HP N36L Microserver - £100

[Biscuit]

I have got totally lost on this thread but its really making me want to explore/learn more.

Cant wait for this thing to arrive and get playing!

[watercooled]

What make/model of HDD is the included 250GB?

[spoon_]

I believe its a Seagate with some sort of HP firmware [don't quote me on this one ]

[Splash]

Barracuda ST3250318AS in mine. Going to try flashing the BIOS as this allegedly resolves performance issues with the ODD port with an official BIOS, see how things look tomorrow.

[spoon_]

Did you guys try EON yet?

http://sites.google.com/site/eonstorage/begin

[b0redom]

I believe that the ODD port is very slow as there's some sort of parrallel IDE<->SATA bridge in there. I've found using the internal USB port for a USB thumbstick to be fast enough for FreeNAS. If I want to use that extra slot, I'll just buy a proper SATA card for £20 or so.

[watercooled]

I believe that the ODD port is very slow as there's some sort of parrallel IDE<->SATA bridge in there. I've found using the internal USB port for a USB thumbstick to be fast enough for FreeNAS. If I want to use that extra slot, I'll just buy a proper SATA card for £20 or so.

The custom BIOS is meant to fix that.

[Splash]

The custom BIOS is meant to fix that.

The official latest BIOS is also meant to fix that. I'm just wiping out the 4 2TB disks as ESXi is having a 'mare writing a VMFS to them after they've been used for ZFS, then I'll be flashing the BIOS to 041. It may well be tonight as the process is taking a while.

[b0redom]

Did you guys try EON yet?

http://sites.google.com/site/eonstorage/begin

Looks like this is based on OpenSolaris which is what I'm running at the moment. The problem with that is that it's VERY fussy about hardware - I could only get it running on my current hardware setup by disabling USB altogether. If I left it enabled, it would cause a kernel panic!

FreeNAS isn't constrained by the same legals as Solaris, and has a far more active development community.

[b0redom]

The official latest BIOS is also meant to fix that. I'm just wiping out the 4 2TB disks as ESXi is having a 'mare writing a VMFS to them after they've been used for ZFS, then I'll be flashing the BIOS to 041. It may well be tonight as the process is taking a while.

Interesting - let me know how it goes. I really want to replace my current NAS with the one of these I have sitting on my desk!

[spoon_]

The official latest BIOS is also meant to fix that. I'm just wiping out the 4 2TB disks as ESXi is having a 'mare writing a VMFS to them after they've been used for ZFS, then I'll be flashing the BIOS to 041. It may well be tonight as the process is taking a while.

Do you have HD204UI's by any chance?

[Splash]

I think so, couldn't be sure as I'm at work at the mo. Why do you ask?

[watercooled]

It might have something to do with this, but it's worth reading either way.

[spoon_]

I think so, couldn't be sure as I'm at work at the mo. Why do you ask?

They need to be patched, thought it'd be good to mention it...

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...bbs_msg_id=386

Drives kinda crap out then you want to pull SMART info out.

[Splash]

Ah that - pretty sure these got patched when I got them earlier in the year but I'll double check now - thanks for the reminder.

EDIT - Well waddya know? seems they needed patching. Wonder if this fixes my crappy performance issues? Also applied the latest BIOS (which annoyingly has the same version number as the original, but a newer date. What's with the quality control here? the Samsung disks also have the same version number, but won't take the flash if they already have it) - will give Nexenta another whirl now.

EDIT 2 - still no dice with Nexenta, unfortunately. Thankfully I can just boot Openfiler with the same raw mappings and try that...

EDIT 3 - Openfiler is refusing to allow me to create a physical partition, and FreeNAS 8's interface for setting up an iSCSI target is terrible. Setup an NFS datastore on FreeNAS8 and tried migrating in a VM to it - fails after a couple of mins of transfer. I'm wondering if it could possibly just be NIC playing up and causing connections to drop, and that it might be worth me picking up an Intel gigabit card?

[MadduckUK]

Ah that - pretty sure these got patched when I got them earlier in the year but I'll double check now - thanks for the reminder.

EDIT - Well waddya know? seems they needed patching. Wonder if this fixes my crappy performance issues? Also applied the latest BIOS (which annoyingly has the same version number as the original, but a newer date. What's with the quality control here? the Samsung disks also have the same version number, but won't take the flash if they already have it) - will give Nexenta another whirl now.

EDIT 2 - still no dice with Nexenta, unfortunately. Thankfully I can just boot Openfiler with the same raw mappings and try that...

EDIT 3 - Openfiler is refusing to allow me to create a physical partition, and FreeNAS 8's interface for setting up an iSCSI target is terrible. Setup an NFS datastore on FreeNAS8 and tried migrating in a VM to it - fails after a couple of mins of transfer. I'm wondering if it could possibly just be NIC playing up and causing connections to drop, and that it might be worth me picking up an Intel gigabit card?

Its always worth having an Intel GB card