Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)
  • NAS or HP microserver
  • philxx1975
    Free Member

    By the time your done adding drives it seems they are similar money

    Whats the deal for storing ripped DVDs etc

    The NAS solutions seem to be one click and your done ?

    rossburton
    Free Member

    Synology and QNAP NAS devices all get great reviews – I’ve a fairly old Synology (DS209) and am looking at a QNAP TS251 to replace it at some point. They’ll be one click for file serving, but obviously won’t actually rip a DVD for you (mainly as they don’t have a DVD drive, but also because it’s technically illegal).

    I’m really tempted by a HP microserver although if you’ve found one for a similar price to a mid-range NAS then I’d love to know where you’re looking… A non-disk mid-range Synology or QNAP can be had for ~200 quid.

    cranberry
    Free Member

    Qnap NASes here, they work well and are easy to set up.

    For ripped DVDs rip the DVDs with Handbrake and install Plex on your NAS and your smart tv/whatever.

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    philxx1975
    Free Member

    Ross, I will find the link 110 quid after cashback for a dual core celeron ??

    Cranberry thanks I will look into the suggestions These synologys are new to me.

    allthepies
    Free Member

    I have both. A HP Microserver N54L running xpenology (basically the Synology DSM OS) and a Synology NAS (fairly entry level).

    The N54L kicks the Synology’s ass, much faster and capable.

    rossburton
    Free Member

    Oh they’ve got a lot cheaper since I last looked. I’ll order a micro server tomorrow 😉

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    Not sure I could ever touch anything by HP these days.

    Synology NAS are very good though. The UI, plugins and expandability are good selling points as well as low power and quiet and yet powerful if you get the Intel Atom models (the non Intel models are underpowered). HP seem to use Celery (sorry Celeron). Just reminds me of their budget crap PCs they took over from crappy Compaq. Under specced and full of proprietary nonsense, and rubbish support.

    Don’t even get me started on their printers!

    rossburton
    Free Member

    Don’t be too put off by Celeron, it certainly used to be the sign for “the shoddy chips” but not so much these days. It’s still a 2.3GHz 22nm dual core IvyBridge…

    The Microserver looks like a fairly standard Celeron package, even using good old Matrox G200 graphics (the G1610T has integrated GPU according to ARK but the mobo doesn’t, but <shrugs> microservers should be headless anyway).

    The NAS-specific x86 chipsets are mostly Celeron, it’s only when you get up to enterprise scale that you get non-Celeron models which then become Xeon.

    andyl
    Free Member

    I’ve got a HP microserver running Windows Server and Drivepool. tbh I am not really making the most of it as I have not had time to sit down properly and set up my laptop and other devices to make use of it.

    A couple of problems I did run into are, but these might be out of date now on the later version, especially if a new bios has been released:

    The optical drive space needs a rare 9.5mm thick drive. I intended to get an external USB DVD/BD burner instead if I ever need one as it can be used on other devices as a spare (eg my laptop DVD drive has packed up after about 6 uses and is not worth fixing)

    If you want to use a HDD (in my case a Samsung Evo SSD) in place of the ODD to allow you to have the OS separate from your storage drives then the power connector used is the small molex off an old 3.5″ floppy drive so you will either need to use a Y splitter off one of the storage drive channels, cut the cable or (as I did) pinch the connector from an old floppy drive. Maplin did sell the connector needed very cheap but stopped doing it and HP wanted £20 or so for the cable.

    You will also then run into a bios problem if you don’t want to use the hardware RAID as it will keep trying to find the OS on the storage drives and not the ODD channel. To fix this you need to use either a USB drive or a micro SD card (both usb and micro SD internal) and set up a fix/bodge where the bios goes to the SD/USB as they can be set before the main drives which then points the bios towards the ODD channel.

    Internally there is plenty of space to either stick the SSD in the top or as I did mount an SSD holder vertically to the side of the drive bays so it’s not sat in the warm air at the top.

    There was also a bios update to make the fans work correctly.

