HP ProLiant Gen8 G1610T MicroServer - £149 (after cashback)

[Teajunkie]

Compared to my hp54nl is this worth the upgrade or not really?

[Lou_smorals]

Hi
I would say yes if you plan to upgrade the cpu from the celeron and no if you dont, I plan to do that exact upgrade and as the net price is only £119 then I recon the sale of my N54L will go a long way to covering it.
LS

P.S.
you will find comparisons with N54L here. http://homeservershow.com/forums/ind...links/?p=62204

[Mystical_2K]

Compared to my hp54nl is this worth the upgrade or not really?

if your using as a media server for XBMC and storing a MySQL XBMC database etc. then no i would not spend the money to upgrade, however if your doing anything more intensive then yeah its worth a punt, especially as you will get money back on your N54L

[evilsatan]

I know the answer to the first question is yes, but as a noob with this stuff I would like some help before I decide to jump in.

* I gather this would be a fantastic replacement for my NAS box and in doing so I would never look back?
* Can I add disks/memory as I go along
* Without the iLO license is it still usable. (A guy at work pointed out that Tesco marketplace have these for £54! http://www.tesco.com/direct/hewlett-...s/329-1618.prd)
* Would this replace what my MacMini does now (Sickbeard, VPN Server, SABNZBD, Plex etc..)
* To get me up and running, how much would I be looking at for a basic set up (including discount).

Thanks

It is far more flexible that a NAS when you use a server OS because:
Yes you can add disks and memory as you go along, if you needed data redundancy you would use Drivepool with folder duplication. I don't think you can add disks to the RAID unless you had two RAID1 arrays (for redundancy) or RAID0 (no redundancy) and installed 2 disks at a time, just check that the B120i controller can configure two arrays.
I'm not sure on the exact benefits of iLO but you don't need it for the server to function.
Yes it can have any Windows software installed to it if you use a Windows server OS.
Server £120, comes with 2GB RAM which should get you started. Drives will depend on the capacity you are looking for, I'm not sure if Drivepool can add the OS drive to the pool, if it can then start with 2 drives, install the OS onto drive 1 then add drive 1 and 2 to the pool with folder duplication on. That's about it, just hook up your existing monitor, keyboard etc. to get it set up.

The internal SATA port cannot be used to boot from when RAID is set in the BIOS, I think it can when AHCI is set though but check this. You can boot from MicroSD, check the speeds though as probably a bad idea ot boot Windows Server from SD, there is an internal USB port but I suspect it is USB2 so wouldn't want to boot a full server OS from that.

[evilsatan]

Pair the server with the 3TB drives here and you have a very cheap high capacity setup!
http://digital-forums.com/showthread...ains-to-be-had!

[Lou_smorals]

Hi
Well My N45L was probably the best tech I ever bought, gets used everyday. Nobody in my house watches normal tv anymore, every tv in the house watching Plex. I would love to do more with the server, connect it to my ip cameras, exchange server, PBX and lots of other hair brained schemes.
Anyway getting to my point, I have bought one of these new G8's and 16 gig of ram. I am going to put O/S on a ssd and have four WD red 3tb in (taking 3 of them from my N54L). I am going to upgrade the CPU to a Xeon....the big question is... do I just stick with windows Home Sever 2011 and nick licence from the N54L or do I use Xpenology, Some Linux distro that doesnt have issues with the raid card, windows server 2012 (cannot really afford), Unraid, some other O/S? or do I try VMware EXSi and put several on.
Please no shoehorn linux / flag pole posts ha ha.
many thanks
LS

[evilsatan]

Hi
Well My N45L was probably the best tech I ever bought, gets used everyday. Nobody in my house watches normal tv anymore, every tv in the house watching Plex. I would love to do more with the server, connect it to my ip cameras, exchange server, PBX and lots of other hair brained schemes.
Anyway getting to my point, I have bought one of these new G8's and 16 gig of ram. I am going to put O/S on a ssd and have four WD red 3tb in (taking 3 of them from my N54L). I am going to upgrade the CPU to a Xeon....the big question is... do I just stick with windows Home Sever 2011 and nick licence from the N54L or do I use Xpenology, Some Linux distro that doesnt have issues with the raid card, windows server 2012 (cannot really afford), Unraid, some other O/S? or do I try VMware EXSi and put several on.
Please no shoehorn linux / flag pole posts ha ha.
many thanks
LS

You cannot use the B120i RAID mode and boot from the internal SATA port so you wouldn't be able to boot from your SSD in your proposed setup if you intended to use RAID rather than Drivepool. However the B120i doesn't support RAID5 so IMO you would be better off with Drivepool anyway as it's so flexible, I will probably make a thread soon about the experiments I have been running as I have a few of these Gen8 servers in at the moment which I am setting up for clients. I am not sure but you might be able to boot to the internal SATA port if you set the B120i to AHCI which won't affect a Drivepool setup and if you intend to use Scanner too this should allow SMART data to be passed to the OS. The SATA port is likely to be SATA2 though

I will be getting an HP P222 RAID controller for mine, setting up 4x3TB WD Red drives in RAID5, booting to ESXi on the internal MicroSD slot and then running multiple VMs as it is meant as a testbed for me, Overcarl also suggested that I then use my 40GB SATA2 Intel SSD as a cache drive which sounds perfect to me. If you don't need the flexibility to install Windows apps then Xpenology is probably a good idea, whenever supplying NAS drives I try to get Synology as the GUI is great and support is good.

