HP ProLiant MicroServer

gwainw said:
I heard that the nVidia 210 have problems with 1080 might be better to look for something else, the size of the pc worries me with overheating issues when you install 4 drives and a gpu
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It seems the 210's had issues due to poor driver support, which has since been remedied. In any case, I'll see how well it runs when I get it. I have a couple of 1080P movies that should push it about as far as it should ever be required to go.
 
HavocXphere said:
We're interested in peak, not load values. Here's a hard-disk with spin up wattage of just over 28W. 4 of those, 112W. Add CPU (15) & GFX (25) and we're at 152W. Thats already over the limit & we actually still need some watts for the mobo and perhaps a safety margins. Then we're also assuming the PSU can actually deliver 150W.

Clearly it can work (e.g. not using enterprise hdds like I did above:p) else they wouldn't sell it...it just needs careful consideration. Looks like Messugga has it covered though.
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The 'peak' value of the system would never be the 'peak' value of all the combined parts. Hard-drives peak at spinup when all the other parts wouldn't be at peak and then pretty much at least less than have half the power consumption during write/read then at spin-up. That's also a SAS drive, I was under the impression the majority of modern drives use about 12 to 14 watts at spin-up where'd you find the spin-up wattages from btw? I also doubt someone buying a R1200 system is going to put 4 x 2TB drives that cost upward of R2000 a drive in there anyways I could very well be wrong on all of this...

My point was putting that graphics card into the system wasn't going to be the problem, if you then load it with a gazillion drives then yes you might miss those 25watts
 
Windows Homeserver 2011 production has been released (old Vail).
 
I am aware it has been released, it's just not available in any retail channels that I have access to at the moment.
 
Right. The 210 from Inno3D fits fine. It doesn't come with the low-profile backplate but I'll order one off of eBay. In the mean time, I'll just have to be careful to not bump it too much, which shouldn't be an issue considering where the system stands. Busy setting up the OS and software RAID, etc.

Edit - And an update. Finally got everything set up correctly (The RAID5 gave me a bit of trouble). The RAID is still doing its thing, so disk performance can't really be measured yet. Copying to it is pretty slow at the moment at 6MB/s, but hdparm chucks out 87MB/s. Again, that's while the indexing and things is going on, so I'm probably looking at an excess of 100MB/s with default settings.
As for the graphics card. The little guy idles at around 50 degrees, so I'm very happy that I went with the actively cooled solution. I'm using default everything that came with the XBMC Live installation, with hardware acceleration for video playback enabled. 1080P plays flawlessly with very little CPU usage. It's difficult to say how much it is exactly, since the RAID is using an average of 60% processing power. It's probably around the 10-15% mark, however.
All in all, I'm fairly happy so far. Once the RAID array is done sorting its stuff out, performance in general should be superb.

Edit - After having done some research, the lack of speed is due to stupid sFTP, which by the very nature of the standard, makes use of encryption. This encryption actually maxed out the processor on my one laptop, which is a 2.2ghz C2D. I moved the copying duties over to my desktop which is a quad core, and total bandwidth usage is closer to 400mbit now, with a good 30% of that being overheads. The little server's CPU is also taking a beating in an attempt to decode the stream, which isn't helping either. Unfortunately, this is the only option available with a standard XBMC Live installation. I'll sort it with SAMBA and a normal FTP client sometime during the week, which should make things a lot simpler and would allow for a more natural NAS experience.
 
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phiber said:
Paid 3k for mine :( and using it as a NAS!!
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Ah, weak man... You should have checked mybb first, they're R1300 at Digital Planet and HPShop. I made a thread about it a while ago before I bought mine, we should link it here. I'll do it when I'm back at my PC.

Edit: Here is the link to my original thread, where I was still unsure about buying the server. Best descision in a long time, by the way.
 
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The server's now all hooked up to the TV and ready to go. We're controlling it with the official XBMC Android remote, which is pretty damn nice. System noise is low, with the drives not being audible at all. The big fan isn't completely silent on this hot day, but from the other side of the room you can't hear it, so with something actually playing on the TV, it should get drowned out. If it starts acting up, I'll simply upgrade it for a higher spec'd unit, but honestly, it's absolutely fine for the time being.
 
