neilt0

IF you are going to virtualize.

I missed your post until now, for some reason. I put another 2GB in mine because I'm currently running Windows 7 on it. Eventually, mine will go up to 16GB as it will be a VM machine. If you use stock unRAID, 2GB will be enough. More RAM can be useful for Dockers and plugins. I have a 2.5" boot drive in the ODD space, connected to the Molex hidden below using a splitter and the SATA connection on the motherboard. That is due to be replaced later this month with an SSD. The chipset on the motherboard only has SATAIII on 2 ports, so that's bays 1 and 2 of the coldswap bays. I may buy a caddy to use my SSD in bay 1. I have some photos of what I've added which I'll post in the build post above. ETA: Build post updated: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40559.msg382645#msg382645

It has no bearing. I switched to AHCI mode, as the RAID will not be used. I used the ISO update in auto mode to update the BIOS for the motherboard and iLO. My thread has more info that may be of use: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40559.0

SuperNews is GigaNews without the price. They use GN servers and GN is the gold standard. They do get DMCA takedowns, but most do. Up to about 1,000 to 1500 days, it's pretty complete. Every NSP has holes, that's why you use a backup.

I've used every usenet NSP and stuck with SuperNews (see my sig). I have AW as a backup, but only as a block account.

You can, but there's no point any more - using RAM to build the RAR before writing to disk is now built in as articlecache.

If you want to minimise writes and/or speed up downloading, I'd use the built in "article cache" feature, not changing the location of temp. Here are my settings: Full size: http://i.imgur.com/3ykt0iK.png 1024MB (1GB) is plenty, I think. I have 8GB RAM in my server. You want to set it so that nzbget can download around 1-2 RARs in to RAM and not hit the hard drive. It's rare to see 500MB RARs. I have seen 1GB RARs, but that's even rarer, so I set mine to 1GB to allow a maximum of 2 RARs to be in RAM until they are written to disk. If you have a crazy fast download speed, you could increase it, but at 152mbps, that's enough for me. You can look at nzbget's stats to see how much RAM it's using at a time: In this case, the NZB has 200MB RARs and nzbget is using 200MB article cache for the first RAR in memory and then about 100MB cache until the first RAR is written. Slower drive and fast internet means you will need more cache. If you are using an SSD, then 2x maximum RAR size should be plenty -- so maximum of 1 or 2GB.

So, I bought the Gen8 and updated the Answers post: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=40559.msg382643#msg382643 If you're in the UK and can find one, the Gen8 is on a very good deal right now -- around £180 with £80 cashback until the end of June (2 or 3 days left). The Gen7 had a similar deal, but that went on for years. This might be different, as Dabs is showing as EOL and ServerPlus's site crashed, so I don't know if they have any. If you can find one, I highly recommend it. Even though I'll end up replacing the CPU and RAM, it's still a great deal IMO. More on the deal: http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-gen8-microserver-179-94-now-99-after-80-cashback-4-95-delivery-184-89-delivered-2217762

nzbget uses less CPU and RAM. It can parcheck a 50GB NZB in 10 seconds. Even if you have lots of CPU and RAM, once you start using VMs, you might appreciate nzbget freeing up resources for other use. As broadband speeds go up, some apps can't keep up. When you get to 152mbps, 300mbps or even 1Gbps you need all the efficiency you can get.

Use code CTWENTY I just got a graphics card for a new build from Dabs via eBay for 20% off More info: http://www.hotukdeals.com/vouchers/20-off-ebay-using-promo-code-when-spending-20-using-paypal-2226753 Only until midnight tonight, so hurry.

I've been running this card with 6 for a long time. I think I have one in both servers. Can't remember. It's an odd choice as a new purchase, unless you got it cheap?

I have two of these. You may need a BIOS upgrade to support large drives (2TB+).

Thanks, gc. That last point RE: AHCI was specifically about the Gen8 HP. It has all sorts of provisioning and iLo and ACUs and all sorts, so it's not your average Pee Cee....

Reserved

Reserved

Build post I added a low-profile Sapphire Radeon HD5450 for Windows 7. The onboard VGA is pretty awful: 2.5" drive at the top, using the SATA port on the motherboard and "hidden" Molex.

Questions post 1. What are the pros and cons of going with an ESXi build vs. a KVM (unraid-based VM)? I'm leaning towards ESXi, but is KVM "better"? If so, how? Most of my drives will be unRAID-dedicated, so that may help. 2. Assuming I upgrade from a Celeron to a Xeon CPU, can I pass through "everything" I want to in to a Windows 7 VM (ESXi or KVM) with no penalty and thus giving the Win7 machine "direct" access the hardware? e.g. LAN port, GPU, USB ports etc 2a. Do I need qualified hardware to be able to pass through? Does the RAM matter? Can I pass through this GPU with no issues? Sapphire Technology AMD Radeon HD 5450 650Mhz 1GB DDR3 PCI-Express DVI (Low Profile) 2b. Does the onboard (crappy) Matrox G200 GPU support 1280x768? I may hold off the GPU upgrade initially and do have a monitor that I can use with that for a while. 3. This is the higher speed RAM that I'm looking at: http://www.ebuyer.com/393263-kingston-8gb-1600mhz-ddr3-ecc-hp-server-kth-pl316e-8g Is there a benefit to buying a "matched" pair, or will 2 separate 8GB DIMMs work as quickly in that machine? I read somewhere about dual reads or somesuch! 4. There was an issue with the initial firmware such that if the onboard "Smart Array B120i" storage controller was set to AHCI instead of RAID, the iLO fan management would kick in the fan to high speed because it couldn't read the drive temperatures. Apparently, that has been fixed in later BIOS versions. Has this been confirmed? 4a. When using (for example) a setup with 1x SSD dedicated to Win7 and 4x drives dedicated to unRAID, should AHCI or a "RAID0" (it's not RAID0) setup be used? Does it make an difference?

