Nas

[Niel]

Correct, same as the one I have which I obught for £89 net of rebates.   If you wait a day or so I suspect you'll see it on sale for less then £100 net, there was a £92 deal which closed only an hour or so ago - keep an eye on HotUKdeals to spot it when it crops up.  

I've put 5 x 3TB WD Red HDDs into mine and am running Nas4free from a LiveUSB stick (I flashed the BIOS to one that enabled AHCI on the optical port to which the 5th HDD is connected).   The N40L is very well built, all the allen screws and the allen key are attached to the inside of the lockable front door.    It's quiet too, it just has one big fan at the back.  The community for these microservers staggered me when I first started looking into it.   If you want to do something with an N40L then someone has already done it and put up a 'how to' guide, video and blog about it!   Great little box and well worth the money.    Â£92 + disk costs for what will be a 15TB NAS box is unbeatable imo.

Completley agree......i know i want one for that price....just need to work out what i want it for and clear it with "the management" and need to find the USPs that will get her to agree to me spending more money on techy bits

[suicidal_monkey]

Just saw this thread again... So this HP server is essentially a standard but small computer with raid capabilities, and comes ready to run out the box and would run a standard Linux distro (I see it's red hat certified) - nothing else required?

I have a little 2-disk netgear readynas but am increasingly frustrated by its lack of certain "normal" server features, specifically on the fly encryption. The nas could then be junked or become backup...

[TeaLeaf]

I've started moving a copy of my music folder onto it, movies, ebooks, data and piccies to follow.   I'm getting about 200-320Mbps according to the Nas4free GUI graph.

To add the 5th drive you need a molex to sata power cable and a sata cable, along with 5.25" to 3.5" adapter wings so that it slides into the internal optical slot.   All the screws needed for 5 drives and the adapter wings are already there screwed to the inside of the server's door.  

I linked the USB drive I am using on a previous page and you'll need a second USB stick to install the embedded image from it (you boot from the 2nd USB and then install onto the 1st USB which is the one that sits in the N40L longterm.   When you upgrade the OS it is then simply a matter of installing a new version on the USB as it has remained totally separate from the ZFS data pool).

Logged into the ZFS IRC help channel earlier to see what it is like and it is highly noob friendly, if the comments I saw were anything to go by.

@Suicidal_Monkey: aye it's a server with 1 x 250GB HDD already installed, no OS and 2GB RAM.   I upgraded the RAM to 16GB (prob overkill but I chose to run Nas4free and ZFS on it which does better with more RAM).   I added my own disks - it has 4xHDD bays (one with the 250GB in it) plus 1xoptical bay - I put in 5x3TB 3.5" disks by replacing the 250GB disk and also using the optical bay with the above mentioned convertor to house the additional HDD.    I flashed the BIOS to a modded BIOS which upped the speed of the optical SATA channel by enabling AHCI which is an otherwise hidden option in the default BIOS.  

Now that the Nas4free is installed and running I have removed the keyboard & mouse, so it is runing headless.   I can't hear the N40L above my water-cooled system, so imo it is quiet. The GUI is nice too (I am not an ssh-friendly person).

[TeaLeaf]

Started copying a file from my PC over wired LAN and at the same time a file over wireless from my laptop.   Am seeing in excess of 650Mbps write speed at the NAS end which I think is pretty impressive for this bit of kit.

[suicidal_monkey]

Sounds like a nice setup - going to have to keep an eye on the deals for that litte server. I've not used the box site to buy stuff before - are they a decent outfit?

Nas4Free seems to have a pretty thorough set of features. I guess the reason you went with the usb stick OS was to cram in as many storage drives as possible, but if you were only using 2 or 3 (or 4 with your adapter thing) I suppose you could run the same thing off the 250Gb drive, still keeping it independent of the data. Any idea what happens if the OS drive is corrupted or something and you were using encryption - will you be able to retrieve the data simply enough with a new OS drive (or USB)?

[DrunkenZombiee]

Started copying a file from my PC over wired LAN and at the same time a file over wireless from my laptop.   Am seeing in excess of 650Mbps write speed at the NAS end which I think is pretty impressive for this bit of kit.

I am glad you took my advice but i am a little concerned by the WD RED drives you have put in there as they have write back cache don't they which on a software raid can be pretty dangerous as it can nuke the data after a few seconds of being inactive/in a faulty state.

You should see some very nice speeds to the NAS =). Great little bit of kit and you can run any daemons you want too on there for other feature such as VPN, APACHE, etc etc.

Sounds like a nice setup - going to have to keep an eye on the deals for that litte server. I've not used the box site to buy stuff before - are they a decent outfit?

