I'm been running two HP MicroServers as home-servers under CentOS-5.6 for 2 months, and have been very happy with their performance. I'm wondering if there are many other MicroServer/CentOS users around?
I've been surprised when looking at the MicroServer forums (eg <http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/ 1431514-hp-proliant-microserver-n36l-owners-thread.html) how few posts I see from CentOS users, even though RHEL is one of the only two OS's officially supported by HP for this machine (the other is Windows Home Server).
Is there by chance a MicroServer/CentOS forum anywhere? I haven't been able to locate one.
The MicroServer is incredibly cheap at the moment, as HP keep extending their cash-back offer which brings the price down to about €160 (with 1GB RAM and a 250GB SATA disk).
There is a large amount of official HP Linux support, eg the "HP Smart Update Manager", though as usual with HP software I find it quite difficult to use. (I have the same feeling about HP support for printers.)
On 7/3/11, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
I'm been running two HP MicroServers as home-servers under CentOS-5.6 for 2 months, and have been very happy with their performance. I'm wondering if there are many other MicroServer/CentOS users around?
I thought the HP MicroServer was a nice little box for low demand CentOS servers, but unfortunately HP inexplicably refuses to sell it in my country.
On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 01:33:10PM +0800, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
On 7/3/11, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
I'm been running two HP MicroServers as home-servers under CentOS-5.6 for 2 months, and have been very happy with their performance. I'm wondering if there are many other MicroServer/CentOS users around?
I thought the HP MicroServer was a nice little box for low demand CentOS servers, but unfortunately HP inexplicably refuses to sell it in my country.
Lost the OP, but I am also running the MicroServer albeit with SL 6.0 on it not CentOS.
Great little box though. Even has virtualization support on the processors so I can run KVM based VM's at a decent clip!
Ray
centos-bounces@centos.org schrieb am 04.07.2011 07:35:48:
Ray Van Dolson rayvd@bludgeon.org Gesendet von: centos-bounces@centos.org
04.07.2011 07:36
Bitte antworten an CentOS mailing list centos@centos.org
An
centos@centos.org
Kopie
Thema
Re: [CentOS] CentOS on the HP MicroServer
On Mon, Jul 04, 2011 at 01:33:10PM +0800, Emmanuel Noobadmin wrote:
On 7/3/11, Timothy Murphy gayleard@eircom.net wrote:
I'm been running two HP MicroServers as home-servers under
CentOS-5.6
for 2 months, and have been very happy with their performance. I'm wondering if there are many other MicroServer/CentOS users
around?
I thought the HP MicroServer was a nice little box for low demand CentOS servers, but unfortunately HP inexplicably refuses to sell it in my country.
Lost the OP, but I am also running the MicroServer albeit with SL 6.0 on it not CentOS.
Great little box though. Even has virtualization support on the processors so I can run KVM based VM's at a decent clip!
Ray _______________________________________________ CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
Hello, I've this MicroServer too. At the moment, I'm installing SL6 on it with 4 KVM based VM's, but I'm switching to CentOS 6 if it will be avaible.
Works like a charm.
Andreas
I'm been running two HP MicroServers as home-servers under CentOS-5.6 for 2 months, and have been very happy with their performance. I'm wondering if there are many other MicroServer/CentOS users around?
I'm also running it for two days now, eagerly waiting for CentOS 6.0 to be released so it can replace my aging, power wasting home server. Very nice box for what I'm going to use it, there are not many alternatives around.
Simon
I was looking at the marketing hype on those machines, and they look like they take a standard 3.5" SATA drive. OTOH, some pictures of the HP model drives for the microserver look like there's some type of handle on the front. I'm assuming that this is the "hard disk carrier" mentioned in the installation manual.
Does the basic microserver ship with four of those drive carriers, or do they have to be purchased separately?
Also, would anyone who has a CentOS-based microserver with a remote access card care to share any observations about that card, such as integration aspects and accessing it in a completely windows-free environment?
Devin
On 07/05/11 8:04 PM, Devin Reade wrote:
Does the basic microserver ship with four of those drive carriers, or do they have to be purchased separately?
Also, would anyone who has a CentOS-based microserver with a remote access card care to share any observations about that card, such as integration aspects and accessing it in a completely windows-free environment?
indeed, it ships with the 4 drive trays. Note they are not advertised as hot swap, I believe this is probably because there is no SES (enclosure services) and Windows in particular is not happy about hotswapping disks without one. afaik, if you go to the trouble of using the mdadm commands on linux to take the drive offline before removing it, you should be able to 'warm swap' as there's nothing in the hardware preventing it, and the SATA connector is inherently electrically safe for hotswap.
