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HP finally release the replacement to the ProLiant ML115

ServersPlus

By ServersPlus
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Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted
hmm, anyone seen power draw figures when loaded with drives?
70 watts according to HP. You could probably reduce that figure by another 14 watts by using 2.5" HDDs (with a suitable 3.5" adapter). Not bad at all.

 

The HP MicroServer is powered by a single 200 Watt non-hot pluggable power supply. As would be expected in an entry level server there is no option to add a redundant power supply. The low power (15W) CPU definitely contributes to keeping the running cost of the MicroServer to a minimum, with HP quoting that a fully loaded configuration only consuming an impresssive 70W of power. (Source)
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dhicks

dhicks

Posted
Posted
The video below gives a good overview of the MicroServer (both inside and out). It is supplied with four HDD carriers as standard.

 

Many thanks, that gives me a very good idea of what the insides of this machine look like.

 

You could if you modify this drive-bay adapter. It's probably easier and cheaper to use a separate optical drive and memory card reader though.

 

Thanks. I'm trying to get an all-in-one case - an external card reader wouldn't really be suitible.

 

The maximum power draw for the PCIe x16 slot is 25w according to the specs page on the HP website, so unless you can find a very short single-slot graphics card which uses less than 25 watts you're out of luck.

 

I'll have to investigate this a bit more - I'm trying to find a server sutible to do hardware-accelerated video file conversion, I might need something a bit larger to accomodate the kind of components needed.

 

The onboard RAID uses the RAID feature of the AMD RS785E/SB820M chipset. The are no Linux drivers for it on either the HP or AMD websites (only graphics & NIC drivers) so I am not sure.

 

Hmm - I wonder what the performance of Linux software RAID would be like on this machine?

 

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David Hicks

localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted
Thanks. I'm trying to get an all-in-one case - an external card reader wouldn't really be suitible.

 

I think you'll find that you won't be able to fit a standard 3 1/2 inch card reader and a slimline optical drive into a single 5 1/4 inch drive bay - it'd be one or the other, or you'd have to get a USB card reader and a slimline drive, and customise a drive cage to hold them - ugly but doable.

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Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted
I'm trying to get an all-in-one case - an external card reader wouldn't really be suitible.

Would an external USB DVD writer be an option? e.g. Samsung SE-S084C/TSBS. You could Velcro it to the top of the case so it doesn't move. :)

 

I'm trying to find a server suitable to do hardware-accelerated video file conversion, I might need something a bit larger to accomodate the kind of components needed.

It looks like you are going to have to get a server or case (if you build the computer yourself) which has two drive bays. The Silverstone SG01-F would be a good choice since it has 2 x 5.25" drive bays and can take full-height double-slot graphics cards up to 12 inches long.

 

Which application will you be using to do the GPU video conversion? Elemental's Badaboom isn't very good quality-wise (compared to x246) and it still needs a fast CPU (ideally a quad core) which would mean the CPU in the MicroServer would be too slow. The same applies to AMDs AVIVO encoder. Perhaps it might be worth waiting for Intel's new Sandy Bridge processors? These are supposed to encode video super fast.

 

The video encode engine is a brand new addition to Sandy Bridge. Intel is being light on the details of the encoder but we saw a demo where Intel took a ~3 minute 1080p 30Mbps source video and transcoded it to a 640x360 iPhone video format. The total process took 14 seconds and completed at a rate of roughly 400 frames per second. (Source)
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dhicks

dhicks

Posted
Posted
It looks like you are going to have to get a server or case (if you build the computer yourself) which has two drive bays.

 

Indeed. Does anyone sell a case that can be used as a standard desktop machine or mounted in a 19" rack?

 

Which application will you be using to do the GPU video conversion?

 

I haven't got to that part yet - probably ffmpeg.

 

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David Hicks

Butuz

Butuz

Posted
Posted
I'll have to investigate this a bit more - I'm trying to find a server sutible to do hardware-accelerated video file conversion, I might need something a bit larger to accomodate the kind of components needed.

