Just a quick question, I have a HP microserver N54L which consists of an SSD for OS (win 7) 2 x 2tb in RAID 1 a 2tb as back up and a 3tb as back plus ive got 2 x 3tb external hard drive also used for back up. Now im running out of space to add more hard drives as im running out of space for my photos. Now i can get bigger drives or was thinking about using my old htpc (amd 5300 fm2, msi matx board, fractal r2) as a server just upgrading the ram. The case gives me the flexiability of adding more drives. I use it mainly as a plex server for my movies, pics, home videos and music. So should i stick with the microserver and getting bigger hdds or using the parts i have and just add the extra hdds i havd laying about??
I have my microserver running as a Synology NAS. It boots off a USB stick from here: http://www.xpenology.nl/boot-images/ You then install Synology onto your hard drives: http://www.xpenology.nl/xpenology-software/ This allows you to have 4 drives in your microserver.. Which runs plex and both torrent and nzb clients I'll explain it a bit better if you are interested in it.
Ok, so essentially you have: HP Microserver 1-4 HDD's, at a size of your choice A USB stick - Needs to be no bigger than 200MB, the image is only 18MB I think. You then: Burn the image to USB and boot up your server from this image, it essentially sets up some barebone type Linux OS and presents your server in your LAN as a Synology NAS. You then from your PC use Synology Assistant to find a NAS in your LAN, to which it will discover your server. You give it the Synology Disk Station image, to install and it installs it onto the disk(s) in your NAS. You can have a single disk, with the ability to upgrade it to a RAID-1, or RAID 5 if you expand. It creates a software RAID on your disks. You have the ability to hot expand too, it's a slow process but if you had: 3x3TB, if you wanted to get some 5TB's you can: Take out 1 disk Replace with 5TB Wait for rebuild Repeat with next disk Then the next Then use the software to expand your RAID It works exactly the same as a real Synology, I had a bit of fiddling to do with folder permissions.. I had to SSH in and CHMOD some to 777 as it creates them with no permissions for some reason so some applications did not work. But, overall it gives a very well spec'd NAS, the option of up to 4 disks. At the price of £144.99 after cashback: http://www.ebuyer.com/517760-hp-proliant-gen8-g1610t-microserver-712317-421 You really can not complain, for a real Synology of this kind of spec you are probably looking at £1000, based on their extortionate hardware prices... And it still won't transcode for Plex if you need it as Atom and Marvel CPU's are not supported for Transcoding which is another reason I chose the Microserver, as one of my TV's doesn't play many formats. The files on the USB stick never change, so as they release updated images you can update your USB key and it has no effect on your NAS, as the key just provides some kind of interface for it to run. For some reason the forum shows account suspended, but when it's back.. It is here: http://provisov.net/suspended.page/
geesus, craig, if that works, pretty awesome, I will have to check it out! Your link is for a Gen8 microserver, mine and OP have the old version, is this still viable? Do you know if it supports raid volumes larger than 16tb? Also if DVBLink server would work, would be useful to me.
Yep, it works on previous generations but it's not only built for Microservers, you can run it on more server types, or in fact PC's/Laptops I believe.. There will be some compatibility issues with some hardware maybe I would assume, but I think it's pretty flexible. I think you could make up 24GB, depending on your RAID level (in a microserver with 4 drives) as all the Synology NAS seem to say they only take up to 6TB drives. It installs the NAS, as a DS3615XS: https://www.synology.com/en-global/products/DS3615xs#spec Which, although can have up to 72TB, it comes made up of 6TB drives. I love my old Synology NAS, a DS112J but it was just too under powered and only had 1 bay. I was looking at getting a DS415, but it was £350 and less spec than the microserver. Other NAS were similar, high priced for low spec and quite frankly I love the Synology interface. It runs flawlessly NZBGet, rutorrent and Plex which is ultimately what I use it for. I don't have to touch the NAS I just simply add an NZB or Torrent to my RSS feed on the sites, it picks it up, downloads it, post processes is eg rename everything to correct format, put in right folders and index in plex....
With some cleverness, you can easily fit 5x 3.5" HDDs into a microserver, using the firmware that unlocks the 'optical drive' SATA port from 1.5 to 3GBps. My setup uses 5x 3TB drives for a 9TB usable volume (RAIDZ2). With a more judicious application of cleverness, you can fit in 6x drives. You need to route the eSATA port to the inside, and chop through the 5 1/2" bay support bracket so you can stack two drives there.
6 Drive N36/40/54L: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11585.0 Using XPEnology on a NAS is something I'd never do! It's blatant IP theft of another companies OS (so illegal) and has no official support on the hardware it's being hacked to run on. A NAS should be reliable and proven-stable, I would stick with one of the well known Linux NAS distros like FreeNAS, unRAID or OpenMediaVault.
I ran XPEnology for a bit on my NL54 with 3 x 2 TB no issues without any major issues. Worked pretty sweet. Was over kill for what I wanted at the time so I went back to my MediaVault EX485 and WHS. Are all implementations of FreeNAS zfs based? I know that NAS4Free forked out from FreeNAS and from what I read was a little more forgiving on hardware.
The kernel, at least, is (it is Linux afterall). Their custom interface and services are proprietary, which makes XPEnology illegal.
TBH seemed a bit too good to be true. Keep reading about so many companies, even Micro$0ft, doing what used to the hippyish notion of giving their software away, usually monetised somewhere further along the line or to corner the market, assumed synology were allowing the same, my mistake!
Legality aside, I'm not quite sure I understand the benefit of hacking a full-fat server to run a presumably limited OS - what are the benefits over the linux distro (NAS specialised or otherwise) or either a desktop or server variant of windows? I'm not being provocative here, genuine question, I know nothing of Synology though I'm considering a G8 Microserver as a second NAS and had intended on running W2012R2 on it.
For me personally I just like the Synology interface and features. There is a demo version you can log into on their website if you want to have a play... There are some custom apps too, not just the ones Synology produce.
I think one of the advantages is that it is easier to maintain, I guess, and you buy the device with the OS preinstalled and ready to go, and has a large company behind it with support. The interface is also better looking too than say, OMV, for example. If you have patience and a tight budget, I don't think is worth it.
I would guess its ease of use, the interface is pretty nice, pre created packages both by synology and third parties and setting up is just easier. Yes I could probably set up a full fat linux distro to do all the same, however its going to take time and would never look this pretty. What your intended function for the box? Just file storage? Do you require redundancy at all? Already got the Win2k12r2 server license?
The box would be a backup target for my main server, with an 8TB disk for static and non-compressible content and 2TB disk for transient content. I already have the appropriate license for W2012R2 and also use it on my main server (which pulls double duty as a HTPC as well), however I'm not sure the full fat OS delviers as much value for me with this use case - I'm just using an entry level single disk NAS at the moment for backup and don't find it lacking. Swapping up to a 2012R2 server would demand a little more attention with regards to updates etc, which I don't have to think about at the moment. The only benefits of 2012R2 for the backup target woudl be ReFS for the 8TB volume and de-dupe for the 2TB one - does Synology have anything to compare?
Just like to say thanks to Craig_T for pointing me in the right direction as I now have Synology up and running on both HP gen8 and gen7 Only took 10 mins to setup
