Geeky Goodness. The HP N40L Microserver thread.

The N54L will remain expensive until the N40L's run out. There are a few cheaper - OTA have it for about $380. I tend to make many posts over on the FB page regarding prices.

I finally got my P410 cards in, so on the weekend I dremel'd out the x1/RAC slot so I could fit the NC360T dual NIC in. Added 4x 3TB Toshibas in RAID5, and its much quicker with the RAID Datastore in ESXi. Will probably pop the Torrent VM 'Download and Seed' disk onto external USB's and connect them through ESXi so I don't kill my array.
 
Razormonsta said:
I tend to make many posts over on the FB page regarding prices.
Click to expand...

You are HP Microservers?

/edit I see the dremel post from Jan 5, and can answer my own question. Yes.
 
Last edited:
Nice mate, it's one of the few FB pages I actually keep an eye on these days. There's been some handy info in there for me. As far as my N40L goes, I'm not happy at the moment. I'm getting a lot of network trouble from Ubuntu (or Samba, which is more likely) and getting it to play nice with the Windows PC's just isn't happening. I think when the new NIC arrives I'm going to pull it apart and start from scratch again.
 
The issue with that built-in NIC is that the chipset behind it is Broadcom and it does not support Jumbo Frames and a few other bits. It's known to give issues with FreeNAS especially, hence the suggestion that an Intel PRO NIC is the way to go. You can get them cheaply and easily, or get an NC360T (Again, Intel Chipset) Dual GbE NIC and do the PCIe slot mod (or mod the card).

Glad you have been finding it useful. We've seen a good increase in likes lately.
 
With stock RAM mine very occassionally struggles to get out of whatever the sleep/suspend mode is called. It will start up but then I seem to struggle to get it to exit XBMC.

Other than that (and that has only occurred 3-4 times in 6 months) it happily sits behind the tv doing its thing without needing to think about it.

I will also get an occassional pause streaming from that to one of our laptops, but I am pretty sure the wi-fi is the limiting factor here.

I am well impressed with it for the purposes I use it for.
 
I've got confirmation that the Kingston 16GB kit of ECC works, so it looks like I will order some soon. Anyone want my 8GB kit?
 
I probably will if no one else puts their hand up. How much do you want?

I have a little thing called a wedding on my plate at the moment, so it might take me a while to get things organised.
 
Has anyone tried the Debian-based Open Media Vault? Hardware wise, I'm content with my server, but I'm not sure about Ubuntu 12.04. I'm not super familar in the first place, and I'm finding it difficult to reduce it to the bare minimum installed apps without knowing what does what. Additionally, I have a bunch of miscellaneous errors/bugs/glitches that I think have resulted from bad uninstalls. I'm thinking that I'd like to go back to absolute basics, and find the lightest, most uncluttered OS that will work.
 
Mong. said:
Has anyone tried the Debian-based Open Media Vault?
Click to expand...
Not personally. I know some of the OCAU guys have used it.

Mong. said:
Hardware wise, I'm content with my server, but I'm not sure about Ubuntu 12.04. I'm not super familar in the first place, and I'm finding it difficult to reduce it to the bare minimum installed apps without knowing what does what. Additionally, I have a bunch of miscellaneous errors/bugs/glitches that I think have resulted from bad uninstalls. I'm thinking that I'd like to go back to absolute basics, and find the lightest, most uncluttered OS that will work.
Click to expand...

Dependent on what you want to do with it.

For media storage - depends on what TV you have, but I would run Plex server on CentOS 6.4 minimal. Install only the packages you need to get Plex Server running.

As for the rest, FreeNAS seems to be the most popular. Both FreeNAS and OpenMediaVault come as 'distributions', so you just install them.

I use CentOS Minimal on most of my VM's at home and work, including the one that runs this site although I added Perl packages and installed ZPanelX as a hosting panel because I don't want the admin overhead. Work pays me to do it, but I'm not doing it at home!
 
Razormonsta said:
Dependent on what you want to do with it.
Click to expand...

Only three things.

1. NAS, with the ability to customise user permissions. I've tried this with Samba in Ubuntu, but it gave me trouble setting different permissions for the same folder.
2. SABnzbd/Sickbeard to manage my media library
3. Media server, connected to my PS3 (PS3 Media Server is my choice)

I use CentOS Minimal on most of my VM's at home and work, including the one that runs this site although I added Perl packages and installed ZPanelX as a hosting panel because I don't want the admin overhead. Work pays me to do it, but I'm not doing it at home!
Click to expand...

I've been reading some documentation on CentOS, and though it does look good and fit for purpose, I think it's possibly a little over my head. My terminal skills are pretty shoddy, so I'd be relying heavily on a GUI to set my stuff up. My main concern is getting through the security stuff so it's not a hassle getting it back into my network.

Other than that, it looks like it can do exactly what I need. It's just a question of whether or not I can make it do what I need.
 
I've been playing with my server for a little while, trying to find a balance between NAS and HTPC. I think I've finally got to where I want to be. I've opted for Ubuntu Server 12.04, with the xfce4 (Xubuntu-base) desktop. I installed the barest version of Ubuntu and xfce, which is a very light desktop GUI. I've got my basic SMB config up and running to allow access to my multimedia, and I'm running Universal Media Server for my streaming/transcoding needs and XBMC for my HTPC requirements. All I need to do now is sort out Transmission/SABnzbd/Sickbeard/Headphones for all my downloading needs and I'll be in business.

The server is noticeably quicker and more responsive when I'm playing with it, so I'm happy I chose to go a lighter route than regular Ubuntu. XBMC seems to be enjoying the greater resources too, I just wish it could transcode and stream to my PS3 and bluray player. It's been fun tinkering today, it's a nice feeling when everything comes together. Master of Machines and whatnot. :cool:
 
Nice.
I have mine running win 7 and while it's OK most of the time it does seem to freeze after a while and become unresponsive.

I was getting low on disk space and am considering changing it from a nas/download box/htpc with no backup to a Raid setup and having one of those little android or raspberry pi boxes add my media centre instead.

That also means I would need a "proper" PC to be able to play all the steam games I seem to have bought. At the moment I can play the old ones on the micro server but no hippie with modern ones.
 
I'm getting low on space too, it's almost time to pick up a few more drives. I was looking at the Raspberry Pi, they actually seem pretty capable. The mashup of Ubuntu/XBMC seems like it works pretty well on them, enough to be a client for 1080p video. Pretty sure they're silent and can take a bluetooth keyboard, which adds to the appeal. Not much hope for games though.

You could always build an economical but more powerful HTPC for games with a bit more juice and relegate the N40L to NAS/media server with RAID.
 
I was considering retiring my microserver from it's xbmc duties, and turn it in to a proper raided NAS and download box.

I tried to buy a raspberry pi tonight, but both element14 and rs-australia have the most god awful websites to use, and I gave up.
 
If you find a good place to buy a Rasp Pi from, let me know. I was just having a look at AusPi, but the prices seem a bit ridiculous if you just want a basic 'B' version and a power adaptor.
 
I went with the one from element14 or whatever they are called. Just waiting for it to be delivered.
Also got an SD card WiFi adapter and a case from eBay. For power I am just going to use a mobile phone jobby
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top