Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD

_SBradley_ · 27 Jan 2012 at 18:02

HEADRAT said:
Hmmm mine seem very low, 50Mbps

Oh, that is slow. Mine's definitely slightly quicker than copying over the Gigabit LAN (though not tremendously so). Are your drives in the four regular bays (i.e., SATA ports 0-3)?

EDIT: And are they definitely running in AHCI mode? What drives are they?

HEADRAT · 27 Jan 2012 at 18:05

Seems to be a problem between my C: which is in Bay 0 and my D: and E: drives.

If I transfer stuff between D: and E: (and visa versa) things are fine, but slow if I copy off or to my C: drive

Yeah they are in ACHI mode.

_SBradley_ · 27 Jan 2012 at 18:42

Are these all the same model disk, or is C: something different?

Maybe Performance Monitor can give some indication? Run "perfmon /res" and go to the Disk tab, then start a copy. See if the active time is maxed out for C: but D:/E: are less than 100%. That would indicate that C: is going as fast as it can, but it just can't keep up with D:/E:.

khrall · 28 Jan 2012 at 17:50

I've been stuck on this all day.

Having set up my microserver with Esxi 5, I sucessfully set up Freenas 8 as a virtual machine using 3 virtual disks in raidz. Copied across my music.

That part was straight forward. Then I installed Vortexbox 2.0, set the Freenas array as /storage/music. Had some inital issues with the share, but soon worked around it and had music coming from my Squeezeboxes.

I noticed on a reboot I had permission errors when Vortexbox was trying to chown my files. Then I noticed that my permissions are removed from Freenas, so I chmod 777. I'm able to rename, transfer etc again. Reboot Vortexbox and loose permissions again.

I re-tested this by re-creating the Raidz array, copying over a couple of folders, seems fine. Map a network drive, using guest logon, everything fine. Start up Vortexbox and my permissions disappear again.

Anyone got any ideas how I can stop Vortexbox removing guest permissions or whatever it's doing?

MikeHiow · 28 Jan 2012 at 20:46

Did you not have issues with freenas and raidz under ESXi? Have you made virtual disks filling up your entire disks or have you just RDMed them?

Did you use 32 or 64bit freenas?

Beans on toast Dave · 28 Jan 2012 at 20:50

bremen1874 said:
Standard firmware or hacked? The standard firmware always used to run the eSATA port in IDE mode (no hotplug). The hacked firmware would allow the eSATA to run in ACHI mode which does support hotplug.

intresting, currently running a ssd on the esata port, does this support ide only?
i presumed it was achi

am i wrong?

khrall · 28 Jan 2012 at 22:32

MikeHiow said:
Did you not have issues with freenas and raidz under ESXi? Have you made virtual disks filling up your entire disks or have you just RDMed them?

Did you use 32 or 64bit freenas?

I made 3x virtual disks filling the entire disk. Freenas and raidz appeared to run fine until the addition of vortexbox. I also used 64bit freenas v8.0.3.

I'm only using 4x 160gb HDD's in there for testing setups. That is until I get something working properly and drive prices drop.

Scott Salisbury · 29 Jan 2012 at 00:48

What are people using for security on their WHS 2011 set ups? I'm just using my microserver + WHS for backups, file storage and VMs, no other services or ports will be open/forwarded to this machine, all client computers have their own AV/Firewalls, will I be ok to just use the windows firewall on my WHS? And not bother with AV?

Scott.

jamesfreddie · 29 Jan 2012 at 02:12

Scott Salisbury said:
What are people using for security on their WHS 2011 set ups? I'm just using my microserver + WHS for backups, file storage and VMs, no other services or ports will be open/forwarded to this machine, all client computers have their own AV/Firewalls, will I be ok to just use the windows firewall on my WHS? And not bother with AV?

Scott.

I run avast WHS on my server.

_SBradley_ · 29 Jan 2012 at 14:02

Scott Salisbury said:
will I be ok to just use the windows firewall on my WHS? And not bother with AV?

I use Windows Defender (installed/enabled by default on WHS 2011, I believe). Although it's connected to the net (for updates, etc.), I don't use my WHS box for anything other than storage (no browsing, for example), so I consider it pretty secure.

I'm also behind a router -- this is very important. (I suspect 90%+ of people are using a router these days, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case.)

jamesfreddie · 29 Jan 2012 at 17:34

_SBradley_ said:
I use Windows Defender (installed/enabled by default on WHS 2011, I believe). Although it's connected to the net (for updates, etc.), I don't use my WHS box for anything other than storage (no browsing, for example), so I consider it pretty secure.

I'm also behind a router -- this is very important. (I suspect 90%+ of people are using a router these days, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case.)

Windows defender is not really an anti virus.

_SBradley_ · 29 Jan 2012 at 20:49

jamesfreddie said:
Windows defender is not really an anti virus.

No. Just saying I don't feel the need to use anything else, considering I don't use my MicroServer as anything but a fileserver.

Scott Salisbury · 29 Jan 2012 at 22:16

Hey all,

My Microserver has arrived and I'm really impressed with it.

Upgraded the memory to 8GB (Used this and working great https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-023-OK)

Added 1x 2TB WD Green HD in addition to the 250GB that comes with the N40L

I've been toying with different ways to set this up, but after some research I'd like to go with the ESXI route, however I have little experience with virtualization, etc.

I've installed ESXI on it with VMs of WHS 2011 & Ubuntu Server both installed to the 2TB drive and seems to be running very well.

I'll be using WHS for client backups and Ubuntu for local web server/development and also to learn more about linux.

