HP Introduces Microserver - Unraid support this HW ?


Ropo

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Hi,

 

Support Unraid CPU AMD Athlon II model NEO N36L and NIC 1GbE NC107i ?

 

New microserver from HP is HP ProLiant MicroServer is interest for maybe performance for network operation (power NIC).

 

Many thanks for answer

 

You'll get more help if you include links to the hardware specs.

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Here is a link to the specs showing the chipsets.

 

Core logic chipsets

AMD RS785E – north bridge, core logic controller

AMD SB820M– south bridge

AST2150(Option) – BMC controller

LAN controller Broadcom BCM5723 single-port Gb Ethernet controller

 

FUD Zilla writes AMD is planning to debut the SB820 southbridge in early 2010:

The new SB820 Southbridge will bring Gigabit MAC inside as well as SATA 3 with double the bandwidth, where you can expect a whopping 6Gb/sec per controller. This is one of the unique features of SB8x0 chipsets and SB850 will also share this neat feature.

Some good old features such as RAID 0,1 and 10 will also be there as well as 12+2 USB ports. The SB820 also has new clock generator, AHCI 1.2 (FIS) and a single PCI Gen 2 x4 support.

 

The SB820M is a really new southbridge so do some checking whether support for it's in unRAID as of yet.

 

The Broadcom BCM5723 isn't currently verified on the unRAID Hardware Compatibility page but the Asus P5BV-M which is listed there uses the Broadcom BCM5721 so it might just work.

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  • 1 month later...

I am hoping it will run as I have just bought two of them, should arrive in the next few days.  Been thinking of how to proceed now I have reached a practical limit of 11/12 drives in my current server and this kind of pushed me.  In the UK there is currently a rebate of £100 from HP so once that comes in each one will have cost me <£120.

 

Will provide more info once they arrive.

 

Cheers

Ian

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As promised here is an update now I have my hands on the servers.  Not sure how much I will be able to play over the next few weeks for obvious reasons but will do what I can.

 

Initial impressions are very good, fairly compact and well built.  Nice design features like the screws and tool for the drive caddies being held in the front door panel until required.  Motherboard onboard USB port very useful as always for safe placement of unRAID key.  Only criticism I can think of is that the caddies themselves feel pretty cheap and flimsy made from plastic, they seem to engage well enough but don't feel as robust as other systems I have used.

 

So far just used the 4.6 AIO rc1 installer and got it up and running.  No problems with the embedded network device, booted up pretty quickly.  I am currently using the supplied 160GB disk (Seagate 7200.12) a 250GB WD2500YD (SATA 1.5G only) and a 500GB WD5000AAKS.

 

Attached is the syslog after initial bootup.  I will more detailed interpretation of this to the experts.  From what I can tell the only issue is:

 

Dec 18 14:17:17 Tower kernel: ata3.00: failed to enable AA(error_mask=0x1)

 

This is on the supplied disk and my initial guess is that it is due to a custom HP firmware on the drive.  Not sure of the implications of this, I may have a look at reflashing the drive with a standard Seagate version but as I wouldn't use the drive long term in an unRAID server may not bother unless there are further issues.

 

I am going to get these drives up and running and copy some data across from my main server and try and put it through the Level 1 hardware compatibility testing.

 

If anyone has any questions on the server let me know and I will try and answer.

 

Thanks

Ian

syslog-2010-12-18.txt

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I got it from www.it247.com.  Second time I have used them with no issue.  If you use quidco you can get another 1.5% cashback and also AW1PCDEC voucher code will give a 1% discount which is better than nothing I guess.

 

My order after the 1% discount was £426.35 including 3 day delivery so with the 1.5% and rebate each unit was a tiny bit over £110!

 

Just going through initial parity sync which isn't going exactly quick at a rate of around 28MB/sec.  This seems a little low to me, there were some more errors in the syslog from formatting the drives and starting the sync so have attached the latest in case any of the experts can shed any light on it.

 

Even if raw performance is poor I think they represent great value as a backup unRAID server to a main one for critical files, think this is likely what I will end up using one at least as.

syslog-2010-12-18.txt

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Have copied 300GB to my array and run a parity check, this had an average speed of 54MB/sec which I don't think is too bad.

 

Attached is the final syslog after parity check has run.  I think I can happily say it is compatible with unRAID and am happy with the purchase.

 

Going to play around with version 5 I think now and see if the HD errors are perhaps due to drive/cabling.

syslog-2010-12-19.txt

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  • 3 weeks later...

Good day.

 

 Just one more happy unraid (4.5.6) on microserver user.

 Made some upgrade: added 4Gb memory, attached APC UPS, HP DeskJet printer and sold 160Gb original disk  ;)

 

 Got 4 hdd installed:

2Tb Seagate 7200 RPM for parity

2Tb, 1Tb, 750Gb WD green for data.

 

Parity check goes at 70 Mbytes/sec.

Network (samba) data upload to the servers goes at about 20Mbytes/sec.

 

Now trying to add fifth hdd - 640Gb WD AAKS to the ODD sata port.

This port is actually PATA-SATA bridge.

