HP Microserver Gen8

Introduction.

The HP Microserver Gen8 fits a solid niche between

– NAS (often proprietary linux images and strange OS file layouts), and

– Desktop Computers  with TB’s of disk attached (noisy, inelegant, wasteful of power).

The Micro Server Gen8 offers relative quiet, a marginally adequate screen, and a boat load of disk capacity.

Configuration.

My current uServer is G2020T CPU and 16Gb memory and 7 DDs.  An  SSD boot drive in place of optical drive, 4 x SSDs (Raid 0) via 640L Raid controller (rr640L), and 2 x 6TB WD drives in slots 3 and 4.

Why?

The reason for this strange config is that I wanted to explore cascaded storage, ie the OS talks to 500Gb of SSD in very fast 4 way stripe, but the OS “sees” 12 TB of file space behind the 500G file cache and files are migrated automatically to/from SSD based on usage only automatically, ie the speed of SSD but the space of the fantastic density of modern 3.5in rotating HDD.

I am using 4 x Crucial MX100 SSD in a 4-way stripe (500Gb) for experimental purposes with 12TB of HDD behind. After the experiments are complete, I will remove them and commit the  4 x 6TB in a Raid 5 config. This should realise about 17.5TB of usable space.

Summary:-

Great little box, great price, solidly (mechanically) engineered.
6TB disks (12TB so far) work fine.  I am confident 4 x 8TB drives will work in a uSvrGen8.
Windows 7 Pro 64bit desktop OS works fine with ethernet and video patches.

But…

Marred by some very odd software and hardware design choices.
No RAID 5 as standard. Raid 0 and 1 only.
1993 Matrox G200EH Video card with 16MB of graphics memory behind VGA socket.
Broken ILO without a license.
Xorg removed Matrox G200 driver code from Xserver 3 years ago.
No sound available.

Could still be the Killer Product if:-

Remove the HP Sales/Marketing Prevention Department with prejudice
Put a modern Video controller (example Radeon 4540) and DPI video connector
Enable Raid 5 on motherboard controller
If supplying flimsy disk carrier supports, make them support a 2.5in HDD/SSD with the bracket, instead of two useless bits of metal.

 

More information:-

There are excellent reviews at the following locations:-

http://www.silentpcreview.com/HP_ProLiant_MicroServer_Gen8
http://www.wegotserved.com/2014/04/12/review-hp-proliant-microserver-gen8/

but be wary of “Supported Linux distributions” in the silent PC review. Supported does not mean the OS has the drivers in the OS distribution – you have to roll your own kernel.

Detailed Walk through.

There was some fiddling to arrange 7 drives inside the uServer. Two (very flimsy) disk carriers have a double SSD tray mounted, with 2 x SSD mounted inside each. The drives sit forward from the standard SATA connectors to permit power and data cables to be fed through the holes at the rear of the disk cage. A power loom was added to feed the 4 drives, and the 4 data cables that came standard with the RR640L are both sufficiently long to allow the dual SSD card to slide into the tray while the cables are eased through the rear of the cage.

Top cover removed with Molex loom to power all 5 SSDs. The orange data cable above is plugged into the motherboard below.

  Hihpoint RR640L occupying the single PCI slot

The two additional 6TB drive are mounted in their flimsy carriers and pushed home.

The OS SSD is mounted on a OCZ plate, and clipped neatly into the vacant space intended for the ODD.

No Microserver G8 equipment was harmed with these modifications. No drilling holes, no cutting wires, nothing that could not be undone and the Gen8 returned to standard configuration.

My “no harm done” method for a potential total of 9 drives, we could add the “Schoondoggy” method for a total
of 13 drives. 13 x 1TB Samsung SSD’s, now we are talking. It is necessary to find a PCI raid controller with 12 SATA connections. Not too hard peering at newegg.com.

Ignition.

I loaded Linux Mint 17, Ubuntu 14.04, OpenSUSE 13.2 and LXLE 14.04. All of the Linux OS suffered from appalling video performance, due entirely to a missing video driver except OpenSUSE, which performed modestly well (about the same as Windows 7 desktop) . See this excellent article for “why”.

** To be added when I find it again **

Since I have no interest in Windows Servers, I wanted to explore Windows 7Pro 64, which works fine with added video driver and added ethernet driver. (You need to add patches cp022689.exe (ethernet) and cp017597.exe (graphics)  from Windows Server 2008 64 bit).

I am currently doing some basic performance performance testing to establish some metrics before venturing to more exotic configs (striped disk for all!).

Ignition Conclusion.

OpenSUSE 13.2 and Windows 7 Pro64 Desktop are both adequate for initial testing and configuration. The remaining Linux distros require the video driver to be added to be useful. Ethernet drivers on all distros worked out of the box.

Highlights:

Windows 7 workstation works fine with added video driver and added ethernet driver.
(You need to add cp022689.exe and cp017597.exe from Windows Server 2008 64 bit)

Maximum screen resolution currently is 1920×1080  with cp017597.exe installed.

Screen redraws are slow, (borders have many border artefacts dragging behind the moving window)
but it is perfectly adequate to answer mail, write the odd letter, use vi to edit a file.

Lowlights

Appalling bios boot time (from cold, 7 seconds shy of 3 minutes 2m53s), restart is a stately 2.04 minutes.
(A well versed HP server engineer remarked over my shoulder “that was quick…”  Que!)

HP would like you to endure a “graphical” bios for both the primary message screen, and the “intelligent(oxymoron)” provisioning. Both Intel (NUC) and HP (uSvrG8) need to get a clue. This is not smart.

Why starting up Firefox from ROM to display some EULA text and some pretty buttons, with caring sharing bon mots such as “You must agree to the EULA before proceeding” is clearly designed to warn the cockles of your heart. Clearly the HP Sales Prevention team in full flight.

Buy an HP Raid card for 3x the price of the whole computer. The Bi120 is not a credible or economically sane solution. 1/ It breaks the fan control and 2/ They cannot be serious about paying 3 x the cost of the box (~$1500) for a single PCI card in 2014. For hardware Raid 5 functionality that is not unreasonable to expect in a “server”.  (HighPoint Rocket Raid 640L plugged into the PCI slot fixes that for US$82 +shipping and duty).

Broken ILO. Obviously HP don’t want you to buy ILO.

Graphical bios oddness and graphical provisioning oddness. Extremely odd. Why are flashing rings with “HP” in the middle useful while it take an inordinate amount of time to get to a screen to select a disk. Someone should take these people aside and show them how quick it is to install Debian, and then ask someone to explain “why?”. We want to know. We would like to examine the thought process behind why graphical interfaces are something that you use once or twice at the beginning of the life of the box, and then never see again. Why bother? I’m sure David Attenborough would like to make an informative documentary about HP Marketing droids who dream this stuff up.

Boot Time.

From Cold – Power on.

0 – 90 seconds – no video, fan starts, fan stops after a bit, no evidence of useful activity

90-180 seconds – initial boot, general prettyness, not much useful activity until 180 seconds

when :- !!!!  offered F8, F9, F10 and F11. One wrong keypress at this point, and collect a 3 minute penalty (ie start again).

Smart Povisioning loads Firefox!!!!!   from a boot rom, before we get to completely not-smart provisioning. No thanks.

The rest of the options work as advertised.

Bios Config – it is necessary to play with SATA/AHCI to make the box behave in the manner required.

Conclusion

A great box, marred by setup dumbness. Could’a moved from great to stellar for a few more cents. I am still happy with it, as performance is good, but shame that some basics (video controller and disk carriers) were missed.