HP ProLiant MicroServer N36L Owner's Thread

[psikey]

Decided not to do a separate thread and just post the photos with comments in here:

All my bits ready

Did change the fan for an Ultra Silent Akasa but had to take back out as different connector/wiring

Power splitter cable (only had 1 molex to 2 SATA so need to get 1 to 3 SATA

The little RocketRAID card from a WD 3TB drive pack I bought a while ago. Had to trim off bottom of bracket.

Extra SATA cabled routed to back and two 2.5" Samsung 320GB drives attached with sponge double sided sticky pads to DVD drive.
Did make a bootable USB of Windows Home Server 2011 so I could disconnect the DVD and power both 2.5" drives until I get the 1-3 power splitter.

System configures as RAID1 for OS using 2 x 320GB 2.5" Toshiba drives and RAID5 for Media Storage using 4 x 2TB 3.5" WD RE4-GP drives

Will do the Acronis Image of the OS tonight before I start messing around with configuring & installing stuff so I can quickly get back to my starting point.

I used the Shift-F10 trick to get the Workgroup name changed to KEYNET which my network uses. Not necessary but wanted in showing KEYNET not WORKGROUP.

Once I get the rebate back I'll have only spent £139 as everything else I had already (had drives from the QNAP I sold). Added a 4GB RAM to the existing 1GB for 5GB total which should be more than enough!

 

[AlpsUk]

Anybody upgraded the RAM on this and wants to sell the supplied 1gb stick I have a wanted ad in the classifieds.

http://www.avforums.com/forums/computer-classified-adverts/1466813-wanted-1gb-ecc-ddr3-memory-hp-proliant-microserver.html

 

[makeluv247]

Well, i found out why I had no display. The red light (behind the HP logo) flashes when there's an error. The RAM is unsupported. Apparently, the microserver does support ECC, but not buffered ECC, must be unbuffered. Off to ebay with this then...

 

[chrisuk01]

Can anyone confirm if this is true? As I was hoping to power off and on the server using WOL? and schedules.

apparantly the N36L bios doesn't support S3 suspend. which is really disappointing as I was hoping to sleep it during the day when not in use. It should support hibernation though, you might need to go into the BIOS to check its switched on.

 

[richard plumb]

apparantly not. It should support WOL but not S3. TBH it doesn't look like a big saving in terms of power, the PSU is still drawing 17W when switched off! Around 30W in idle mode (disks spun down)

You could look at shutting it down during the day, that should be schedulable. And WOL should in theory work from S5.

 

[mcbunny]

Wol works fine and hibernation works too but its slow

 

[stiscooby]

Regarding WHS 2011 and RAID 5............ does anyone know, if I had disks in a RAID 5 volume created by WHS 2011 then say the OS disk died, can you then re-install WHS and then re-detect/re-add the existing RAID 5 volume? i.e. get your RAID 5 volume back without losing data?

I guess you must be able to otherwise it would be a bit pointless? Only ever used hardware RAID before so just wanted to check how windows RAID works.

Oh, also, is there any performance increase/decrease in using WHS RAID 5 as opposed to using hard drives in standard "stand-alone" form (in no RAID at all)?

Cheers

 

[psikey]

Regarding WHS 2011 and RAID 5............ does anyone know, if I had disks in a RAID 5 volume created by WHS 2011 then say the OS disk died, can you then re-install WHS and then re-detect/re-add the existing RAID 5 volume? i.e. get your RAID 5 volume back without losing data?

I guess you must be able to otherwise it would be a bit pointless? Only ever used hardware RAID before so just wanted to check how windows RAID works.

Oh, also, is there any performance increase/decrease in using WHS RAID 5 as opposed to using hard drives in standard "stand-alone" form (in no RAID at all)?

Cheers

Yes. It initially shows as a Foreign volume which you can import. Think you need to make sure disks are in correct order.

 

[richard plumb]

Wol works fine and hibernation works too but its slow

what OS? Some are saying linux/unix might have issues with drivers. Might be better supported in windows though

 

[mcbunny]

Vortexbox fedora 14

 

[jhunt1977]

apparantly not. It should support WOL but not S3. TBH it doesn't look like a big saving in terms of power, the PSU is still drawing 17W when switched off! Around 30W in idle mode (disks spun down)

You could look at shutting it down during the day, that should be schedulable. And WOL should in theory work from S5.

How comes the PSU draws so much power on standby !

Has anyone verified this ?

If you are worried about power consumption, you could always upgrade the PSU to a Pico PSU.

