HP proliant Microserver vs NAS unit

RobertP

RobertP

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In my research for how best to stream music from a central store I stumbled across the HP Proliant Microserver which is £240 but with £100 cashback making it £135 odd after Quidco.

Add Windows Home Server and it looks like a comprehensive (and possibly automatic) back up solution as well as good media streaming for the same price as a good make 2 bay NAS....and it takes up to 4 drives.

Am I missing something? I never realised there were such things as 'microservers' before today!
 
neil_g said:
a lot of people rave about them.

if youre thinking of WHS avoid the latest version, theyve stripped out the functionality that let you use different size disks in its "RAID".
Click to expand...

There are lots of people complaining about the lack of the drive pool, but it did cause some issues which is why it has been removed.

Until recently the cost of discs didn't really cause this to be a problem, buy a load of 2TB and off you go.

Overall the newer version is better from what I hear :)

WHS - for media

SBS Essentials, very similar, no media streaming, adds linking into office 365 for single sign on etc. to the hosted services

If I didn't have a server setup already I'd be looking at WHS, perhaps when my I replace my netgear media player (can't work with Windows 7/2008 R2)
 
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I'm using an original one - it was my WHS v1 server and it did that fantastically, but I have made a small Mini-ITX box my WHS 2011 server and made the Microserver into an unRAID box with 5x 2TB disks and a 128GB SSD thanks to a IcyBox 5.25" bay and cabling...

Mine idles @ 19w with all the drives (WD GreenPower 2TB) and peaks under load around 32w.

The newer version in your link has a better processor and more RAM as standard.

Get one and you can literally play with it until you get exactly what you need!
 
(aimed at dale) i thought that was one of its main selling points over a regular NAS to be honest.

i think a server machine will be more flexible and WHS has media center server. however personally im not a big fan of these microservers, theyre cheap and slow for my liking. it barely meets the requirements for WHS 2011.
 
WHS - its Windows, you can run various Windows software on it (including full iTunes), its centralised security, centralised backup, remote access and management (remote desktop and files). Its pretty good and much more flexible than a NAS, but adds some limitations over normal windows (normally just due to being a different version of Windows and companies not allowing it to be installed).

Quite a few NAS can do RAID on different size disks (Drobo is the one I think of)

I personally run a dell T110 server with Hyper-V and a Vista guest on top for Media, its got 4 2TB drives for Media mirrored.
 
Dale_d3100 said:
WHS - its Windows, you can run various Windows software on it (including full iTunes), its centralised security, centralised backup, remote access and management (remote desktop and files). Its pretty good and much more flexible than a NAS, but adds some limitations over normal windows (normally just due to being a different version of Windows and companies not allowing it to be installed).
Click to expand...

yup, hence i said its more flexible :). some NAS (synology do have built in itunes servers, dlna servers and other addons). but ultimately it depends what you want the unit to do.

Quite a few NAS can do RAID on different size disks (Drobo is the one I think of)
Click to expand...

drobo was the only one i could think of off hand. i know synology and qnap run "regular" raid. not sure of others.
 
The iTunes servers on a NAS cannot download from iTunes automatically and cannot stream to airplay devices etc. It can host the files for iTunes on another computer, but that is about it.
 
Synology can only do the airplay if you have their software installed on a PC :(
 
Doh!

I read with DS Audio installed which I took to be a piece of PC software, not an app on a mobile device.
 
The old NAS unit I'm playing with at the moment has pathetic processing power and just serving up album covers seems too much for it. Then I started looking at things like a new Synology 2 bay NAS just to serve music.

This microserver is looking very promising with its other possibilities and low power use. Might even get something back on the 250Gb drive it comes with so could end up cheaper than a NAS unit. No rush to order yet so I'll keep reading for a while longer yet.
 
Having been burnt by proprietary raid controller failure and being left with healthy but unreadable drives, can WHS work with NTFS formatted drives?
Just want to be able to pull the drives out and get data off if the box goes wrong...
 
WHS is Server 2003 or Server 2008 R2 with loads of bits turned off and removed and some extra bits added.

It will just be a case of plug it in to another computer and you can read the drives.

What RAID was it? I don't like smart RAID etc. I stick to RAID 1 as you can just plug into another computer and access the data.

If all the data is on one drive but unreadable, you can often get past the RAID layer using disk recovery tools. I accidentally deleted the RAID set info and partition tables, but was able to recover my data.
 
RobertP said:
The old NAS unit I'm playing with at the moment has pathetic processing power and just serving up album covers seems too much for it. Then I started looking at things like a new Synology 2 bay NAS just to serve music.
Click to expand...

my DS1010+ has a 1.67Ghz Dual Core processor and 1gb memory (expandable to 3gb if you really feel inclined) and it flies along. granted its a small business unit, but my point is the newer synology units all mainly have 1.6Ghz processors and at least 256mb memory so shouldnt really be sluggish.

for example the DS212 has the 1.6Ghz and 256mb DDR3, gigabit LAN, USB2 and 3 for external drive access and/or backup, 18w max load (tested with 3TB drives).. not a bad price either.
 
RobertP said:
Having been burnt by proprietary raid controller failure and being left with healthy but unreadable drives, can WHS work with NTFS formatted drives?
Just want to be able to pull the drives out and get data off if the box goes wrong...
Click to expand...

depends on the raid controller in the microserver. not all raided disks can be read by a non raid controller. (edit - im reading like the WHS drives are raided, if theyre "just a bunch of disks" then theyll work in any NTFS compatible system).

ive migrated from one synology to another identical model (RMA'd unit due to faulty HD slot) with no data loss, unplug drives, prep new unit, insert drives, job done.
 
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neil_g said:
(edit - im reading like the WHS drives are raided, if theyre "just a bunch of disks" then theyll work in any NTFS compatible system).
Click to expand...

That is all I'm after really. A disk you can pull out and read in another computer should the worst happen. If it will do JBOD but any one disc from however many could be pulled on its own and the data read from it then that would be perfect.
 
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