NAS options with HP Microserver

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xpd

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#320434 14-Aug-2025 08:21

Well, yesterday one of my NAS drives failed (2x2TB in an ancient unit) - I was not running it in RAID and thought "poo" but not overly concerned for the data that was on it. Thankfully tho, for whatever reason, while I thought I had data on both drives, it appears I was actually only using one drive, so my data was safe (and now moved to another device just in case).

Which got me thinking it was time to "upgrade" my NAS to something more modern. And that reminded me, that I had a HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 (8GB RAM) sitting in the cupboard that I was given a few months back.

So I'm looking at using that.

What are my options with it - I could just run Windows with a bunch of drives and shares. Or do I look at something along the lines of TrueNAS/OMV/Unraid ? I'm not overly concerned about running it as anything else (VMs etc, already have system I do that on), just purely file storage (primarily for my onsite backups). Going something Linux based appeals to me to a degree as then less risk of encryption if my main system did get hit with ransomware etc by some miracle.

I have a bunch of mixed sized drives I can throw into it.

TIA

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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michaelmurfy

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#3402488 14-Aug-2025 08:49

Unraid is easy and I think you'll like it especially if you've got mixed drives. Just ensure your largest drive is assigned as your parity. I personally use Unraid on my HP Microserver.

Outside of that - would recommend Proxmox. There's a bunch of "helper scripts" here: https://community-scripts.github.io/ProxmoxVE/ that make it easy to just spawn stuff.

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mdf

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#3402503 14-Aug-2025 09:51

+1 Unraid (which @michaelmurfy put me onto a few years back).

Some great instructions on how to use on SpaceinvaderOne's youtube channel.

Dairusire

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#3402575 14-Aug-2025 14:17

I'm a user of Unraid and honestly my experience with it has been great. It's easy to use and simple to deploy containers or apps.
Predominantly use it for Media. Plex.
I just have a home built machine with
SAS HBA,
i7 8700
64GB of RAM
Nearly 100TB of storage in the thing come to think of it. (used calculator after I wrote this, 101.52?TB, how the heck did I get there)

There is a couple of quirky things about it (and dumb), but being able to use odd sized disks in the same array is honestly awesome, and being able to expand said array by just adding another disk or replacing is 10/10.

Recently had a Data disk fail in my array, was an 8TB. Bought a new 20TB disk which was larger than any other disk. Put it in, and what you can do is a parity swap (new 20TB disk for existing 16TB parity disk). It'll take the array offline while it's performed but moves the entire parity to the new disk, then once completed you can bring the array back online and rebuild the (old 8TB failed data disk) new 16TB disk from parity.

Or if you weren't silly like me, just buy a new 16TB disk replace the failed one and rebuild the array with just a reboot.

One thing about the entire process above, which is the aforementioned dumb, it's a single threaded process. Genuinely CPU usage on a single core pegged at 100% constantly while this was running. I checked, that is by design. So stupid.

Outside of the above, it's pretty solid and rather simple (ish) to use. Only real suggestion, put it on a UPS.

Handle9

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#3402579 14-Aug-2025 14:25

I use Unraid and hexos (which is just truenas in a nice skirt) on my two NAS. I also run Unraid on a micro server at Mums place.

If you want to use mismatched drives then Unraid is by far the best option. If you don’t I’d consider something like OMV (easy) or Truenas (more powerful) as they are free and I’m not the biggest fan of Unraids new license model.

You pay for Unraid and get a year of software updates. After that you need to pay for updates. If you are just running storage it probably doesn’t matter but if you are just running as storage then do you really need paid software?

michaelmurfy

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#3402641 14-Aug-2025 20:59

Handle9: You pay for Unraid and get a year of software updates. After that you need to pay for updates. If you are just running storage it probably doesn’t matter but if you are just running as storage then do you really need paid software?

