HP Microserver in the office

More recently, the HP server division has released a very interesting and somewhat unexpected product. He got the talking name Microserver - even without seeing the device itself, on the one hand, you can roughly imagine what it is about, and on the other hand, you can dream up anything. The new server is designed for small working groups and is designed for use in offices, but at home it is not prohibited to use it. On the wave of interest in this model, I decided to write a couple of posts about how the Microserver can be useful, and what it was able to adapt to.

Caution, a lot of photos!
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When reading a post, it is important to understand that any server cannot be used in just a few familiar ways. It is possible that your own scenario of using the device will be more useful, original and curious, so feel free to post it in the comments.

Disclaimer: the author is not an expert in setting up and installing servers, this is his personal server, which is planned to be used for multi-disk storage at home, and, possibly, in the office.

In the first part I would like to talk a little about the server itself, and how it can be useful in the office. In terms of size, the Microserver resembles half of the usual tower system block, except perhaps a bit wider. In the upper part there is a place for a five-inch device, and you can install anything there, even a Blu-Ray drive. The possibility of expansion is never superfluous, after all, there you can manage to put another hard drive.

By the way, about the disks. A considerable share of its attractiveness in the eyes of the IT public Microserver is obliged to have four slots for SATA drives. If you look at the online prices for NAS-storage under four drives, it becomes clear that it is much more profitable to buy a Microserver, install four drives there, raise a RAID array and enjoy life, having received a server into the bargain. It is possible that in the end the money will be spent less.

Microserver has Gigabit Ethernet and eSATA interfaces. It is a pity, of course, that the second network interface will need to be installed on its own, well at least the necessary connector is available. But for example, wi-fi in this case will have to be added using a USB dongle. It's nice that there should be enough connectors for everything - on the Microserver case there are six USB connectors, four in the front and two in the back, and one is inside, so if you want you can hide a smart and capacious flash drive inside, or something else interesting. Such flexibility, as a rule, is not enough in ordinary computers, most often acting as servers in small offices.

For the test, we brought the Microserver to an ordinary two-room office in the center of Moscow. The small IT company employs five people, and an old systemic (by the way, HP production) tried to adapt the server, which was once very powerful, but now almost useless. The old computer could no longer cope with the required tasks, so the Microserver came in very handy. First of all, the server was installed Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition, better suited for business needs, but in general you can install almost any modern OS on Microserver. If desired, you can even make it a home computer, but this is in the second part of the story.

As an office router used Linksys WRT610N, fast, but at its core home Wi-Fi router. But for the needs of a small office, its overall performance is sufficient. There are no difficulties with setting up Microserver, the procedure is typical and familiar to any system administrator. Any sophisticated use of Microserver was not planned, the server was equipped with a pair of spare drives and turned into a data warehouse. The average data transfer rate was about 5 MB per second, from time to time dropping to 1.5 MB, but this is already due to the peculiarities of the wireless network.

What is the best office microserver for? The built-in disk controller of the server supports RAID1, so you can set up data duplication and use Microserver as a repository of important data - various databases, documents, multimedia content, if the company, for example, is engaged in design or video editing. With today's availability of 2-terabyte disks (at least the same Western Digital Green WD20EARS), this should not be a problem. Well, when the disk space becomes small, you can connect external storage via eSATA.

There is also an opinion that Microserver can perfectly show itself as a mail server, especially if you add more RAM (you can increase its number up to eight gigabytes). The processor will remain unchanged - AMD Athlon II at 1.3 GHz. In this configuration, the server will quietly pull Exchange and provide reliable “native” mail to all employees. Well, if the company maintains serious accounting, it becomes obvious where to keep the accounting databases.

The picture is completed by the ability to configure the Active Directory server and enjoy all the benefits of a single entry point to all used services, although for a small company this is not so relevant.

Of the particularly convenient features of the server design, it is possible to point out a fully removable motherboard, the usual server compartments for disks, and a thick metal door. The cover and door can be easily removed for access inside the case. The entire server design leaves a pleasant sensation of forethought, it is felt that the Microserver is made according to the server canons of HP and is a full-fledged "prolian". For example, in order to remove the motherboard, you only need to unscrew a pair of screws. This can be easily done without a screwdriver, the key screw connections are made so that the screws can be fastened-unscrewed with your fingers. As they say, "a trifle, but nice."
On this, perhaps, round out. In the second part, I want to talk about the operation of Microserver as a home server, everything can be even more interesting here, yet the usage scenarios even come to a head more noticeably. Here you have a simple text editing machine, a repository of HD video, a music box, and much more.

Ps. The photos were taken with office light and are not processed in any way, except for cropping.

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