 

If you want a very budget yet well designed case capable of handling a pimp setup with multiple big GPUs take a look at the Coolermaster Elite 370. Its cheap as chips and asoundingly well designed and all for £30 + vat. You could use a 3.5 or 5.25 all in one card reader and have room for a DVDRW drive.

 

http://www.coolermaster.com/upload/product/6656/featured/top1.jpg?751100106

http://www.coolermaster.com/upload/product/6656/featured/top6.jpg?1235415780

 

Butuz

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  • 2 months later...
computer_expert

computer_expert

Posted
Posted

I've been looking at getting one of these servers due to the size and price (with hp's £100 cashback offer), but the CPU is putting me off it as i'd like to run esxi or xenserver on it.

 

Other than the ML110 G6 which has a few issues with the disk controller & ESXi (don't really want to buy another expansion card though), are there any servers that are equivalent to the ml115 or is the microserver the best bet for a smallish and cheap (<= £250) server?

Chillibear

Chillibear

Posted
Posted
I've had one for a while now running as an ESXi server and it works quite nicely, certainly fits in the house nicely! CPU isn't what I'd call fast, but its okay for me. I'm generally running non-gui servers FreeBSD/Linux and I don't tend to have more than 3 or 4 running at any one time since it's just a test rig. It's nice having the 4 SATA drive bays and it's pretty quiet.
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  • 3 months later...
sidewinder

sidewinder

Posted
Posted

I've come a bit late to the party with this but I am thinking of buying one before the cashback offer finishes.

 

Like others, the CPU puts me off though. Lots of people have said its ok, but not great...but in real terms what does that mean? I mean if I was running ESXi with 4 VM's of Server 2008R2 (assuming I buy more RAM) is it going to be very sluggish or unusuable? Only ever going to be for testing

jamesfed

jamesfed

Posted
Posted

As with many things the speed of the PC is determined by the hard drives and the RAM - unless accual processing is needed the processor has very little to do.

As such what workload are you looking at running on your 2008R2s?

sidewinder

sidewinder

Posted
Posted
It will just be a lab for me to personally test things...so very light workload as it will only be me and possibly a few test clients using it. So I'm guessing it should cope ok
jamesfed

jamesfed

Posted
Posted
It will just be a lab for me to personally test things...so very light workload as it will only be me and possibly a few test clients using it. So I'm guessing it should cope ok

 

Yeah that should be fine - only thing I would worry about would be your choice of Hypervisor - as far as I understand the MicroServer uses AMD RAID (compared to something like a HP P410i) so VMWare/XenServer might not have the drivers for it - Hyper-V works fine though :)

Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted
only thing I would worry about would be your choice of Hypervisor - as far as I understand the MicroServer uses AMD RAID (compared to something like a HP P410i) so VMware/XenServer might not have the drivers for it - Hyper-V works fine though :)

While it's true that ESXi doesn't support the MicroServer's "fake" RAID controller, there's nothing stopping you from either using the disks individually (JBOD-style) or buying a proper hardware RAID controller that is supported (the HP SmartArray P410 is a good card to use). :)

 

One advantage to using ESXi as your hypervisor is that you can install it to a flash drive, connect it to the internal USB port and use the optical drive bay for a fifth HDD to run additional VMs from. If on the other hand you go with Hyper-V, you could run the operating system from the fifth HDD and RAID together the other four HDDs within the operating system itself - 2008 R2 does software RAID-5.

 

Some other info which you may find useful...

