HP Microserver - Get 'em while they're still cheap

[woohoo]

Bet you feel a bit sick now then hey

lol, nah I may even buy another then again I'm running out of room in my office. Thinking of converting the garage to an office then I can bankrupt myself filling it.

[Durbs]

How loud/quiet are they?

Scrap that, can only take one hdd

Pretty quiet and inconspicuous really.

And to confirm, as said, they can take up to 6 drives although I tend to fit 5; 1 X small SSD as the boot drive attached with a velcro sticky pad under the optical bay and then 4 disks in the RAID flavour of your choice in the front bays.

[Durbs]

Pretty quiet and inconspicuous really.

And to confirm, as said, they can take up to 6 drives although I tend to fit 5; 1 X small SSD as the boot drive attached with a velcro sticky pad under the optical bay and then 4 disks in the RAID flavour of your choice in the front bays.

Also note, if you are fitting an SSD to the 5th SATA port (marked ODD on the motherboard) then HP have hobbled that port by setting it to run in IDE rather than AHCI mode but there is a BIOS mod knocking about that enables AHCI. Ran some benchmarks a couple of days back on the SSD running pre and post BIOS update (I was that bored) and it made a substantial difference.

[quackhandle]

Mine came this morning, amazingly fast delivery only ordered it 24hrs ago!

I plan to use it to build SQL Instances, use all flavors of VM's (hyper-v, VMWare, VirtBox) so I was wondering (since I've not actually owned a server before) what the consensus of the best OS to put on it (don't say Linux!), I have a technet subscription so I was downloading Small Business Server 2011 last night (kept on getting network error, can Chrome handle a 6.4GB download?), but would it be better to simply put Win Server 2012 on it?

TIA

qh

[Durbs]

so I was wondering (since I've not actually owned a server before) what the consensus of the best OS to put on it (don't say Linux!)

Most people tended to use Windows Home Server 2011 as far as I can gather, but the WHS range has now been discontinued. Its (indirect) replacement is 2012 Server Essentials so this is what I use and it runs well. I have also used Windows Storage Server on them in the past.

If you want to play mainly with VM's then take a look at ESXi. For VM use, you'll also want to look at what 16GB memory pairs are supported (the specs state max 8GB but 16GB generally works fine in the N54L, it can be fussy on what make of ram you use though if using > 8GB).

[stek]

Mine came this morning, amazingly fast delivery only ordered it 24hrs ago!

I plan to use it to build SQL Instances, use all flavors of VM's (hyper-v, VMWare, VirtBox) so I was wondering (since I've not actually owned a server before) what the consensus of the best OS to put on it (don't say Linux!), I have a technet subscription so I was downloading Small Business Server 2011 last night (kept on getting network error, can Chrome handle a 6.4GB download?), but would it be better to simply put Win Server 2012 on it?

TIA

qh

ESX is out there, as is Oracle VM Server both bare metal installs and managed remotely.

But really you need some proper disk, more spindles multi controllers - IMHO that will be what will slow it down, hypervisor and guests on one disk and/or controller....

[Platypus]

It can't do LPAR tho, but I knew that, having made that mistake before!

Oh? Why not?

[doodab]

ESX is out there, as is Oracle VM Server both bare metal installs and managed remotely.

But really you need some proper disk, more spindles multi controllers - IMHO that will be what will slow it down, hypervisor and guests on one disk and/or controller....

For a lab machine I'd go with an SSD. You need a lot of spindles to out-IOPS an SSD and you can pick up a couple of them for the price of a decent 8 port SAS controller. You can always stick extra virtual disks on a large mechanical drive if you want to run a storage server or something.

[quackhandle]

Apologies if it is a daft question, but does ESX install direct as the base OS or it is still worth putting 2012 Server Essentials on it then ESX on top of that?

TIA

qh

[stek]

Apologies if it is a daft question, but does ESX install direct as the base OS or it is still worth putting 2012 Server Essentials on it then ESX on top of that?

TIA

qh

ESX first as it is the hyper visor, you will need another PC to manage it from