I do agree here but they do have a lifetime software license still or with their unleashed license it's $38 per year after the initial year which isn't bad. I'd pay to support development which is why when the license changes were about to happen I upgraded to Unraid Pro mainly out of support, not that I needed more drives.

I appreciate the fact they're keeping old licensing as is with free updates.

Handle9

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#3402643 14-Aug-2025 21:03

michaelmurfy:

Handle9: You pay for Unraid and get a year of software updates. After that you need to pay for updates. If you are just running storage it probably doesn’t matter but if you are just running as storage then do you really need paid software?

I do agree here but they do have a lifetime software license still or with their unleashed license it's $38 per year after the initial year which isn't bad. I'd pay to support development which is why when the license changes were about to happen I upgraded to Unraid Pro mainly out of support, not that I needed more drives.

I appreciate the fact they're keeping old licensing as is with free updates.

I've got three unraid licenses (a Pro, a Plus and a Starter license) so I like the software, and community, a lot. It's a fairly nuanced discussion, they changed their model as well as can be expected while maintaining their viability.

They certainly haven't screwed their installed base and gave everyone a chance to buy licenses before it changed. I just don't like the model much, I'd rather pay more and get a lifetime license. That doesn't make me right or wrong, it's just a personal preference.

xpd

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#3402646 14-Aug-2025 21:40

Installed the trial to have a poke at, can see its advantages etc, but I am wondering if I am better off staying with Windows as it will be just storage, and I know my way around it.... but I am a geek, so therefore I should play with other OS's ;)

Will see....

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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michaelmurfy

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#3402696 14-Aug-2025 23:58

xpd: but I am wondering if I am better off staying with Windows as it will be just storage, and I know my way around it....

I'll answer this for you - no you're not.

You can run Windows as a VM if you so desire but I highly recommend getting out of your comfort zone, trying Docker containers out and sticking with it.

UnRaid is an excellent operating system for people like yourself as it's easy to use, powerful and has everything you need. I still recommend it to people despite the licensing as it's a great entry point into Linux and Homelabbing with containers.

Handle9

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#3402714 15-Aug-2025 03:25

michaelmurfy:

xpd: but I am wondering if I am better off staying with Windows as it will be just storage, and I know my way around it....

I'll answer this for you - no you're not.

You can run Windows as a VM if you so desire but I highly recommend getting out of your comfort zone, trying Docker containers out and sticking with it.

UnRaid is an excellent operating system for people like yourself as it's easy to use, powerful and has everything you need. I still recommend it to people despite the licensing as it's a great entry point into Linux and Homelabbing with containers.

The other really strong point of Unraid is the community. There is a massive number of guides available on YouTube for how to setup different services as well as their forums and subreddit being super helpful.

Spaceinvader One, Ibracorp and Alientech42 on YouTube all have great guides.

Tinkerisk

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#3402748 15-Aug-2025 09:26

Anything but Windows. Proxmox+[insert your favorite NAS s/w here] or TrueNAS SCALE on bare metal.

- NET: FTTH, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs, ipPBX
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
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cddt

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#3402754 15-Aug-2025 09:41

xpd:

wondering if I am better off staying with Windows as it will be just storage

If you want set and forget, then Windows probably isn't the right answer. Something like Debian maybe? Then you get LTS updates for 5 years.

My referral links: BigPipe | Mercury

Gurezaemon

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#3402758 15-Aug-2025 09:50

I've found OpenMediaVault (OMV) to be perfect for this sort of usage, and it will run comfortably on pretty much anything.

I have a Intel Atom D510 from 2009 powering a 2-drive system, and it still handles gigabit speeds quite comfortably.

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xpd

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#3402766 15-Aug-2025 10:16

Thanks all, have decided I will go with UnRAID, but after reading reviews and posts on Reddit etc, will start from scratch with a new server (needed anyway) and a couple of new drives and be my only server. Will take me a little while to get this funded (house comes first...) but hopefully around Xmas it'll be done :)

I'll start a post here once I have all the parts and do a step by step of how it all goes :D

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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