Nas4Free seems to have a pretty thorough set of features. I guess the reason you went with the usb stick OS was to cram in as many storage drives as possible, but if you were only using 2 or 3 (or 4 with your adapter thing) I suppose you could run the same thing off the 250Gb drive, still keeping it independent of the data. Any idea what happens if the OS drive is corrupted or something and you were using encryption - will you be able to retrieve the data simply enough with a new OS drive (or USB)?

5 x 3.5 inch Disks are no problem without modification =). I am running a 250 gig drive for the OS and then 4 drive RAID 5. You can put a half height GFX card in it and use it as a media server with HDMI and storage if you wish. Its a great bit of kit.

Greetings from Sunny Orange County.

DZ

[TeaLeaf]

I am glad you took my advice but i am a little concerned by the WD RED drives you have put in there as they have write back cache don't they which on a software raid can be pretty dangerous as it can nuke the data after a few seconds of being inactive/in a faulty state.

5 x 3.5 inch Disks are no problem without modification =). I am running a 250 gig drive for the OS and then 4 drive RAID 5. You can put a half height GFX card in it and use it as a media server with HDMI and storage if you wish. Its a great bit of kit.

Under ZFS I am not considering this a problem at the moment.  The N40L is on a UPS too, so unless I get 3 drives failing at the same time then I should not have a problem under ZFS (Z2).
http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/ZFS_Best_Practices_Guide

The optical sata is not full speed afaiaa from all the community forums out there, unless the latest N40L's have a changed bios.   So you can run drives without modification, but the 5th drive will not be at full speed.

@Suicidal - aye to max out storage space.  If the OS USB corrupts then I just image another and stuff it in as the data pool is separate from the OS and not corrupted.  Upgrading the version of Nas4free is similarly easy, you simply write the new image to the USB, plug it back into the N40L and boot it up again.

[kregoron]

I am glad you took my advice but i am a little concerned by the WD RED drives you have put in there as they have write back cache don't they which on a software raid can be pretty dangerous as it can nuke the data after a few seconds of being inactive/in a faulty state.

You should see some very nice speeds to the NAS =). Great little bit of kit and you can run any daemons you want too on there for other feature such as VPN, APACHE, etc etc.



5 x 3.5 inch Disks are no problem without modification =). I am running a 250 gig drive for the OS and then 4 drive RAID 5. You can put a half height GFX card in it and use it as a media server with HDMI and storage if you wish. Its a great bit of kit.

Greetings from Sunny Orange County.

DZ

WD reds have write back cache disable from stock.. It can be dangerous, tho data nukage is rare, as most modern software/hardware raid controllers just kicks out the disk that isnt fast enough to return from inactive/suspend state... Which is annoying in itself as it takes so darn long to add the drive to the array again. (DARN YOU SEAGATE!!!)
Write Back Cache is only dangerous if you got a power outage while the controller is writing new data, but thats why you got a UPS

[suicidal_monkey]

Hmmm, ebuyer is now up to 139 and box up to 119, so it's become a game of chicken - will they run out, go up in price, or have a nother dip into the 90 region... aaargh.

[TeaLeaf]

...and for those looking to buy one of these here's what looks to be a sub-£100 price net of cashback:

http://www.serversplus.com/microserver_cashback

[suicidal_monkey]

Thanks for the heads up but serversplus (when I looked at least) is 184 ex vat, so after vat and p&p it's about the same as ebuyer's £130 after cashback

[TeaLeaf]

We all missed a trick, we should have copied Backblaze and built our own 180TB NAS box!

[suicidal_monkey]

RAM upgrade to 16GB went fine (despite the spec saying 8GB max)

how critical is this quantity of ram? Will the existing 2gb work okay in a less intensive setup (two 2tb HDD, mirrored), albeit more slowly. Mainly light file storage with encryption, possibly some VMs at a later date, tbd.

... did you have plans for the 2gb you took out of yours...?

[TeaLeaf]

It's not critical, but if it is working out which parity bits to put where then when it gets busy it helps.    Many people use 2GB and have no issues at all.  With fewer disks it's less important.   With more disks it is nice but not essential.

If I can find the old RAM you are welcome to it, but I don't remember where I put it now or even if there are enough slots for it to be of any use!

[TeaLeaf]

It's not critical, but if it is working out which parity bits to put where then when it gets busy it helps.    Many people use 2GB and have no issues at all.  With fewer disks it's less important.   With more disks it is nice but not essential.

If I can find the old RAM you are welcome to it, but I don't remember where I put it now or even if there are enough slots for it to be of any use!

Aside:
My refund for the £100 cashback offer was acknowledged within a week of submitting the form and the cheque is due some time before 7th May.