HP ProLiant MicroServer Build

neil_g said:
something like this: http://dx.com/p/usb-2-0-to-ethernet...work_Gadgets&gclid=CPnMn8OP6LYCFZLKtAodp0EAaA

(ive never used one so cant comment on reliability)

or some modern routers have USB connectivity for sharing drives.
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I guess what I really need to do is ditch the apple timecapsule and get a decent router/modem and a proper NAS. I really would like some decent home backup space, as well as something that plays nicely for sending photos, music and video around the house to ipads, sonos, consoles and TVs. The problem is I am so far out of the loop since going mac that I don't really have a clue where to start any more!
 
menthel said:
I guess what I really need to do is ditch the apple timecapsule and get a decent router/modem and a proper NAS. I really would like some decent home backup space, as well as something that plays nicely for sending photos, music and video around the house to ipads, sonos, consoles and TVs. The problem is I am so far out of the loop since going mac that I don't really have a clue where to start any more!
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synology NAS would be my suggestion then. best NAS ive used with super features (windows and mac sharing, dnla etc etc etc). or a qnap, they seem to be very similar.
 
Upgrades!

StarTech eSATA card and HP NC364T Quad Gigabit in and working..


StarTech eSATA card and HP NC364T by neilgates, on Flickr


StarTech eSATA card and HP NC364T by neilgates, on Flickr

So now I have 5 Gigabit LAN and 3 eSATA to play with.

Again the StarTech kit easy to install, the supplied CD seems to have every Windows driver you'll likely need on it (even a 2008 R2 which was nice).

The HP was picked up as an Intel card to start with (Intel chip onboard so figures), easy network teaming with the HP Networking Utility..


HP Networking Utility by neilgates, on Flickr

Also installed the spare 2TB in the HP bay 4, just waiting for the RAID0 to erase and rebuild (yes I double checked my backups, although I still closed my eyes when clicking YES to erase.. :help: ). Probably should have done it through the boot option though rather than the RAIDXpert Windows util as I would've had the "Fast Init" option available.. :bonk:


AMD RaidXpert by neilgates, on Flickr
 
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How do the disks in the extension box appear Neil? You mentioned earlier about setting the RAID mode on the box. Can't see that in any of the manuals....
 
arad85 said:
How do the disks in the extension box appear Neil? You mentioned earlier about setting the RAID mode on the box. Can't see that in any of the manuals....
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you mean appear in windows? just as a normal local drive. if you want above the 2TB limit you need to format as GPT etc.

setting the raid is on page 5:

http://sgcdn.startech.com/005329/media/sets/SAT3540U3ER_Manual/SAT3540U3ER.pdf

While the enclosure is powered on, press and hold the ‘Mode’ button for three (3)
seconds until one of the RAID LED’s start to flash. Pressing the ‘Mode’ button will now
switch between available RAID modes. Once set, press and hold the ‘Confirmation’
button on the back of the enclosure until the enclosure powers off. Connect the
enclosure to a computer system, then power the enclosure back on and it will now be
set for the desired RAID mode.
NOTE: Changing RAID modes will destroy any existing data on the hard drives
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arad85 said:
I assume the one you have can't do JBOD (can't see it in the manual).
Click to expand...

the one I have supports:

BIG (Spanning or Concatenation)
RAID 0 (Striped Disks)
RAID 1 (Mirrored Disks)
RAID 10 (1+0; Striped set of Mirrored Subset)
RAID 3 (Striped set with Dedicated Parity)
RAID 5 (Striped Disks with Parity)


I think the one you are looking at does, though doesn't state specifically JBOD it does say in the specs:

" Some operating modes of the enclosure require an eSATA host port to provide Port Multiplier (PM) support. Without PM support, only one of the drives will be accessible. "

if I remember rightly most JBOD say this?
 
neil_g said:
if I remember rightly most JBOD say this?
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Yeah. Basically if yours doesn't support "port multiplier" mode (more than 1 disk down a SATA cable), it will only ever present the contents as a single disk to the host OS. The RAID mode does what it needs to and forms a RAID array with the drives looking like a single logical drive. That's really good if you want a fire and forget RAID system....

The one I was looking at uses the host SATA port capabilities to manage the disks in the box. If I ever need to upgrade.... :D
 
arad85 said:
Yeah. Basically if yours doesn't support "port multiplier" mode (more than 1 disk down a SATA cable), it will only ever present the contents as a single disk to the host OS. The RAID mode does what it needs to and forms a RAID array with the drives looking like a single logical drive. That's really good if you want a fire and forget RAID system....

