HP ProLiant MicroServer

heathersonline · 19-06-2014 10:10PM

Any sign of this deal coming up again? I've been keeping an eye here but it's been ages

stimpson · 19-06-2014 10:16PM

heathersonline wrote: »

Any sign of this deal coming up again? I've been keeping an eye here but it's been ages

March was the last time it was up. Nobody knows when or if it's coming back - you just have to keep an eye out.

randombar · 20-06-2014 08:55AM

stimpson wrote: »

Wow - it's a year already since I got my Microserver.

Just wanted to remind people to check for dust bunnies - my drives were showing 41 deg yesterday and I had to crank the fan. I just brought it outside, dismantled it and cleaned it with a can of compressed air. I whipped out the video card as it's not used and now they have settled at 32 deg and the fan is dialed back to a whisper.

I'll soon have t add some drive space -- running at ~86% full. WD Reds are about 2/3s what they were last year, so another 3 TB I think...

Good call on this one, fairly dusty now all right and a few HDs are running hot.

Will be selling on a hot swap caddy and DVB-S2 card soon enough, constantly upgrading the box!!

stimpson · 20-06-2014 09:15AM

GaryCocs wrote: »

Good call on this one, fairly dusty now all right and a few HDs are running hot.

Will be selling on a hot swap caddy and DVB-S2 card soon enough, constantly upgrading the box!!

Is the hot swap caddy for the CD bay? Any details on it?

randombar · 20-06-2014 10:05AM

stimpson wrote: »

Is the hot swap caddy for the CD bay? Any details on it?

Yup: http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-5-25in-Trayless-Mobile-3-5in/dp/B000KS8S9W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403258636&sr=8-1&keywords=hot+swap+5.25+caddy

Jack Sawyer · 20-06-2014 10:26AM

Re. Startech kit....

Hmmmm - More stuff I never knew I needed & must now buy right away

- Gary I know you've the N40L - Anyone confirm if this will slot right into the N54L also - AFAIK it should be fine.

stimpson · 20-06-2014 10:27AM

GaryCocs wrote: »

Yup: http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-5-25in-Trayless-Mobile-3-5in/dp/B000KS8S9W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403258636&sr=8-1&keywords=hot+swap+5.25+caddy

I'll be needing one soon, but I notice you're in Cork. Might be as easy for me to buy off Amazon when I'm buying my drive.

randombar · 20-06-2014 10:28AM

stimpson wrote: »

I'll be needing one soon, but I notice you're in Cork. Might be as easy for me to buy off Amazon when I'm buying my drive.

Ah ya that would make sense.

Jack Sawyer wrote: »

Re. Startech kit....

Hmmmm - More stuff I never knew I needed & must now buy right away

- Gary I know you've the N40L - Anyone confirm if this will slot right into the N54L also - AFAIK it should be fine.

5.25 inch slots are pretty standard across all devices everywhere. Would be fine I'd say.

love that turbo · 20-06-2014 11:26AM

GaryCocs wrote: »

Good call on this one, fairly dusty now all right and a few HDs are running hot.

Will be selling on a hot swap caddy and DVB-S2 card soon enough, constantly upgrading the box!!

The DVB-S2 card, any details on it. Very interested.

Wcool · 20-06-2014 11:38AM

I got a N36L (3 years now!) running Ubuntu. I recently installed Plex but it seems the N36L is too slow to handle all the transcoding Plex requires.

Is the speed difference between N36L and N54L enough to make transcoding on-the-fly possible? If that is the case I might buy a 2nd hand N54L.

Gen8 is unfortunately too expensive compared to gen 7.

positron · 20-06-2014 11:43AM

stimpson wrote: »

Wow - it's a year already since I got my Microserver.

Just wanted to remind people to check for dust bunnies - my drives were showing 41 deg yesterday and I had to crank the fan. I just brought it outside, dismantled it and cleaned it with a can of compressed air. I whipped out the video card as it's not used and now they have settled at 32 deg and the fan is dialed back to a whisper.

