Geeky Goodness. The HP N40L Microserver thread.

JugV2 said:
If I put another PC in the house I have to go down the path of structured cabling :(
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not a bad thing really. i wired up an office cat 5e 20 ports and another 10 telephones when i was in singapore (for work!).

if i was to do it again (pre existing cabling in my house) i would get all cat 6, and wire up every room in the house. bedrooms, walk in robes, halls. about the only place you wont see an ethernet port will be the toilet/laundry
 
A cheap option that might be suitable is flat cable. I needed a low-visibility option to get wired internet upstairs, so I hunted around and found a 50m length of flat cable to run up the skirting board the whole way. Double sided tape holds it in place well enough even vertically up a few walls, and only two people have actually noticed that it's there. It's only 6mm wide and maybe 2mm tall, so it's almost invisible and it's CAT6A cable too.

Basically, it makes a multiple hundred dollar proposition into a $50 one. It's not perfect, but the alternative was paying a licensed cabler a few hundred bucks to achieve the same thing. Might not meet acceptable standards for those of you who need permission from the missus though, or if you have kids running around.
 
Razormonsta said:
It's not for games.....

That said, if you want some 4GB ECC DIMMS then I will be upgrading mine in due course.
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Any closer to upgrading?

I've noticed that when waking from sleep it seems to struggle somewhat with XBMC with just the 2GB ram. So now could be the time to consider upgrading.
 
I was thinking about some 8GB ECC DIMMs I have found cheap - $45 a piece. Not sure if they will work though, and not feeling like splashing $100 on something that may or may not work. Also, it's discontinued so no stock returns.....

The known good 8GB ECC DIMMS are more like $85 each on eBay.
 
Understandable.

I'll have to see what I can find in the 4Gb range for myself.
 
Mong. said:
What BIOS version are you guys running?
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Good question. I remember updating it, as I was having problems with it reading 3TB drives.

Will check when I get home.
 
I am using a bios created by someone called TheBay which adds support for up to 6 sata drives at full speed.

I haven't used this capability yet, but to be able to run the OS off a SSD then still have 18TB or more data available to use sounded good to me at the time, and there was loads of talk about this bios on the internet. Enough for me to feel safe enough using it anyway.

HP N36L Microserver Updated AHCI BIOS Support. | AVForums.com - UK Online
 
Yeah, that's the one I'm considering at the moment. Is this the hacked BIOS which adds support for hot swappable HDD's too? I've been using the OCAU thread for reference and it also has a hacked BIOS to enable full speed on the last two SATA ports, but I don't think it's the same one. I'm a bit hesitant to mess around with this stuff on my N40L because if I mess it up and brick it, my home entertainment and a bunch of stuff for work and uni will fall to pieces. I'm looking at putting a hard drive cage in so that I can expand, and it seems that changing the BIOS is unavoidable if I want more space.
 
I have my (Linux) OS running on a USB stick plugged in to the internal USB port (which I think is for the tape) appears as /dev/sde where the bays are sda, sdb, sdc and sdd. Works a treat :)
 
hunnymonster said:
I have my (Linux) OS running on a USB stick plugged in to the internal USB port (which I think is for the tape) appears as /dev/sde where the bays are sda, sdb, sdc and sdd. Works a treat :)
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I was tempted with doing something similar, but ended up going with a Windows install so that it didn't confuse Mrs Egg overly.
 
hunnymonster said:
I have my (Linux) OS running on a USB stick plugged in to the internal USB port (which I think is for the tape) appears as /dev/sde where the bays are sda, sdb, sdc and sdd. Works a treat :)
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All mine are virtualised so it's even easier!

The USB port is there for booting from a USB key - all Proliant servers have had them since G5's. G7's also have a SD Card slot which you can install ESXi to - it runs faster than USB.

The basic way of doing it is to install to the USB key and go to the Datacentre, shut the machine down, slide it out of the rack, pop the lid & pull out the old USB/SD and put the new one in. Push back into the rack, power it on. Downtime: 2 mins.
 
Does anyone have any experience setting up Samba shares with Ubuntu? All I want to do is set my desktop and my laptop to have read/write permission across the network, and my mum and brother's laptops to be read only. At the moment, I'm just trying to share the media folders; movies, TV and music. Unfortunately, when using the GUI I'm not able to create two different shares for the same folder. It just overwrites the second share to be identical to the first. Can anyone help me out with how to troubleshoot this?
 
How do folks get around the H40L not supporting sleep mode (S3)? I'd imagine this would significantly impair its ability to act as a dedicated HTPC.......does hibernation (S1) mode have support? If so does this lend itself to resuming to make FTA recordings?

I'd imagine they're a great home server/NAS or dedicated HTPC backend.....as long as you're happy to leave on 24/7.
 
Nick the Knife said:
How do folks get around the H40L not supporting sleep mode (S3)?
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Nobody cares, because

Nick the Knife said:
I'd imagine they're a great home server/NAS or dedicated HTPC backend.....as long as you're happy to leave on 24/7.
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everybody uses them like this. Or as ESXi boxes where you want to disable anything Sleep-related anyway.

Meanwhile, there is an announcement - the N54L is indeed being released and will be available shortly.

Apparently it's available to order from vendors in NZ while HP UK have then available to pre-order on their website. Price is up a little, but it's just a faster CPU (2.2Ghz).

I also have the Microserver Product manager on my Twitter now, so any questions, fire away.
 
Makes me wish I'd held on a little longer, but I've become pretty dependent on my little N40. It's nice being able to keep my power hungry gaming and music production PC's off when I just want to watch a movie.

Aside from the CPU, any major changes RM? It wouldn't be awful if they upgraded the stock NIC and even had an option for 4GB of RAM.

Did anyone end up getting any of the 8GB modules? I'm also considering switching adding a better NIC to mine, I'm getting some stuttering while streaming some of my higher bitrate BD rips. Good excuse to upgrade my router too.
 
Mong. said:
Did anyone end up getting any of the 8GB modules? I'm also considering switching adding a better NIC to mine, I'm getting some stuttering while streaming some of my higher bitrate BD rips. Good excuse to upgrade my router too.
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I have 8GB in my N40L... Working like a charm and has been since I spannered it in months ago.
 
Mong. said:
Aside from the CPU, any major changes RM? It wouldn't be awful if they upgraded the stock NIC and even had an option for 4GB of RAM.
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Nope, just a speed bump on the CPU from 1.5Ghz to 2.2Ghz, and a TDP increase of 15W to 25W.

No other changes, the chipset remains the same so no new features.

Mong. said:
Did anyone end up getting any of the 8GB modules? I'm also considering switching adding a better NIC to mine, I'm getting some stuttering while streaming some of my higher bitrate BD rips. Good excuse to upgrade my router too.
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No I haven't, and probably will not. Not even using the full 8GB in either ESXi box yet. Be careful as the later N40L's are likely to not work with 16GB anyway.... plenty of info in the OCAU thread.

The NIC you need is an Intel PRO Gigabit - should cost $40 new.
 
Razormonsta said:
The NIC you need is an Intel PRO Gigabit - should cost $40 new.
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I forgot to say cheers for the info mate, I've got one on the way now.

Megabuy have the new N54L for $487 according to Facebook. If all we get for our dough is a CPU speed bump, yikes...
 
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