the 4 in 1. That left the 4 port multilane from the mother board unused if I wanted to plug in the 6 in 1 instead.

johnybean · 10-06-2015 12:54pm

howamidifferent wrote: »

I had an 8 port HP 410 Raid card so four ports for the large sleds and 4 ports for the 4 in 1. That left the 4 port multilane from the mother board unused if I wanted to plug in the 6 in 1 instead.

Wow! This sounds awesome! If I got this card and 6 SATA cables and your enclosure and a splitter for the power then I would be able to add up to 6 more drives?

howamidifferent · 10-06-2015 1:06pm

johnybean wrote: »

Wow! This sounds awesome! If I got this card and 6 SATA cables and your enclosure and a splitter for the power then I would be able to add up to 6 more drives?

That's the card but you need one with a low profile bracket. That's full height. I have so much crap I probably have the low profile bracket lying around.
The 6 cables come with the enclosure so no need to buy seperately.

johnybean · 10-06-2015 1:37pm

howamidifferent wrote: »

That's the card but you need one with a low profile bracket. That's full height. I have so much crap I probably have the low profile bracket lying around.
The 6 cables come with the enclosure so no need to buy seperately.

PM sent

Danger781 · 11-06-2015 8:16pm

If anyone is interested I'll be documenting my experience with this server in my blog;
http://manninglife.blogspot.ie/

The three most recent posts are since I got the G1610T and the ones before are my feeble attempts at installing a level-2 hypervisor on my desktop.. interesting read if that is your sort of thing

horgan_p · 12-06-2015 10:12am

Would you need to upgrade the raid controller in this ?
If I'm reading it correctly this box wont do hardware RAID 5 ?

johnybean · 12-06-2015 11:50am

Just reading up on the RAID card recommended on the previous page and I was wondering, can a card like this be used just to expand the number of ports without getting into any RAID configuration? I currently use Flexraid for my redundancy so I dont want to start messing around with RAID 0,1 or anything like that. Can I simply add the likes of this card to the pcie slot on the microserver motherboard and start plugging in new drives and have them appear in device manager ready to be added to my spanned flexraid pool?

stimpson · 12-06-2015 12:19pm

johnybean wrote: »

Just reading up on the RAID card recommended on the previous page and I was wondering, can a card like this be used just to expand the number of ports without getting into any RAID configuration? I currently use Flexraid for my redundancy so I dont want to start messing around with RAID 0,1 or anything like that. Can I simply add the likes of this card to the pcie slot on the microserver motherboard and start plugging in new drives and have them appear in device manager ready to be added to my spanned flexraid pool?

It must have a half height bracket to fit, even then I'm not sure you'll have enough physical space in the machine for that particular card as it's quite long.

One of these should do the job: http://www.newegg.com/global/ie/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124064

You'll need to think about power consumption though - the PSU on the N54L is only 150W I think...

johnybean · 12-06-2015 2:18pm

stimpson wrote: »

It must have a half height bracket to fit, even then I'm not sure you'll have enough physical space in the machine for that particular card as it's quite long.

One of these should do the job: http://www.newegg.com/global/ie/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124064

You'll need to think about power consumption though - the PSU on the N54L is only 150W I think...

I was thinking that myself (about the power consumption) I will have 4 drives in the built in bays and 6 drives in the 6 in 1 odd cage, suppose I could just give it a lash and see how I get on!

stimpson · 12-06-2015 2:55pm

Umm..LOL???

I wouldn't advise giving it a lash. Bad things could happen, and with the possibility of losing data, I wouldn't risk it. Find the power consumption for all of your components and ensure it doesn't exceed 150W.

If you're close to or exceed the 150W I'd be upgrading the PSU before switching it on.

HP ProLiant MicroServer

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