HP ProLiant MicroServer

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.

howamidifferent · 23-03-2011 4:02pm

Might be an idea to check the BIOS version and upgrade to latest etc..

Link here....

vibe666 · 23-03-2011 4:05pm

Elara: Kin wrote: »

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

€4 off doesn't seem all that special though.

but yes, my maths is terrible!

Elara: Kin · 23-03-2011 4:12pm

vibe666 wrote: »

€4 off doesn't seem all that special though.

but yes, my maths is terrible!

crying-smiley-sad-male-cry-tears-smiley-emoticon-000352-large.gif

vibe666 · 23-03-2011 5:25pm

Elara: Kin wrote: »

ah don't feel bad, they can't all be world record breaking deals.

it's still a steal with the cashback tho, whichever way you slice it.

mik_da_man · 24-03-2011 1:29pm

Woukdw it be easy to set. This up to replace a NAS for torrents/media sharing or would it be a bit of hallse installing OS and configuration. ?

howamidifferent · 24-03-2011 1:32pm

mik_da_man wrote: »

Woukdw it be easy to set. This up to replace a NAS for torrents/media sharing or would it be a bit of hallse installing OS and configuration. ?

Depends on your computer skills...too some people it may be impossible to others it may be an hours work...

Also depends on the operating system and utilities you decide to install.

machalla · 24-03-2011 1:34pm

mik_da_man wrote: »

Woukdw it be easy to set. This up to replace a NAS for torrents/media sharing or would it be a bit of hallse installing OS and configuration. ?

That really depends on how comfortable you are with setting up a machine under linux or windows.

Heres a fairly straightforward Torrent Server/File share iso that would be quick to set up.

http://www.turnkeylinux.org/torrentserver

KeRbDoG · 24-03-2011 1:53pm

Just received mine yesterday, really quiet box

nice replacement for my over spec'd HP tower server (ML150)

Kinetic^ · 24-03-2011 5:59pm

Finally bit the bullet and ordered one. Still unsure if I'm going to use it.

hmmm · 24-03-2011 7:56pm

I'm tempted to get one and put unraid on it - has anyone here used this combination?

Onikage · 24-03-2011 9:34pm

Must.. resist...

unklerosco · 24-03-2011 10:25pm

Would one of these be able to handle on the fly transcoding of a number of files at the same time. I've changed my server from a 3ghz P4 to a E8400 machine as at times I can have up to 4 different files being transcoded and sent to different devices via lan and over the net.. I use air video quite a bit on the iphone/ipad and my family have access to the server also via remote access for watching vids.. The old machine would go crazy if you tried to do more than one file at a time..

Jonathan · 24-03-2011 10:35pm

Unboxing mine now.

NeedaNewName · 24-03-2011 10:42pm

Onikage wrote: »

Must.. resist...

Is this way better than getting a NAS device?

I was thinking of getting a NAS but this yoke looks the biz?

howamidifferent · 24-03-2011 11:44pm

NeedaNewName wrote: »

Is this way better than getting a NAS device?

I was thinking of getting a NAS but this yoke looks the biz?

It's cheaper than a decent NAS without any drives, more powerful than most consumer NAS boxes, far more customisable and far easier to expand with additional external storage. Only downside really is the lack of hardware RAID options other than 0 and 1 but most OS's will allow you use software RAID anyway (if you want it). :cool:

KeRbDoG · 25-03-2011 1:19am

Just finishing setting up this box as a server.
Anyone found a way of controlling the front 'HP' sign LED in Linux? Seems to have three colours, red, amber and blue. Blue being the normal colour during operation.

Jonathan · 25-03-2011 1:22am

KeRbDoG wrote: »

Just finishing setting up this box as a server.
Anyone found a way of controlling the front 'HP' sign LED in Linux? Seems to have three colours, red, amber and blue. Blue being the normal colour during operation.

Haven't looked at it yet, but have a poke around /sys.

You might be able to mount it using sysfs and control it that way.

