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HP N54L Microserver $229.00 + Postage at Shopping Express

550

It's back again.
The Microserver at $229.00 + postage.
Link : http://www.shoppingexpress.com.au/buy/hp-proliant-n54l-micro…
Sale Ends 00:00 am, 18 August 2014

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    • Officially it can't support 4TB.

      If you using it the same way as making 4TB work for you (USB stick), 5TB will also work.
      The Microserver experts here should able to add on more on this.

      Cheers
      SE

    • Keep an eye on this page: http://n40l.wikia.com/wiki/Hard_drives

      4TB has been confirmed to work but no 5TBs on the list yet. However I think they should work. I use 3TBs so far that haven't shown a hiccup.

  • so what would be the ideal selection of items to start a nas from the list?
    is it better getting matching storage options? ie. 4x 4TB drives or 4x2TB drives…. which raid offers the redundancy wehre if one drive fails you have enough redundancy to keep the files alive?

    • +2

      You can find all this by Googling however:
      - RAID 5 needs at least four drives and allows one drive failure.
      - RAID10 or RAID2Z also needs at least four drives but allows two drives to fail… but of course it isn't magic and will need a much larger overhead than RAID5 to offer this.

      If you're new to NAS I recommend you go for a simple RAID5 based system and also buy an external USB drive to perform manual backups of your important data whenever you feel it's appropriate. Rule No.1 with any NAS, never assume redundancy replaces regular backups!

      • Thanks mate,

        so with the above post about 4tb… is that after Raid5,Raid10/2Z ? ie. 4TB = 16TB of hDD space?

  • So:

    HP N54L
    4x red 3TB hdd

    Sub Total $849.00
    Shipping
    Shipping Cost To Post Code 40** $13.85
    Discounts Applied
    Microserver-14082014 Free Shipping 2 or More Remove Coupon Microserver-14082014 -$2.40
    GST Inc. $78.22

    Shopping Cart Total $860.45

    reasonable…. what does everyone think? 9TB seems like a fair bit to fill. I reckon I have close to 2TB atleast on all external HDD's

    • +1

      Looks solid for a NAS. All you'll want after is a good quality USB stick for Nas4Free or FreeNAS or Xpenology OS.

    • It's not difficult once you start building up. I'm about 7.5 TB used with about 840+ movies (1080p mostly). I added a 5th 3 TB and also added a RAID software (FlexRAID) to give me 11.9 TB usable. At the current rate I suspect I'll probably use it all up by 2016 so am very interested in 5TB and larger capacities for my next server.

      • its so hard to submit the order…. arrrr 9gb (12TB with raid5/10) is surely enough… i can always buy another 3TB harddrive later and just put it in right? or does it involve removing all the data off it and redoing it all ?

        • the latter, unfortunately. you can't just add extra drives into a raid5 (or it's zfs equivalent, raidz1). but you can replace each drive 1 at a time with a bigger one
          (at least in zfs, like freenas uses). Although with a strict records destruction policy (ie: delete all those 1080p movies you know you're never going to watch again), you could stretch out for quite a few years on 9tb. And then when you do need to upgrade, you can swap out each 3tb for a 8tb drive (or whatever is the sweet spot by then for tb/$) and FreeNas/nas4free will rebuild the RAIDz1 without losing anything. so you'll end up with 4x 8tb - 8tb = 24tb usable, and a pile of 4 paperweights (3tb each).

        • +1

          If you use UNRAID you can do exactly what you suggest - the parity drive gets recalculated.

  • Guys, need help on dis.

    I'm selling my computer at home but want to keep the hard-drives. It's a 3.5" sata, I have a few other one's similar as well as an older IDE.

    can i combine them all together and put them in this - will it work?

    • 3.5" sata - yes. IDE - no.

      The N54L has 4 standard slots for 3.5" sata drives. If you want to put more than 4 in, you'll need to fiddle around (and get some special cables). If you want to put an IDE in, you'll need a PCIE IDE controller card and some cables and ribbons and probably a lot of crazy. I don't even know if a PCIE IDE controller card is a thing.

  • is this better than something like an external usb 3.0 casing for the drive

    • depends on how big the drive is, how many other drives you want to add to it, what your home network looks like, features of your router (does it have USB file sharing?), what you want to put on the drive, who you want to access the data, etc.

  • Hi OP,
    Is there a limit on the number of HDDs you can purchase?
    I get message saying a limit of 2 when adding 4 x 3tb WDs but the total price updates.
    Just wanted to confirm this

    • just do 2 seperate orders. 2 with the microserver, than do another 2 afterwards

  • Looks like you're out of the RAM modules (KVR16E11/8I) rep. I was looking to buy two of those plus the R7240. :(

    • they can only support upto 8GB. one stick of the ECC would be plenty. heck even the 2gb is fine if you want to transcode one stream of 1080p.

      its seems like that SPNology supports 1080 streaming

      • +1

        It only formally supports 2x 4gb sticks for a total of 8gb. But certain brands/models of 8gb sticks will work, and work in pairs to give 16gb. I believe the 8gb that was offered is one such model.

        • +1

          Yes, I'm running 16Gb (2x8Gb Kingmax/Kingston)in my N54L due to RAIDZ2 being so memory hungry… at least that's what I was told when I had problems initially setting up FreeNAS and was only running 8Gb at the time. I took everyones advice and upgraded to 16Gb but still had the same problems. Everything magically fixed itself when I rebuilt the NAS from scratch using a fresh download of the OS which also happened to be a slightly newer release so it was either a bug in the version or a slightly faulty download… but I'm going with a buggy release as the download & USB creation was flawless.

