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NAS device: Difference between revisions
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The HP Microservers offer a flexible approach to a DIY NAS solution. | The HP Microservers offer a flexible approach to a DIY NAS solution. | ||
The hardware has | The hardware has | ||
* dual core AMD processor | |||
* 2 * DIMM slots t | |||
* 1 GByte ethernet | |||
* 4 * 3.5" SATA drive bays | |||
* 1 * 5.25" drive bay intended for optical drive. | |||
There are | There are 3 models (that I know of) of the microserver - the older N36L a more recent (as of Feb 2012) N40L and the latest (as of mid 2013) the N54L. | ||
The servers have a very attractive price of £220 and there have been regular offers where there is a £100 cashback - so the price comes in at | The servers have a very attractive price of £220 (+VAT) and there have been regular offers where there is a £100 cashback - so the price comes in at less than £150 for the base machine. | ||
For a NAS device there is little requirement for an optical drive so it would seem reasonable to put a 5th hard disk into the top bay - one of these looks attractive to mount a 3.5" disk in the 5.25" bay : http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000KS8S9W/ref=oh_o01_s01_i00_details | For a NAS device there is little requirement for an optical drive so it would seem reasonable to put a 5th hard disk into the top bay - one of these looks attractive to mount a 3.5" disk in the 5.25" bay : http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000KS8S9W/ref=oh_o01_s01_i00_details or this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004LOANNK/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1 has a 2.5" bay as well which could be used for a SSD. | ||
However, the BIOS as delivered is configured to not allow the 5th SATA port to run at 3.0G and there are reports of performance issues when mixing | However, the BIOS as delivered is configured to not allow the 5th SATA port to run at 3.0G and there are reports of performance issues when mixing | ||
There is plenty of information on hacking the BIOS for the N36L and the N40L and I have followed this to build a NAS box from the N40L. | |||
I am now planning to build another pair of NAS devices from the N54L and hopefully the instructions for hacking the BIOS of the N40L will work for this one as well. | |||
The pair of NAS's I have based on the N40L comprises: | |||
* N40L | |||
** with hacked BIOS - it seems that the BIOS is an off the shelf AMI BIOS that HP use but they have locked it down and the 'hack' is merely to unlock it | |||
* 2 * 4G DIMMs which is the max memory configuration according to the documentation form HP but there are reports that some people have had luck with 2 * 8G DIMMs with some specific brands of memory. I haven't tried this but if I wasn't about to build a new NAS's then I would explore upgrading the RAM because the software I am using makes use of all spare RAM for caching. | |||
* dual dock http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004LOANNK/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1 | |||
* 5 * 3TByte disks - 4 mounted in the internal disk bays and one in the dual dock | |||
* 120 GByte SSD - Samsung 840 PRO in one machine and Intel 330 Series in the other | |||
* a short (30cm) SATA cable to connect the 3.5" bay to the motherboard | |||
* a short (30cm) eSATA to SATA cable to connect the SSD in the 2.5" bay to the eSATA port on the back - I had to cut a hole in one of the blanking plates of one of the PCIe slots. | |||
* SANDISK Extreme USB key 16G for OS - http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007YXA5S8/ref=wms_ohs_product?ie=UTF8&psc=1 - these were the fastest USB memory sticks I could find and have wear levelling. | |||
** I found that the performance of the web GUI was quite dependent on where it was installed but since I wanted to use all the disk bays for data disks I had to use the USB boot option for the OS. | |||
* NexentaStor NAS software - this is based on a fork of OpenSolaris with a Web GUI. There are 2 versions available, the enterprise edition is quite pricey but the community edition is free for upto 18TByte of configured storage. The 5*3T disks give just short of 11T of usable storage. | |||
