DoeBoye Posted January 13, 2015 Share Posted January 13, 2015 Does anyone have any experience with this product? I was looking into getting one to set up a friend with unRaid, but I'm not clear on the hard drive situation. The literature all talks about it coming with a non-hot-swap cage, and I assumed that meant it came with the drive caddies as well, but a number of posts scattered around the internet make it sound like you need to buy separate drive trays/caddies. This is the model I was looking at: http://www8.hp.com/ca/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=7051766 I'm seeing it for around $300, which seems like a decent price if it includes the caddies. If I need to buy them separately, the price is not as attractive... [EDIT] Bought! See Below [/EDIT] Thanks! DB. Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted January 14, 2015 Author Share Posted January 14, 2015 So I ended up ordering the server, and I have to say, I'm pretty impressed! First thing to note is that it does come with drive trays!!! They're not the best I've ever seen, but they do the job. They come with metal supports that you need to remove to screw in your drive, but they work well and the drive slides right into the socket. Tray With Drive Tray Without Drive In the chassis Interior Also, it appears to have a passively cooled cpu, which is a nice bonus, but I have yet to hear what the case fans sound like... That's all I have for now. I'll go ahead and see how unRaid installs next and report back Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted January 14, 2015 Author Share Posted January 14, 2015 Update 2: unRaid 5 installed without a hitch! I needed to go into system options and set the controller to AHCI, change the boot order to boot from the usb key, and it booted without issue. A few more observations: The Good 1. Fans are fairly quiet. Audible, but not crazy loud (Except during the boot sequence) 2. Comes with a dual-NIC 3. Has a built in USB socket directly on the motherboard. The Not-So-Good 1. The PSU is 350w and has a split 12v rail. One is labelled 'cpu', the other just says 12v. Both are rated for 16amps, and I assume that means there are only 16amps available to the drives. That leads me to believe that if you want more than 4 drives, you'll probably want to upgrade the PSU 2. In that vein, there are only 2 more available sata ports on the board. If you are going with 7 drives, you'll need to buy a 2-port sata card as well. 3. 2GB of ram... Good enough for a basic NAS, but if you want to get fancy with plugins or docker etc., more ram will be required. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this server. For $260 plus tax, you'll be hard pressed to find a better 4-7-drive system. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 14, 2015 Share Posted January 14, 2015 I would bet you could get 7 drives out of that PSU without issue. People get 6 drives on a micro server that has only 150W PSU. Putting in a high end video card changes everything, but for now it'll handle 7 drives. Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted January 14, 2015 Author Share Posted January 14, 2015 I would bet you could get 7 drives out of that PSU without issue. People get 6 drives on a micro server that has only 150W PSU. Putting in a high end video card changes everything, but for now it'll handle 7 drives. You're probably right. I was working under the assumption of 2 amps a drive, putting it very close to the max 16 amps... I generally err on the side of caution when making these decisions for my own gear so that's why I suggested swapping out the psu @ 7 drives . Also, the brand is Delta, which seems to make PSUs for some well rated names (Antec for one) and the general internet feel is that they have a good product... The literature rates the efficiency at 85%, which is often a sign of decent parts as well... Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted January 21, 2015 Author Share Posted January 21, 2015 So just an update on this server. It seems like hardware has really progressed since I built my first system. I plugged in a kill-a-watt to see how much juice this thing takes, and it seems to be using a total of about 35w during a preclear! I don't have a parity drive set up, so I can't say for sure what it would using during a parity check, but I have to say, I'm pretty impressed! Granted, my production server has a bunch more drives and a 750w psu, but I'm surprised there's such a huge difference (I use around 130w @ idle). Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 21, 2015 Share Posted January 21, 2015 NICE! Thanks for the progress update(s). I've been so curious about that model. Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted January 21, 2015 Author Share Posted January 21, 2015 No Worries! I forgot to mention, that that number is with 2 drives only: a 4TB Hitachi (Not the 7200RPM one), and an old 2.5" drive from 2007 that I'm using for playing with Docker . Quote Link to comment
