HP ProLiant MicroServer

sir_love

I have just one question - i searched this thread and followed it for months! Got the slip to buy it.

Can i get it off ebuyer and still get the cashback? I presume ive to use parcel motel. Once someone confirmed ill get it straight away

Thanks in advance

MAJJ

All your points have been answered in this very long thread:-) Planning on doing exactly what you are planning.

sir_love wrote: »

I have just one question - i searched this thread and followed it for months! Got the slip to buy it.

Can i get it off ebuyer and still get the cashback? I presume ive to use parcel motel. Once someone confirmed ill get it straight away

Thanks in advance

sir_love

Thanks - i couldnt find the answer. you are right it is a long thread!!!

Going to order it now - is there any issue with sterling or euro? do you claim the euro form?

MAJJ

Zardoz wrote: »

What about buying off Insight ,seems cheaper than Ebuyer and direct delivery to Ireland
http://uk.insight.com/en-gb/productinfo/servers/0001792065-00000001

Thanks, where did you see direct delivery to Ireland? I am seeing a message saying if home or student user they only ship to UK, this is during creation of new personal account.

rovoagho

From personal experience, I wouldn't touch Insight with a barge pole. I'd no end of trouble with them over the return of a laptop. Months of trouble.

MAJJ

Nforce wrote: »

Just ordered one of these from Ebuyer, to be delivered using Parcel Motel. Will it fit okay in the PM lockers?

Hi Nforce, how did you order this or more specifically, pay for this. I used parcel motel for delivery address, then went to pay via paypal which needed my home address. Order went through but was cancelled. Any suggestions how to get an order through?

Zardoz

Is anyone using these servers as a normal desktop ?

stimpson

They're not really designed as a desktop - they're more for server - ie. low power useage, RAID support etc.

Having said that, there is nothing stopping you. It only has VGA out so if you need DVI or HDMI you'll need a card, and if youre going to use Win7 with Aero interface you'll need a dedicated card. More RAM would help too.

I think I'd rather spend a few quid more and pick up an i5 desktop machine.

Zardoz

Thanks Stimpson
I would be getting it for my uncle ,who really only needs a basic pc for word processing,surfing the web etc ,very low usage.

He is currently using an old Celeron 1.2Ghz desktop with Win Xp, that is over 12 years old so anything would be an improvement.

stimpson

Maybe something like this

http://www.komplett.ie/komplett/product/zkb_02pc/80010320/ap_retro_all_in_one/details.aspx

built in monitor, twice the RAM, twice the HD size, faster processor, DVD - €222

You're going to have to add the cost of an OS to either machine anyway.

Nforce

MAJJ wrote: »

Hi Nforce, how did you order this or more specifically, pay for this. I used parcel motel for delivery address, then went to pay via paypal which needed my home address. Order went through but was cancelled. Any suggestions how to get an order through?

As I mentioned above, I ordered using my Parcel Motel Northern Ireland address, paid using Google Wallet (which is linked to my real address). Just got my shipping confirmation earlier.

Postage to NI is ~£10 extra.

johnybean

Thanks for the replies regarding payment and delivery. I ended up going for Insight as suggested by Zardoz. I had to ring them and confirm that they are indeed approved HP suppliers and the device was £196 including postage(after some haggling)
They are delivering straight to Ireland. They state on their website that they are due a delivery tomorrow on the 10th (Same date as ebuyer) so fingers crossed.:D:D

rovoagho wrote: »

From personal experience, I wouldn't touch Insight with a barge pole. I'd no end of trouble with them over the return of a laptop. Months of trouble.

I only saw this quote from rovoagho after I had placed the initial order so here's hoping that was a once off occurrence.

Once system arrives I'll get a 4GB stick of RAM and try and get my hands on a couple of 3TB WD RED drives and see can I get this bad boy up and running as a media NAS for the house.

kaltz

Just had my order confirmed by ebuyer using google wallet and parcel motel. This was after my visa card order was cancelled and ebuyer started looking for a UK passport or utility bill. When I check the delivery address the PM id is missing. Have contacted ebuyer so hopefully they will sort this before its dispatched.

teddy b123

Wow, I thought I was the only one having my orders cancelled with ebuyer.
In total I've had 3 orders cancelled

First time the order was cancelled was due to being a foreign credit card, I rang customer service who could see nothing on their end as the order is cancelled and the order ref is no longer valid

2nd time I put the order through with Paypal, However did not have my Parcel Motel address setup in paypal so this too got cancelled
Rang Ebuyer again who claimed Paypal canceled my order and not them. Rang Paypal, They assured me it was not them that cancelled the order and to speak to ebuyer again. When I rang them back I asked to speak to a supervisor, I was assured that if I added my address to paypal the order would go through

3rd time lucky, Or so I thought! Cancelled again, Anyone else would have given up by now but I was determined to give this company my money!