KeRbDoG · 25-03-2011 1:34am

Jonathan wrote: »

Haven't looked at it yet, but have a poke around /sys.

You might be able to mount it using sysfs and control it that way.

Think that kinda of poking is outa my league

can't find anything while searching. Another night maybe

gordonl · 25-03-2011 2:39am

I guess that something like this in the 5.25" bay would provide a 5th swappable drive?

Dealextreme have something similar

KeRbDoG · 25-03-2011 10:02am

gordonl wrote: »

I guess that something like this in the 5.25" bay would provide a 5th swappable drive?

Dealextreme have something similar

Yup, that should work to add another drive via the additional SATA connector on the motherboard.

Note - you will need to also get yourself a SATA cable as that one isn't included in the box

vibe666 · 25-03-2011 10:58am

if you're looking for something to use as an external mirror for your data, you could do a lot worse than one of these: http://elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=MMEV931036

it comes with its own pci-x multi-lane esata controller card and all the cables (inc. a nice long 1.5m esata cable which is handy) and will do the usual RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 & JBOD modes which you can configure via the included management app via the PC which works fine, more or less the same as a standard hardware RAID controller interface where it allows you to add/remove create/delete RAID volumes on the device and even has options to monitor the status of the volume and send you email alerts if there are issues with it.

i've got 4x 2tb (Samsung Spinpoint F4) drives in a single RAID5 volume in mine and you get about 5.45tb of usable ntfs formatted space from that which i'm using as a mirror for my NAS, with read and write speeds in the region of 100MB/s using the supplied esata controller, so it's pretty respectable and for the money its hard to beat.

before you create the RAID volume in the drive manager app, the drives just show up in windows individually, so you can do what you like with them there, or use the supplied app to configure the RAID volume at which point it just shows up in windows disk management as a single volume for you to format however you like, so you have plenty of options with it.

nialo · 25-03-2011 11:30am

Got mine yesterday, set it up on windows server 2k8 r2 at the moment as was going to use freenas but it wipes any existing data drives you put into it...

anyone know what os i could use apart from 2k8 that will allow me to setup the box as a media server (ps3 media server), file server and a remote tunnel for external internet access...

thought about putting a standard copy of freebsd on it and trying to tweak it but not sure how much work that would be..

Kinetic^ · 25-03-2011 11:32am

nialo wrote: »

Got mine yesterday, set it up on windows server 2k8 r2 at the moment as was going to use freenas but it wipes any existing data drives you put into it...

anyone know what os i could use apart from 2k8 that will allow me to setup the box as a media server (ps3 media server), file server and a remote tunnel for external internet access...

thought about putting a standard copy of freebsd on it and trying to tweak it but not sure how much work that would be..

Ubuntu server? Dyndns for remote, mediatomb for ps3 and samba?

nialo · 25-03-2011 11:49am

read the ubuntu didnt work that well on it?

kumar_aq · 25-03-2011 12:02pm

www.amahi.org

machalla · 25-03-2011 1:30pm

nialo wrote: »

read the ubuntu didnt work that well on it?

Centos maybe then? Its usually rock solid on most hardware. I haven't tried it on this box yet though or ubuntu.

I'm playing around with esxi and adding in vms to test them out on the box.

It might be worth trying out so you can experiment with different os until you get what you need. I currently have Winserver2008, Freenas and some other vms for testing (brought up and down as needed) running on the machine.

This link is useful if you need to map physical devices under esxi by the way. In my case its allowed me to point to the 4x2Tb drives on the machine.

http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/

Kinetic^ · 25-03-2011 2:37pm

nialo wrote: »

read the ubuntu didnt work that well on it?

It might be sluggish if transcoding but for file sharing it would be fine.

Oracle · 25-03-2011 2:55pm

nialo wrote: »

read the ubuntu didnt work that well on it?

It's OS certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so Fedora should work well on it.

nialo · 25-03-2011 2:55pm

cheers for the info guys. will looking the options.

vibe666 · 25-03-2011 10:01pm

might be worth looking at clarkconnect too.

