HP ProLiant MicroServer Build

I have a dell 2900 you can have if you are interested in the purchase (not free, but not a lot). Has 8 hot swap bays and a percent controller
 
Dale_tem said:
I have a dell 2900 you can have if you are interested in the purchase (not free, but not a lot). Has 8 hot swap bays and a percent controller
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thanks for the offer but I don't have the space for it (even compared to the micro and 2x DAS), if its anything like the 2950 2U racks itll be a bit noisey too and the missus would go mental :D
 
It is quiter than the 2950s, but it is still a server :). I had it at home 2 years ago in a rather warm coat cupboard. Lol


It is only a 2.8Ghz Xeon (from p4 era) so not huge amounts of heat.
 
Easy ;) lol


I've got 3 microservers thanks to you and this thread ;)
 
neil_g said:
if you can spec me up a fairly compact but expandable server (I like my data backed up locally on separate arrays, totally separate controllers :))
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Oooh.. I do like a challenge... :D

What do I have to get for £400? Case/es, controllers, PSU, mobo, memory, cooler? or do you have any of that sort of stuff you can reuse?

What does "separate arrays" mean? Totally separate PSUs?

How much expansion is "expandable"?
 
arad85 said:
Oooh.. I do like a challenge... :D

What do I have to get for £400? Case/es, controllers, PSU, mobo, memory, cooler? or do you have any of that sort of stuff you can reuse?

What does "separate arrays" mean? Totally separate PSUs?

How much expansion is "expandable"?
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I have absolutely no spare parts kicking around.

Separate arrays, I guess that should mean power too as that's essentially what I have now. Although ups'd a blown psu could wipe out both arrays..

Expandable storage wise, I have 9 drives now and I'm going to need more space (or at least I could swap existings for higher capacity).
 
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I guess technically my set up is similar. My home server copies all documents/photos to a second drive (albeit on the same controller) then to an Apple Time capsule at the other side of the house.
 
If you want a cheap OS for file storage on x86 which you can manage through windows in the normal way (permissions etc and from another PC) you can install hyper-v 2012, but don't use the hyper-v part :)
 
neil_g said:
Suppose if the Microserver went then budget would be a bit more than 400.
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OK...

How about:


Total (if my maths is right) ~£420 (you must have an old gfx card somewhere for video.....

If it were me, I'd add a Startech 3.5" - 5.25" hot dock tray £15 (http://www.ebuyer.com/229062-startech-5-25in-trayless-hot-swap-mobile-rack-black-hsb100satbk) to. Case seems to come with fans, but you can obviously get cases at a lower price. Personally, I'm favouring light cases with lots of holes and convection with fans run as silently as possible. Essentially, that means keeping enough space around the case to keep it cool and possibly some form of cheapo fan controller.

Why £105 on the mobo? Well, it has 6 onboard SATA ports (so you can run a decent array onboard) plus 2 eSATA 6G ports. Want to add another 4 drives - simply add another external eSATA box ;) Also, has a decent number of PCI-e ports - extra PCI-e HBA controllers or an old server NIC (fleabay) - no problem sir....

Any good?
 
right sorry about that, the proverbial hit the fan this morning when i got in..

i see its possible to build a server for ~420+ (i absolutely have no GPU, well maybe a really old PCI card but that aint gonna work). im not feeling it though, its not going to give any added benefit for what i want to achieve.

liking the startech enclosures though, cheaper rebranded icybox by the look of it.
 
neil_g said:
im not feeling it though, its not going to give any added benefit for what i want to achieve.
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Possibly not - but you do have more grunt with the CPU and you run your own choice of OS on there too. Although TBH, I could probably just run freeNAS on my server now and be fairly happy (I've moved a lot of stuff around recently now I have a fast VM machine).
 
neil_g said:
i think im going to go with option 3 on my list..

1x startech pcie1 twin esata card - £23
2x startech 4bay raid - £147ea
1x hp quad port gigabit NIC pcie4 - £96

Total - £413
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I'd get a better eSATA card. I have some Adaptec 1420's here - they're internal, but I think there external ones too. They use PCI-e x4 as the bandwidth can throttle more than one SATA connection per PCI-e lane (been there, done that, got the T shirt with a Startech 4-port internal PCI-ex1 card ;))

If you want to save money elsewhere, just buy a HP NC380T from fleabay £25 for a dual-NIC ex-server card (I assume you don't need quad gigabit or are you going SAN?). I have 4 of them here....
 
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arad85 said:
I'd get a better eSATA card. I have some Adaptec 1420's here - they're internal, but I think there external ones too. They use PCI-e x4 as the bandwidth can throttle more than one SATA connection per PCI-e lane (been there, done that, got the T shirt with a Startech 4-port internal PCI-ex1 card ;))
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only have a 1x and a 16x. there is also an onboard esata, spec'd a twin for further expansion later but i shouldnt be anywhere near maxing both ports out anyway, only really maybe during backups?

If you want to save money elsewhere, just buy a HP NC380T from fleabay £25 for a dual-NIC ex-server card (I assume you don't need quad gigabit or are you going SAN?). I have 4 of them here....
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only have low profile pci, doesnt look like the NC380T has a low profile option? was thinking quad for VMs more than anything.

there is a mod you can do to the - hard to source for a good price - dual port Intel E1G42ET (basically cutting the pci connector down) to get it into the 1x slot. that would free up the 16x for a better controller?
 
