HP Micro Server or QNAP NAS for home

[edutech4schools]

I have £500 ish to spend on my home network system.

 

Currently have old desktop running server 2008 and a few TB drives for storage but it is very slow.

 

Do I go for a NAS box with RAID something like the qnap devices which gives me turn on and forget functions or do I get a HP Micro Server and use this as a storage device which does have the bonus of letting me tinker with the OS but will almost defiantly consume way more of my time with things like MS updates and the rest.

 

Anyone used either of these devices?

What would you go for?

[sted]

would you believe ive just got and am in the process of testing a hp microserver right now just shoved 2008r2 on it (freenas 0.8 diddnt find the array drives (even in ide mode)) so far seems ok ive even enabled aero with 1gb ram and its running fast enough

[edutech4schools]

How loud is it? I no longer have a room just for me and my computer bits due to expanding family so it will probably go in the front or back room.

 

pity about the freenas.

 

Could you do me a favour and upload a largish file over the network to it and download it again and post the times and file size. The reason - I once had an icy nas box with a 1000gb network card (main reason I purchased it) but due to the control chip it wouldn't even run at 100mb. So they could advertise it as 1000 but it was not actually capable of that speed.

 

Let me know if you like it after you have had a play.

[sted]

How loud is it? I no longer have a room just for me and my computer bits due to expanding family so it will probably go in the front or back room.

 

pity about the freenas.

 

Could you do me a favour and upload a largish file over the network to it and download it again and post the times and file size. The reason - I once had an icy nas box with a 1000gb network card (main reason I purchased it) but due to the control chip it wouldn't even run at 100mb. So they could advertise it as 1000 but it was not actually capable of that speed.

 

Let me know if you like it after you have had a play.

 

will do in a mo im just trying a diff version of freenas atm

 

noise its not silent but no noisier than most nas boxes

[sted]

right speed freenas 0.72 a 970mb iso took 30 seconds

server08r2 (just vanilla install and drivers (and turned on aero and hyperv) 32 seconds

 

just to standard 160gb drive windows standard 250gb freenas no raid

Edited April 6, 2011 by sted

[glen_j]

i've got a qnap nas at work, 4 1.5tb hdd as a raid 5 1 500mb file takes 10 secons to copy across. cant say how loud it is as its in a server cabinet with lots of other kit its pretty good and as you say fit and forget

[Avalon]

i recently bought a hp proliant microserver for home use and am very happy with it.

 

I added in a second hard drive and upgraded the memory to 8Gb from the original spec. I installed vmware esxi on it and have created a few VM's which run very nicely on it.

 

£100 cashback offer still running on the hp microserver until the end of april too!

[sted]

i recently bought a hp proliant microserver for home use and am very happy with it.

 

I added in a second hard drive and upgraded the memory to 8Gb from the original spec. I installed vmware esxi on it and have created a few VM's which run very nicely on it.

 

£100 cashback offer still running on the hp microserver until the end of april too!

 

thats why i bought it think im going to try and find a cheap soundcard for it and use it as a spare workstation as well. Seems to run hyperv in 08 quite happily now to decide whats going in it drive wise do i get aniother 2 2tb drives and pull the existing pair out of my nas and set it up as raid 10(if it does raid 10) or a pair of raid 1 arrays or do i risk a software raid 5 array. Its currently running 3gb ram inly vms i suspect im going to run are xp so as its sp1 i can lose 512 mb ram and up it if needs be

[edutech4schools]

OK after lots of reading I went for the QNAP NAS TS-219P+ Turbo NAS

 

QNAP Systems, Inc. ( TS-219P+ Turbo NAS ) - Quality Network Appliance Provider

 

Reason I went for this:

 

1. Hdd are very expensive on the Micro Server. I was after 2TB in raid 1 which cost 50 each for std SATA II. On the Micro Server this would have pushed the price up by £300 each.

 

2. The NAS drive supports i-phones and android.

 

3. Turn the NAS on and off by timer.

 

4. With qnap plugins add extra features like. PHP, Gallery, Media player addons, and many more.

 

5. DLNA, UPNP

 

6. Database support

 

7. VMware ISCSI support

 

8. Just turn on and use, no more hours of tinkering / trying to get software working.

 

 

Note: I will also get a Micro Server but just the basic model so I have a server to play with if I need to do some AD testing.

[Arthur]

1. HDD are very expensive on the MicroServer. I was after 2TB in raid 1 which cost 50 each for std SATA II. On the MicroServer this would have pushed the price up by £300 each.

You don't have to buy the HDDs from HP.

 

I ditched the 160GB Seagate drive that came with my MicroServer and bought 5 x 2TB Samsung HD204UI's for a total of 8TB in RAID-Z. Each drive cost no more than £60.

[morganw]

...and changing the drives is a good way to make it quieter, I'm using 3 WD Caviar Green drives in mine and it's quieter than just using the one hard drive that is supplied with it.

[edutech4schools]

Did not check about cheaper HDD's but nas is still the best option for my home setup.

 

I am going to get the HP this month anyway as its sooo cheap for the basic system and still has cash back offer for next few days.

 

 

 

Cheers.