 

  • If you want to use the optical drive bay for a HDD (instead of a DVD/BD drive), you should flash this modified BIOS (more details here) - it enables AHCI on SATA port 5. Without it, performance is atrocious (you won't get more than 23MB/s!). To fit the drive in there, you will also need a 5.25" to 3.5" adapter such as the Scythe Hard Disk Stabiliser II (~£7.00), a 45cm latching SATA cable (£3.00) and an LP4 to SATA power cable adapter (£1.00).
  • Standard DDR3 RAM works fine. I recently bought 4GB (2x2GB) for around £30, but I think I may upgrade to 8GB RAM because 4GB is not enough for what I want to do. The cheapest 4GB ECC DIMMs I have found cost £47 each. Non-ECC 4GB DIMMs are £10 cheaper.
  • Due to the chipset, RAM only works in single channel mode. This means mixing different sized DIMMs is perfectly fine. e.g. 1x4GB + 1x1GB for 5GB. However, do not mix non-ECC RAM and ECC RAM.
  • The onboard HP NC107i NIC is actually a Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5723.
  • The x16 PCIe slot only supports cards upto 25 watts. If you use this slot make sure any PCIe cards do not exceed this.
  • If you want to stick a graphics card in the PCIe x1 slot, a good one to choose would be the HIS Radeon HD 5450 1GB Silence (~£39 / Review).
  • I have 5 x Samsung HD204UI 2TB HDDs in my MicroServer since I plan to use it as a NAS. If you get any of these drives, update the firmware as soon as you get them to avoid data loss.
  • The cash-back cheque takes ages to arrive in the post. I ordered my MicroServer on the 7th December 2010 and received the cheque on 8th February 2011 (64 days later!).

  • Thanks 1
sidewinder

sidewinder

Posted
Posted

Thanks for all the info, I've ordered one :)

 

One thing I couldnt find was an affordable half height PCIe NIC...anyone know of any? Found a dual port HP one but at £100 odd is about £90 over what I want to spend ;)

  • 5 months later...
Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted

HP have finally released a faster MicroServer... :)

 

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/uk/en/sm/WF25a/15351-15351-4237916-4237917-4237917-4248009.html

 

Systems come with the new 1.5GHz AMD Turion™ II Neo N40L processor, with with either 2GB RAM, 250GB hard disk (£219 ex-vat), or 4GB, 2x500GB hard disk (in a RAID configuration) and preinstalled with SBS (£565 ex-vat).

 

The processor should give the new generation of Microserver around at 20% speed boost, which should server both home and business users with a nice performance edge. Either system is highly recommended for any small business, the integration with Office365 makes this a killer local/cloud storage combination.

 

(Side note, the current £100 cash back offer only includes the lower end 1.3GHz model which is still available, and hasn’t been extended to the newer models at the moment) (Source)

jamesfed

jamesfed

Posted
Posted

I'm wondering if AMD just have a load of the Neo processors just lying around that they are practically giving away to HP to make space for the newer E-350 (and similar) APUs.

 

Especially considering the Neo line was supposed to fill the gap that AMD had in the ultraportable line (which it did very well with the HP dv2 in my opinion in using this laptop daily) but with an extra graphics boost which is now totally filled by the APUs.

Arthur

Arthur

Posted
Posted (edited)

You may be right. A MicroServer with a 1.65GHz AMD E-450 would make much more sense. For the sake of an extra 3 watts, not only would it be a little bit faster but you also get a "free" Radeon HD 6320 too. :)

 

I don't think AMDs APUs support ECC RAM which may explain why HP aren't using them in their MicroServer's?

Edited by Arthur
jamesfed

jamesfed

Posted
Posted
120% of very little, still isn't much. I don't think its an ML115 replacement until it has atleast 4 cores.

 

Lame.

 

I don't think HPs target was to ever replace the ML115 with the Micro Server - more to introduce a new end of sever designed for the small business who just want to store files (maybe not even run AD) and for the home users who want to run Windows Home Server.

 

Its not like its even 'server' class hardware going in there like you might find in the current ML series.

 

We’ve got one of the MicroServers here for our IT class and they love its simplicity in design and they are getting a lot of learning out of having their own dedicated kit. All the same though when we kitted out our last Primary School it was done using a ML110 Quad Core as this is a more serious production environment.

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