Geeky Goodness. The HP N40L Microserver thread.

Did you ever upgrade the RAM on yours Monsta?
 
eggbert said:
Did you ever upgrade the RAM on yours Monsta?
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No, still got 8GB in each of them. Haven't had a need with 3x 2GB machines on one, and 1x 4GB machine on the other.

Although I might upgrade to one of the newer Gen8 boxes next year, in which case one whole box (minus the extra p410 and NC360T) would be available.

Veeam have a nice little giveaway, includes a HP ML310e server. Hope I can win that, especially after I won a mechanical keyboard off mwave via their Facebook page. $149 worth and great to type on too!
 
Is the 4gb server capable enough? I am thinking about upgrading from stock but ram is a little more expensive than I thought. I was expecting to pay $40-60 for 8gb but it looks closer to the $100 mark for 2X4gb sticks.
 
eggbert said:
Is the 4gb server capable enough? I am thinking about upgrading from stock but ram is a little more expensive than I thought. I was expecting to pay $40-60 for 8gb but it looks closer to the $100 mark for 2X4gb sticks.
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It's capable enough to run this site on a VM with a hosting panel in 2GB of RAM -- and that includes MySQL database and a whole heap of other bits. Okay it's not the fastest thing in the world and it's running on a home ADSL connection, but it give you an idea.

The 8GB sticks were very expensive as they are EEC (and not EEC REG). You can buy normal DDR3 memory for the G7 units, it works just fine but when you are talking VMware and also things like ZFS on Solaris where a memory corruption can cause data corruption then you want ECC.

The newer Gen8 Microservers can take normal unbuffered DDR3 or ECC REG from your normal servers if I remember correctly.
 
@Monsta_AU do the n40ls accept 4tb drives or should I stock with 3tb ones?
What is the best bang for your buck these days. I'm guessing the sweet spot must be around the 4tb mark these days?
 
Yes, 4TB is fine although if you are running them from a HBA or RAID card like a p410 then you need to generally flash them to a new BIOS to handle the size.

You can get 4TB Hitachi's from BH Photo (aka 'BHP') in the US for about $150-$160/unit delivered. I personally run the 3TB Toshibas from local suppliers at $130/unit and have zero issues as they are a reliable unit.
 
I found that i didn't have the time or attention span to get everything running on linux like i wanted to so have gone back to running windows on my n40l.
I've had a mate going on for months about how good plex is so decided to give that a go instead of xbmc as a home theatre.

Works great...until you want to watch anything 720p or higher. It seems that plex have decided in their infinite wisdom to make transcoding a CPU only thing whereas xbmc can pass that along to the GPU to do.

Such a shame as it was nearly the perfect set up. It even managed to transcode and stream the odd Asian language shows my wife likes to the raspberry pi running rasplex.
 
Well I just picked up a couple of HP Elite 8300 SFF boxes which will be replacing the Microservers. And cheaply. Like $75 per box for something that is 9 months old - we sold them to the client! A big step up as they are i5-powered, and will do 32GB of RAM each while maintaining the low-profile P410 RAID and NC360T network card.

I had hoped to fit two 4x2.5" cages in them but there is no space for that malarkey unfortunately. One will fit but the second really is only for a 3.5" Floppy or SSD as the SATA ports on the mobo impinge on the space. I might see if I can get an external drive box with a SAS connector and just route a cable out the back so I can maintain my 3TB Toshies. I would even prefer something that I could share with box boxes (dual SAS connectors) and do some shared storage which would be awesome. We have a client with a Promise SAS array like that but we are talking thousands for that box.

Anyway - PLEX JUST WORKS. The transcoding is shit - I agree. But that is because of the asthmatic CPU in the Microserver, not Plex itself. Generally anyone with low end hardware like this will convert the file to the required resolution on their desktop and save that to the storage and stream it native resolution. I am pretty sure the Microserver can handle that.
 
So this is not a microserver post per se but it is a related cry for help.

We got nbn this week (yay) bit the downside of this is that i have to think what to do with the n40l.

They have set up the nbn in the kitchen, so I have had to place my modern 7390 Fritz next to it to provide WiFi around the house.

Now I have two problems. The n40l has no WiFi card so is currently sat with the (ex) modem being a download box/ nas. Do I buy a WiFi card for it and move it back to the TV, or let it stay as a nas/download machine and use something else for the htpc duties?

The other issue is that the Fritz.Box's WiFi doesn't reach all parts of the house so the raspberry pi upstairs currently gets no signal. What should I look for in the way of range extenders?
 
Cable it. Seriously. I work in IT. Just cable it.

WiFi was only ever a 'best effort' transmission medium.
 
eggbert said:
Concrete walls :(
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AussieDuct !!!!

Seriously - I would be tempted to put a skirting around all the walls like a commercial office - would give maximum flexibility and future proofing ....
 
I bought 50m of flat CAT6 cable then ran it across the flat top surface of the skirting board. Any bits that had to go through doors got run up through the door cavity and painted white to blend in a little better. It's unobtrusive and easy, and the speed and stability benefits are great.
 
Nice work @Mong

When we built our house here in CBR about 4 years ago the sparkies queried why I was bothering to get cabling everywhere and throught I was crazy getting a run out to the garage. Now I'm laughing.

While wifi gets the most use the HTPC is cabled along with the network printer and TV. In the garage I have the NBN NTD coming in along one cable and another going back out to my NAS (which gives PC and laptop backup in another building if not actually off-site).
 
Hmm. Device controller roots on ideport4. That doesn't sound good.
 
gthomas04 said:
You got something against mixed marriages eggy? :)
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I should hope not. I am in one after all - I'm male, and she is female.

The above should have said device controller error, but somehow autocorrect on the phone changed it to roots.
 
Long time between posts. How are the microservers going?

I've just spent a weekend reconfiguring mine with some new drives, and switched from Ubuntu to Debian after some testing. I'm impressed with the amount of use it gets from the household, given the good price a few years ago.
 
Mine is still burbling away acting mostly as a media server but also a handy spot to dump files to via Dropbox from mobile (and if its a biggie I can move it to another location and free up the Dropbox)
 
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