Messugga said:
The server's now all hooked up to the TV and ready to go. We're controlling it with the official XBMC Android remote, which is pretty damn nice. System noise is low, with the drives not being audible at all. The big fan isn't completely silent on this hot day, but from the other side of the room you can't hear it, so with something actually playing on the TV, it should get drowned out. If it starts acting up, I'll simply upgrade it for a higher spec'd unit, but honestly, it's absolutely fine for the time being.
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Hi Mesugga,

Im really glad I found this thread, as I am also planning to build an XBMC Live HTPC with the HP microserver. Ive been playing around with XBMC live on my laptop over the last month or so, but Ive hit a snag - I cant get the audio out on HDMI to work (Ubuntu is not seeing the HDMI device). Ive tried new drivers, etc - still no luck - this was kinda putting me off Ubuntu, but your success gives me hope once again.

Can you confirm that with your setup the HDMI audio out worked on XBMC Live 10.1 as is, without having to install newer drivers, or tweeking etc ?

Did you have any other problems with the HP MicroServer / GeForce 210 with XBMC 10.1 ? (HDMI Video worked 1st time?)
Did you add more RAM, or are you running with 1GB ?

Can you also confirm if this is the graphics card that you are using :
http://www.zapsonline.com/51425-inn...64bit-memory-graphics-card-asp8h67-m-evo.html
Finally, have you tried a dual monitor setup on you htpc ? (HDMI and VGA)
I have a longer term plan of adding a small LCD for navigating when the TV is off, hence my question.

Thanks in advance...
 
justjaxx said:
Hi Mesugga,

Im really glad I found this thread, as I am also planning to build an XBMC Live HTPC with the HP microserver. Ive been playing around with XBMC live on my laptop over the last month or so, but Ive hit a snag - I cant get the audio out on HDMI to work (Ubuntu is not seeing the HDMI device). Ive tried new drivers, etc - still no luck - this was kinda putting me off Ubuntu, but your success gives me hope once again.

Can you confirm that with your setup the HDMI audio out worked on XBMC Live 10.1 as is, without having to install newer drivers, or tweeking etc ?

Did you have any other problems with the HP MicroServer / GeForce 210 with XBMC 10.1 ? (HDMI Video worked 1st time?)
Did you add more RAM, or are you running with 1GB ?

Can you also confirm if this is the graphics card that you are using :
http://www.zapsonline.com/51425-inn...64bit-memory-graphics-card-asp8h67-m-evo.html
Finally, have you tried a dual monitor setup on you htpc ? (HDMI and VGA)
I have a longer term plan of adding a small LCD for navigating when the TV is off, hence my question.

Thanks in advance...
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I simply plugged in the Geforce and set the XBMC to output via HDMI. It automatically handled the video, but I had to tell it to output the audio via HDMI. There are a couple of menu options on the XBMC frontend that you need to select. No driver updates were required for the latest version of XBMC Live that I downloaded. If you aren't getting any video output at all, even at bootup, then you probably need to look in your BIOS settings. You can't disable the onboard video, but by default if I remember correctly, the BIOS is set to look for and prioritize discreet GPUs.
I'll have to confirm which version of Ubuntu my Live XBMC is based on. It's either 9.04 or 10.1.

I added another 4GB of RAM, but due to the slightly outdated Ubuntu thanks to the XBMC Live installation, it only picks up 3GB of memory so far. Apparently there's a small update available that changes that. That being said, I doubt it's used over 100MB when playing video, so I probably wouldn't have bothered with it if I knew that.

Dual monitor I haven't tried and you'd probably want something with a tad more grunt than the 210 if you were going to do that. The 210 gets pretty hot as is, so I wouldn't want to risk overheating by straining the unit too much.
The link doesn't seem to work for some reason, but it looks like its the right card, from the URL. If I were you, I'd phone them up and have them double check for you, since it seems that suppliers aren't too fussed about giving you EXACTLY that card, as long as the specs are the same, which isn't acceptable in this situation. You need an actively cooled card with a heatsink not much taller than the backplate or there's a big chance that it won't fit. The card I purchased didn't come with the half-height backplate, however, so I'm currently running it without that. Not ideal, but it'll do for the moment, until I can get something else sorted.
 
Messugga said:
I simply plugged in the Geforce and set the XBMC to output via HDMI.
Click to expand...

Thanks mate,

Noticed on the prophecy shop has something similar, but it is called Innovision (as opposed to Inno3D):
http://www.prophecy.co.za/innovisio...orce-gt210-512mb-ddr3-64bit-pcie-p-76873.html

Is this perhaps the same ? (I know Im being pedantic, but I need to be really sure.) Also, according to the Prophecy Shop, this card needs a 400W Power Supply, but the microserver has a 150W PS - I assume that you don't have an issues with power supply ?
 
justjaxx said:
Thanks mate,

Noticed on the prophecy shop has something similar, but it is called Innovision (as opposed to Inno3D):
http://www.prophecy.co.za/innovisio...orce-gt210-512mb-ddr3-64bit-pcie-p-76873.html

Is this perhaps the same ? (I know Im being pedantic, but I need to be really sure.) Also, according to the Prophecy Shop, this card needs a 400W Power Supply, but the microserver has a 150W PS - I assume that you don't have an issues with power supply ?
Click to expand...