I haven't actually used one but the Remote Access Card provides a web based KVM, and if its anything like iLO Advanced (various websites seem to think its equivalent), it likely uses a Java-in-your-browser based VNC implementation for the remote VGA, so this should be pretty easy to get going with Firefox+Java on a 'nix platform. Several sites say it uses Avocent MergePoint EMS
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 5:48 AM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
indeed, it ships with the 4 drive trays. Note they are not advertised as hot swap, I believe this is probably because there is no SES (enclosure services) and Windows in particular is not happy about hotswapping disks without one. afaik, if you go to the trouble of using the mdadm commands on linux to take the drive offline before removing it, you should be able to 'warm swap' as there's nothing in the hardware preventing it, and the SATA connector is inherently electrically safe for hotswap.
-- john r pierce N 37, W 122 santa cruz ca mid-left coast
I thought this was particularly dependent on the BIOS to support AHCI, and not necessarily so much on SES alone?
Many desktop grade motherboard can hot swap a SATA HDD and they don't have SES, only AHCI in the BIOS. Or is HP just trying to stay on the safe side with not advertising hot swap, incase someone with Windows has issues with it?
On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 5:48 AM, John R Pierce pierce@hogranch.com wrote:
indeed, it ships with the 4 drive trays. Note they are not advertised as hot swap, I believe this is probably because there is no SES (enclosure services) and Windows in particular is not happy about hotswapping disks without one. afaik, if you go to the trouble of using the mdadm commands on linux to take the drive offline before removing it, you should be able to 'warm swap' as there's nothing in the hardware preventing it, and the SATA connector is inherently electrically safe for hotswap.
-- john r pierce N 37, W 122 santa cruz ca mid-left coast
I thought this was particularly dependent on the BIOS to support AHCI, and not necessarily so much on SES alone?
Many desktop grade motherboard can hot swap a SATA HDD and they don't have SES, only AHCI in the BIOS. Or is HP just trying to stay on the safe side with not advertising hot swap, incase someone with Windows has issues with it?
I think that's exactly the case here. SATA is hot-pluggable by design from the physical/electrical point of view. However, the different operating modes (SATA controller) and operating systems, may not play well so vendors are generally careful what they advertise. I'm quite sure running in AHCI mode and with RHEL/CentOS md raid will not show any issues.
Simon
Devin Reade wrote:
I was looking at the marketing hype on those machines, and they look like they take a standard 3.5" SATA drive. OTOH, some pictures of the HP model drives for the microserver look like there's some type of handle on the front. I'm assuming that this is the "hard disk carrier" mentioned in the installation manual.
I think your questions have all been answered, but I thought I'd add my two cents that I've been really impressed with this box as a home-server. (I have two, in different locations.)
There is no handle on the front of mine. There is a key to lock the front panel, which it is important not to lose! Also when you open the front panel, there is a handle to pull out the motherboard. Maybe that is what you saw. I found it quite awkward to pull out the motherboard, which you have to do to add memory or any card (but not to add another SATA driver), but I am no hardware guru, and usually find this sort of thing hard. I saw a couple of YouTube videos, where a guy disconnected the connectors and pulled out the board in about 10 seconds, but I found each of the 6 connectors quite hard to undo.
I'm surprised how few people seem to be using CentOS (or RHEL) on this machine, according to the forums I've looked at, as the only 2 OS's supported are RHEL (5 and 6) and Windows Home Server. There is a large amount of software support (eg "HP Smart Update Manager") which seems to be RHEL-oriented (there are some RPMs included).
Most of the discussions on the forums are about adding as many hard disks as possible (you can put some in the top, intended for a DVD drive). I didn't really understand the purpose of this exercise, as if I wanted a box with 8 drives I wouldn't choose the MicroServer to start with.
Incidentally, HP's cash-back offer has been extended for another month, I think, so the box is still absurdly cheap, at about 150 euro. It's been extended about 4 times. I don't understand HP's motive, as they must be losing money on this.
-----Original Message----- From: Timothy Murphy Sent: 03/07/2011 10:52 To: centos@centos.org Subject: [CentOS] CentOS on the HP MicroServer
I'm been running two HP MicroServers as home-servers under CentOS-5.6 for 2 months, and have been very happy with their performance. I'm wondering if there are many other MicroServer/CentOS users around?
I'm running C 5 x86_64 (currently 5.5) on mine. Given it the full 8GB of ECC RAM. I've put the drive it came with (the 160GB) into the optical drive bay, so it now shows as hdb. I've got 4 x 1.5TB in the main slots, showing as sda-sdd. They are hot swap under C 5, with the kernel happily doing whatever it does when a drive is plugged/unplugged. I've got them as a 3 disk ZFS RAID-Z array, with the fourth as a spare, under zfs-fuse. The write perf isn't great, but most access is over Samba and my wireless / distinctly under par gigabit network, so it serves me well. And we love snapshots and all those other lovely ZFS features, so that outweighs anything else. Also running Squeezebox server and an old version of VMware Server, with a couple of VMs (not under ZFS - that would be too slow).
Looking forward to C 6! Glad to hear that SL 6 works OK.
Andy
-
Andreas Reschke -
Andy Holt -
Devin Reade -
Emmanuel Noobadmin -
John R Pierce -
Ray Van Dolson -
Rudi Ahlers -
Simon Matter -
Timothy Murphy