HP Proliant Microserver

[audiomuze]

So I've finally had time to get my Proliant Microserver going and I've got to say it's an excellent choice for running Squeezeboxserver. I installed 2GB ram, Ubuntu Server 10.10 on a USB stick (which boots the Microserver) and added 5 x 5900rpm Seagate 2TB drives, each formatted ext4. Server scan times are bloody impressive and overall response is also excellent. Stupendous value for money and great performance. Highly recommended, my Thecus N5200PRO is sold :-)

[nolesrule]

I'm tempted to pick up one of these. But I'm alos looking for something that will stream my blu-ray rips. Anyone know if it's powerful enough for that?

[audiomuze]

I'm tempted to pick up one of these. But I'm alos looking for something that will stream my blu-ray rips. Anyone know if it's powerful enough for that?

Streaming almost certain, transcoding on the fly, not sure

[vlrnmz]

So I've finally had time to get my Proliant Microserver going and I've got to say it's an excellent choice for running Squeezeboxserver. I installed 2GB ram, Ubuntu Server 10.10 on a USB stick (which boots the Microserver) and added 5 x 5900rpm Seagate 2TB drives, each formatted ext4. Server scan times are bloody impressive and overall response is also excellent. Stupendous value for money and great performance. Highly recommended, my Thecus N5200PRO is sold :-)

I've got a similar configuration (HP Microserver, 3 GB RAM, Debian Squeeze on first HD and 2x1.5 TB HDs with music) and I'm very happy with it. Using a PCI-E extender, I managed to install a Xonar Essence STX sound card and, following the instructions found in this review http://www.silentpcreview.com/HP_Proliant_MicroServer, I changed the fan in order to make the system quieter. Now I have a fast Squeezebox server and a good sounding listening station (Xonar STX + AKG 701) at the same time.

[justreturned]

I bought one of these around one month ago, and for me it is the perfect machine to setup a little home server. It replaced a small Atom Nettop (Squeezebox) and a Readynas Duo (storage).

I configured it to run Debian Squeeze (on an SSD drive connected to the additional internal SATA port), with 3x2 TB setup as a RAID5 array (yielding 4 TB with redundancy) for my media collection and other uses. It runs Squeezebox server, Transmission BT, as well as Samba, Netatalk and NFS for access to the media collection from various operating systems (e.g. for XBMC running on a Shuttle XS35GT next to my TV).

The CPU is easily fast enough to run a software RAID configuration in Linux (mdadm), which I recommend, as the built-in "RAID" controller is just fake-raid (i.e. software RAID) as well, with less flexibility (no RAID5). Hardware upgrades done on my machine were adding another 4 GB of RAM, replacing the built-in 250 GB drive by 3x2 TB Western Digital drives, and installing an SSD drive for the OS (you also need another SATA cable). Too bad HP is not selling these without HD and without RAM...the defaults are somewhat useless these days.

For the technically intrigued, you can easily setup Debian as a Xen host (dom0), with several virtual guest operating systems (for example another Debian, or Ubuntu) running alongside the main operating system. This is potentially interesting if you prefer the stability and longevity of Debian as a main OS but would like to run the latest and greatest software from Ubuntu PPAs (e.g. Transmission, Deluge), and to physically separate these services from the main OS. Or, if you are unlucky enough to no to be living on the North American continent, and therefore deprived of many media services, you could create another instance of Debian just for Squeezebox Server, with a pptp client routing all its internet traffic via a friendly VPN outlet to the US. Or, even more advanced, setup this VPN instance as a VPN server itself (using pptpd), thus allowing other machines in the household to benefit from that VPN access as well and control your server via remote access from anywhere.

Whatever your objective, I think this machine is a great platform to build a personal homeserver, and especially the 4 drive bays make it a cheaper, faster, and much more flexible replacement for any consumer NAS device (Netgear, Synology, QNAP).

[HeadBanger]

I'm tempted to pick up one of these. But I'm alos looking for something that will stream my blu-ray rips. Anyone know if it's powerful enough for that?

Brilliant piece of kit - I've had mine up and running for a few weeks now with FreeNAS & SlimNAS. I'm streaming BD rips (MKV) to a Dune media player and it streams absolutely fine over my wired network. My music library of >10,000 flac tracks scanned in about 30 minutes!

I'm Interested in setting mine to hibernate when not in use - how do you do this please? And when sleeping does it wake OK?

[Henry66]

I, too, would like to know if this unit can go to sleep (not hibernate) and spin down the disks. What is the power draw in the sleep state?

[slate]

I, too, would like to know if this unit can go to sleep (not hibernate) and spin down the disks. What is the power draw in the sleep state?

Maybe post #8

[RAD_Abz]

right, in sleep mode the server was consuming just 3w.

so powerconsumption:

on installation of OS with dvd drive running = 35w
running squeezebox server = 30w
sleep = 3w

Can I ask how many HDD you were running with.

[code46]

Just bought one of these after stumbling upon audiomuze's posts on the forum, have to get some more 2TB hard drives and decide between WHS or Ubuntu Server. New to server OS' and completely new to linux.

Waiting for my 8GB of the Kingston Ram to arrive.

Plan to use it for audio and video streaming.