HP Proliant Microserver

[JonWill]

Looks to me as if you are installing the WHS version... You should install the windows 7/ vista version. I have it working on WHS 2011 fine!

[Komornick]

What you will reccomend instead Win Home Server 2011 ?

[JonWill]

What you will reccomend instead Win Home Server 2011 ?

If this is a question for me, I have LMS 7.7.2 working absolutely fine on WHS 2011 - you just need to download the Windows 7/ Vista version and install it. If you read the rest of this thread (daunting, I know!) there are many recommendations - Vortexbox is something I would have looked at had WHS not worked for me.

J

[RiccardoR]

I came from a system based on Dockstar/Squeezeplug but after this thread I decided to buy the Microserver (the new one, the N40L) also because the collection of my music (about 55.000 songs) is slowing down the time response of my 5 players. The Dockstar is really great for a music collection not too large (I think not more than 30/40K), but the Microserver give me now an unknown speed (and space for 3 more hd to store my photo and films).
Thanks to all those who have convinced me to switch to Microserver!
Riccardo
P.S.: The DockStar not 'been abandoned, when I want to power off the Microserver I use it to backup especially to display the plugins (SuperDateTime) and instant access to web radio (with his 5W of power consumption).

[JohnB]

Anyone interested in the HP Proliant Microserver needs to keep an eye on HP's cashback offers. There was one just ended on 31st Aug which made the effective cost £117 (from Misco).

Interestingly there was an offer on the HP ProLiant ML110 G7 G840 (Intel Pentium G840 2.8 GHz, 2GB RAM, 250 GB HDD) which brought the price down to £127 (also from Misco)! It has 4 HDD capacity, etc, etc.

I already have the earlier generation of Microserver but the ML110 might be interesting for someone who needs more processing power. Though I have no idea whether there are any issues in setting it up with unbuntu, etc.

[jezbo]

I'm interested in one of these - may take the plunge, cashback offer still there it seems.

What's the current consensus on easiest way to get LMS running on it? VortexBox? WHS?

[JohnB]

It's probably not a good choice for the technophobic but don't forget Ubuntu.

[tusken]

I'm interested in one of these - may take the plunge, cashback offer still there it seems.

What's the current consensus on easiest way to get LMS running on it? VortexBox? WHS?

if you are only familiar with windows based systems, then WHS would probably be the "easiest" (in the sense that you will already be familiar with what you need to do). However, i recommend vortexbox - its free for a start whereas WHS isnt. I had never set up a server before or used anything other than windows ,and the VB install was easy (once i had realised that to use RAID0 i needed to use two drives of identical size!). Most people run the VB headless and log into it, to access the command line (if necessary) via cryptoterm or putty -i use cryptoterm.

the GUI for the VB, which you can access on any other pc on your network, is excellent and user friendly and you can update your VB from that GUI. Note ,however, that sometimes bugs occur on the GUI updates which mean you need to update from the command line. the advice on the VB forum is update from the command line only. You need to be prepared for this if you are someone that likes their system totally up to date (the updates are constant - i do mine about once a fortnight now - if you leave it a long time between updates then you end up with a LOT to update)

[aspendl828]

I bought the n40l from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. I am running it headless using Win 7 Ultimate. I particularly wanted to mirror my drives so I added have 2 x 2tb drives for the 1.5 tb of music and the supplied 250Gb drive has the O/S and LMS.

I use TightVNC to access the machine as required.

I have found it to work really well for me. The only downsides are the lack of Sleep functionality. It does do Hibernate but I'm not fully comfortable with that yet. I think the Win 7 mirroring doesn't really like Hibernation. So I have the Hiberbate After value set really high and just VNC on and shut it down at night. When I get in from work I'll just switch it on.

To be honest, if I wasn't so obsessed about redundancy (and yes I also have backup to usb drives which are kept offsite) I would probably have put Vortexbox on it. I've tried that a couple of times and would have used it this time but from what I can see the latest version does not support ay kind of RAID installation.

Hope that helps.....

[jezbo]

if you are only familiar with windows based systems, then WHS would probably be the "easiest" (in the sense that you will already be familiar with what you need to do). However, i recommend vortexbox - its free for a start whereas WHS isnt. I had never set up a server before or used anything other than windows ,and the VB install was easy (once i had realised that to use RAID0 i needed to use two drives of identical size!). Most people run the VB headless and log into it, to access the command line (if necessary) via cryptoterm or putty -i use cryptoterm.

the GUI for the VB, which you can access on any other pc on your network, is excellent and user friendly and you can update your VB from that GUI. Note ,however, that sometimes bugs occur on the GUI updates which mean you need to update from the command line. the advice on the VB forum is update from the command line only. You need to be prepared for this if you are someone that likes their system totally up to date (the updates are constant - i do mine about once a fortnight now - if you leave it a long time between updates then you end up with a LOT to update)

Does VortexBox allow you to store the media in any folder structure you choose? Can you also store other files and use it like a data server from windows via a UNC path or drive mapping?