LinITX.com - 12V 150W PicoPSU-150-XT

This is probably one of the most efficient PSU available, it means more space is available inside the case and less fan noise ! .

 

[RyanJc]

Same problem here. Different 4GB RAM to you, but cannot get Windows to start with this plugged in (either paired with the 1GB or alone). Windows memory test says everything is ok, just trying a startup repair with the windows install disk. Fingers crossed. I presume you have x64 windows 7?

Yeah 64 bit ive done the bios update but havent tried the 4 gig stick yet! Have you had any luck with yours mate?

 

[djquik1]

Got my MSI GT520 installed and the 4gb memory from Kikatek.com.

Memory works fine and is picked up as 4gb during bootup and Server 2008 r2.

However, can't get the card to be detected in windows. I've connected it with hdmi and I get a picture but nothing in device manager regarding the graphics card.

Any ideas?

 

[AlpsUk]

Got my MSI GT520 installed and the 4gb memory from Kikatek.com.

Memory works fine and is picked up as 4gb during bootup and Server 2008 r2.

However, can't get the card to be detected in windows. I've connected it with hdmi and I get a picture but nothing in device manager regarding the graphics card.

Any ideas?

Have you pushed down the card far enough?

 

[djquik1]

I've taken the card back out and in again a number of time. It clicks into place but Server 2008 just doesn't see it. But I can get an image on the screen with the hdmi port

Device manager states: Standard VGA graphics adapter

Have you pushed down the card far enough?

 

[mcbunny]

That's what it should say until you install driver

 

[theronkinator]

I've taken the card back out and in again a number of time. It clicks into place but Server 2008 just doesn't see it. But I can get an image on the screen with the hdmi port

Device manager states: Standard VGA graphics adapter

That's the card, you need to install the nvidia drivers.

 

[psikey]

Didn't realise you could do hardware RAID 10!

 

[chrisuk01]

have finally setup sickbeard / xbmx / sabnzb on my current PC - intel pentium 4 3.8 dual core with 2 gig of ram.

The processing part for sickbeard, is using 100% CPU.

Looking at the specs of the HP this is dual core and is half the speed. Is anyone running the above, and if so how have you found the processing part of sickbeard?

 

[richard plumb]

what processing?

I have sabnzd and sickbeard running. It was a little slow with initial scanning, but its been fine since. TBH it might take a bit longer to process, but its just renaming and moving a file, no big deal.

Worth considering a separate drive though - even a small one just for temp downloads, and then sabnzbd/sickbeard can move final content to the array. And if you set the scan times to be fairly far apart, the drive can still spin down to save power/noise. I have sickbeard set to 360 (every 6 hours, thats the max) and sabnzbd checks RSS feeds every 480 minutes.

sab can take a few minutes to unpack things. Seems to take a couple of minutes per GB (I had one repair take 15 minutes). But the server is sitting there doing it in the background - thats what its there for.

 

[New Start Neil]

Wow-so much info here!

I've got my N36L and I'm planning to use it is a file/media server.

Here's what I'm thinking of doing and I wondered if you guys could tell me if it sounds feasible or not please?

• Get the Icy Box IB-172SK-B to go in the optical drive space.
• Get an Intel 40GB 320 Series SSD (SSDSA2CT040G310) to go in the Icy caddy and run that as the boot drive (Windows 7)-this might be a bit big for an O/S, but it seems to be the smallest capacity drive I can find.
• Put the 250 gig drive that came with Proliant in the ICYBox caddy for storage.
• Transfer the 1.5TB drive that's currently attached to my Popcorn Hour A200 (via USB) in bay 1 of the N36L.
• Put 3 x Samsung 2TB drives in the remaining 3 bays.
• Maybe get a 4 gig USB flash drive and use it as Readyboost.

Phew!

How does that sound?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/40gb...flash-read-200mb-s-write-45mb-s-3700-iops-oem

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/icy-...ta-and-1x-35-sata-hdd-with-easyswap-mechanism

 

[wiz]

The Icy is 22.99 @ amazon inc del!

Installed mine yesterday and it wouldn't boot. After a bit of faffing it boots fine now

 

[djquik1]

Got the card installed - Right clicked and updated the driver. However, it will not play 1080p files. Its just very choppy. Do I need to make any changes to enable 1080p support?

That's what it should say until you install driver

 

[theronkinator]

What operating system/software player.

It has to support hardware decoding to work.

 

[djquik1]

I'm running VLC on Server 2008 r2.

Thanks for your help

What operating system/software player.

It has to support hardware decoding to work.