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HP ProLiant N54L MicroServer NAS $229 with Free Shipping - UPDATED AGAIN

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HP ProLiant N54L MicroServer NAS $229 with Free Shipping - UPDATED AGAIN
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SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 18:03 ebay.com.au (1053 clicks)
Last edited 10/04/2014 - 09:32

I already have one of these running FreeNAS with 6 x 4TB HDDs however I've been considering another to run beside it as a general 'home' server running Windows to manage security cameras, downloads and future possibilities such as sprinkler systems etc. etc. Just stumbled across these for $229 delivered so I thought I'd better jump before they're no longer available because two of these fit perfectly side-by-side on a 19" Rack Shelf and will keep everything neat & tidy :)

Thought the few remaining OzBargainers who don't yet have one may be interested as these are great 'all-rounder' units versatile enough to be used for many different purposes.

UPDATE: Didn't hear back from them but just noticed their stock levels show 'More than 10' now so it seems they have plenty.
2nd UPDATE: Just got a nice message from the REP who said they have added more stock but only a few units as it's all they have left and it's unlikely they'll get any more as these are now end-of-life. With this in mind I highly recommend anyone still contemplating buying an N54L to jump on these now before they're no longer available. The newer 'G8' model has a higher spec and will basically do the same thing however it's far less hackable than the N54L… plus I like the minimalist all-black look of the N54L better anyway ;)

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closed Comments

  • tonyjzx on 09/04/2014 - 18:07
    +11

    microservers: collect the set

    • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 18:14
      +5

      Ha, yeah. They should also be available in 'Glitter' or 'Tropical' colours :)

  • xuqi on 09/04/2014 - 18:24

    Good price, but there's only 6 left.

    • CyberGenesys on 09/04/2014 - 18:26

      9 available, 3 sold

      That means there were 12 to begin with?

    • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 18:27
      +2

      Yes, 9 Available & 3 Sold usually indicates there was 12 to begin with. There was 10+ before I posted this deal (as per the deal posting rules) so OzBargainers must have snapped up a few already! I've just shot them a message to see if they have access to more. We'll see…

      • SteveAndBelle on 10/04/2014 - 08:16

        As above, I haven't heard back from them but I have just noticed their stock levels show 'More than 10' now so it seems they have plenty left.

    • Steptoe on 09/04/2014 - 18:54
      +1

      Your screen's upside down.

  • Pigfarmermc on 09/04/2014 - 18:44

    How are you running 6x4tb? 4 internal and 2 external?

    • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 18:54
      +2

      There's actually enough physical room for 8 HDDs inside the N54L but here's mine running 6: http://i175.photobucket.com/albums/w159/SteveAndBelle/685d83…

      4 HDDs in the proper bays + 2 HDDs mounted across the bed of the Optical Drive bay up top (Note: requires a small section of metal to be snipped out to make room for Power & SATA connections). One drive is connected to the spare SATA port on the M/Bd and the other connected to the eSATA port on the rear. Not elegant but it works perfectly and stays cool. As you can see you could squeeze another two drives on top of those but you'd need to do more metalwork plus get an add-on card with more SATA ports plus you'd probably be pushing the limits of the standard Power supply and may run into heat problems so I consider six HDDs to be a comfortable upper limit.

      FreeNAS just runs off a USB device permanently connected to the USB on the M/Bd so no HDD required for that.

      • cryptos on 09/04/2014 - 19:09
        +1

        "SteveAndBelle" also contains 3 sub-albums

        Cats

        Sidchrome

        Valves

        :)

      • DiGiT02 on 09/04/2014 - 19:12

        Are the 2 drive screwed in or just sitting on unsecured?

        Did you put together any guide on how you did this or have more photos?

        • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 19:29
          +3

          The drives push-fit into the 5.25" pretty snugly sideways without any anchoring and I was nearly about to leave them like that but decided I'd better hold them somehow so I cut a few strips of double-sided 3M 'Industrial Grade' foam tape and basically stuck them down. They're not going anywhere. No time to make a guide sorry as I had to get the NAS up and running as quickly as possible.