TheDoc · 26-03-2011 11:29am

So I've grabbed myself a new Xbox and I'm tempted to grab one of these.

Essentially want a central storage unit for torrents and media files, running irssi to ssh into from work. Remote access to download torrents would be a plus.

Essentially have 2 pc's 2 laptops and an Xbox in the house. Thinking of grabbing apple Tv too, so I want something central to simply stream files to the various PC's when I want.

Has anyone got this for a similar setup and had success? I was going to jump into a NAS but the fact this seems a bit more customisable seems win.

Also whats the noise like on it? Preferably need something that runs power efficent and quiet.

kumar_aq · 26-03-2011 1:02pm

TheDoc wrote: »

So I've grabbed myself a new Xbox and I'm tempted to grab one of these.

Essentially want a central storage unit for torrents and media files, running irssi to ssh into from work. Remote access to download torrents would be a plus.

Essentially have 2 pc's 2 laptops and an Xbox in the house. Thinking of grabbing apple Tv too, so I want something central to simply stream files to the various PC's when I want.

Has anyone got this for a similar setup and had success? I was going to jump into a NAS but the fact this seems a bit more customisable seems win.

Also whats the noise like on it? Preferably need something that runs power efficent and quiet.

amahi (www.amahi.org) should do good for your needs. Apple tv I am not sure how about jailbreaking?

machalla · 28-03-2011 3:22pm

I had a quick look at Amahi over the weekend as I hadn't come across it before. It seems to have some issues with Fedora 14 as of yet. One thing I was surprised at was that their web app installers are all being charged for (not huge amounts $4 but still not free). In particular the DNLA one to allow someone to stream to Xbox/PS3 devices.

You may need some help to get this up and running fully if you are to au-fait with linux.

nialo · 28-03-2011 3:30pm

ya spend a few hours yesterday setting this up. and come to the conclusion i didnt like it. didnt like the dncp server part of it at all. or the remote tunnel to the website, or the fact you have to pay for extras etc... was looking at this as a replacement version for windows 2k8 rc server... but tis much easier to configure and get off the ground quicker! 40 minutes windows install to fully up and running! took me 5 hours to get fedora on to the machine without a cd drive.. usb install and network install were a nightmare to get to run.. kept running into repository problems. got it up and running in the end but pain in the ass.

going to look at another os tonight. freebsd base install then tweak it a bit. used it before so should be quicker than fedora. (hopefully)

Diarmuid · 28-03-2011 4:19pm

TheDoc wrote: »

So I've grabbed myself a new Xbox and I'm tempted to grab one of these.

Essentially want a central storage unit for torrents and media files, running irssi to ssh into from work. Remote access to download torrents would be a plus.

Essentially have 2 pc's 2 laptops and an Xbox in the house. Thinking of grabbing apple Tv too, so I want something central to simply stream files to the various PC's when I want.

Has anyone got this for a similar setup and had success? I was going to jump into a NAS but the fact this seems a bit more customisable seems win.

Also whats the noise like on it? Preferably need something that runs power efficent and quiet.

I setup Ubuntu on a stock mini-pc with RAID1 setup and ran it headless for the usual server duties (music, remote backup, torrent etc...) . I don't see a hugely compelling reason to change to something more esoteric than that.

mickotoole · 29-03-2011 10:18am

I just went and bought one, not because I need it mind, only because the price was so good. Lucky it's small as I should be able to sneak it past the missus without her noticing!

machalla · 29-03-2011 4:50pm

I just got an email to tell me my claim has been approved by HP and they will be sending me on a rebate cheque for €117 within 28 days.

Lots of thanks to the OP again for pointing this out to all of us.

Elara: Kin · 29-03-2011 4:52pm

Yeah thanks OP.

oreillykm · 29-03-2011 5:12pm

Just got my confirmation email too!

howamidifferent · 29-03-2011 8:14pm

oreillykm wrote: »

Just got my confirmation email too!

Yep, I just got confirmation of my first server rebate, 2nd one was only returned yesterday,,,,

HP ProLiant MicroServer

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