MicroServer N36L/N40L/N54L - 6 Drive Edition


Recommended Posts

Nice setup.

 

A little off topic. what is the max resolution on that portable monitor?

 

I have been looking for something like that for a while.

I have a rack mounted mac mini server that gets used offsite quite often. most of time it needs no monitor. but every now and then we need to put a monitor on it. We found out that none of the normal portable USB monitors work as the primary/only display on OSx. the HDMI of this one should work for us.

 

 

1366x768. It's made for VGA, HDMI and MHL, Battery or USB Power. Audio input too.

Link to comment

For those interested, I just purchased a N54L.

I'm able to see 16GB of ram with the following chips.

Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT102464BA1339

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148466

 

Nice to see another MicroServer owner!

 

In case you hadn't seen all the discussion on forums.overclockers.com.au , there are some sets of RAM that work in the MicroServer until you either reboot or power off and re-power (I can't remember which).

 

I suggest you do a few (5-10) cycles of soft rebooting and hard power cycling and each time check that the BIOS sees all 16GB. As you're only booting in to the BIOS, it shouldn't take long.

 

There are reports that Patriot RAM works, and I think one or two other types, but most 8GB DIMMs do not work -- the HP Microserver doesn't officially support 16GB.

 

Cheers,

 

Neil.

Link to comment

For those interested, I just purchased a N54L.

I'm able to see 16GB of ram with the following chips.

Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT102464BA1339

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148466

 

Nice to see another MicroServer owner!

 

In case you hadn't seen all the discussion on forums.overclockers.com.au , there are some sets of RAM that work in the MicroServer until you either reboot or power off and re-power (I can't remember which).

 

I suggest you do a few (5-10) cycles of soft rebooting and hard power cycling and each time check that the BIOS sees all 16GB. As you're only booting in to the BIOS, it shouldn't take long.

 

There are reports that Patriot RAM works, and I think one or two other types, but most 8GB DIMMs do not work -- the HP Microserver doesn't officially support 16GB.

 

Cheers,

 

Neil.

Good info..

I Have been pretty successful with 2x Samsung 8GiB ECC Unbufferd UDIMMs... but i have not powered it on and off more then a dozen times since I installed it.

 

 

1366x768. It's made for VGA, HDMI and MHL, Battery or USB Power. Audio input too.

 

Ok, about the same as 14-15" laptop. thanks for the info. that should work... I'll probably get one when I get back stateside.

Link to comment

For those interested, I just purchased a N54L.

...

I'm using an addonics SIL3132 card for external eSATA access to a Sans Digital PM Unit.

Have you tried plugging the SansDigital into the MicroServer's eSATA port? [surprise!! :)]

I plan to swap it out with a SYBA SD-PEX40031 so I can use the internal SATA ports for the upper two bays.

Seems a pity to put a PCIe v1 card (possibly further constrained by a PCI dependency) into a PCIe v2 slot, though I empathize with the attraction for that card's connectivity [2 SATA + 2 eSATA].

In the mean time I am preclearing 4 drives simultaneously. They seem to be running at max speed.

 

Two of the drives are 3TB 7200 RPM Seagates - ST3000DM001

I was getting 170MB/s on the first 1TB of the drive, now I'm at 155MB/s.

For the Hitachi 3TB 5400 RPM drives HDS5C3030ALA630, I started at 130MB/s and I'm at 115MB/s after the first 1TB.

 

Nifty lil machine.

Yes, they are. The MicroServer's 6 port SATA subsystem (via the SB820M SouthBridge) is pretty decent. You're still ~100 MB/s shy of saturation [(2x170)+(2x130) = 600]. I measure about a 675-700 MB/s ceiling (on a N40L).

 

Envying your 50% faster CPU ...

 

 

Link to comment

For those interested, I just purchased a N54L.

I'm able to see 16GB of ram with the following chips.

Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory Model CT2KIT102464BA1339

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148466

 

I get 4392.57 bogomips

 

I also installed this unit up top so I could swap drives in an out fast.

SYBA SY-MRA55006 5.25" Dual Bay Mobile Rack for both 2.5" and 3.25" SATA HDD, Plus 2 USB 3.0 Port

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998184

 

I'm using an addonics SIL3132 card for external eSATA access to a Sans Digital PM Unit.

 

I plan to swap it out with a SYBA SD-PEX40031 so I can use the internal SATA ports for the upper two bays.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124038&Tpk=SD-PEX40031

 

We'll see how it goes.

