[Chester LUG] Slightly OT: perfect little machine for a low(ish) power Linux server

[Les Pritchard]

Hi Sebastian,

I also bought one of these and upgraded it to 8gb (max RAM). The build
quality is pretty good, they do feel like a HP device. As Stuart said,
this box would work well for a NAS with FreeNAS or Nexenta on it. It
has 4 drive bays so you could make a really nice small storage box
with the OS on a USB stick. The CPU isn't up to doing SAN/iSCSI type
work so I'd avoid that.

I'm currently using the box with VMWare. I've moved a small collection
of low CPU use VMs to it and they work fine.

The box is pretty quiet, so if anyone needs a box to sit in the corner
of their house it won't drive you crazy!

Les

On 13 March 2012 10:56, Sebastian Arcus <shop at open-t.co.uk> wrote:
> Hi Stuart,
>
> Thanks for sharing your experience. I run a number servers made of old
> 500MHz-1.5GHz processors at several small businesses (up to 15 workstations
> per server) - doing imap and smtp email, samba file sharing, openvpn and
> even Asterisk for VoIP. I find that cpu load is not an issue. I usually use
> RAID-1 in software - and again, doesn't seem to generate much load.
>
> I'm interested if you hit any other downsides when working with this system.
>
> Regards,
>
> Sebastian
>
>
>
> On 13/03/12 09:42, Stuart Burns wrote:
>>
>> I bought one of these the other day. I shoved an extra NIC in it along
>> with 8 GB RAM. They are ok for small little boxes but if you plan to do
>> anything that requires any moderate grunt, it's a not really up to it.
>>
>> Having said that, if you want low power and lots of space they are
>> fine.  Just remember you will have to do RAID in software (Unless you
>> want to spend a few hundred on a P410 or similar)
>>  and computing the parity across a couple of RAID 5 disks sets
>> underneath ISCSI was a killer.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Stuart
>>
>>
>> On 13 March 2012 00:12, Sebastian Arcus <shop at open-t.co.uk
>> <mailto:shop at open-t.co.uk>> wrote:
>>
>>    I remember there being some talk at Liverpool LUG about a suitable
>>    machine for a low power home server. If anybody here is considering
>>    building a Linux server for either home or a small business, HP has
>>    this Proliant Microserver at only £159 (after cahsback). This
>>    includes a 250GB hard-disk and 2GB ECC memory!
>>
>>
>>  http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-__hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-__microserver-100-cashback-__658553-421
>>
>>
>>  <http://www.ebuyer.com/281915-hp-proliant-turion-ii-n40l-microserver-100-cashback-658553-421>
>>
>>    It seems to me this would make a cracking Linux server for home or a
>>    small business. I'm not entirely sure why is it so cheap - specially
>>    as it has a server grade mobo and RAM. Too bad I'm not about to
>>    build any server for clients at the moment - I'm almost tempted to
>>    buy one and keep it just in case.
>>
>>    No affiliation with HP or Ebuyer - I just thought somebody might
>>    benefit from the heads up.
>>
>>    Sebastian
>>
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Stuart Burns
>> E: stuart.james.burns at gmail.com <mailto:stuart.james.burns at gmail.com>
>> M: [redacted]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
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