HP Microserver Gen8 discussion

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#906007 1-Oct-2013 21:26

freitasm:
HiTM4N: So I assume your personal machine will backup locally to this server then this server will back everything up to the online crash plan servers?

Not quite. The Crashplan server creates a local copy in a folder with a funny structure. My local PCs will continue to backup to Crashplan servers, and this is an additional copy.

HiTM4N: Will you just use Microsoft RAS to create the VPN or third party software?

Microsoft RAS, since this will be a SSTP. I am inclined to perhaps run a small *NIX VM to host an OpenVPN server - if I do this might not run the RAS. Will decide this tomorrow.

Nice :)

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#906384 2-Oct-2013 12:37

Interesting, will be interested in the performance of the system overall though.

If i go down the track of getting one, i will personally look at running a couple of the following drives:
Seagate SV35 Series ST2000VX000
http://www.pp.co.nz/products.php?pp_id=AA35050

Make the most of the 6GB/s bays in the system, and if you are going to run any sort of database on the drives you will be thankful for the extra speed.

I saw a server once, running SBS2011 on a mirror set of 1TB SATA drives, Exchange, SQL and file shares. And the client wondered why the system was so slow!!

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#907726 4-Oct-2013 10:18

Next steps:

Remove the D: partition to make it a reserved space for C:
Unplug Z: (USB3 external drive)
Unplug Y: and store away (a copy of F:)
Clean up E: which is now being used solely for Crashplan LAN backup (a couple of Windows and Mac OS machines)
Install Hyper-V and perhaps a small Windows Server image with passthrough to F: to server as the main management tool around, avoiding touching the main OS
Get my OpenVPN to actually work

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#907746 4-Oct-2013 10:55

Also installed Deduplication and Backup so these jobs are running now.

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#907748 4-Oct-2013 11:00

Only cause i am lazy, but how are you finding the noise from the box? Generate much heat?

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#907749 4-Oct-2013 11:02

I've put the box in Passive mode cooling, so the noise is pretty low - mind you using it in the home office, which is away from the lounge, etc...

No heat so far, but we're in a cold spell anyway. Let's see in summer.

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#910025 8-Oct-2013 18:36

Some more information about this HP Microserver Gen8... I will soon post a review and we will have one of those to giveaway.

More importantly, as in previous HP competitions we have MORE THAN one blog giving those away over three weeks - and you will be able to enter in any or all of them for more chances. From the week of 27th October we will start the competition on Geekzone, with other blogs following (two or three per week). Keep an eye on this topic because I will update the schedule later.

In the mean time, here are the participating blogs/forums:

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#915488 15-Oct-2013 16:02

so I was hoping Mauricio would test and tell me if Hyper-V installed and ran on the Microserver, but i gave up waiting and just went and bought one. A G2020T model with the switch (but the switch is on backorder).

I've used 4 x WD "red" 3TB drives in "Raid 0+1" mode, with 1 100GB logical drive for OS files, a 1TB logical drive (for regular files), and a 4TB logical drive (for hyper-v virtual machine/disk files).

I've installed Windows Server 2012R2 and enabled Hyper-V (It works!)
I've also configured Hyper-V Replica to replicate 1TB of virtual machines from a Windows 2012 Hyper-V cluster (It also works!)

I'm currently having the odd crash (*) - possibly down to the memory i'm using, or a NIC fault. Bugcheck 0x00000139. I'm going to see if i can progress this and find the cause.

(*) this may well be due to the fact i'm using Win Serv 2012R2 and the microserver isnt yet tested/certified for the new OS release.

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#915513 15-Oct-2013 16:30

Regs, are you using Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Hyper-V role installed, or Hyper-V Server 2012 R2? Mostly interested in performance, I haven't tried R2 HyperV on it yet. However, on my Gen7, I had to disable the onboard NIC and use a different NIC to stop Win Server 2012 R2 from randomly hanging.

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#915590 15-Oct-2013 17:04

Inphinity: Regs, are you using Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Hyper-V role installed, or Hyper-V Server 2012 R2? Mostly interested in performance, I haven't tried R2 HyperV on it yet. However, on my Gen7, I had to disable the onboard NIC and use a different NIC to stop Win Server 2012 R2 from randomly hanging.

I'm using Windows Server 2012 R2 (not the standalone Hyper-v).

I had some problems with other HP servers (Gen6 BL460c's) with Broadcom NICs in Windows 2012 (+Hyper-v). I found I could create a crash with these by saturating the network. Turning off some of the advanced NIC features (RSS/Offloads/etc) seemed to fix that in that instance. I updated the NICs in the Microserver with the latest firmware and software today, and i'm going to dedicate a NIC to windows and a NIC to hyper-v tomorrow (2 onboard nics + sep iLO nic, how cool!). If I still get a crash (seems to happen at least once a day over 3 days) the i'll try disabling advanced NIC features. If i'm still having issues, i'll look at disabling c-states on the CPU, maybe limiting memory DIMM speed. and run a higher power mode (currently set for low power which clocks it down to 1.6GHz).

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#915607 15-Oct-2013 17:30

It may be something with Hyper-V only because I haven't had a crash and have saturated the NIC with copies (as shown above) and streaming, all working well.

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#915659 15-Oct-2013 19:01

Also, there's an updated pack available now - it includes a ethernet driver that's newer than the one installed on my box a couple of weeks ago.

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#915836 16-Oct-2013 02:09

Mark:
Inphinity:
Mark:
but maybe not such a good FreeNAS server (RAID controller might be a hinderence to ZFS)

I have used FreeNAS on the Gen7s, and it performs fairly well - I get about 80MB/sec transfer speeds out of it. 4x 1TB Seagate 7200RPM drives for the ZFS storage pool, with a 250GB as the boot drive. I would imagine the Gen8s to be about the same, if not a little better. For comparison, my Seagate BlackArmor 400 with 4x 2TB Barracudas in RAID5 only gets about 25MB/sec write and 45MB/sec read.

Hmmm ... does the RAID controller give the option to pass through the drives with no RAID wrapper ? One of the features of ZFS I'm keen to implement is the bitrot detection which it can't do when the storage is in a volume handled by a RAID controller.

?

I've had FreeBSD/FreeNAS ZFS bitrot detection when "the storage is in a volume handled by a RAID controller" because I only used RAID 0 volumes of one disk. So I haven't found a RAID controller that prevented ZFS bit rot detection. And I don't think that you mean that you want to install an existing RAID set. Changing RAID controller would likely be the bigger problem.

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#915909 16-Oct-2013 10:34

freitasm: Also, there's an updated pack available now - it includes a ethernet driver that's newer than the one installed on my box a couple of weeks ago.

Good point. I already have a download of that, so i'll run it and update. I also see a newer BIOS version (labelled critical) and a couple of blue-screen advisories - one in-particular mentioning RAID storage driver. Am updating ALL the drivers and BIOS now and will report back again on friday!

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#915924 16-Oct-2013 10:59

freitasm: It may be something with Hyper-V only because I haven't had a crash and have saturated the NIC with copies (as shown above) and streaming, all working well.

did you use the HDDs in RAID mode, or SATA AHCI mode?

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