The one I was looking at uses the host SATA port capabilities to manage the disks in the box.
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I see so you're basically wanting to present separate drives which you'll let ZFS (it is you that runs ZFS?) manage?

If I ever need to upgrade.... :D
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Shhh don't mention the U word, makes my wallet nervous after the last few weeks.. don't think I'll be needing to for a while now. Hopefully..

So at the moment I have:

HP N40L
4x 2TB RAID0 = ~8TB

StarTech DAS1
4x 2TB RAID5 = ~6TB

StarTech DAS2
Presently empty

If anything I might start acquiring 4TB drives (when they start falling in price a bit more) and start filling the spare DAS, then roll my files over and replace the 2TB drives in the other DAS. Maybe..
 
neil_g said:
I see so you're basically wanting to present separate drives which you'll let ZFS (it is you that runs ZFS?) manage?
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Got it in one. The cool thing about ZFS is I can then use drives wherever.

For example, let's say I had bought 8x2TB and 2x enclosures. I could could each enclosure as a separate RAID5-like array and then add them to the storage pool I already have. I'd then have 3 x 6TB RAIDZ systems, making a single storage pool of 18TB. Where ZFS is clever is that I already have a single spare 2TB drive as a swappable spare on my storage pool. This is attached to my mainboard SATA controller. If I had the setup as above (12 disks organised as 3x RAIDZ arrays, 2 in the external StarTech enclosures) if any of the disks fails, I can use the hot swappable one in situ to replace that drive. Just to reword that, if one of the drives in one of the StarTech boxes dies, I can replace it with the spare drive connected to the motherboard - that array would then be 3x 2TB in a StarTech enclosure and 1x 2TB off the motherboard. From memory, it is two or three command lines to do that - whilst the system is running.
 
okay so that's interesting, when i executed this raid rebuild it said it would erase everything.

however, after doing a rescan of the disk in disk management everything is still there on the original partition so just did an extend in diskpart..
 
Well... there you go. Sometimes stuff just works :)

BTW, is the side power cable a bit of a pain when you want to line the things up inside a cupboard?
 
arad85 said:
Well... there you go. Sometimes stuff just works :)
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yeah, i can breathe a bit easier now then.. still have 2 active onsite copies. i can turn my sync back on and not worry about my files getting borked.. :LOL:

BTW, is the side power cable a bit of a pain when you want to line the things up inside a cupboard?
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the pic of them side by side back on post 194, that's as close to each other as they'll get due to the side mount connector. getting them plugged in took a bit of wiggling but they'll not be moving again now the esata card is in.
 
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Right.. a quick test. I currently have a couple of disks in the enclosure, a 500G and 1T brive. The 500G is quite old now... They show up as:

Code: 
ada9 at ahcich0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
ada9: <MAXTOR STM3500320AS MX1A> ATA-8 SATA 2.x device
ada9: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada9: 476940MB (976773168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)

...

ada10 at ahcich0 bus 0 scbus0 target 1 lun 0
ada10: <SAMSUNG HD103SJ 1AJ10001> ATA-8 SATA 2.x device
ada10: 300.000MB/s transfers (SATA 2.x, UDMA6, PIO 8192bytes)
ada10: 953869MB (1953525168 512 byte sectors: 16H 63S/T 16383C)

500G drive on its own
Code: 
[root@MAINSERVER /testa]# dd if=/dev/zero of=testa.dat bs=2048k count=10000
20971520000 bytes transferred in 224.507560 secs (93411197 bytes/sec)

1TB drive on its own
Code: 
[root@MAINSERVER /testb]# dd if=/dev/zero of=testb.dat bs=2048k count=10000
20971520000 bytes transferred in 176.678017 secs (118699091 bytes/sec)

Both together:
Code: 
[root@MAINSERVER /testa]# dd if=/dev/zero of=testa.dat bs=2048k count=10000
20971520000 bytes transferred in 240.768541 secs (87102409 bytes/sec)

and

dd if=/dev/zero of=testb.dat bs=2048k count=10000
20971520000 bytes transferred in 190.995563 secs (109801085 bytes/sec)

so I can still get 200MBytes/sec to both drives in parallel - not too bad given this is just plugged into an e-sata port on the back of my motherboard (it all just worked!).

My comments on the enclosure is that it seems OK, but could do with some drive dampening. Also, that fan will have to be replaced if it ever spins up!
 
You got the raid ones in the end?

