Yes, I am using it as a NAS. It's on Server 2008 R2.

I was initially looking at the Acer H342 but decided on this because of it's "upgradability".

Didn't the guy at the shop fix the DVD writer for you? They did it for me. It took a while though because of the torq screws and because it's quite small space. Now, I have already taken the DVD writer out because I needed the top space to put the 160GB Seagate boot drive there to make space for the 4 Samsung F4EGs at the bottom.

Anyway, I'm also a newbie. I've no experience with Vail. A little bt of experience in Windows Server. Still learning. Partitioning was a breeze as I used a single 8TB partition and devided to different share directories.

The reason I went with Server 2008 instead of Home Server on this machine is because I can take advantage of the motherboard RAID. This is also the reason why I was not too happy with the Acer as you'll be stuck with Home Server.

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Added on October 18, 2010, 11:33 am

Fan noise is very silent. I can only hear the 4 Samsung F4EG hardisk writing / reading if I put my ear in front of the casing. I don't have any equipment to measure power consumption but for a NAS with a CPU, it should still be pretty low. The Motherboard Monitor software does not really recognise the board / chip but it reads 5.1W at idle and max 9.1W.

I don't have many people connected to the server. I find it plenty fast for my use. I stream 1080p mkv files and even 40Mbit Bluray .m2ts files at 24p to my 46" LCD over wired LAN with no problems while simultaneously running Winrar to achieve files on the RAID 0 array in the background. If I'm not wrong, HP says the N36L is suited for small business not more than 10 people. I was looking for good read and write NAS performance and I find the network performance very good. From the Bandwidth Monitor program, the throughput easily hits the 1GBit LAN limit when transferring files from my other desktop to the server.

Check out some pics and review here;

http://www.tenniswood.co.uk/technology/rev...rver/#more-6595

http://www.tenniswood.co.uk/technology/win...nce-comparison/

I'm running 1 + 2 = 3GB memory. 2GB DDR3 was about RM 100 plus. I installed Server 2008 R2 with 3GB from the start. So I do not have an idea how it performs with 1GB. But I believe still manageable. Even though Server 2008 R2 will run since it meets the minimum requirements, it does not hurt to give more RAM.

As for connection, I always believe in direct wired cable connection. Don't use Wifi for HD streaming. I have a CAT6 cable connected via Cisco GB switch.

You can try Windows Server 2008 R2 or Redhat Linux. No idea about the shutdown times the Linux OS.

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Added on December 18, 2010, 10:37 pm

I think trix said it was ok to run the Microserver with Windows 7. Look at his post.

On a side note, I thought I came across a newspaper advert that that the Microserver is now at RM 1200++ or something like that? The specs remained the same though. 

Just as I suspected, price has gone up a little. Took this two nights ago.

I don't download files using my Microserver though but the network card on the Microserver hits close to 120++ MB/s on transfers from my other PCs. I leave the settings as is and use HP's driver downloaded from the website.

Am running Windows Server 2008 R2 for what it's worth.