 

In the mean time I am preclearing 4 drives simultaneously. They seem to be running at max speed.

 

Two of the drives are 3TB 7200 RPM Seagates - ST3000DM001

I was getting 170MB/s on the first 1TB of the drive, now I'm at 155MB/s.

For the Hitachi 3TB 5400 RPM drives HDS5C3030ALA630, I started at 130MB/s and I'm at 115MB/s after the first 1TB.

 

Nifty lil machine.

 

The monitor I have is the GeChic 2501. It has all sorts of cool features.

GeChic On-Lap 2501M 15.6” LCD Monitor with built-in battery. It supports HDMI, MHL and VGA output.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0V10H35673

 

Since my new apartment is much smaller then the old one, I have to get creative about how many monitors and how long they will be connected. This puppy is battery and/or usb powered with a VGA adapter MHL and HDMI adapter.

 

I'm using a DELL Bluetooth keyboard until everything is stable and I no longer need to access the console.

 

Nice!

 

Why do you need a big ram? Is it because you installed ESXI ?

Link to comment

Nice!

 

Why do you need a big ram? Is it because you installed ESXI ?

 

I have not 'yet' but plan to. Sometimes I max out the machine just so I don't have to do it later on.

There are many times in the past I did not max things out and it became hard to find parts.

With the newer CPU and extra ram I plan to have ESXi a slackware dev environment and an XP instance for utorrent. (either that or put it on my laptop).

 

FWIW I'm getting excellent read speeds with the newer Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM drives. They have consistantly outperformed my expectations by leaps and bounds. At least for the preclearing step.

 

I'll be posting benchmarks as I test the two drive setups for parity speeds and write speeds.

This should be an interesting comparison.  What are the speed differences from 5400 rpm parity to 7200 rpm parity.

 

Any suggested benchmarking I should do?

 

I was planning to put 4 drives in the array.

 

Testing with a 5400 RPM parity drive, then a 7200 RPM parity drive.

Link to comment

Nice!

 

Why do you need a big ram? Is it because you installed ESXI ?

 

I have not 'yet' but plan to. Sometimes I max out the machine just so I don't have to do it later on.

There are many times in the past I did not max things out and it became hard to find parts.

With the newer CPU and extra ram I plan to have ESXi a slackware dev environment and an XP instance for utorrent. (either that or put it on my laptop).

 

FWIW I'm getting excellent read speeds with the newer Seagate 3TB 7200 RPM drives. They have consistantly outperformed my expectations by leaps and bounds. At least for the preclearing step.

 

I'll be posting benchmarks as I test the two drive setups for parity speeds and write speeds.

This should be an interesting comparison.  What are the speed differences from 5400 rpm parity to 7200 rpm parity.

 

Any suggested benchmarking I should do?

 

I was planning to put 4 drives in the array.

 

Testing with a 5400 RPM parity drive, then a 7200 RPM parity drive.

 

Thats great, do let me know what Unraid and Windows performance like when you install ESXi  on HP MicroServer :)

 

I wanted to do this soon... Do you think I should get Hardware Controller Card?

Link to comment

I wanted to do this soon... Do you think I should get Hardware Controller Card?

 

 

I did, it didn't cost all that much to add 2 more eSATA ports.

I purchased another card from syba that has 4 ports, 2 internal, 2 external.

This way the top 2 drives have full speed without installing a hacked bios.

I'm not sure if it's esxi compatible yet, but I'll work on it in the future.

It's a SIL3124, in addition to the SIL3132 card.

I may try to score an ARC-1200 for the internal drives since I know it's compatible and I have to extract data from an Areca array anyway.

Link to comment

Has anyone with a Microserver updated to RC10 yet?  Wondering if anyone has had the CPU errors I have outlined in this thread.

 

Mine is an original N36L with the updated AHCI bios with 5 mixed disks and 2GB RAM.  Due to these errors I am hesitant to update my main one.

 

Been using rc10 without any issues. No errors. N46L, 4gb ram, 2 3tb and 4 2tb drives. Always good to make a backup of your flash just to be safe if you upgrade.

Link to comment

Bad link. I updated to RC10 and it's much faster. 92MB/sec parity checks, 29MB/sec array writes. 60MB/sec cache writes. I had to remove rtorrent, but Transmission is working better for me anyhoo.

