Microserver file server config

[TechMinerUK]

Hi, recently I purchased a HP Microserver N36L for use as a basic file server. It currently has 3GB of RAM (ECC) and I have been looking to use it as a small file server. What would be the best way to configure the server for this as I have read on FreeNAS but this appears to need more RAM and (For best practice) an SSD (Avoid flaky USB drives) for the random writes which in turn would mean I would need to buy  JBOD card due to the servers lack of ports.

 

However is this the best setup or am I missing some secret gold mine somewhere as NAS4Free and Server 2012 R2 are looking like promising candidates without needing expensive devices such as the IBM M1015 cards etc.

 

So what does everyone recommend?

[Altecice]

If you just want a simple file server then you can just install Windows on it and create simple SMB shares.

[TechMinerUK]

1 minute ago, Altecice said:

If you just want a simple file server then you can just install Windows on it and create simple SMB shares.

Ideally I would like this to be a backup server using some kind of RAID or ZFS system for redundancy in case a drive fails

[Altecice]

2 minutes ago, TechMinerUK said:

Ideally I would like this to be a backup server using some kind of RAID or ZFS system for redundancy in case a drive fails

 

Although not best practice you COULD create a simple software RAID (Mirrored partitions) via Disk Management via windows. 

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17926/use-drive-mirroring-for-instant-backup-in-windows-7/

[TechMinerUK]

1 minute ago, Altecice said:

 

Although not best practice you COULD create a simple software RAID (Mirrored partitions) via Disk Management via windows. 

True but this seems like a bit of a "botched" implementation and since this is for a backup server I could use the extra reliability

[porina]

I have the similar N40L, and run Windows Home Server on that set up with simple file shares. It is basically a variation of Server 2008 R2, the server version of Windows 7, and I don't use the server stuff built in it. No longer available or directly supported, although it still gets security updates from 2008 R2. I use it for backups only, and as it is for backups, don't really need redundancy on it.

 

I gave up on trying to get FreeNAS working before going WHS. ZFS sounds like a great fs but to get all the fun stuff it is rather demanding to provide that functionality, and the old microservers are not great for that.

[TechMinerUK]

2 minutes ago, porina said:

I have the similar N40L, and run Windows Home Server on that set up with simple file shares. It is basically a variation of Server 2008 R2, the server version of Windows 7, and I don't use the server stuff built in it. No longer available or directly supported, although it still gets security updates from 2008 R2. I use it for backups only, and as it is for backups, don't really need redundancy on it.

 

I gave up on trying to get FreeNAS working before going WHS. ZFS sounds like a great fs but to get all the fun stuff it is rather demanding to provide that functionality, and the old microservers are not great for that.

So would I be better with a Server 2012 R2 install (I don't want to use anything too outdated)

[porina]

4 minutes ago, TechMinerUK said:

So would I be better with a Server 2012 R2 install (I don't want to use anything too outdated)

If you've checked the minimum spec is ok and don't mind the cost, can't see why not. Personally I'd probably just run consumer Windows 7 if I were to do this again today, since it is lower cost and I don't need the server stuff.

[TechMinerUK]

1 minute ago, porina said:

If you've checked the minimum spec is ok and don't mind the cost, can't see why not. Personally I'd probably just run consumer Windows 7 if I were to do this again today, since it is lower cost and I don't need the server stuff.

I can get my hands on Server 2012 R2 (Dreamspark) so that's not a problem. I would have thought that something like NAS4Free would have been better though which is confusing me. Is it due to the high RAM requirements?

[porina]

37 minutes ago, TechMinerUK said:

I can get my hands on Server 2012 R2 (Dreamspark) so that's not a problem. I would have thought that something like NAS4Free would have been better though which is confusing me. Is it due to the high RAM requirements?

ZFS is a bit ram hungry. If you only need a simple file system with nothing fancy then pretty much anything would do.

[TechMinerUK]

40 minutes ago, porina said:

ZFS is a bit ram hungry. If you only need a simple file system with nothing fancy then pretty much anything would do.