        • +1

          @SteveAndBelle:

          ZFS likes its ram, and will use up whatever you've got. But shouldn't need a heap. I'd say yeah, buggy release. Although 16gb sure shouldn't hurt. :)

    • +2

      Hi lmh86

      More RAM on the way. You may place order now.

      Cheers
      SE

      • +1

        Thanks just put an order through for the ram

  • Hi Op,

    Seems that you are out of stock.. Anymore coming in?

    • Yup, some more coming in, but not a lot left, please be quick.

      Cheers
      SE

  • Query please, if I was to buy one of these to replace an aging qnap Nas, install xpenology and then set it running with Plex media server could I then just use rasplex as my client and have it play pretty much everything that gets streamed to it?

    Today I have raspbmc as my client and that plays everything fine as the files are in the relevant format that it supports.

    I just wanted to check I could achieve the same functionality by switching to the n54 and then changing my pi. (I want to look at running the other 2 Pi's I have for the kids which is why I am looking to change to a more central option with PMS).

    Thanks

    • +1

      should do. you won't need to do any transcoding on the N54L if the raspberry pi has enough grunt to natively play what you're throwing at it (plex is based off xbmc so should support the same file types with around the same efficiency on the same hardware).

      Assuming there's a plex server for xpenology.

      • Thanks. A quick search shows xpenology will run pms so I think maybe that's the way to go.

        The pi can do 1080p now whilst running the raspbmc flavour of xbmc so hopefully it should be able to run rasplex and do the same.

  • Hi All,

    Every time this offer comes around I seem to miss out but mainly because I am not sure if it will serve what I want to achieve.

    I am currently storing all my data on one external 2TB HDD but I am scared to lose everything as there is no redundancy. I stream the movies to my PS3 (which is now sadly dead but later to be replaced by a PS4 by xmas) using PS3 Media Server.

    I have lots of 2TB and 1TB drives lying around and I was considering buying the D-Link 345 NAS at some stage but for around the same price I can get this and also have more usage out of this.

    Reading most of the comments here it sounds like I could make use of XPEnology but not sure if I can do RAID 5 with this or even if i could do RAID 5 if I install Windows Server on it.

    I have not decided yet but I think to have this as a HTPC would be a good idea but I may end up just using it as a NAS only but would like to be able to stream movies off it to my future PS4.

    Is this all possible? what's your recommendations for my requirements here?

    Any help would be GREATLY appreciated as I don't want to miss out this time as it may be the last time this could come around.

    • +2

      Yeap.. install Xpenology on it, and create a SHR (synology hybrid raid) array, but I think you need to use at least 3 drives.. Use the calculator to see what storage you get from it..

      https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator

      See my other post as it should give you an idea of how straight forward it can be.. Do your homework tho on setting up an xpenology setup..

      • Xpenology looks great. I'm already liking it. Love that calculator as well. Cheers.

        Just not sure yet if there is any way I could throw in a low profile VGA card with HDMI out (which I know is available for this server and be able to play movies straight from xpenology to my TV through some sort of web gui or app controlled from a smart device? that would cover all what I need to achieve here. anyone has done it before?

        I am readng about PLEX and XMBC but still need to find out more about them as I simply have not worked with either one before.

        • I don't think Xpenology can act as a media player, only as a server. So you'll either need to load a more fully-fledged OS on the N54L instead of xpenology (such as ubuntu), or have a separate media playing device (like an Intel NUC or a raspberry Pi).

          I could be wrong about xpenology though. If it CAN act as a player of Plex or XBMC, there are certainly player apps for mobile devices for both plex and xbmc (xbmc has a few free options, too).

  • Hey guys, has anyone setup a home server as a lab using Hyper V?, would you get away with a terrabyte harddrive and 2gb ram?

    • Haven't tried HyperV but I found the RAM limiting with a similar ESXi setup.

  • Thanks tplen

  • everyone is talking about raid 5 … what's wrong with RAID 1? can I just pop 2 drives in and run RAID1 so I have a straight forward redundancy of my data?

    • +2

      RAID 1 (mirror) is fine—actually, preferred—for two drives. When you get to 3+ drives, however, 50% loss of usable capacity is often considered wasteful and unnecessary. This is where RAID 5 comes into play, as it only requires that one drive worth of capacity be sacrificed for single drive redundancy.

      I personally prefer (and recommend) RAIDZ-1 over RAID 5 where supported, and RAIDZ-2 or RAIDZ-3 for double and triple redundancy where required.

  • I wonder if the G8 G1610T will ever come down to $329 again? It looks to have been some sort of a sale price standard at the early part of the year. What went wrong?

  • Has anyone setup this with ESXI with raid?

  • Am I too late, or is this out of stock?
    I did leave it to the last 5 minutes, but I got this when I went to checkout:

    Sorry. We don't have enough '712969-375' in stock to fulfill your order. Please change the qty on order in your shopping cart to a lower number and click update. Then try to checkout again.
    Special Discount 'EVO16' is invalid.
    Special Discount 'Microserver-14082014' is invalid.
    Special Discount 'dailydeals-16082014' is invalid.

    • Yep, guess I missed out, seems the price has gone back up again. Shouldn't have tried to add the RAM to my cart at the last minute. Oh well that's what I get for procrastinating.

  • I ordered mine at 10pm when they had the epic hour on the Kingston 64GB micro SD card.

  • received today :) thanks guys; harddrives were placed in the server box with heaps of bubblewrap. I was freaking out when there was only one box :P…. you guys had me for a sec… now waiting for aus post to deliver the other 2 harddrives so i can start transferring stuff

  • Got the GPU and RAM. Working well with N40L running Ubuntu Precise.

    Rep, any chance of sourcing a PCI card with at least two internal SATA 3GB/s and one external USB 3.0?

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