Cheap home server - look at the HP Microserver

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Hi All

I have recently got a new toy to study with its a HP Microserver.

Specs:

Product Description HP ProLiant Ultra Micro Tower Server
Form Factor Ultra micro tower
Processor 1 x AMD Athlon II ( Dual-Core ) 1.3 GHz
Cache Memory 1 MB L2 Cache
Networking Embedded NC107i PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Server Adaptor
RAM 1 GB (installed) / 8 GB (2 x 4 max) - PC3-10600E UDIMMs DDR3 800 MHz
Optical Drive None
Dimensions (WxDxH) 21 x 26 x 26.7 cm
Weight 6 kg
Warranty 1 year warranty


First impressions about this machine:

1) The damn thing is tiny, Its not as tall as an A4 page and not very deep - great on saving space.

2) Its very quiet, even during start up, nothing more than a low background hum - if you have your head against it.

3) It has space for 5 standard HDD's a Dvd expansion bay and has a USB port directly on the motherboard.

Its the last point that had un interested as the hardware is also full supported for the installation and running of VMWare ESXI. Currenlty I've got ESXI running on a USB stick put directly into the board with 3x 250gb HDDs in. The first is reserved for the VM's themselves with the other drives reserved for the actual data.

One of the plans I'm considering is dropping open filer in and have it take the two data drives and present that as a single san type volume, but I'm getting a head of myself.

The RAM has been upgraded to 4GB using some crucial memory we had and the drives are some that were kicking around as spares and EXSI is free. So far this has been a very cost effective purchase.

Its not a power house by any means but as a test enviroment for 3 or 4 VM's to play with and break its working out very well.

The HP link says 209+VAT however currently Misco (and maybe others) are running a promotion that means that a rebate is available bring the price down to £140. The offer runs until the end of the month.

If you are wanting to do some hardcore VM type stuff (like my boss has) I would recommend you for the the ML110 which is about £100 more after the rebate but comes in a quadcore flavour.

Long story short if you are looking for a first home / test server and you have the money to do it before the end of the month then I would seriously consider giving it a go.

 

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I actually thought it was quite large, it is compared to the various shuttle devices I have (and I have 3 of them), however the box runs Openfiler (natively) just perfectly.

At the moment my Microserver is running as my dedicated shared storage platform for my ESXi cluster.

Nice write up but people should be aware that it's not really 'micro' compared to some of the other cases out there.

 

Ah fair enough, I've not used the shuttles, but in comparison to a lot of other server products its small and quiet.

 

Not really interested in the size aspect but more the sound output. Is it really as quiet as advertised (22 db) and usable in a quiet office (or at home where it shouldn't disturb the wife)?

 

Anyone got an opinion on passive shuttle PC's ?

 

Nugget when its idiling I cant hear it next to me, and when its under load its still very quiet.

 

A very interesting article Dave, a great read, thanks so much! Being a noob to all this virtualisation stuff I have a few quick questions that I hope you can answer.

1) did you have to buy new HDDs to populate the microserver?
2) did you have to buy additional NICs?
3) do you have a link to the memory you purchased?
4) is this system suitable for vmware5 and MS Hyper-V?

Many thanks

 

I'm pretty sure you can throw 16gb ram in these too.

Mines got 8 in and I can happily run server 2008 and 4 vm's through hyper v

 

Great! Thanks Jamin100 thats very useful to know, I guess I just need to get the trial versions of vmware & hyper-v now. Thanks