I was looking for NAS boxes that weren't expensive but yet offered 4 storage bays in a small footprint. I tried to build my own but often either blow the budget or end up with an ugly casing that does not fit the purpose.

After some looking, I came across a simple NAS box from Acer (H342) with 4 storage bays that comes complete with Windows Home Server for file sharing and runs on low powered dual core Intel Atom with 2GB DDR2 memory and 1TB hardisk for RM 1290.

Just recently, I came across the HP Proliant Microserver box that runs on the low powered AMD Athlon II Neo N36L and comes with 160GB hardisk and 1GB DDR3 RAM at RM 916.



It has 4 storage bays like the H342 but the difference is the HP is has a video out (unlike the H342 which is headless) and supports RAID 0 or RAID 1 from the motherboard chipset via AMD Raidxpert (very similar to Intel Matrix Storage Manager). The downside of this box is that it does not come preinstalled with an OS inside. The HP box supports Windows Server 2008 R2 and Redhat Linux for the budget conscious. Drivers can be downloaded from the HP website.

Sorry for the late reply. I first saw it at All IT in the Curve. Got mine at one of the shops in Digital Mall at Section 14.

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Added on October 11, 2010, 4:35 pmIf you're looking at a budget, the Samsung F4EG is nice. It's 5400rpm and 32MB cache though. Not 64MB as mentioned.

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Added on October 11, 2010, 4:37 pmYes, 7200rpm is always better than 5400rpm but there's always heat / power / longevity vs performance issue. When you factor in that you're limited by the 125 MB/s limit over the Gigabit network, then you're better off with 5400rpm drives for RAID and you can already saturate the line.

Anyway, I think for a mission critical file server for company use, better to buy WD Enterprise line up (i.e. RE4 for 7200 rpm or RE4-GP for 5400 rpm). These drives are built for RAID use. The WD Black drives even though with 5 years warranty are not certified for RAID use because of the absent TLER command. If you plan on using the 2TB WD EARS drives in RAID, becareful. Even QNAP puts a warning.

http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=182&t=33196



This post has been edited by jchue73: Oct 11 2010, 04:37 PM

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".

Congrats man. 4GB extra? You're running 5GB in total? I only got 2Gb extra.

Yes, that's the same shop I bought from. The guy was patient enough to open up the display unit and slide out the motherboard tray to show me how many slots of memory etc. Not to mention that fixing up the Internal DVD Writer / Reader was quite tedious since the screws that the HP uses are all torqx screws.

BTW, did you notice the box that the Internal DVD Writer / Reader came with? It's bomb proof ! It's actually the same kind of packaging that the real Proliant servers come with.

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 amFan 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/

This post has been edited by jchue73: Oct 18 2010, 11:33 AM

I measured 1080p full Bluray m2ts files and they need to be streamed at around 5MB/s or so. The 1080p mkv are much lower at 2 or 3MB/s depending on the decoding. So it's quite light on the network actually. A 100MBit network is more than enough. I decent NAS like from Synology should be able to stream at that speed. So my guess is it's the media player? What player is that?

My playback is through mediaplayer on the PC. I built a SFF Lian Li cube PC V351 and put it in the cabinet near the TV. At that time, I was tempted to buy the small dedicated media players but decided to build a PC for that because of more playback flexibility and because at that time, the dedicated media players were VERY expensive. I will try and stream 1080p HD stuff through my WD Player and see how it goes.

Anyway, I decided on the HP Microserver for my NAS needs not solely for smooth HD playback but because of these 5 things;

1. I can put 4 hardisk in for the ever growing need for space.
2. It's fast when I transfer and store TB of files over the network.
3. It's relatively cheap.
4. It's flexible because of the OS.
5. It's relatively small (smaller than my Lian Li PC V351).

Else, a good Gigabit network backbone and a cheap NAS solution would be fine just for normal HD mkv playback.

I wanted a 4 bay because I already had 2 units of 2-bay NAS (Linksys NMH300 and Buffalo LinkStation Duo) filled up with 2TB hardisks. While the Buffalo was fast and problem free, the Linksys always disconnected when you write big files to it. Reading is fine.

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Added on October 18, 2010, 3:09 pmWhat media player is that? Perhaps cannot decode the video codec or the DTS codec?

