'Microserver' vs NAS enclosure

CtrlAltELITE · January 11, 2018

Hey Guys

So I find myself looking for a NAS, for the last 2 years my home media solution has been a RPi3 hooked up to a 2TB Hitachi 7k3000 on a USB drive caddy, this being used in a NAS configuration mounted to my TVs Nvidia Shield hosting and encoding plex. So far I have been happy with the performance of this extremely cheap method, the RPi also hosts a mail server and only begins to bottleneck when I am trying to maximise network throughput through it, I believe this is a consequence of its USB sharing the bus with its ethernet connection. However I have now ran into the issue that 2TB is simply not enough storage. I would like to expand to 6-8TB.

I was about ready to hit the buy button on the new Synology 418j, which I believe would serve my purposes ideally with a rack of 4 2TB drives in raid 5. However the price of nearly £300GBP is really rubbing me the wrong way, I was also strongly considering a Synology 218j with the same internals but only 2 4TB drives offering less redundancy but cheaper storage. I was deliberating between these 2 devices when I find this:

https://www.ebuyer.com/796583-hpe-proliant-gen10-873830-421-entry-opteron-x3216-1-6ghz-8gb-ram-microserver-873830-421

and this

https://www.ebuyer.com/770312-lenovo-thinkserver-ts150-70lv-pentium-g4400-3-3-ghz-8gb-ram-4u-tower-70lv003eea

Small servers, offering slots for 3 or 4 drives in raid, with full x86 CPU functionality, allowing for more wider range of hosting options. I will admit, I was fairly sold on the ARM based Synology systems, my own mail and file server I host via my RPi would work ideally on them and really doesn't require more power. However I can't see past the fact that for the same price, or even less, I can have a 'real' server with modern, energy efficient hardware and the option to occasionally host, literally anything I want within the limitations of the processor, as well as having the option of expansion with things like SSD caching.

My question is; whats the downside? I am really struggling to see it, I imagine the power differential will be there, but the opteron based HP had a TDP of 12-15w, I can't imagine the power consumption would be THAT much higher than the synologies quoted 9-21w. Even if say there was a 20w difference in power consumption, That would cost me a total of £2.50/month, hardly the end of the world.

So, is there a downside I am overlooking for going for a full x86 small server platform with FreeNAS or Win Server, over a purpose built low power NAS?

porina · January 11, 2018

I have two of the older Microservers, so dunno how they compare with the linked one. They're ok if all you want is up to 4 bays. If you want to run desktop Windows, it can get a little tricky to find drivers for things, and may have to find the equivalent server version to transplant. I don't know if it also affects the microservers, but I also got their ML10 gen9, and it turned out the bios updates for the recent IME bug was behind a paywall. Stuff that. It may also be a problem if you ever need to replace any of the hardware components.

As a suggestion, also try looking up older generations of the microserver on the used market.

Blake · January 12, 2018

7 hours ago, porina said:

I have two of the older Microservers, so dunno how they compare with the linked one. They're ok if all you want is up to 4 bays. If you want to run desktop Windows, it can get a little tricky to find drivers for things, and may have to find the equivalent server version to transplant. I don't know if it also affects the microservers, but I also got their ML10 gen9, and it turned out the bios updates for the recent IME bug was behind a paywall. Stuff that. It may also be a problem if you ever need to replace any of the hardware components.

As a suggestion, also try looking up older generations of the microserver on the used market.

They aren't behind a paywall for the first year or so. just make an account on the HP web site and register your product.

I have a Gen 10, migrating from a G7, much faster, but basically the same (no ilo, but I don't need that for my usage).

If you have a stock gen 8 then the gen 10 is better.

If you have swapped out the CPU in the G8 it'll be the same/slightly better performance wise.

porina · January 12, 2018

3 hours ago, Blake said:

They aren't behind a paywall for the first year or so. just make an account on the HP web site and register your product.

It's over a year old when I looked for the update, which was specifically to fix the last Intel ME thing. I can't find a way to get it. I think this even contradicts their own policy, where I found another webpage where they say they don't restrict security related updates. Still, I like it consumer style, where you can get updates any time, no registration required.

Quote

I have a Gen 10, migrating from a G7, much faster, but basically the same (no ilo, but I don't need that for my usage).

If you have a stock gen 8 then the gen 10 is better.

If you have swapped out the CPU in the G8 it'll be the same/slightly better performance wise.

I have the base gen8 which I'm currently using only to test HDs with thanks to ease of access to the bays. I think the other is a Gen7, the taller black unit with full height CD bay and AMD CPU. That doesn't do much now, but my Windows Home Server install is still on there and seems to get updates as if it were 2008R2. I've gone off the microservers in part as I find 4 drives too limiting. Using the ML10 Gen9 with 7 drives currently.