I'll soon have t add some drive space -- running at ~86% full. WD Reds are about 2/3s what they were last year, so another 3 TB I think...

Thanks, I noticed a lot of dust on the front grill - should give it a clean tomorrow.

My 1TB + 3 TB is nearly full now, might get another 3 TB but then I will have to pay for UnRAID I think.. Perhaps I would replace 1TB with 3TB.

Anyone else thinking of buying an UnRAID license? I think it's cheaper to multi-buy.

johnybean · 20-06-2014 11:44AM

Wcool wrote: »

I got a N36L (3 years now!) running Ubuntu. I recently installed Plex but it seems the N36L is too slow to handle all the transcoding Plex requires.

Is the speed difference between N36L and N54L enough to make transcoding on-the-fly possible? If that is the case I might buy a 2nd hand N54L.

Gen8 is unfortunately too expensive compared to gen 7.

I have the N54L and it depends on the encoding of the file but I found to not be up to the task of transcoding anything encoded with 5.1 audio to a roku box I have. Instead of re-encoding everything, I just ensure that anything that will be played on the Roku is "aquired" with 2.1 audio only so that files can be played directly.
To sum up, my experience has been that N54 is not powerful enough to transcode on the fly reliably.

mickotoole · 20-06-2014 11:52AM

Wcool wrote: »

I got a N36L (3 years now!) running Ubuntu. I recently installed Plex but it seems the N36L is too slow to handle all the transcoding Plex requires.

Is the speed difference between N36L and N54L enough to make transcoding on-the-fly possible? If that is the case I might buy a 2nd hand N54L.

Gen8 is unfortunately too expensive compared to gen 7.

I have an N36L and I've got Plex running on it without any difficulties. I've had no problems with transcoding.

Maybe it's your set up?

Wcool · 20-06-2014 11:54AM

Thanks for that JohnyBean, it's what I expected.

I think I will hold on to my Proliant for another year until I can replace it with something that runs on the latest generation of low power Atom or Celeron, it seems the current generation of chips is both less power hungry and capable of transcoding on the fly.

Wcool · 20-06-2014 12:02PM

mickotoole wrote: »

I have an N36L and I've got Plex running on it without any difficulties. I've had no problems with transcoding.

Maybe it's your set up?

It could be but I doubt it. It can transcode divx in general for movies up to 1.5 Gb but these days I tend to have more x264 files with at least 720p.

Plex struggles with those.

It's not a problem for my TV, I have a dedicated XBMC Ion box (4 years! old and going strong). It can display any file at any resolution and I don't transcode but just use samba to pull the original file of the server. But it would be nice to see movies on phones and tablets and I am not able to do that reliably. Screen size of phone is 720p. The phone is WP8 phone, and it does not support too many codecs. Maybe I should go back to Android and avoid transcoding altogether.

randombar · 20-06-2014 12:18PM

love that turbo wrote: »

The DVB-S2 card, any details on it. Very interested.

Have it installed and working with TvHeadend and Ubuntu

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002GNLUOY/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

stimpson · 20-06-2014 12:43PM

PMS minimum spec for transcoding is 2GHz. The N54L will do it fine for most stuff. The only thing I've had problems with is 15GB+ BR rips.

There is no need to transcode to a Roku. I had a SkyGo and used DirectPlay and it worked fine 95% of the time (once I got a recent build of the Roku client)

Remouad · 20-06-2014 12:50PM

GaryCocs wrote: »

Have it installed and working with TvHeadend and Ubuntu

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002GNLUOY/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Have the same card. works a treat.

johnybean · 20-06-2014 02:34PM

stimpson wrote: »

PMS minimum spec for transcoding is 2GHz. The N54L will do it fine for most stuff. The only thing I've had problems with is 15GB+ BR rips.

