Shortcoming:
- If no optical drive is installed, then the designated power cable terminates in a 4-pole connector. To connect a drive or as in my case an SSD as a cache then an adapter cable must be purchased (4-pole times on SATA power is also traded as a floppy power connector).
- In addition, the device is no ILO license that must be purchased separately if you want to use the ILO interface (Remote Console). But this end, HP provides a temporary license, so you can hang it in any case directly via this interface without a mouse, keyboard and monitor to the device from an external location.
- The HDD bays are made of thin plastic and the lever for locking the hard drives are a bit fragile so handle it carefully.
Why this server?
I have professionally much to do with HP servers and my WHS2011 / HP X510 was not around so I was looking for a different solution. On the MicroServer series I was in the past, attentive, but only now meets the Gen8 version my request to aesthetics and performance. In addition, a loss of data led to the realization to adopts self-repairing system because of a corrupt file system. The solution for me is the HP ProLiant MicroServer + FreeNAS.
The Device:
for the price I really expected worse and am thrilled with the stability and professionalism of the processing. Everything can look very sophisticated, with the exceptions already described. The low price was due to that we here refer to a truly professional machine only one power supply have but that's bearable.
The additional components: to achieve my goal were the following items necessary
a) additional 8 GB of RAM, as FreeNAS ZFS want per verbautem 1TB HDD 1GB RAM
b) a had faster USB Stick min 8GB (still an old 8GB OCZ stick because) [it is in forums not recommended the microSD to take that could be used in this device], which can be inserted in the device itself must therefore outside rumstecken nothing
c) Adapter for power cables (see text above)
d) SSD as cache L2ARC (since I had lying around a small plate)
e) External CD / DVD drive (I have the thing just bought without which, however, allows me to its internal body now the SSD comes.
To make a long story short:
feeNAS 9.3 without problems on USB installed Raid-Z2 with 4 plates up (as you should either have a clue what is all or any instructions read well) and everything was great. The device now purrs to himself, waiting for that it gets on Wednesday its specially designed HP 8-port switch that I had to give him. Snapshot DR I'll sync
UPDATE: have the SSD cache L2ARC not implemented because of such a system is not recommended. A L2ARC cache is only recommended if the RAM is no longer sufficient and the plates are too many. In addition, the L2ARC consumes RAM (1-2 GB) and with my 10GB this would cause problems. What you can take even more - more RAM is always good - but must be ECC.