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Added on October 18, 2010, 3:10 pmForgot to mention that HP came out with a service advisory on the N36L.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechS...rodTypeId=15351

Basically it shows how to enable NCQ and Write Cache on the RAID array from RaidXpert program.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Oct 18 2010, 03:10 PM

It's very unfortunate that one cannot get Server 2008 R2 to run on the USB stick. Installing ESXi is cool but Server 2008 R2 has Hyper V too. Haven't played with it. Should be interesting.

I made a Ghost image of the OS partition and the hidden partition as well. Should be fast to restore it if required. I actually had to do clean installs a few times because of screw ups. It was fast installing from the USB thumbdrive vs DVD drive but still require some time too. Learned my lesson already.

Yes, 4 hardisks on RAID 0. Oh, for back ups, I do it online. They are not important data anyway. If I were to allocate backup space, I'll go broke.

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.

Ok, understood. Between homeplug and Wifi, stick with homeplug.

If I knew about homeplugs back then, I would have used it instead. Setting up the CAT6 was a little tedious as I had to drill holes through the wall and had to do it when wifey was not around.

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Added on October 19, 2010, 10:46 amIt's not about speed. Especially not burst speeds. It's about sustained speeds which even the best Wifi N tend to drop. The highest 1080p mkv encode would probably set you for not more than 3MB/s. A full m2ts Bluray would be about 5MB/s throughput. So in theory, Wifi G would be enough too but not.

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Added on October 19, 2010, 10:46 amThat's a good suggestion. Play the file with the PC.

140MB/s? Faster than Gigabit speed?

This post has been edited by jchue73: Oct 19 2010, 10:46 AM

Congrats. Perhaps we should start a mini club. Very satisfied with the peformance too. On real world large file transfers, I'm getting about 119MB/s read and about 110MB/s writes on the RAID 0 array.

No idea on the memroy but I recall HP's website stating that the Microserver supports only Unbuffered ECC. So I think the 1MB DDR3 that comes with the Microserver is indeed ECC. I'm lazy to take out and check but if it's convenient for you, you could take dow the part number on the Micron stick (saw the sticker on the module in the shop while the guy was taking out the motherboard tray) and google for it.

Anyway, this was actually the draw back because ECC modules are hard to get and expensive. So to test it out, I asked the shop to put in ordinary DDR3 memory and it booted up ! Thought that if it didn't work, it would give me grounds not to proceed with the purchase since the shop claimes it works with ordinary DDR3.

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Added on October 25, 2010, 3:39 pmWah... 8GB? No idea lah on the ESXi vs Hyper V. I'm not too advanced.

Anyway, I'm trying to check if the eSATA connection at the back of the HP Microserver supports port multiplication. If yes, can get another 4 bay eSATA box to hook it up.

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Added on October 25, 2010, 3:40 pmIf it's anything like the Buffalo Linkstation Duo, the performance is very good. It never drops off the network and it's very consistant. Highly recommended.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Oct 25 2010, 03:43 PM

Thanks for the ECC tip. Yeah, the Micron 1GB stick is mixed with the 2GB Kingston.

Why using soft raid? You have important data? Mine are not so important. It's actually a media server and for those media files that I cherish, I upload them to Hotfile / Rapidshare.

Ok, I actually never thought about care packs for the Microserver. I keep forgetting that it's a HP product. I use to buy quite a bit of carepacks for my company's HP servers. They give a piece of mind. How did you enquire about them? RM 160 for 3 years is bloody cheap.

I too have loads of files. But upload 150 to 170 GB per day 24/7 or so, you should be able to cover quite a bit of data. Not all of them important, right?

I'll PM you if my contact does not reply to me about the Care Packs.

I think booting via eSATA or external USB2 storage would be much faster than thumbdrive. I took out my DVD drive and used a left over bracket from previous machine to mount the Seagate 160GB there instead. Works fine.

Just found out the supplied Micron 1MB DDR3 memory is confirmed to be an ECC stick.

Not my picture.



http://www.micron.com/products/ProductDeta...9JSF12872AZ-1G4

Early this morning, I updated the BIOS on the Microserver to the latest version 2010.09.30 (A) 15 Oct 2010. Had to use a USB stick for this. Don't know what the new BIOS does. Did not go in the BIOS to check but I thought the bootup sequence was faster. Placebo effect?