If you are upgrading to a Xeon (something I hope to do in the future but not for now) then I would be swaying towards the ESXi route, and seeing as you will have so much processing power and RAM I would say you don't want the storage to be the bottleneck so go for a RAID controller too. The P222 is the only officially supported card but there are other HP cards that will work in there.

[Lou_smorals]

Hi
Thank you so much. I currently run the following in my N54L - Couch potato, Sabnzbd, Sonarr & Headphones as well as obviously PMS. I was also looking to automate my IP cameras around house and garden with some Onvif supporting software. maybe use mailserver.
you have given me some food for thought although not bought O/S or Xeon yet.
thanks again
LS

[Lou_smorals]

You cannot use the B120i RAID mode and boot from the internal SATA port so you wouldn't be able to boot from your SSD in your proposed setup if you intended to use RAID rather than Drivepool. However the B120i doesn't support RAID5 so IMO you would be better off with Drivepool

Hi m8
this guy seems to have it
http://homeservershow.com/forums/ind...-hba-ssd-esxi/

I have ordered a Xeon e3 1220L so cannot wait till I get this going properly.
LS

[Lou_smorals]

Hi
Update time....and public shaming for me... the words "out of depth" spring to mind, bear in mind I am used to N54L and windows home server 2011 please befor judging.
Observations of a newbie, wow fan sounds like a harrier jump jet landing when booting up - tbh its very loud. Ilo jesus, not only do I not understand it and why I need it it makes my boot up time about 10 minutes, surely I must be doing something wrong?
As I am still waiting for my extra memory and Xeon to arrive (Easter tsk) I could not wait to mess with it and loaded Xpenology on it....School boy error (you would think I would know better from clone days) I did an update from control panel and now no drives seen and it does funny things to my network......Back to the drawing board.
How come when you are doing all this its annoying , frustrating and time wasting but when you have finished succesfully it was fun?
Cheers
LS

[evilsatan]

In the thread you linked to he is booting an SSD off of the B120i controller as he is using a PCI raid controller for his disks so it's the same problem I mentioned regarding the internal SATA port.

it takes a horribly long time to boot but such is the case with many servers I have used, the Gen7 was quick but lacked features . I'm not quite sure of the use of iLO, I used my iPad to access it but didn't mess with anything but remote power off and remote on.

With all all of your intended applications I would be tempted to run a Windows OS even though most your apps run on NAS devices. Also switch from Sickbeard to Sonarr. I can't see xpenology making the most of a Xeon CPU but I may have overlooked something.

[Lou_smorals]

Hiya m8
thanks for reply, I have got Xpenology on it now, but when memory and CPU arrive i want to load Exsi so I can try a couple of OS not just Xpenology.
My old N54L is still running my plex etc and I do use Sonarr on it not sickbeard on that. This is first time I have seen Xpenology and not got my head around it yet, but looks good. I not sure if the apps I use are on there, or can be added by adding repositories.
All in all I am a better place than I was yesterday, I was well out of my comfort zone and getting more and more frustrated at my lack of knowledge. This is why I love it here, hobbiests like myself can learn from professional guys like yourself.
I would like to use my server for far more, just not sure what yet. Definitly would like my own email server and previously messed with voip and PBX just to learn (didnt need them, just like tinkering).
Thanks again
LS

[QfanatiQ]

What are you looking at when fully loaded?
I have often looked at these and the nl range, but tehn always thought, it would (for me) end up being a money pit. However, I keep looking back and thinking it would be a good source for my media and all the home to connect to.

Cheers.....Q

[evilsatan]

Hiya m8
thanks for reply, I have got Xpenology on it now, but when memory and CPU arrive i want to load Exsi so I can try a couple of OS not just Xpenology.
My old N54L is still running my plex etc and I do use Sonarr on it not sickbeard on that. This is first time I have seen Xpenology and not got my head around it yet, but looks good. I not sure if the apps I use are on there, or can be added by adding repositories.
All in all I am a better place than I was yesterday, I was well out of my comfort zone and getting more and more frustrated at my lack of knowledge. This is why I love it here, hobbiests like myself can learn from professional guys like yourself.
I would like to use my server for far more, just not sure what yet. Definitly would like my own email server and previously messed with voip and PBX just to learn (didnt need them, just like tinkering).
Thanks again
LS

Im learning on the server too, when I get some time I will try to get a dedicated thread going for setups and advice. It sounds like VMs will be the way to go for you as you can then run multiple OS for different projects, you can use snapshots and easily start again. I am completely new to esxi, I haven't installed it yet as I want to get my raid controller in there first so looks like we will be going through that learning curve together!