 

atiixp 0000:00:14.1: IDE controller (0x1002:0x439c rev 0x40)       
ATIIXP_IDE 0000:00:14.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
atiixp 0000:00:14.1: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later  
   ide0: BM-DMA at 0xff00-0xff07                                  
   ide1: BM-DMA at 0xff08-0xff0f                                  
Probing IDE interface ide0...
...
hdb: WDC WD6400AAKS-00A7B0, ATA DISK drive               
hdb: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
hdb: UDMA/100 mode selected                              
..
hdb: max request size: 512KiB                                         
hdb: Host Protected Area detected.                                    
^Icurrent capacity is 1250261615 sectors (640133 MB)                  
^Inative  capacity is 1250263728 sectors (640135 MB)                  
hdb: 1250261615 sectors (640133 MB) w/16384KiB Cache, CHS=65535/255/63
hdb: cache flushes supported                                          

 

I started preclear and read was Ok - around 95Mbytes/sec

But zeroing is done at only 9Mbytes/sec ! No errors in syslog.

 

Please, can someone confirm normal write speeds on ODD port  ?

 

Maybe the problem is hdd itself. Or I have to buy pci-e sata controller to add more disks.

And the best solution would be some tweak in atiixp driver..

 

Thanks, Evgeny

 

Model=WDC WD6400AAKS-00A7B0, FwRev=01.03B01, SerialNo=WD-WCASY0012037
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=50
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=16384kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=1250261615
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes:  pio0 pio3 pio4
DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5 udma6
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=disabled
Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi,

I just started my first Unraid build with a Proliant Microserver too.

I am using with the beta 4.7 (just saw that a stable release was available now).

 

I have only the stock 1 Gb of RAM so preparing the disks tooks some time. 2 x WD20EARS and I left the stock 160 Gb that came with it to practice replacing disks.

 

The power button works for powering up (obviously) but also for shutting down nicely.

 

Seems to be working nice so I will upgrade soon to a Plus registration key.

 

Cheers,

 

Laurent

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Upgraded to final 4.7 today and ordered 4 Gb of RAM to speed things up in the furture.

 

A really nice thing about those servers that I don't remember seeing mentioned,  is that inside the doors you have a little wrench attached to unlock the screws to get to the motherboard and also nicely aligned near the bottom of the doors the screws for the hard drive caddys. There are also 4 for the optional optical disk drive by the wrench inside.

Nice touch. Of course I realized that after buying extra screws to mount the disks ...

 

L.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hooray !

 

  I've got solution with low write speed (only 9Mbytes/sec) on ODD port. Now I'm running preclear on WD6400AAKS with 110Mbytes/sec on ODD port !

  The point was with MicroServer BIOS - ODD and eSATA ports are in "SATA combined" mode (IDE emulation) and there is no way to change it in standard BIOS.

  One Russian guy with nick Int13H slightly modified BIOS to include South Bridge configuration menus - you can easily disable "SATA combined mode".

  Here is the topic http://forum.ixbt.com/topic.cgi?id=11:41849-25#877 and new BIOS download link http://narod.ru/disk/4953126001/ahci.zip.html

  If you are brave enough and want to get full-function on ODD port follow those steps:

1. download September 2010 BIOS firmware setup from HP and follow HP instructions to create bootable usb stick

2. download from the link above and unzip ahci.zip, copy files ahci.bat and ahci_o.rom to usb

3. Boot from this USB stick, first the standard BIOS would be flashed in autoexec.bat. Then run ahci.bat

4. reboot, enter BIOS and disable SATA combined mode in SouthBridge submenu

 

Good luck, Zhenya

 

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I've just built one of these for my parents, and it is an amazing little box.  It's everything the posters above have said, and if you add a hotswap bay to the ODD slot, you have a nice 4 data + 1 parity box unRAID Pro box.  I've got mine doing a several hour mem test on 4GB of RAM, and after that it's off to preclearing.  I specifically want to thank zheka_ppp for the helpful tip on flashing the BIOS to adjust the southbridge to allow for full speed SATA on the ODD.  That little tweak makes an insane amount of difference for that extra drive.  This is a highly recommended solution for anyone not needing more than 8TB (assuming 2TB drives) and wanting a small quiet solution to sit on or under their desk.  What a great find guys!

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Hm... I'm only getting about 16 - 18 MB/s for parity check.  I did the eSATA ODD port solution listed above, and my preclears finished lightning fast, so I know it's not the SATA connections.  All the drives are 5400 rpm Hitachis or Samsung.  I did a ps -eo pcpu,pid,user,args | sort -k 1 -r | head -10 and got basically no cpu usage, during a parity check?

%CPU   PID USER     COMMAND
0.7  5113 root     [unraidd]
0.6  4877 root     [mdrecoveryd]
0.0  6369 root     head -10
0.0  6368 root     sort -k 1 -r
0.0  6367 root     ps -eo pcpu,pid,user,args
0.0  6303 root     [flush-0:14]
0.0  6302 root     [flush-9:2]
0.0  6301 root     [flush-8:48]
0.0  6300 root     [flush-9:1]

 

Remember this is a brand new system with precleared drives.  Syslog attached.

syslog-2011-02-15_1.txt

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2Tb Seagate 7200 RPM for parity

2Tb, 1Tb, 750Gb WD green for data.

 

Parity check goes at 70 Mbytes/sec.

Okay, now I need some help.  How are you getting 70MB/s when I'm getting 30?  I applied the Southbridge update like you showed, and it did open up that extra SATA port, but 30MB/s for parity rebuild is just too slow.  Am I missing something in the BIOS?

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