    Would I buy another HP product? Nope, mainly on bios problems. Is it very good value for money if willing to mess around? Yes.

    In a way I wish I had just bought a Synology but this is more powerful. I am just not exploiting the power right now I also like that if I want to I can use FreeNAS or any other server OS and not be locked into a proprietary one.

    cranberry
    Free Member

    if I want to I can use FreeNAS or any other server OS and not be locked into a proprietary one.

    I don’t see being locked into a proprietary OS a problem for NAS. Qnap have regular updates and a good stock of plugins and the ease of setup and use is a major plus.

    twisty
    Full Member

    The microserver option you have more flexibility and performance, ZFS etc, but you have to set it up/fiddle with it.
    The NAS option works straight out of the box, then again if you want to do advanced/odd stuff with it then you are back to puttying in and fiddling with it.
    Bottom line is microserver is probably the better option if you like/want to fiddle with linux.

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    Synology is based on BusyBox on (I believe) Linux kernel. A little less flexible in some ways but allows for very low memory footprint and less overheads, so ideal for a low power NAS device.

    The admin UI is quite a neat web UI with desktop feel. Regular updates, although major updates do tend to wipe and replace the core OS filesystem (settings and apps are retained). That’s fine if you don’t fiddle but if you fiddle with under the hood customisations then you need to back those up and reapply. I use scripts to check for changes in my customised files on each update now.

    Quite a large “modding” community and unofficial and official customisation apps.

    There’s also a third party boot mod to load the Synology OS on other hardware.

    tinribz
    Free Member

    Another Synology fan, like the apps and media streaming out the box, and the regular emails it sends me!

    Main reason for a nas is lower power costs and noise. If they aren’t a big deal for you then why not just buy an old dell office PC offa ebay and put a linux server on it? Or a fanless mini ITX, or cheap laptop?

    squirrelking
    Free Member

    Microservers have a tiny power footprint as well hence their popularity

    finishthat
    Free Member

    Because the micro servers are very cheap when on offer – have a warranty etc – they are also designed for 24×7 low power use , headless and remote usage – unless you already have a spare suitable system there is no point in buying some old tat when the microservers are just over £100 brand new.

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    Used to run an old PC as a NAS server but it was noisy, consumed a lot of power and the PSUs kept going bang! (alarmingly with flash and smoke. Thankfully was in each time it happened). That’s the problem with them sat there running 24/7 collecting dust in a corner. I feel safer with a dedicated NAS, low power and running off a small power brick. I run mine on a UPS also.

    Does have fans and vents so still need to give it a dust now and again but the Synology ones are dead easy to open out and clean. Also like that the drives just push into place.

    0303062650
    Free Member

    I sorted out an HP microserver to be used as a NAS for a mate, 5x disks in it (was one of the older ones) and using FreeNAS. I think including putting the hard disks in the little cages, finding a spare USB drive, flashing the bios, about 60mins from boxes of bits to functioning NAS.

    If you really want to cut some noise (not a huge difference, but some), grab a pico psu and a good quality ‘power brick’. Stick loads of RAM in it too. Way more powerful and capable than any comparative Synology unit and the same with qnap / etc etc. It’ll saturate your standard 1Gb network when transferring data, no problem.

    As for deadkenny, if you used an old pc and the psu kept popping, chances are it was *badly* assembled or the gratuitous use of shockingly crap components.

    FreeNAS is ace though and providing you use ECC RAM, your data won’t suffer the perils of ‘bit rot’.

    deadkenny
    Free Member

    The old PC was fine for years. It was just when I ran it as the NAS which was less demanding running Fedora as a server doing very little compared to use as a Windows desktop. Only difference was it was running 24/7.

    PSUs might have been “cheap” though 😉 . Went through a couple, totally different brands and plenty of Watts for the set up. Was a humble AMD K6-2 (going back some years now! 😀 ) and board it came with, no heavy power components, just basic graphics card and a hard disc. The caps were the things going bang.

Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)

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