There is no need to transcode to a Roku. I had a SkyGo and used DirectPlay and it worked fine 95% of the time (once I got a recent build of the Roku client)

Maybe its something I am doing wrong but any 7-10GB Mkvs I have tried with 5.1 audio wont play direct play, they will only work if transcoded. The movie will take up to 1 minute to buffer at the start, will stop to buffer midway through and when I check on the server the cPU usage is at 100%. I think it is because the TV the roku is attached to is not connected to a 5.1 system so the PMS has to downmix the audio to stereo on the fly.

stimpson · 20-06-2014 02:50PM

johnybean wrote: »

Maybe its something I am doing wrong but any 7-10GB Mkvs I have tried with 5.1 audio wont play direct play, they will only work if transcoded. The movie will take up to 1 minute to buffer at the start, will stop to buffer midway through and when I check on the server the cPU usage is at 100%. I think it is because the TV the roku is attached to is not connected to a 5.1 system so the PMS has to downmix the audio to stereo on the fly.

The Roku should do the downmixing. Make sure you're set to DirectStream or DirectPlay on the Roku.

johnybean · 20-06-2014 02:52PM

stimpson wrote: »

The Roku should do the downmixing. Make sure you're set to DirectStream or DirectPlay on the Roku.

Thats the way I had it set up. Might give it another try at the weekend

stimpson · 20-06-2014 04:24PM

johnybean wrote: »

Thats the way I had it set up. Might give it another try at the weekend

It shouldn't be transcoding. I downloaded the latest sources for plex roku and built them myself and side loaded them. Worth doing if you're able as the client had improved greatly.

What OS are you running on the server?

johnybean · 20-06-2014 04:33PM

stimpson wrote: »

It shouldn't be transcoding. I downloaded the latest sources for plex roku and built them myself and side loaded them. Worth doing if you're able as the client had improved greatly.

What OS are you running on the server?

Windows 7 with the pms for Windows and the plex client for roku from the Roku store

randombar · 26-06-2014 09:59AM

A bad night last night, I think I might have fried the Motherboard . . . if anyone has one they're not using please let me know

blabley · 27-06-2014 09:20AM

GaryCocs wrote: »

A bad night last night, I think I might have fried the Motherboard . . . if anyone has one they're not using please let me know

Guess it's out of warranty?
What did you do to it?

randombar · 27-06-2014 09:26AM

blabley wrote: »

Guess it's out of warranty?
What did you do to it?

I was one of the first so well out of warranty.

Hopefully the deal will start up again soon.

Was installing a new dual DVB-S2 card and something went haywire. No smoke or anything but can't get to bios now with everything plugged out, CMOS switched etc. Martin ( Martin the Microserver) is at the doctors today, hopefully they can do something.

blabley · 27-06-2014 10:33AM

GaryCocs wrote: »

Was installing a new dual DVB-S2 card and something went haywire. No smoke or anything but can't get to bios now with everything plugged out, CMOS switched etc. Martin ( Martin the Microserver) is at the doctors today, hopefully they can do something.

Oh no! Poor Martin, yeah seems a little strange but hope it's good news

randombar · 27-06-2014 11:04AM

blabley wrote: »

Oh no! Poor Martin, yeah seems a little strange but hope it's good news

Was very strange, long term I'm wondering is it better to build a custom machine so if one part breaks you're not down a whole server, the boards/power supply replacements for this cost way too much. Great to get started with the home server side of things but not sure about the long term prospects.

witnessmenow · 27-06-2014 01:42PM

GaryCocs wrote: »

Was very strange, long term I'm wondering is it better to build a custom machine so if one part breaks you're not down a whole server, the boards/power supply replacements for this cost way too much. Great to get started with the home server side of things but not sure about the long term prospects.

Just buy a second microserver when they are on offer!

You wont come close to building something as cheap as these on offer with custom parts without skimping on stuff.

heathersonline · 11-07-2014 06:55PM

I just took the plunge and bought one on dabs, €175 with 4gb ram, happy enough with the Deal as I would have removed the 250gb and bought more ram. This way I can put the cash towards buying drives.

Am a complete beginner when it comes to this kinda thing so will probably have to read this thread from scratch. Planning to use it for plex and maybe some music streaming but gotta try figure out what OS to put on before I even start!

HP ProLiant MicroServer

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