What drives are you running? I didn't think mine was too bad (with the Samsung 2tbs), definitely no louder than the HP next to them :D

I wouldn't worry about the fan, I've never heard mine go above low speed even in the cupboard with the HP fully loaded rebuilding its dlna database.
 
neil_g said:
You got the raid ones in the end?
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No, the cheap one that lets me see all drives. Just got an old (failing) 500G and old 1T in there for the moment. The drive chirping is annoying me at the moment though so may have to find somewhere to hide it. I can hear the fan - it ticks slightly - so may just have to replace due to that (but you will see from my other threads, I don't like fan noise!!). Will test how reliable it is attached to my server over the next few days. Got another 2TB and a 3TB coming with the new case. Going to reorganise the RAIDZ into a stripe of 5 plus 1 spare (currently 4+1 spare) and will probably get another 2 3TB drives if the enclosure works out OK for local movie backups.

Currently playing with one of these though:

ae5_lt.jpg


Programmable automatic fan controller :D
 
neil_g said:
I looked at those fan controllers the other day when thinking about switching cases on the desktop.. £50.. :eek:
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Yes, but it is way more than just a fan controller.... Given what it does, it's not bad... There's an embedded micro on board which keeps everything managed and you get 4 temp sensors to place in the case (you can also use Open Hardware Monitor to read off the on-chip sensors too).

I'm thinking along the lines of a couple of power profiles that says "if case is below 35 deg, and CPU is below 50 deg, switch off all fans" and "if disk temp is above 30 deg, switch on disk fans" etc.... The software looks to have everything you need - including a method of upping power when you are starting fans.

Of course, that's if I can't get passive working ;)
 
Manual? Isn't one as far as I can find. Having said that it's fairly intuitive. You can buy extra units and slave them or buy dedicated expansion modules. You can always run more than one fan from a single output subject to max heat dissipation from the drive chip. You just get a subset of your fans on the same output at the same settings... The rack mount and heatsink for the drive chips are extra and very overpriced but...
 
ah right, I found the v4 manual on their site.. :D

well it sounds pretty well featured, keep your quiet pc thread up to date (need pics btw). if you find it doesn't do what you want and decide to move it on let me know ;)
 
quick question to all you knowleageble folk...

how easy would it be to stick a drive in the spare bay and use it as a dedicated drive for website hosting? i'm looking to set up a stock photo website for my photos so some clients can view and download directly with payment via paypal (using the new GraphPaperPress theme http://graphpaperpress.com/themes/stock-photography/ )

because of the number of photos its going to use a fair bit of GB space and traditional hosting is looking to cost upwards of £100 a year hence i thought i'd see if this was an option.

Any thoughts?

thanks
 
Big A said:
quick question to all you knowleageble folk...

how easy would it be to stick a drive in the spare bay and use it as a dedicated drive for website hosting?
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You should start a separate thread about this, but if you have to ask the pros and cons and if it's a good idea, then it probably isn't for you ;)

Almost no one hosts their own website these days....
 
arad85 said:
You should start a separate thread about this, but if you have to ask the pros and cons and if it's a good idea, then it probably isn't for you ;)

Almost no one hosts their own website these days....
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interesting to know, thanks.

any suggestions for hosting options with large (50gb+) storage then?

thanks
 
Big A said:
interesting to know, thanks.

any suggestions for hosting options with large (50gb+) storage then?

thanks
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Start a new thread ;)
 
Power cut blew my old "G" WAP (well not literally, it just wouldn't transmit or receive anything) yesterday so got a nice new TPLink "N" AP on order.

Anyway, that kind of prompted me to start looking at Firewalls again, so installed Sophos UTM on a virtual machine. The home version is a free ISO and it's still stacked with features..


sophosutm_1500 by neilgates, on Flickr

Just need to configure it so the missus can't get on the shopping websites and I'll connect the WAN interface :LOL:
 
pfSense is where it's at for firewalls Neil ;)
 
Sophos? Seriously?

So annoying!!!

Looked at the Sophie stuff at Infosec and it was behind in quite a few ways.
 
Dale_tem said:
Sophos? Seriously?

So annoying!!!

Looked at the Sophie stuff at Infosec and it was behind in quite a few ways.
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Yup seriously. Ultimately it's not really my decision but its one of a couple that meet the spec (fairly basic) and normally sophos undercut everyone else significantly which is how we ended up with sophos av over forefront.. :-/
 
neil_g said:
Yup seriously. Ultimately it's not really my decision but its one of a couple that meet the spec (fairly basic) and normally sophos undercut everyone else significantly which is how we ended up with sophos av over forefront.. :-/
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I feel you pain Neil. They give the cheapest prices to our head of IT and then he doesn't want to know about anything else.
 
I put mine in a 2U rack with a brush covered hole in and route the cables underneath. You can just see it under the laptop in this photo (also with 2 cables running off to something I was building at the time):

P1010518-1024.jpg
 
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