 

Oops, messed it up trying to embed it, fixed now.

 

I may try and use a fresh usb with some fresh disks and see what happens.

 

EDIT: In case anyone else is worried Tom has confirmed this is not a real problem this thread

Link to comment
  • 2 weeks later...

Hi

here is upload new rc11 version optimized for AMD N**L CPU :)

Because orginal image is optimized for Core2Duo (intel)

 

changed in kernel

Processor type and features  --->

    Subarchitecture Type ()  --->

        (X) PC-compatible

    Processor family ()  --->

        (X) Opteron/Athlon64/Hammer/K8

 

+ some patch

-HOSTCFLAGS   = -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer
+HOSTCFLAGS   = -march=amdfam10 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer
HOSTCXXFLAGS = -O2
-------------
-        cflags-$(CONFIG_MK8) += $(call cc-option,-march=k8)
+        cflags-$(CONFIG_MK8) += $(call cc-option,-march=amdfam10)
--------------
-cflags-$(CONFIG_MK8)    += $(call cc-option,-march=k8,-march=athlon)
+cflags-$(CONFIG_MK8)    += $(call cc-option,-march=amdfam10)

 

after start

from dmesg

CPU: Physical Processor ID: 0

CPU: Processor Core ID: 0

mce: CPU supports 6 MCE banks

LVT offset 0 assigned for vector 0xf9

using AMD E400 aware idle routine

ACPI: Core revision 20120320

Enabling APIC mode:  Flat.  Using 1 I/O APICs

..TIMER: vector=0x30 apic1=0 pin1=2 apic2=-1 pin2=-1

CPU0: AMD Turion II Neo N40L Dual-Core Processor stepping 03

Performance Events: AMD PMU driver.

... version:                0

... bit width:              48

... generic registers:      4

... value mask:            0000ffffffffffff

... max period:            00007fffffffffff

... fixed-purpose events:  0

... event mask:            000000000000000f

CPU 1 irqstacks, hard=f008c000 soft=f008e000

Booting Node  0, Processors  #1

Initializing CPU#1

Brought up 2 CPUs

System has AMD C1E enabled

Switch to broadcast mode on CPU1

Total of 2 processors activated (5989.95 BogoMIPS).

Switch to broadcast mode on CPU0

PM: Registering ACPI NVS region [mem 0xddfae000-0xddfdffff] (204800 bytes)

NET: Registered protocol family 16

 

egrep svm /proc/cpuinfo

flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc nonstop_tsc extd_apicid pni monitor cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs skinit wdt nodeid_msr hw_pstate npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save

 

im also added to image:

- media three (for support tuners DVB S/S2/C/T etc) - special if HP microserver has 2 PCIE :)

- added exFAT and NTFS support (latest driver 2013)

- added mc

 

Link to file: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49442039/unraid.rc11.tbs.zip

 

Enjoy ;)

Link to comment

Please install

http://slackware.cs.utah.edu/pub/slackware/slackware-13.37/slackware/ap/bc-1.06.95-i486-1.txz

 

and put in console

 

time echo "scale=5000; a(1)*4" | bc -l

 

My Score on N40L (and my tweeked system with few installed plugins)

real 1m9.860s

user 1m7.350s

sys 0m0.190s

 

please check on orginal image and let me know

 

UPDATE:

second test - over script

Please download - https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49442039/benchmark.sh

and execute (remember about chmod)

 

my score (tweeked system)

root@unRAID:~# ./benchmark.sh

Time for 100000 additions is  real 0m1.841s user 0m1.790s sys 0m0.040s

 

real 0m1.843s

user 0m1.790s

sys 0m0.040s

Time for 100000 mul is  real 0m2.763s user 0m2.690s sys 0m0.060s

 

real 0m2.765s

user 0m2.690s

sys 0m0.060s

Time for 100000 divisions is  real 0m2.940s user 0m2.850s sys 0m0.070s

 

real 0m2.942s

user 0m2.860s

sys 0m0.070s

UPDATE: on orginal image rc11

./benchmark.sh

 