Why would you want to mod the BIOS? It's already SLIC 2.1 compatible. How else is the Microserver going to run Windows Server 2008 R2 if it's BIOS is not SLIC 2.1?

Anyway, thanks for the info on the hot plug. By right, SATA should be hot pluggable by design if I'm not wrong. 4 hours? What size lah is your RAID 5 array?

Let it be known that the Microserver does not come with OS pre-installed. It's listed by HP as compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2 and Linux Redhat and has drivers for them. So you need to install your own.

Yes, technically you can turn on Active Directory and use it as a domain controller. Of course it's small scale only.

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Added on November 1, 2010, 5:36 pmI know. What I was trying to say is you don't need to go through to a lot of length just to modify the BIOS to get Server 2008 R2 installed... The BIOS already has SLIC 2.1 code.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Nov 1 2010, 05:36 PM

Since my brother-in-law has a MSDNAA account, I manage to download Server 2008 R2 for free.

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Added on November 2, 2010, 11:40 am

How it is possible for HP to provide a server for a price lower than the price of Windows Server 2008 R2? Unfortunately, nothing comes for free in this world.



The DNS323 is very slow. The difference between that and the Microserver would be heaven and earth. You'll be very pleased.



No idea but I do believe they have some HP outlet shops there in LYP? You could try and ask. You could also try All IT in LYP. Their Curve branch had it. Don't see why their LYP branch would not.

Else, try and order it online from HP's website.

No experience in Linux but I believe RaidXpert (required for BIOS level RAID support) can be supported under Linux. Look here;

http://wwwd.amd.com/AMD/SReleaseF.nsf/webl....15~SB8xx~Linux

Unfortunately, there is very minimal stuff on HP's Microserver website when it concerns drivers under Linux.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Nov 2 2010, 11:40 AM

I think abubin was asking if Linux supports the RAID function from the BIOS (RAID 1 or RAID 0). AMD chipsets should be supported but you need to get RAIDXpert installed to support RAID in the OS via BIOS much like Intel's Matrix Manager with an Intel chipset.

No worries. Don't forget that you may want to add some memory too.

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Added on November 2, 2010, 6:15 pmI agree that the Microserver is a bang for the buck for those looking into a above average NAS. Well, the QNAP and Synology devices have their places. Their 2 bay solutions offer very good and fast solutions at slightly higher prices. If performance you're after, they don't dissapoint.

But when you go hit into 4 bay solutions, the QNAP and Synology devices become very expensive. When you compare that the Microserver has more flexibility, it's a no brainer. It would have been excellent if the AMD chipset supported RAID 5 onboard much like the Intel ICHXXR boards.

Anyway, I was very close to getting the Acer H342 homeserver but luckily they did not have that in stock. All this while, I was looking at QNAP and Synology NAS solutions but could never justify and pull a trigger on one. The first time I saw the Microserver at All IT and was very curious about what it could do. For the asking price, I was very sceptical. Did some googling and the flexibility of the Microserver was what attracted me. It's more flexible than the H342. I must say it's been one of my best purchases so far. If the Microserver had been built by some other capalang company, I would have thought twice before committing. But it comes from HP's Proliant server line and my experiences with HP so far has been very positive.

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Added on November 2, 2010, 6:28 pmForgot to ask... What kind of performance are you getting with that RAID 5 array?

My RAID 0 array maxes out the Gigabit connection at about 119MB/s.

Just for kicks, I rar-ed an 8 GB mkv file locally on the Microserver onto the RAID 0 array and it took 4 minutes flat. No compression. Just store. I took the same file and rar-ed it locally on my Quad core Q6600 o/c to 3.2GHz with 6GB memory. It completed the job 20 seconds faster only. That machine was running 2 x 320GB WD AAKS hardisk in RAID 0.

This post has been edited by jchue73: Nov 2 2010, 06:28 PM

Ok. My rationale for upgrading the RAM from the get go is for smooth and fast installation. Furthermore, after you have set up and placed your cube nicely, you would feel very lazy to take out the wires and pull out the motherboard.