          Believe me, if you've got an N54L and six drives in front of you with nothing else it really wouldn't take long for anyone to come to this conclusion ;)

        • DiGiT02 on 09/04/2014 - 19:43

          any way you can post a pick of the back so I can see the eSATA solution

        • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 19:46
          +2

          No need as all this info is easy Googleable yourself: http://i.imgur.com/fbMTU.png from this website: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11585.0

          You simply get yourself a cheap eSATA to SATA cable and simply poke it through a gap above the PCI slots.

      • Chroma on 09/04/2014 - 19:26

        There's actually only enough room for 5x 4Tb drives internally. 8 drives is only if you're running 4x 2.5" drives which don't come in 4Tb. You could run up to 6x mSATA in the 5.25" bay but you're getting into serious hack job territory to even have enough internal cables for everything.

        As you've demonstrated, the 6x 3.5" internal requires alterations to the case. Kudos for the enthusiasm but the last thing I would want is to pack hard drives in too tightly and have no air flow. Magnetic/spindle drives generate a lot more heat than most would expect.

        PS if we're being ridiculous you could also remove the caddies and modify the caddy housing for up to 8x 3.5" drives in the lower bay.

        • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 19:35
          +2

          I understand where you're coming from but my 'enthusiasm' resulted in exactly what I needed… a bullet-proof 14.5TB NAS with RAIDZ2 dual-redundancy for less than $1200 which is also compact and runs cooler & quieter than my old ReadyNAS. After a few irritations setting up FreeNAS it's working perfectly.

      • CyberGenesys on 10/04/2014 - 08:28

        I was running 8 drives by using a 3x 5.25" to 4x 3.5" bay adapter plus a SAS card. The PSU seemed to deal with it fine. Due to the size of the bay adapter the top panel of the case was left off. Which didn't worry me.

    • korda on 09/04/2014 - 18:55
      +2

      A nexus doubletwin can fit 2 hdds in the top CD bay without any mods needed.
      I fit 7 drives in there, number 7 lives in the space under the CD bay. Had to cut some metal away to fit it in there.

      • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 18:58

        Yeah, those DoubleTwins would've been perfect for my setup but I couldn't find them anywhere :(

        • Steptoe on 09/04/2014 - 19:01
          +2

          $11

        • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 19:08

          Nice work Steptoe. I searched high & low for these all over the world only a few months back when I was building my N54L and only found a set in the UK for some crazy high price. I decided against it and did the above hack as I needed the NAS up and running as quickly as possible 'cause my old NAS was very close to crashing :)

          Cheers for the link!

        • Steptoe on 09/04/2014 - 19:36
          +1

          Little known resource called Google :p

        • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 19:37
          +1

          Ha yeah. I've been told about that. Will have to look into it one day :P

      • Master Bates on 09/04/2014 - 19:19

        korda, out of interest how have you wired 7 HDDs given the 4 drive bays and 2 SATA ports; did you buy an additional card?

        • Chroma on 09/04/2014 - 19:30

          You need not only SATA ports but the internal power cables as well, and there isn't exactly a great deal of room to move in those cases once they're loaded.

        • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 19:43
          +2

          Google search N54L and you'll discover a lifetime of information on how others have set theirs up.. probably a bit too much information TBH as it gets overwhelming for those like me who just wanted a very simple 'home' NAS with loads of storage space for as little $$s as possible.

          Some people have fitted server grade RAID cards to their N54Ls worth 3-4 times as much as the MicroServer itself but it allows them to run loads of HDDs. They have also replaced the standard Power Supply with a much more powerful version that runs cooler & quieter too but personally that steps way over the line for me. These are great little machines but there are other devices far more capable if you need to solve bigger problems.

        • Master Bates on 09/04/2014 - 22:30
          +1

          129 bookmarks in my internet browser bookmark folder named "N40L".

