compatibility Homeserver upgrade, non-hotplug compatibility issues

Wout_ · October 30, 2016

Hello,

I have a HP Proliant ML310e Gen8 v2 homeserver in my attic that I use for general things, including having a Plex Media Server to stream to all my devices on my local network. I recently decided to use this server for a couple of more things, and with only a 1TB HDD that is included in the server, I have to upgrade a couple of things including the storage of the server.

While thinking about my needs in the future, I came up with the following plan:

2x 1TB Raid 1 HDD (= project files, documents, important data, one is already included in the original server)

1x 4TB HDD (= media, non important data)

1x ~500GB SSD (= OS: Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 10 Education in Hyper-V, might add a second OS (linux?) in Hyper-V)

The non hot swap plugs are of 'type' 652998-001, 4 are available, one is already in use with the 1TB HDD that was included in the server.

The products I'm currently looking into are:

1x 1TB for the raid 1: WD Blue WD10EZEX

1x 4TB for the less important data: Toshiba MD04ACA400

1x 500GB SSD for the operating systems: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB

The question

The thing is that i'm not yet an experienced person with hard drives, and I haven't really done a lot on this server. I think that out of the box, the hdds and ssd I want to buy aren't going to get in. Therefor, I was wondering if anyone can help me get the right products (and extra things I might need) to get this all working. If you have any recommendations or anything else about what i'm about to do, please let me know aswell.

My budget is around €500 (~ 549.3 USD), but this is including any fees and probably another 8-16GB of DDR3 ram.

Thanks in advance

Wout

Electronics Wizardy · October 30, 2016

35 minutes ago, Wout_ said:

OS: Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 10 Education in Hyper-V,

Just saying windows server 2012r2 standard and datacenter come with keys for vm's(2 for standard, unlimited for datacenter)

Here is what id do for storage.

1x 250 or 120gb ssd(or hdd) for boot

4x 2 or 3tb hdds in a storage spaces parity for storage, you can then use some of the ssd space as a cache if you want.

My personally opinion with data storage is that you get cheap drives(you can get 30-40 dollar 2tb hdds here http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Ultrastar-2TB-SATA-7200rpm-3GB-s-Desktop-PC-hard-drive-3-5-HDD-0F10939-/282210142981?hash=item41b5090b05:g:s6gAAOSwLnBX9qoC

Then you use software to built redundancy and disk checksumming so that you can't lose data.

Electronics Wizardy · October 30, 2016

And for your other question, do you have trays or blanks in the other bays. Pull them out, do they look like the one holing the hard drive, or is it smaller.

You will probably have to buy a few more trays, search ebay.

Wout_ · October 30, 2016

Thanks for answering! I wasn't aware of the limitation of the amount of VM's, but I do have a datacenter license, so that shouldn't be a problem. Second, are you sure 120 or 250GB for a minimum of 2, probably going up to 3 or even 4 in the future, is enough? The last thing I want is to have at some point the issue where I have a few gigs too little, and when I need to buy another SSD.

I only have 4 non hot swap plugs, with one taken already with the standard HDD. This means I only have two left for the storage (and one for the ssd). Of the storage I need only about one TB for important data. All the 4 bays are in the server, one is in use (there is a HDD inside), and the other 3 are empty. This is how the empty ones look:

What software would you suggest for the redudancy? There might be software already available in the HP server, I've seen some nice tools such as Intelligent Provisioning which are included.