Like I say, I'm looking for a safe data storage setup

[Jarsky]

Windows Server Storage Spaces is very robust.Or if you can install Linux you could run mdadm which again, is very robust. Both are much less resource hungry than ZFS.

[TechMinerUK]

1 minute ago, Jarsky said:

Windows Server Storage Spaces is very robust.Or if you can install Linux you could run mdadm which again, is very robust. Both are much less resource hungry than ZFS.

But are they as good as ZFS for redundancy?

[porina]

57 minutes ago, TechMinerUK said:

But are they as good as ZFS for redundancy?

Maybe I misunderstood, this was a backup server? Do you need redundancy on it?

[Jarsky]

1 hour ago, TechMinerUK said:

But are they as good as ZFS for redundancy?

Sure, ZFS isnt magic. It's a filesystem and logical volume manager. ReFS+Storage Spaces does 95% of what ZFS does.

MDADM is more of a Software RAID solution, but its extremely flexible & resilient, unlike Windows RAID-5 subsystem.

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 hours ago, Altecice said:

 

Although not best practice you COULD create a simple software RAID (Mirrored partitions) via Disk Management via windows. 

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17926/use-drive-mirroring-for-instant-backup-in-windows-7/

Please never do that. Its really bad compared to any other solution(storage spaces, btrfs, zfs, hardware raid)

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Sure, ZFS isnt magic. It's a filesystem and logical volume manager. ReFS+Storage Spaces does 95% of what ZFS does.

MDADM is more of a Software RAID solution, but its extremely flexible & resilient, unlike Windows RAID-5 subsystem.

No storage spaces doesn't. Storage spaces has a much worse cache system. It also doesn't do checksums and much slower.

[TechMinerUK]

9 hours ago, Jarsky said:

Sure, ZFS isnt magic. It's a filesystem and logical volume manager. ReFS+Storage Spaces does 95% of what ZFS does.

MDADM is more of a Software RAID solution, but its extremely flexible & resilient, unlike Windows RAID-5 subsystem.

Is their a software implementation of MDADM then as this server will be used by less experienced users since it's a home server

10 hours ago, porina said:

Maybe I misunderstood, this was a backup server? Do you need redundancy on it?

It is a backup server but I would like the extra security that redundancy offers

4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Please never do that. Its really bad compared to any other solution(storage spaces, btrfs, zfs, hardware raid)

Okay, noted

4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

No storage spaces doesn't. Storage spaces has a much worse cache system. It also doesn't do checksums and much slower.

So would I be best avoiding the Windows implementation?

[Blake]

14 hours ago, TechMinerUK said:

Hi, recently I purchased a HP Microserver N36L for use as a basic file server. It currently has 3GB of RAM (ECC) and I have been looking to use it as a small file server. What would be the best way to configure the server for this as I have read on FreeNAS but this appears to need more RAM and (For best practice) an SSD (Avoid flaky USB drives) for the random writes which in turn would mean I would need to buy  JBOD card due to the servers lack of ports.

 

However is this the best setup or am I missing some secret gold mine somewhere as NAS4Free and Server 2012 R2 are looking like promising candidates without needing expensive devices such as the IBM M1015 cards etc.

 

So what does everyone recommend?

I have the n54L.

On board does 4+1sata.

throw an LSI in if you want another 4.

 

If you use storage spaces, make sure you don't use parity. FreeNAS would be better. Alternatively, just use the HW RAID card built in/on an add-in card.

 

[TechMinerUK]

Which LSI card would you recommend as I'm on a tight budget and they're all so expensive over here. Also can someone explain storage spaces to me

[Jarsky]

22 hours ago, TechMinerUK said:

Is their a software implementation of MDADM then as this server will be used by less experienced users since it's a home server

MDADM is a software implementation, but I guess you mean some easy GUI thing. 

TBH if you're building an array of any kind, you shouldn't let anyone "manage" it that doesn't know what they're doing. 

Your biggest issue with reliability and redundancy isn't the software (storage spaces, zfs, mdadm, unraid jbod, etc...) its the human element. 