Nope.. full size only. NC360T does, but that's £45 for 2 ports.

TBH, I run all my VMs over a single ethernet port (but they aren't high bandwidth needs). I do have a couple of 380s in the VMs though - but they are dedicated to the firewall (one in/one out port). That's for logical needs rather than real security.
 
arad85 said:
Nope.. full size only. NC360T does, but that's £45 for 2 ports.
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better than £96 though :)

TBH, I run all my VMs over a single ethernet port (but they aren't high bandwidth needs). I do have a couple of 380s in the VMs though - but they are dedicated to the firewall (one in/one out port). That's for logical needs rather than real security.
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youre probably right i think i need to stop thinking above my needs. i was going to toy around with some firewalls so a pair would be handy there.
 
neil_g said:
i was going to toy around with some firewalls so a pair would be handy there.
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Yup.. That's what 2 of mine are doing (firewall duty). One is in my server and teamed, the other is in the cupboard in a box. The VM environment and all the other VMs run through a single NIC.

I do run my VMs off SSDs though (the ones I run tend to have quite small disk size requirements - of the order of 10-30GB a shot).
 
I went a bit overkill with my storage set up on the HP server: since upgrading to WHS v2 and losing out on the Drive Extender, I really wanted an expandable storage offering some kind of redundancy but wanted to keep it all in the HP box.
So I picked up a P410 controller with 512MB cache. The larger cache allows for live RAID migrations and the controller uses the same mini-SAS connector and the sockets on the card (there are two of them for up to 8 drives) is right next to the header on the motherboard so I was able to test with the same cable.
In the end, I picked up another mini-SAS cable and used the on-board AMD controller to run the OS off an old c300 SSD. I then set up a RAID 5 array on the controller with 4x 2TB drives. And I can always add more drives and restripe the data across to increase capacity without having to reformat (although I'd hate to think how long that would take on 2TB 5400rpm SATA drives!).

I also added an Intel GbE PCIe NIC as the onboard was so unreliable :(

In total, I've probably spent more on the RAID controller and NIC than on the whole server itself, but it remains small, quiet, and offers me all I need in the small footprint.

I have some photos somewhere I can try to dig out if of interest (we are a photo forum after all LOL)
 
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neil_g said:
so what did you do with the 2nd SAS?
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Dunno if that's directed at me Neil! I'm not currently using the 2nd SAS port on the P410 controller.
Currently:
On-board mini-SAS: single 64GB SSD to boot OS from
P410 mini-SAS#1: 4x 2TB drives in RAID5 array
P410 mini-SAS#2: currently no drives connected
 
tfboy said:
Dunno if that's directed at me Neil! I'm not currently using the 2nd SAS port on the P410 controller.
Currently:
On-board mini-SAS: single 64GB SSD to boot OS from
P410 mini-SAS#1: 4x 2TB drives in RAID5 array
P410 mini-SAS#2: currently no drives connected
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ah right, was wondering on the purpose for the 2nd sas that's all
 
What was best price on those? £150 after cashback?
 
Looks like the G630t Microserver might be out soon, HP have accessories for it listed on their site..


G630T Specs
Processor Number G630T
# of Cores 2
# of Threads 2
Clock Speed 2.3 GHz
Intel® Smart Cache 3 MB
Instruction Set 64-bit
Instruction Set Extensions SSE4.1/4.2
Max TDP 35 W
Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 32 GB
Memory Types DDR3-1066
Processor Graphics Intel® HD Graphics
Graphics Base Frequency 650 MHz
Graphics Max Dynamic Frequency 1.1 GHz
Intel® vPro Technology No
Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology No
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x) Yes
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) No
Execute Disable Bit Yes
Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) Yes
 
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I'm actually quite impressed by these little StarTech DAS. Cheap, extremely easy to set up, very quiet, on a sustained write getting 260MB/s..

And.. PURPLE LEDS ON ACCESS :cool:


PURPLE LED on access/write by neilgates, on Flickr

Got the first one filled with 4 of the 2TB drives from the NAS in RAID5, going to use the 5th drive to max out the 4 bays in the N40L. The other StarTech will get some BIG disks in it going forward, but it's off at the moment as I don't have any spare and the eSATA card isn't installed yet. The Quad NIC is sat at the post office waiting for collection..


Squeeeeeze.. by neilgates, on Flickr
 
neil_g said:
I'm actually quite impressed by these little StarTech DAS. Cheap, extremely easy to set up, very quiet, on a sustained write getting 260MB/s..
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That's a really good speed. And I now know where I will be getting an extra enclosure should I need to expand :)

I do like StarTech - they make some nice stuff for the home user who goes beyond a single PC with a disk in it....
 
arad85 said:
That's a really good speed. And I now know where I will be getting an extra enclosure should I need to expand :)

I do like StarTech - they make some nice stuff for the home user who goes beyond a single PC with a disk in it....
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd recommend them, dead easy to set up.. screw the handles to the disks and slot them in (don't do what I did and forget, makes the drives near impossible to get back out.. :help: ), power it on, select the raid mode, press the confirm button, reboot it, format in OS. Auto or 3 manual fan speed settings, low is very quiet (on auto it hasn't gone above low yet).

Only small snag I had (other than forgetting the handles first off) was 2008R2 didn't like it being plugged in while the OS was running, it kept maxing out one of the cores and hanging the disk access but a reboot has solved that. Probably just needed a reboot to finish loading the native driver (no StarTech specific driver needed).
 
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