Time for 100000 additions is  real 0m2.291s user 0m2.150s sys 0m0.050s

 

real 0m2.293s

user 0m2.150s

sys 0m0.050s

Time for 100000 mul is  real 0m3.150s user 0m3.080s sys 0m0.060s

 

real 0m3.152s

user 0m3.080s

sys 0m0.060s

Time for 100000 divisions is  real 0m3.120s user 0m2.950s sys 0m0.080s

 

real 0m3.127s

user 0m2.960s

sys 0m0.080s

Link to comment

on my N54L with RC8a and without the tweeked kernel

 

model name      : AMD Turion(tm) II Neo N54L Dual-Core Processor

real    0m44.619s
user    0m44.300s
sys     0m0.110s

root@unRAID:/tmp# grep "cpu MHz" /proc/cpuinfo     
cpu MHz         : 2200.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
root@unRAID:/tmp# grep "cpu MHz" /proc/cpuinfo     
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 800.000
root@unRAID:/tmp# grep "cpu MHz" /proc/cpuinfo     
cpu MHz         : 800.000
cpu MHz         : 2200.000

 

When I get a chance I'll install the tweaked kernel and retest.

Link to comment
  • 4 weeks later...

I have two MicroServers running unRAID. Both have been extended to run 6 drives. A third system is currently in use as ESXi server and may become another unRAID next year. Here is some information that maybe useful for other MicroServer owners.

 

A. BIOS Update: This is required for adding a 5th and 6th hard drive. I have been using the 'Russian' BIOS mod for a while, but all my systems run a version supplied by TheBay now. I have documented the process and required settings in a PDF document [1]

 

B. Hardware mods: I have been using the Nexus DoubleTwin [2] to mount 2 drives in the Optical Drive Bay (ODB) [3] [4]. Cables required are (i) a power splitter / Y cable from Molex to 2x SATA power; (ii) an internal SATA cable, approx 50cm long; and (iii) an external eSATA to internal SATA cable, approx. 50cm long. The 5th drive is connected using (ii), routing the cable from the motherboard to the ODB. See the silver cable in pictures [4] [5] [6]. For the 6th drive, cable (iii) is routed from the back of the case through an opening above the PCI extensions slots [7]. You can easily bend the metal on the clamp that holds down extension cards with a pair of pliers. Temps can go up a bit during parity checks, but are OK otherwise. Replacing the ODB cover with a perforated cover might be a good idea.

 

C. Wake-On LAN: This has to be enabled in the BIOS (see [1]). The current unRAID releases have a bug in their shutdown scripts causing the network interface to be in the "up" state on powerdown. However, at least on the HP, this prevents WOL to work when the system is powered off (as compared to a WOL from S3/Sleep, which is not supported by the MicroServer BIOS). To fix, this I have added the lines below to my go file:

 

# Fix Wake on LAN
mv /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.bak
sed 's/|| \/sbin\/ifconfig/\&\& \/sbin\/ifconfig/' < /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.bak > /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1
chmod 755 /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1

 

For reference, a copy of my go file can be found here [8]. There's some additional stuff in there that requires extra packages, so please adapt before use.

 

D. Auto Poweroff: I have been using a modified version of the auto_s3_sleep.sh script from this forum, with an added powerDownInsteadOfSleep option [9]. Assuming that this script is located in the bin folder of your unRAID flash share, the following lines in the go script [8] will activate it:

 

# Wait for disks to spindown and no network activity
/boot/bin/auto_s3_sleep.sh &

 

E. Misc enhancements: I have added very thin patches of felt to the drive holders to reduce vibrations and noise.

 

F. Experience: The system is stable with the latest unRAID beta (b14), except that NFS on user shares (NOT disk shares) is totally buggy.

 

Hope this helps some of you guys!

 

[1] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/HP%20Proliant%20Microserver%20-%20Flash%20Modified%20BIOS.pdf

[2] http://www.aquatuning.co.uk/product_info.php/info/p6594_Nexus-Double-Twin-HDD-decoupling.html

[3] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/IMAG0127.jpg

[4] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/IMAG0126.jpg

[5] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/IMAG0133.jpg

[6] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/IMAG0134.jpg

[7] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/IMAG0135.jpg

[8] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/go.txt

[9] http://www.jens-thiel.de/static/HP/auto_s3_sleep.sh.txt

 

Nice to see someone else is using my BIOS, I am TheBay from AV Forums, there is a newer BIOS than what I posted on AVF, but doesn't really add much so haven't updated the upload yet. Now the N54L has been release I will work with this BIOS. I may start putting updates/uploads in here if it's of any interest?. I used to work for HP so no need to worry about my BIOS causing problems with your system as I use official tools.

 

Dale

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.