Moving from Synology NAS to HPE Proliant Microserver Gen10 - Pt.3 ClearOS, Web UI
First Impressions After Unboxing My New Precious
Opened the front panel. Then disassemled the machine. Looked very neat. HPE engineers know how to build a microserver, I must admit. No hardware added yet, assembled it to the original form.
There is no manual. All right. One page brochure recommends to set up ClearOS, a web based OS. Is it similar to DSM of Synology? Will I get the same user experience? YouTube videos of ClearOS look promising. Let's do it!
Monitor And Keyboard, Please!
There are display port on the back. But I ain't got no monitor. And I don't have keyboard either, since I use laptops only. I hope those won't be neccessary. Or I can purchase keyboard and DP-HDMI converter for my TV. So I can use the TV as monitor.
Next step: burning ClearOS installer to a bootable USB pendrive on my laptop. No problem, easy-peasy.
Power cord, USB pendrive and network cable attached to microserver, ready to boot, right? Wrong. At least the machine did not get IP. What's wrong? For a NAS this would be enough. Except a NAS does not require bootable media to start. But this is a microserver.
OK, I bought keyboard and adaptor for my TV. Let's see...
For BIOS setup press <f2> or <del>... Time passes and a boot menu apears. Mass storage device is listed there. OK, so I could set to boot from it. And a usual linux setup screen apeared on the screen. Language picked up, partitioning... What? This time there are no disks in the microserver. Only the USB drive. Which is read only according to the setup program. It is not like a "Live CD", a bootable medium the OS can start from. It's an installer only.
Okay, an another USB drive is needed if I want the OS on a USB drive instead of a HDD or SSD. For that (or for BIOS upgrade?) the microserver has a USB slot inside. I was curious if this little machine can work with the OS on a flash drive, so I picked this approach. The installation went all right. Apart from partitioning (used recommended settings, hit next button) and setting root password no questions was asked. I could customize the installation package I think, but I did not bother.
After ClearOS installation on first boot a network interface setup screen welcomed me. I could pick whether to use firewall (server mode) and set up the 1st network interface (with strage name instead of eth0) to use DHCP.
Ah, at last! The server had an IP address on LAN. Great! I suggest to google and RTFM (read the manual) about server modes and interface settings. If the server connects to a router and "External" interface should be configured in order to have the router set as gateway.
Tada, the web UI became alive. I could continue setting the machine up from my laptop.
After logging in to the web UI, oneshould pick up the ClearOS edition to be used. Community Edition is free. The rest is not. Registration is mandatory, but no personal data is required. After comleting these steps the web UI is fully functional. "Marketplace" is available to install applications for the web UI.
OK, so far so good. Could be a bit smoother but all right.
Where is the disk management app? o_O
There is no such thing. Or at least I could not find it for the newest stable version of ClearOS. On the other hand SSH acccess could be configured. So disk arrays can be added manually. ClearOS is a CentOS-based linux system. Am I a linux expert or what?
Monitor and keyboard are required for the setup of the boot device and the network. Mouse is good to have.
As I tried ClearOS can be installed to and used from an USB drive, different from the installation medium. This can be done in another PC (even on a laptop). Drivers do not matter. Everything required to operate a microserver will be installed anyway.
Regarding to network setup options RTFM is recommended.
Linux knowledge or willingness to learn is strongly recommended if you want to use a microserver with ClearOS.
