{"id":1791,"date":"2015-07-07T18:15:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T17:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/?p=1791"},"modified":"2024-03-02T12:28:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T12:28:29","slug":"enter-the-server-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/07\/enter-the-server-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Enter the Server &#8211; Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1779\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1779\" style=\"width: 639px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Untitled-1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"1779\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/07\/enter-the-server-part-one\/untitled-1\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Untitled-1.png\" data-orig-size=\"732,284\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"HP Proliant MicroServers Gen 8\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Untitled-1.png\" class=\"wp-image-1779 \" src=\"http:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Untitled-1.png\" alt=\"HP Proliant MicroServers Gen 8\" width=\"639\" height=\"248\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Untitled-1.png 732w, https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Untitled-1-300x116.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 639px) 100vw, 639px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1779\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Yes, there is a kit with 3 exchangeable faceplates for the Gen8.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After I got the Gen 8, it was testing time. I knew the roles I wanted for my new server:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>File Sharing<\/li>\n<li>Backup<\/li>\n<li>Plex<\/li>\n<li>Private Cloud<\/li>\n<li>Download Management<\/li>\n<li>SFTP Server<\/li>\n<li>VPN Server<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When the hardware arrived I had to improvise a bit, since the budget I had, was not enough for the &#8220;perfect configuration&#8221;, so I had to settle with what I bought and with what I already had.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;perfect configuration&#8221; I mentioned before would be IMHO, to upgrade the CPU for a\u00a0Intel Xeon E3-1265LV2, 16GB of RAM, 4x 4TB WD RED, a 250GB SSD for the OS or a 64GB Micro SD to\u00a0boot VMWare ESXi, running an entire virtualized solution.<\/p>\n<p>The bundled CPU is a Celeron\u00a0G1610T, and it&#8217;s not very powerful (2 cores @ 2.3 GHz) to run VMs,\u00a0but enough to run the roles I had in mind. I just needed a few more gigs of RAM and my father got me an 8GB DIMM\u00a0he had laying arround that luckily was compatible with the Gen8.<\/p>\n<p>So from 2GB I was now sporting 10GB of RAM which, BTW, helps a lot with the HP\u00a0B120i Controller. It&#8217;s not a great controller, but for the price I don&#8217;t think it could get better. Still, if you want, there&#8217;s a PCI-E expansion slot inside the server that you can use to add another controller (or anything else).<\/p>\n<p>As for the storage, I got\u00a02x 3TB WD Red drives, I managed to scavenge some WD Green drives I had lying around. So, my current storage configuration is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1 TB drive for the OS<\/li>\n<li>2 TB drive for laptop backups, guest file sharing, private cloud and downloads<\/li>\n<li>2 x 3TB drives in RAID 1 for the main storage (photos, documents, movies, tv series, music, etc&#8230;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As for the OS, I tried a few. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.freenas.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FreeNAS<\/a> was the first. It resembled a lot of the NAS OSs you can find in regular NAS, but a bit behind QNAP and Synology OSs. It&#8217;s very powerful and robust, it&#8217;s based on FreeBSD, but the configuration is not very user-friendly. The Plex server configuration didn&#8217;t go\u00a0as smooth as it should. Still, it&#8217;s on my top 10.<\/p>\n<p>Second was CentOS 7. It all ran smoothly, with an exception (very big exception that also happened with FreeNAS): the Gen8 has only on big fan for the entire system. With CentOS, the fan would not lower from 16% and the temperature sensors on the server ILO reported temperature a bit higher than expected. This is probably related with how CentOS handles the Gen8 ACPI or some drivers&#8230; either way, I didn&#8217;t have time or\u00a0the patience to look for a solution.<\/p>\n<p>For Synology fans, there&#8217;s also a hack of the Synology OS for X86 machines &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.xpenology.nl\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">XPEnology<\/a>\u00a0&#8211; but maybe because I was trying to install and boot it from the MicroSD, I didn&#8217;t have success installing it \ud83d\ude41 Also, it seemed a bit too much of a hack and by then I was trying to use the Gen 8 as a full server and not just as a NAS.<\/p>\n<p>I then realized that I had my Technet copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 unused \ud83d\ude42 and like I work with W2k12 on a daily basis&#8230; why the hell not?<\/p>\n<p>Every piece of software I need is\u00a0available on Windows. As an added layer of data protection, online backup plans like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.code42.com\/crashplan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Crashplan<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Backblaze <\/a>also run on Windows (still Backblaze doesn&#8217;t run on Windows Server or Linux). HP drivers usually are very well optimized for Windows Server, so I went ahead.<\/p>\n<p>The setup was very smooth. After I installed the OS, I ran the Service Pack\u00a0DVD\u00a0with the latest drivers and firmware from HP and some Windows Updates later, I noticed that the temperature readings dropped a lot compared with CentOS 7. When idle, the fan doesn&#8217;t go beyond 7% even when my office is at the peak of the heat and I don&#8217;t have Air Conditioning over here, just a window. The server is very silent, and notice, that my QNAP NAS was fanless!<\/p>\n<p>So, now I have my Gen8 running all the services and roles I need. Is it perfect? No, not yet, there&#8217;s still room for improvement. Perhaps when I have the time and money I might try to carry out more and transform this into a VMWare server. Right now the most important for me is that I got full fledge server that suits my needs, cheaper than a NAS, and you can&#8217;t beat a good deal like that \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n<h5>Tips for the Gen 8<\/h5>\n<ul>\n<li>The best site you can go to for info on the Gen8, is <a href=\"http:\/\/homeservershow.com\/forums\/index.php?\/forum\/88-ms-gen-8\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">this forum<\/a> on the HomeServerShow site. The info they have there is precious and it was a deal breaker for me when I was considering to buy the Gen8.<\/li>\n<li>The Gen8 has a micro sd slot on the board that you can use to boot OSs like VMWare ESXi and FreeNAS. If you don&#8217;t want to use it to boot the OS, you can still use it to keep files normally. Get a 64GB or more MicroSD and you got another storage place on your Gen 8.<\/li>\n<li>The entry-level Gen8 I got does not come with an optical drive. Although you can get one, with all the USB ports on the server, you can boot anything from a USB pen or HDD. Besides that, you still have the virtual drives on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www8.hp.com\/us\/en\/products\/servers\/ilo\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ILO<\/a>. \u00a0Skip the optical drive and get an SSD to put there instead and boot the OS.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Feel free to ask me anything about the Gen 8, here in the comments on Twitter. I&#8217;ll be glad to share more info on this with you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/2015\/07\/07\/enter-the-server-part-three\/\"> Here&#8217;s part three<\/a><strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After I got the Gen 8, it was testing time. I knew the roles I wanted for my new server: File Sharing Backup Plex Private Cloud Download Management SFTP Server VPN Server When the hardware arrived I had to improvise a bit, since the budget I had, was not enough for the &#8220;perfect configuration&#8221;, so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,6,3,4],"tags":[380,378,379,399,381,382,383,400],"class_list":["post-1791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-stuff","category-hardware","category-linux","category-windows","tag-gen-8","tag-hp","tag-hp-proliant-micro-server-gen-8","tag-linux","tag-nas","tag-qnap","tag-synology","tag-windows"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1791"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2005,"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1791\/revisions\/2005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.odrakir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}