#n40l

[sdstrowes]

More Proliant N40L silencing resources

[sdstrowes]

More N40L silencing resources

[sdstrowes]

including pinouts

[geeklingo]

N54L MicroServer Running 16GB ECC RAM

Kingston 16GB ECC Kit (KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G)

One of the challenges with running ESXi or even ZFS on the HP MicroServer N36L, N40L or N54L is the 8GB RAM limitation detailed in the hardware specs. Fortunately, running 16GB ECC RAM is a fairly easy and…

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[mhamzahkhan]

Upgrading Disks in my Home NAS

It’s been a few weeks since I switched my NAS from LVM (no RAID, pretty much RAID0), to ZFS. It’s…

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[thegearsphere-blog]

PROJECT: It's project time again...VMware ESXi on HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L

I've just finished uni for Christmas and I feel another project coming on.

I've had my HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L for almost a year now. Whenever I bought it I had the intention of using it as a backup server for all of the PCs in my house. It's a mix of Windows and Mac so I needed something to stick on the box that would play nice with both OSes. I was gonna run with Windows Home Server and RAID 1 and then try to hack Mac support but to be honest, as much as I like Windows, I prefer something *nix-like to be leaving on 24/7. I already had a media server NAS at that point running unRAID (a Slackware based NAS OS). So I decided to roll with unRAID again and install the CrashPlan add-on (install guide here) for PC backups in the house.

I can honestly say it's been one of those "set it and forget it" kind of things that has just worked! Just what you want really. I'm mainly just using it to store PC backups, Applications, MSDN .ISOs etc but I want to give it a bit more use. 

I would like to install VMware ESXi (free virtual machine hypervisor) onto it and replicate my unRAID setup as it is currently but then also have other virtual machines running as well. I'm a computing student and I want to learn more about Windows Server, Active Directory and other products and there's only so much I can do on my MacBook Air.

Currently the HP N40L I have is only running with 2GB DDR3 RAM. I would need to upgrade this to be able to do what I want. I've had a read around on forums and apparently 8GB is the limit (what HP says). However, many people have been able to get 16GB fully working with no issues and no hacked BIOSes required. I hope this is true. I plan on installing ESXi and moving my unRAID setup over today and then if everything works I'm going to drop the 60 quid for 16GB of RAM and start playing with running multiple VMs.

Watch this space!

UPDATE 1: It would seem that 2GB of RAM is not enough to install ESXi (lots of insufficient memory messages in the log). Well in this household that is easily remedied. Bumped it up to 4GB and the installer has almost completed.

UPDATE 2: Done! After that first RAM hiccup, the rest of the install was painless. I now have my previous unRAID boot disk moved over and, after some forum reading, worked out how to pass disks through to the VM so that their physical characteristics could be picked up and so unRAID would be able to talk to the correct disks (it needs to know the serial number)

Below I have a screenshot of the vSphere client logged onto the ESXi host and the unRAID VM. Now I just need to learn what all the bells and whistles do!

[thegearsphere-blog]

PROJECT: HP ProLiant Microserver N40L (AKA my Home Backup Server)

Here it is...my little box of wonder!

This is the little HP PC that I talked about in my last post (PROJECT:Home Backup Server) and I have now been using it for backups in the house since I wrote the post.

As I had said in the link above, I was going to try using a combo of unRAID and Crashplan on it and that's just what I have done. It was a little tricky to get set up at first but once you get Crashplan installed it's a doddle. I'll likely do a separate post detailing the install.

The box itself is practically minuscule when compared with a micro-ATX or even full ATX tower case. Below you can see it next to my main media server and it's half the height and depth of it! You could very easily lose this thing!

On the front of the machine you have a power button, network and HDD status LEDs, 4x USB 2.0 ports and the access door to get at the drives. This door is also lockable using the 2 included keys.

Once you open the door up you are presented with a very compact internal bay of 4 cold-swap drive trays. Each hard drive you want to use gets screwed into one of these trays using the included screws cleverly stored on the inside of the door panel.

Also conveniently placed inside is a proper internal USB port. This is really handy for me as it means I can put my unRAID OS flash drive inside the locked panel instead of having it plugged in the front or rear where someone in the house can just come along and unplug it.

Around on the rear of the machine there's not a lot to say. You've got your power in, a single 120mm exhaust fan (not whisper quiet but not deafening either), 2x USB 2.0 ports, gigabit ethernet, eSATA and VGA out. Internally there are 3x PCI slots; PCIe x1, PCIe x4 (for an optional management card) and PCIe x16.

I'll be doing another post on setting up unRAID on it for the first time and installing the Crashplan add-on as well but there you go, a brief overview of the beast!

UPDATE 1: And the unRAID guide is up!

UPDATE 2: So is the CrashPlan one!