400W is recommended for the entire system. The card pulls only around 23W under full load, if I'm not mistaken. The PCIe 16x slot on the microserver only has 25W of available power, which is less than the norm, but the card runs fine.

I bought my card from Prophecy. I like their service and they actually had their supplier open the box of the card to check dimensions for me. They went through a fair amount of effort for a relatively small sale, and I like that. Innovision = Inno3D as far as I can tell.

CPU usage with 1080P and hardware acceleration enabled, results in processor usage of around 20%, partly due to the software RAID5 I'm running and partly due to there being some CPU usage anyway. Playback of ~350MB SD TV episodes of for example Big Bang Theory, results in ~4% CPU usage.
 
Messugga said:
400W is recommended for the entire system. The card pulls only around 23W under full load, if I'm not mistaken. .
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Thanks once again for your help Messugga,
I've just pulled the trigger (as they say on Avforums :D) on a MicroServer and the GT210 from Prophecy.

This is infact my second MicroServer - the 1st is running a FreeNAS - wanted to separated the NAS from the HTPC (besides, the NAS sits in my study).

I may just call on you once again, if I hit a snag.
Otherwise, I cant wait...

Thanks again!
 
justjaxx said:
Thanks once again for your help Messugga,
I've just pulled the trigger (as they say on Avforums :D) on a MicroServer and the GT210 from Prophecy.

This is infact my second MicroServer - the 1st is running a FreeNAS - wanted to separated the NAS from the HTPC (besides, the NAS sits in my study).

I may just call on you once again, if I hit a snag.
Otherwise, I cant wait...

Thanks again!
Click to expand...

No problemo. Just shout if there's anything I can help you with, but for me everything came together rather easily except for the RAID5 which I struggled getting up and running due to lack of a real (ADSL) internet connection, but even that wasn't too tricky.
 
Messugga said:
I'll have to confirm which version of Ubuntu my Live XBMC is based on. It's either 9.04 or 10.1.
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XBMC live Dharma 10.1 is based on ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Messugga said:
I added another 4GB of RAM, but due to the slightly outdated Ubuntu thanks to the XBMC Live installation, it only picks up 3GB of memory so far. Apparently there's a small update available that changes that. That being said, I doubt it's used over 100MB when playing video, so I probably wouldn't have bothered with it if I knew that.
Click to expand...
Its got more to do with the fact that there is no native 64bit XBMC live, its based off the 32bit ubuntu, but there is a work around you can use to get it to see all the ram. A better option (if you want 4GB)maybe is to install a full Xubuntu x64 or Lubuntu x64 install or another variety with a small foot-print and then install XBMC on-top of that(setting it to load into XBMC at startup). You also get the benefit of having a full GUI os if you exit XMBC, giving you more options to install other packages with a gui and not through CLI. Depends on what you're looking for I guess!

Messugga said:
Dual monitor I haven't tried and you'd probably want something with a tad more grunt than the 210 if you were going to do that. The 210 gets pretty hot as is, so I wouldn't want to risk overheating by straining the unit too much.
The link doesn't seem to work for some reason, but it looks like its the right card, from the URL. If I were you, I'd phone them up and have them double check for you, since it seems that suppliers aren't too fussed about giving you EXACTLY that card, as long as the specs are the same, which isn't acceptable in this situation. You need an actively cooled card with a heatsink not much taller than the backplate or there's a big chance that it won't fit. The card I purchased didn't come with the half-height backplate, however, so I'm currently running it without that. Not ideal, but it'll do for the moment, until I can get something else sorted.
Click to expand...
Dual-monitor is a bit trickier in linux, so be prepared to edit a few Xorg.conf files if you want anything other than side by side monitors at the same resolution. If you're mirroring the output onto 2 screens, I don't think it will cause too much more work for the GPU, but if you have 2 separate X sessions or an extended desktop it probably will make it work a bit too much.

A lot of the cards also say they have a low-profile backplate included but they're not in the box, I'm sure if he asks Prophecy to check if there is one in the box they will and if there isn't ask them if they could source one for you, probably be more convenient than getting one of eBay.
 
Received my MicroServer this morning. (good value for money, already thinking that I should order another one or two before special ends. Machines this size don't come cheap)

Appreciate the feedback on the GPU/XBMC info as I will probably also be using it as a HTPC addition to being primarily a NAS.
 
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