[geeks] Heads up: HP Microservers

[Mark Benson]

On 11 Feb 2011, at 19:31, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> I happily stand corrected - I searched on the model number and turned up
> little info, it is at newegg, amazon, etc. Just over $300, as you say...
>
> A very nice box, thanks for the heads-up!

Just to make you want one even more, here's a quick anecdotal comparison
between a Acer H340 Home Server (Atom 230) and the Proliant Microserver:

http://www.tenniswood.co.uk/technology/windows-home-server/hp-microserver-vs-
acer-h340-performance-comparison/

Also some nice information I've found reading about these boxen on the net:

 - It has an internal USB 2.0 port for an internal (i.e. locked away from
meddling fingers) USB bootstrap disk.

 - The spare Hard Drive caddies and Optical bay come with their own screws
neatly installed in the door ready to use, along with a Torx 15 tool for
installing them and undoing the motherboard retaining screws.

- It's proven surprisingly feasible as a HTPC setup. It's quiet and has a
bunch of room storage, support fro an optical SATA drive, and a PCI-e x16
half-height slot (max 25W) that is capable of taking a DVI or HDMI capable HD
compliant graphics card.

- the NIC and SATA controller work in Linux, FreeBSD and Nextenta (and
OpenSolaris?).

- It uses ECC RAM which is either preferred or required by ZFS. This, combined
with Debian's recent release of a new FreeBSD-based server OS, could make for
some interesting storage solutions? With room for up to 8GB of RAM,
potentially 4 hard drives plus a SSD... sounds like some serious ZFS foo could
be done with it!

The more I look at it and the way it's put together the more I can't fail to
be impressed. Proper Proliant kit like this should be many times this price
but this is affordable and very well made and an oen door to anyone wanting to
experiment in a variety of areas.

--
Mark Benson

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