What are you looking at when fully loaded?
I have often looked at these and the nl range, but tehn always thought, it would (for me) end up being a money pit. However, I keep looking back and thinking it would be a good source for my media and all the home to connect to.

Cheers.....Q

Depends on on your usage mate, server £120 after cashback, you can use Drivepool if you want to keep the cost down, buy it with scanner and that's $35 for a lifetime licence. Add the cost of 4 hard drives depending on the capacity but I recommend WD Red drives (or other enterprise/NAS drives). You can use the stock processor and the included 2GB ram to get you started. So all in all its a low start up cost with future upgrades possible, if you will not be serving too many clients and you just want to automate and store your media then I can't see a cpu upgrade being necessary.

Also so if you use Drivepool then there is no need to buy 4 drives from the off, just add a couple of drives if you want to set up data duplication for redundancy and simply add the other drives when you need them or they are on offer.

[QfanatiQ]

Im learning on the server too, when I get some time I will try to get a dedicated thread going for setups and advice. It sounds like VMs will be the way to go for you as you can then run multiple OS for different projects, you can use snapshots and easily start again. I am completely new to esxi, I haven't installed it yet as I want to get my raid controller in there first so looks like we will be going through that learning curve together!



Depends on on your usage mate, server £120 after cashback, you can use Drivepool if you want to keep the cost down, buy it with scanner and that's $35 for a lifetime licence. Add the cost of 4 hard drives depending on the capacity but I recommend WD Red drives (or other enterprise/NAS drives). You can use the stock processor and the included 2GB ram to get you started. So all in all its a low start up cost with future upgrades possible, if you will not be serving too many clients and you just want to automate and store your media then I can't see a cpu upgrade being necessary.

Also so if you use Drivepool then there is no need to buy 4 drives from the off, just add a couple of drives if you want to set up data duplication for redundancy and simply add the other drives when you need them or they are on offer.

I think this may be a covert buy later this year. Thats very good to know about both the hard drives and CPU.

When does a CPU upgrade get any consideration?
Cheers.....Q

[Lou_smorals]

hi
i think cpu upgrade needed if you are going to use EXSi but u deffo need memory upgrade but ECC memory expensive stuff.
Evilsatan i cannot wait for your thread on it, i am struggling out of my depth.
i tried to update xpenology using the method given on xpenology forum and had epic fail, after reboot it wouldnt see drives and my whole network went berserk. Now loaded ESXi lol....whole Easter playing ha ha ha.
LS


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[Lou_smorals]

Im learning on the server too, when I get some time I will try to get a dedicated thread going for setups and advice. It sounds like VMs will be the way to go for you as you can then run multiple OS for different projects, you can use snapshots and easily start again. I am completely new to esxi, I haven't installed it yet as I want to get my raid controller in there first so looks like we will be going through that learning curve together!
.

What Raid controller are you looking for, the P222 or ??
Many thanks
LS

[evilsatan]

The simple answer is its down to the processing power required for what you are doing, the integrated single core/ARM chips in NAS devices are sufficient to just run couchpotato, sabnzbd and to serve the media but if more people need to stream at the same time it will require more processing power.

If if you wanted to run multiple VMs then you would need more RAM and probably a better processor (although I will use the stock cpu to begin with).

What at do you want the server to do for you?

[QfanatiQ]

What at do you want the server to do for you?

Well, I was hoping to build some kind of media server to be honest. Thats all i tinker with nower days myself and something I have alwas been keen on having in one central place that anyone can access. When I say anyone, its either me or my missus, at worst, two of us at any one time. We currently have a huge array of different HD's and whats on what is a mess etc etc etc.

I was originally looking at an XBMC or something. simialre. Music, Film, TV. I guess managed family albums.

Cheers.....Q

[Lou_smorals]

Hi
If money was the issue and you wanted to avoid a "money pit" I would just get somebodies Gen 7 (many will be selling now to buy gen8) so the N54L, hopefully somebody will have already added the memory, they come with an O/S hard drive you just add media drives and I would use Plex rather than KODI (XBMC) and you can add the sports channels to that (TSNgo) and if you were a VIP here you could join the forum server.
You deffo dont need all the Gen 8 guff, iLO and bells and whistles for a media server, the N54L pisses that without breaking sweat.
Hope that helps
LS