shazants Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 Nice job getting it for that price, cant find it over here in the UK for less than £470!!!! :-( Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted March 5, 2015 Author Share Posted March 5, 2015 Nice job getting it for that price, cant find it over here in the UK for less than £470!!!! :-( I'm still seeing it available for 290 CDN$: https://www.mikescomputershop.com/product/3534515 It's a shame it's so much more in the UK! Are you looking at the i3 version? The xeon model sells for more... Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted March 5, 2015 Author Share Posted March 5, 2015 Nice job getting it for that price, cant find it over here in the UK for less than £470!!!! :-( I don't know UK vendors, but this place has it for £280... Seems a bit better :-): http://www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk/catalogue/item/P174601P?from=category&heat=title Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted September 24, 2015 Share Posted September 24, 2015 I'm now considering one of these as part of a 3 node ESX setup. This would be the main node whereas the micro servers would be the failover nodes. I know it's not apples to apples, but the CPU's usage will be similar in most cases. i.e. hobby learning/training lab. Can anyone comment on the fan noise? Any other comments to post about? Quote Link to comment
DoeBoye Posted October 5, 2015 Author Share Posted October 5, 2015 I'm now considering one of these as part of a 3 node ESX setup. This would be the main node whereas the micro servers would be the failover nodes. I know it's not apples to apples, but the CPU's usage will be similar in most cases. i.e. hobby learning/training lab. Can anyone comment on the fan noise? Any other comments to post about? Hi! I built this server for my brother, so I haven't been exposed to it since I first put it together for him, but from what I remember, it was definitely not a loud server. Not having a cpu fan also really helps on the noise front. I can ask him if he finds it noisy, but as it lives in his basement, I doubt it's something he pays attention to... It's also since been upgraded to 6.1.3 without a hitch. Very stable. Only reboot it saw since I sent it to him in January was when I upgraded it to 6.1.3 . Every time I speak to him or login to tweak it, he praises it. He was coming from a Synology unit I set up for him 4 or 5 years ago... Assuming the price is right, I would definitely recommend these servers for a small Unraid system (and small is a relative term, since with 8TB drives nowadays...). Is there anything else you would like me to ask/check out about it? Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted October 5, 2015 Share Posted October 5, 2015 Is there anything else you would like me to ask/check out about it? Thanks for responding, I was just looking to see if the fans were loud. I'm intrigued by the iLO and for ESX usage it's just what I need. Quote Link to comment
ehfortin Posted October 31, 2015 Share Posted October 31, 2015 Hi, Thanks for responding, I was just looking to see if the fans were loud. I'm intrigued by the iLO and for ESX usage it's just what I need. I'm having 3 of these for my ESX cluster. 2 based on the i3-4150 and 1 that runs on a E3-1220. To answer the question, the fans can be loud. They will be while booting which can take a few minutes as HP is checking a lot of stuff behind the scene. Then, the fans will slow down and adjust to the temperature inside the casing. So if your room is warm and you use a lot the CPU, the fan will accelerate up to what is needed to keep everything cool. Adding CNA, HBA or video card can also increase the internal temperature a lot which will translate in more noise. Just to give you an idea, my 3 machines are in another room with a closed door. I can hear the fans accelerate when I'm loading the CPU. Note that it is not a high pitch noise like small 1U/2U servers as the casing and fans are a lot larger. If the machine is in the same room as you, you will definitely hear it. That being said, these are really good machine for lab usage. The ILO is giving you remote access to the console which is great. However, the "basic" is only for management. It will stop acting as a remote KVM about 30 seconds after the OS start booting. You can buy a license that gives you the ability to use that without limit. It is a a few hundred $$ but you can find original licenses on Ebay for a lot less. Then, you have a nice remotely manageable server that you can control even if the server is powered off, as long as there is electricity connected to the power supply. That's very useful when you have your servers in another room ehfortin Quote Link to comment
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