I rang https://twitter.com/armandoebuyer (A Managing Director at Ebuyer). To my surprise, The 2nd time I rang him the call was answered. Within seconds he had me in a call with his person in customer service who then had me in a call with their customer operations supervisor, We have quick run over what happened, Long story short, They ended up trying to create an order on their end for me, However this order wouldn't go past paypal, It would appear they got a bit suspicious as to why I had made 2 transactions which then got refunded almost immediately and decided to put a temporary block on my account. Get that fixed, Couple of emails between myself, The customer operations supervisor and one of their fraud analysts and the order finally is through!

Delivery set for Tuesday!

I must say this was probably some of the best (and worst) customer service I've ever had for purchasing a single item.

Zardoz

Is it feasible to run Ubuntu server on one of these off a USB flash drive instead of the internal hard drive ?
I only need an install of ~8gb so a 250gb hard drive would go to waste .
Would there be write issues with using a flash drive or should it be ok .

stimpson

I don't see why not. I think each sector is good for 100000 writes so you'd be a while trying to kill it. When sectors do die they are marked as bad and data is moved to a good sector. I'm planning to use unRAID which is based on Slackware. It's recommended to install on a USB stick.

Get a decent one with spare capacity and you'll be fine. I got an 8gb transcend USB 3 for a fiver on amazon.

Zardoz

stimpson wrote: »

I don't see why not. I think each sector is good for 100000 writes so you'd be a while trying to kill it. When sectors do die they are marked as bad and data is moved to a good sector. I'm planning to use unRAID which is based on Slackware. It's recommended to install on a USB stick.

Get a decent one with spare capacity and you'll be fine. I got an 8gb transcend USB 3 for a fiver on amazon.

Thanks Stimpson for the good advice ,I will give it a go.
I think most of the operations in Ubuntu are reads and most of the OS is running in Ram so very little writes so it should be fine.

I got a good 8gb drive off Amazon with high transfer speeds so should be fine.
It will be easier to backup the usb drive anyway as opposed to an internal drive which I have had issues with in the past with Acronis True Image.

stimpson

What are you planning on using it for?

rovoagho

I've run mine on a 16GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit since November of 2011. I use greyhole on the main 4 drives, with another smaller disk tucked into the CD/DVD slot as a landing zone, so the flash drive just does OS stuff. Haven't had a single complaint from the OS about running on a flash drive.

Zardoz

rovoagho wrote: »

Haven't had a single complaint from the OS about running on a flash drive.

What OS are you using ?

rovoagho

CentOS

Zardoz

rovoagho wrote: »

CentOS

Thanks ,are you using a swap file ?

rovoagho

Zardoz wrote: »

Thanks ,are you using a swap file ?

Don't think so. I'll check tonight.

rovoagho

rovoagho wrote: »

Don't think so. I'll check tonight.

Nope, no swap.

Zardoz

rovoagho wrote: »

Nope, no swap.

Interesting .The Swap partition does most of the write operations so removing it reduces the chances of corrupting the flash drive but it can in some cases ,lead to freeze ups .

gctest50

http://www.slax.org/



https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BootToRAM#Booting_Ubuntu_To_RAM

rovoagho

Zardoz wrote: »

Interesting .The Swap partition Dowsing it was t of the write operations so removing it reduces the chances of corrupting the flash drive but it can in some cases ,lead to freeze ups .

It's a file server, the most intensive thing it has to do is transcode, and while PS3mediaserver does occasionally crap out on me, that's more down to PS3mediaserver than anything else. Plex seems to handle it no problem.

More importantly, it has a full complement of 8GB of RAM. If it got to swap, there'd be more important things to worry about. That said, I didn't have any problems with the stock RAM either. I just filled it on principle.

stimpson

I just had my confirmation mail from HP saying that the will be sending me my €120 within the next 45 days.

Yippie!

Zardoz

rovoagho wrote: »

It's a file server, the most intensive thing it has to do is transcode, and while PS3mediaserver does occasionally crap out on me, that's more down to PS3mediaserver than anything else. Plex seems to handle it no problem.

More importantly, it has a full complement of 8GB of RAM. If it got to swap, there'd be more important things to worry about. That said, I didn't have any problems with the stock RAM either. I just filled it on principle.

I see ,8gb is alot of Ram ,you dont need a swap file so .
Nice setup you have

stimpson

I ordered 8 gigs of this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B004G8KCGO/ref=redir_mdp_mobile?ref_=pe_217191_31005151_M3T1_dp_1

Not ECC or anything but it's meant to do the trick. I'll be flogging the 2gb stick on adverts.ie when it arrives. PM me if you're interested.