The part that I'm not very clear about is how to manage the storage. Lets say I eventually fill the 2TB drive, how would I go about adding more? Is it simply just a case of buying another drive, creating more virtual disks for the VMs and continue saving data to the new drive? Or is there a better way to deal with this?

Cheers,
Scott.

Scott Salisbury · 29 Jan 2012 at 22:17

jamesfreddie said:
I run avast WHS on my server.

_SBradley_ said:
I use Windows Defender (installed/enabled by default on WHS 2011, I believe). Although it's connected to the net (for updates, etc.), I don't use my WHS box for anything other than storage (no browsing, for example), so I consider it pretty secure.

I'm also behind a router -- this is very important. (I suspect 90%+ of people are using a router these days, but I thought I'd mention it, just in case.)

Thanks for the replies, I've used Avast before and never had any issues with it. Just not sure about support for WHS.

roachyuk · 30 Jan 2012 at 11:38

oh well just ordered mine be here tomorrow....then the fun starts what operating system to use how to set up lol better get reading the thread for tips lol

tbz_ck · 30 Jan 2012 at 13:29

Scott Salisbury said:
Hey all,

My Microserver has arrived and I'm really impressed with it.

Upgraded the memory to 8GB (Used this and working great https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-023-OK)

Added 1x 2TB WD Green HD in addition to the 250GB that comes with the N40L

I've been toying with different ways to set this up, but after some research I'd like to go with the ESXI route, however I have little experience with virtualization, etc.

I've installed ESXI on it with VMs of WHS 2011 & Ubuntu Server both installed to the 2TB drive and seems to be running very well.

I'll be using WHS for client backups and Ubuntu for local web server/development and also to learn more about linux.

The part that I'm not very clear about is how to manage the storage. Lets say I eventually fill the 2TB drive, how would I go about adding more? Is it simply just a case of buying another drive, creating more virtual disks for the VMs and continue saving data to the new drive? Or is there a better way to deal with this?

Cheers,
Scott.

Yes, it's pretty much like that.

The only issue you might come against is that WHS 2011 likes to backup the server to another partition. So you need another "datastore" or VM Disk in the same datastore to give you a partition that you can backup the server to (or use external disk via USB passthrough etc)

What I did

500GB drive (1 datastore - WHS 2001 OS and space for other OS drives in my ESXi environment)

1x 1TB Drive (1 large datastore - 1 large VHD - target for shared storage and client PC backups)

1x 1TB drive (1 large datastore -1 large VHD - target for server backups)

Spare slot. You can add a disk whenever, configure a datastore and VHD's and add them to WHS as new drives. They initialise using Windows Disk management and away ya go

Crucially, I installed ESXi to a 8GB USB stick which means that all the disk storage gets used for VM's rather than the hypervisor. Works very well on the Microserver (Done this on an older one and on the latest N40L equally successfully)

roachyuk · 30 Jan 2012 at 15:22

can you put a drive in hp miceoserver you already have with files on....or do you have to format it in anyway first ?

cheechm · 30 Jan 2012 at 18:56

roachyuk said:
can you put a drive in hp miceoserver you already have with files on....or do you have to format it in anyway first ?

Should be alright.

Scott Salisbury · 30 Jan 2012 at 19:45

tbz_ck said:
Yes, it's pretty much like that.

The only issue you might come against is that WHS 2011 likes to backup the server to another partition. So you need another "datastore" or VM Disk in the same datastore to give you a partition that you can backup the server to (or use external disk via USB passthrough etc)

What I did

500GB drive (1 datastore - WHS 2001 OS and space for other OS drives in my ESXi environment)

1x 1TB Drive (1 large datastore - 1 large VHD - target for shared storage and client PC backups)

1x 1TB drive (1 large datastore -1 large VHD - target for server backups)

Spare slot. You can add a disk whenever, configure a datastore and VHD's and add them to WHS as new drives. They initialise using Windows Disk management and away ya go

Crucially, I installed ESXi to a 8GB USB stick which means that all the disk storage gets used for VM's rather than the hypervisor. Works very well on the Microserver (Done this on an older one and on the latest N40L equally successfully)

Thanks a lot for the reply and posting your set up, very useful.

When you says "1 large datastore -1 large VHD" what does this mean? I know what a datastore is but what is a VHD in this context and how do you use it? Are you just saying that it's one large unpartitioned datastore?

I've read that some people are also installing a NAS (such as freenas) as a VM on their ESXi setup to use as shared network storage across all VMs. Do you think this is something that might help me? I'm trying to work out if this would add any benefit.

Scott.

tbz_ck · 31 Jan 2012 at 09:20

Scott Salisbury said:
Thanks a lot for the reply and posting your set up, very useful.

When you says "1 large datastore -1 large VHD" what does this mean? I know what a datastore is but what is a VHD in this context and how do you use it? Are you just saying that it's one large unpartitioned datastore?

I've read that some people are also installing a NAS (such as freenas) as a VM on their ESXi setup to use as shared network storage across all VMs. Do you think this is something that might help me? I'm trying to work out if this would add any benefit.

Scott.

A datastore is a virtual container for virtual hard disks (in VMWare speak I should have said they were .vmdk files). For example if you have a 1TB physical hard disk you can create on it 1 full capacity datastore or many datastores that slice up the capacity of the physical hard disk.

Within each datastore you can create as many virtual hard disks (.vmdk) as you like and attach them to your virtual machines.

So in my setup I kept it quite simple. For each of my 1TB Disks I created the maximum size datastore I could (931.25 Mb for a 1TB physical disk) and within that I created the maximum size virtual hard disk I could. I then attached this to WHS which finds it as a disk within disk management and you can then format it and assign it a drive letter.

Hope this helps