          I'll admit it, I'm being lazy hoping for a quick answer! ;o)

        • korda on 10/04/2014 - 11:25
          +2

          Yes. I have a 4-port PCIe x1 card in there for a total of 9 drives (8 in Raid-Z2 and 1 SSD off the ODD port for boot), leaving the e-sata port free. One drive has to sit outside the microserver.

          I have to power some of the extra drives off an external ATX power supply though, I had some reliability issues running everything (+ PCIe x16 video card) off the internal power supply. If I could find a cheap higher wattage replacement for the internal power supply I'd get one. I could go down the picopsu route but haven't checked if the 200W model is beefy enough.

        • Master Bates on 11/04/2014 - 16:00

          Thanks yo!

      • gizmomelb on 09/04/2014 - 20:46
        +1

        yup.. I just pulled a 'spare' nexus doubletwin out of my cupboard as I couldn't remember what they were called - I've got them in a few of my different PCs.

  • gizmomelb on 09/04/2014 - 20:48
    +1

    oh.. also I highly recommend XPEnology or gnoboot as a NAS - http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=d97a5669759…

    it's a modified Synology OS and has lots of home friendly features which are very easy to set up and use.

    • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 21:02

      Could've told me earlier Gizmo ;) FreeNAS is incredibly powerful BUT I've ripped my hair out trying to set it up to act like a super-basic NAS without permissions or quotas or anything. Got it working now and it's amazingly stable but yeah definitely not for the beginner sheesh! So many hoops & loops.

      • datamile on 09/04/2014 - 21:08

        Not seen xpe, running unraid on N40L

      • CyberGenesys on 09/04/2014 - 21:58
        +1

        Personally (when I had a n54l) I ran Centos6.5 minimal installed on a USB stick, put all the drives into a single (software)RAID5 and shared the whole lot in a single Samba share. Takes about 15 minutes to setup (not including the day of initialising the RAID).

        • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 22:09

          FreeNAS is a strange beast and I don't pretend to fully understand every part of it but compared to the ReadyNAS it replaced and what you said above setting up a RAIDZ2 volume within FreeNAS to take advantage of dual-redundancy (ie. RAID6) the actual volume creation & initialisation only takes about 30 seconds… and that's for a whopping 14.5TBs! I didn't trust it at first but it just did it so fast compared to the days I had to wait for the ReadyNAS to prep a volume half the size. FreeNAS is painful in many other ways tho, believe me ;)

  • bhm133 on 09/04/2014 - 22:03

    Anyone running these on freenas? Any problems with gigabit connections? My asus mobo has a realtek ethernet port and it isnt supported with freenas. Gets bogged down a lot. Thinking about getting an intel nic but with the size if these i may spend the extra cash.

    • SteveAndBelle on 09/04/2014 - 22:05

      Erm, I think the first 8 words of my description says it all ;)

      Yes, they work perfectly with FreeNAS although an Intel Gigabit NIC for your existing system would be a lot cheaper if all else is OK.

      • bhm133 on 10/04/2014 - 10:34
        +1

        If I could neg myself I would. I knew I should have used my eyes to read all the details. Was tired. No exexcuse!!

        Thanks for the info. Good to have confirmation.

        • cornbeef on 10/04/2014 - 11:06
          +1

          can sell you a neg if you want one bhm133

        • SteveAndBelle on 10/04/2014 - 11:21
          +1

          Wow, that opens up a whole new can'o'worms for OzBargain… list POS & NEG votes on eBay with a quantity more than 10 then post the deal here. Hmmm :P

          (KIDDING of course Mods!)

        • cornbeef on 10/04/2014 - 11:42

          the modsquad could consider annual awards…

        • bhm133 on 10/04/2014 - 13:29

          Put it up on eBay 99 cents free delivery and I'll but 10.

          Then post it on ozbargain. 99 cent negs.

  • petestrash on 10/04/2014 - 22:34

    Ended…

    Today was not the day to be offline :(

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