 

All the options given in this thread are really good, and you shouldnt really have issues with any of them. But if you need something *easy* then either FreeNas, unRAID or Windows Storage Spaces. 

 

As for cards, if you need to expand - then the LSI 9211-8i HBA - but that server only has 4 slots doesnt it? 

[leadeater]

On 6/27/2016 at 2:20 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

No storage spaces doesn't. Storage spaces has a much worse cache system. It also doesn't do checksums and much slower.

Storage Spaces if configured correctly performs very well, even better in Server 2016. I agree that in Server 2012 R2 the storage tiering isn't that great for new files as it's not an inline process, it's done by scheduled optimizations.

 

In Server 2016 there has been a good amount of improvements and a new featured called multi resilient virtual disks which when paired with SSDs as the mirror tier and HDDs as the parity tier all writes always go to the mirror tier, even modifications of existing data. Also in Server 2016 storage spaces now only support ReFS (v2) so their is checksums and full data resiliency.

 

In both the older 2012 R2 and the newer 2016 storage spaces if you want to use parity configurations you need to use journal disks, these cache writes to parity tiers. You'll commonly see SSDs being used for this online but there is nothing stopping you from using HDDs for this task, you need a minimum number of journal disks that match your storage configuration.

 

Also in 2016 dual parity now uses erasure coding so is much more space efficient.

 

Bottom line, if you see anyone saying storage spaces performance is bad that is a configuration issue not a technology issue.

 

 

ZFS is great and is in areas better than storage spaces, as it should be since it has been around much longer and is a more mature technology. Storage spaces has its own advantages however since storage pools are more easily expanded and has better SMB3 support if that is what you require/benefit from.

 

Storage spaces direct is another really nice feature but most people here aren't interested in, need or have 3 servers minimum to do this.

[TechMinerUK]

On 28/06/2016 at 2:42 PM, leadeater said:

Storage Spaces if configured correctly performs very well, even better in Server 2016. I agree that in Server 2012 R2 the storage tiering isn't that great for new files as it's not an inline process, it's done by scheduled optimizations.

In Server 2016 there has been a good amount of improvements and a new featured called multi resilient virtual disks which when paired with SSDs as the mirror tier and HDDs as the parity tier all writes always go to the mirror tier, even modifications of existing data. Also in Server 2016 storage spaces now only support ReFS (v2) so their is checksums and full data resiliency.

In both the older 2012 R2 and the newer 2016 storage spaces if you want to use parity configurations you need to use journal disks, these cache writes to parity tiers. You'll commonly see SSDs being used for this online but there is nothing stopping you from using HDDs for this task, you need a minimum number of journal disks that match your storage configuration.

Also in 2016 dual parity now uses erasure coding so is much more space efficient.

Bottom line, if you see anyone saying storage spaces performance is bad that is a configuration issue not a technology issue.

ZFS is great and is in areas better than storage spaces, as it should be since it has been around much longer and is a more mature technology. Storage spaces has its own advantages however since storage pools are more easily expanded and has better SMB3 support if that is what you require/benefit from.

Storage spaces direct is another really nice feature but most people here aren't interested in, need or have 3 servers minimum to do this.

 

On 28/06/2016 at 6:38 AM, Jarsky said:

MDADM is a software implementation, but I guess you mean some easy GUI thing. 

TBH if you're building an array of any kind, you shouldn't let anyone "manage" it that doesn't know what they're doing. 

Your biggest issue with reliability and redundancy isn't the software (storage spaces, zfs, mdadm, unraid jbod, etc...) its the human element. 

All the options given in this thread are really good, and you shouldnt really have issues with any of them. But if you need something *easy* then either FreeNas, unRAID or Windows Storage Spaces. 

As for cards, if you need to expand - then the LSI 9211-8i HBA - but that server only has 4 slots doesnt it? 

Right, so if I wanted something expandable then storage spaces is a better alternative. Also the server is only 4 slots but it only has 4 full speed SATA ports so if I wanted a boot SSD I'd need an extender card or if I wanted to add more HDD's in the 5.25" bay