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4TB of network-attached storage for under £400.
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4TB of network-attached storage for under £400.
Still seems a little on the expensive side when you consider you can still pick up a HP microserver for £121 after cashback and 4x2Tb Samsungs for about £227 and less if you pick the drives up on a special, totalling about £350.
Comparing that to the £600 price tag for the 8Tb Buffalo version you pay a very significant premium for the OS preinstalled and a few addons of which I'm sure you can replicate most functions free of charge.
I'd say that the NAS producers are making a fairly healthy profit on bringing their products to maket or HP are on a serious loss leader.
You hit the nail on the head Myo - you're paying premium for the software. Not everyone who could use a central pool of storage has the skills nor inclination to build and configure the server software, and that's got to be what people are splooging on. I personally think that the Microserver is likely to be running *very* tight margins, especially when you factor in the cashback but it's getting HP a lot of presence on geek shelves. Wouldn't part with mine for the world (though it was a shame I had to splash out on an Intel NIC)
Certainly a tidy premium when you consider this is an ARM based NAS which from my reading is a fair bit cheaper than the Atom offering of other manufacturers. It was the only thing really putting me off getting a NAS a couple of years ago, but the Microserver sure solved that issue. Pretty amazed at the cost difference that the Intel solutions generates and seems to demonstrate that Intel still have a way to go with low power solutions if it allows a major player to knock about £200 off a product.
I've had my Microserver for a little while but have not populated it as intended due to wanting to buy a house, so have 4 200Gb drives in raid 5, a 16Gb solid state boot drive and have an esata to sata cable for a 500Gb backup drive up top.
Debating on whether to pick up an intel duel or quad port nic for the x16 slot although quad port may be a little overkill :)
Potential for a x1 HBA to run a couple of external DAS enclosures if I wanted to extend the capability.
Also looked at a USB to sata converter to allow me to run my 16Gb SSD from the internal USB port and allow 6 2Tb sammies in the box from the onboard ports. Makes my setup for a 12Tb NAS about £500 :)
I am intrigued, which model do you have?Quote:
Originally Posted by [GSV]Myocardial
The previous model to this (N36l part code 633724-421 - has a slightly slower processor I believe): HP Proliant Microserver
Running linux software raid 5 from the SSD, which is all most of the consumer NAS products do, albeit in a slightly more proprietry manner.
Waiting for next 2 months pay and then I'll probably drop the cash on 5 samsung 2Tb F4EG's.
This has gone off on a MicroServer tangent, hasn't it...
ServersPlus.com has a 4Tb MicroServer bundle for £309+VAT - server, 2x2Tb drives, 4 gig RAM and FreeNAS 8 on a bootable flash drive, and you get £100 back from HP. That's the bundle I got, but I put VMWare ESXi on mine.
I've had a quick play with FreeNAS 7, and it's definitely not for beginners - it's a multi-step process just to get it to see the discs.
Alan.
How do you get 5 drives in there when it only has 4 SATA ports?Quote:
Originally Posted by [GSV]Myocardial
There is another port used for the optical drive, just run a SATA cable and there is a hacked bios to allow the controller to run the drive at full speed.Quote:
Originally Posted by GingerNinja
You can run a sixth via and eSata to Sata adapter and run that cable in the back.
I got an N40L and have just been trying Freenas 7 on a USB stick, latest build works great for iTunes server and Upnp. I looked in the ODD bay but how'd you get the 2.5 drive in there I can't see a way of removing the caddy?Quote:
Originally Posted by [GSV]Myocardial
Cheers
G1ngerninja