HP Microserver (again) N40L

Well finally sercummed to one of these babies primarily as my Buffalo
Linkstation NAS is about full + the drive is at least 6yrs old. It's been
faultless in this time (touch wood)!!

So intending to install WHS 2011 on the N40L with 2x WD data drives in a
Raid 1 configuration.

First obstacle - bodging a DVD drive in to install the OS or a USB flash
stick of sufficient size :>

Tim..

 

No bodging required - it has a 5.25" slot for a DVD, and an internal
USB socket for a flash drive.

They're really nice kit.

Cheers - Jaimie (succumbed, btw!)

 

Any tips on a pain free deployment of WHS and then migration of 120gb data
to it ?

I'd like it to operate in a similar manner to the current NAS where I open &
deposit files directly to from whichever of 4 PC's that are in use...

Tim.

 

You can fit an internal SATA optical -- you will need a SATA power cable
(because HP strangely only provide a 4-pin Molex power connector) and a
normal SATA data cable. At least, you do for the N36L ... I assume the
N40L is the same apart from the CPU (and the extra GB of RAM).

Or you can use a USB optical drive. I really recommend this, as USB
opticals are really handy things to have lying around and not
particularly expensive.

I don't know whether WHS can be installed from a USB Flash drive --
Windows is funny like that -- so check before you try that route.

Cheers,
Daniel.

 

1) Install WHS (I've never done that, but it can't be hard)
2) Spend a day patching it up etc
3) Set up your RAID
4) Copy your data across from the Buffalo using something *other* than
Explorer. Xcopy, robocopy, or sundry other restartable copy utilities.
5) Share the folder the data is in to the network.

Yep, it'll do that.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

Synctoy will move the data. I've got three of these with Windows 7 on,
lovely machines!

 

Why WHS? There are better server OSs.

You can certainly install Linux directly off a USB flash drive. This
is what I did.

 

Given the popularity of the HP Microserver, I've been wondering in what
circumstances it would be worth buying a full size server nowadays. What
size office network or workload would you need before splashing out on one
of the big noisy floorstanding jobbies from Dell et al?

 

The HP's are *seriously* limited on CPU, and not terrifically endowed
with memory slots. Nor do they have enough drive space to do a
usefully large RAID10.

They really are little domestic or small department size servers,
nothing more.

Cheers - Jaimie

 

No fault tolerance, no redundancy, no hot-swap parts, built down to a
price.

As you say though, very good SOHO/small business servers.

 

No lights-out hardware, no redundancy in things like power either.

Of course the step after the big noisy floorstanding ones is smaller
noisy rackmounted ones with separate disk arrays.

 

Or renting space in a data centre.

 

This card provides some lights-out features:
http://www.serversplus.com/searching.asp?prod=SVHEW-615095B21

 

What do you think is in those data centres?

 

I know what's there. I was responding to your comment starting "the
step after". My point is that it may be the next step to rent space
rather than to run your own server.

 

We rent space for our own servers

 

The HP's are *seriously* limited on CPU, and not terrifically endowed

2 Dimm slots, up to 8GB ram (ecc and non-ecc) qualify for "not too
bad"
You have 4 hdd slots, can use the optical drive place for a fifth, and
have an esata port...
remote management card (iLo) for 100 quids (optional)...

Price/size of a nas, better than a nas: radeon hd 4000 integrated,
ddr3, esata, pcie x16 and x1, very decent Network speed
Can reach 200MB/s on my JMB393 raid 5 external on the esata port and
150mb/s on crystal diskmark on my 3tb hds723030ala640 (i used the
hacked bios to have ahci on all ports. DO NOT forget to install 785e
Chipset+graphic driver from http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/embedded/8-95/Pages/embedded_windows_all.aspx
)
can't get more for 200 quids. Now at 350, would be less interesting...

If you need 6 disks raid 10, i guess you might need a real server...

Regards,
Benjamin