Answers post 2a. Do I need qualified hardware to be able to pass through? Does the RAM matter? Can I pass through this GPU with no issues? Sapphire Technology AMD Radeon HD 5450 650Mhz 1GB DDR3 PCI-Express DVI (Low Profile) A: I did buy the 5450 GPU, albeit I'm not using it in a VM. 2b. Does the onboard (crappy) Matrox G200 GPU support 1280x768? I may hold off the GPU upgrade initially and do have a monitor that I can use with that for a while. A: It does not! However, it's pretty useful for providing the graphics support for iLO4 (Remote Console). Remote Console is very nice. 3. This is the higher speed RAM that I'm looking at: http://www.ebuyer.com/393263-kingston-8gb-1600mhz-ddr3-ecc-hp-server-kth-pl316e-8g Is there a benefit to buying a "matched" pair, or will 2 separate 8GB DIMMs work as quickly in that machine? I read somewhere about dual reads or somesuch! A: I used one of the 2GB ECC DIMMs from a Gen7 Microserver and that works, getting me 4GB for now. 4. There was an issue with the initial firmware such that if the onboard "Smart Array B120i" storage controller was set to AHCI instead of RAID, the iLO fan management would kick in the fan to high speed because it couldn't read the drive temperatures. Apparently, that has been fixed in later BIOS versions. Has this been confirmed? A: This has been fixed with the latest BIOS. I used the "Full ISO" to upgrade the iLO BIOS and the motherboard BIOS and there's no issue with the fan running at high speed. It runs at 14% pretty much all the time, even at high CPU load and is very quiet. I haven't tried maxing out the CPU for long period yet. 4a. When using (for example) a setup with 1x SSD dedicated to Win7 and 4x drives dedicated to unRAID, should AHCI or a "RAID0" (it's not RAID0) setup be used? Does it make an difference? A: I used AHCI and can't think of a good reason to use the RAID modes with unRAID and a Windows VM.

I put together a couple of nice Gen7 MicroServers (per my sig): http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11585.0 That thread has had 305,978 Views (the highest view count of any thread in the "unRAID Compulsive Design" forum). The Gen7 HP MicroServers were really popular -- HP said they have sold "hundreds of thousands" of them. I'm now looking to put together a Gen8 setup, but this time the setup will be quite different. My plan is to (eventually) build the server up to be VM-based (in some way -- more on that later) and I'd run unRAID, but also use it as a Windows 8 workstation for audio and video editing. My initial plan is to buy the 712317-421 SKU (http://www8.hp.com/uk/en/products/ups/product-detail.html?oid=5384977) and upgrade it by adding a Xeon CPU, 16GB of ECC RAM, an SSD and a GPU. Then migrate hard drives from my older MicroServer in to a new unRAID array. My original thread was all answers, with few questions from me! This time, as things are more complex, I'm adding posts in this thread containing questions and answers. There is plenty of information out there and Weebotech has posted some good information here, too, but there are still quite a few questions I have. Hopefully people here will have some of those answers, but if not, I will also go over to other forums etc. to find out and post the answers here.

I run 6 on 2 Microservers. It's fine.

I have two Gen7 Microservers. One has 8 drives. 7 are internal: 4 in internal bays 2 in an X-swing 1 2.5" cache drive under the x-swing 1 in an external caddy I use an (old-ish) Adaptec 1430SA to connect the extra drives. 7 of the drives are 4TB and the next upgrade will be to 8TB drives. I like the Microservers so much, I have no plans to switch to other hardware.

128,000TB. I believe that's the current 48-bit LBA BIOS limit. Is this also true for the N36L? I'm thinking of upgrading my 1.5TB drives to 4-6TB WD Red depending on what deal I can get. N36L, N40L and N54L are all the same basic model. I have 2TB drives in my N36L and 4TB drives in my N54L. The 8TB Seagate Archive drive is a better deal than most 6TB NAS drives out there from what I can tell.

There are several DIMMs that get you to 16GB in the G7, but they weren't cheap last time I looked, so I stuck with 8GB.

Good luck putting an 800W PSU in a Microserver! :-) I do have an 850W PSU in one of my older servers, but I prefer using two Microservers with a small number of high capacity drives in each.

There should already be a plugin that works, but they're not as crucial now.