Was originally after a NAS, but after missing the deal on the HP Microserver from shoppingexpress, i am now ont he hunt to something like that. I believe the power consumption between the two are marginal.
Where is the best place to get a microserver? And which one is best?
Best place to purchase?
As long as you have the space I would recommend building your own server.
My one has a very similar power consumption as the HP Microserver but is more powerful. Also they are very cheap to build except if you need heaps of RAM e.g. ZFS Raid.
How does one go about building there own?
There are guides online, usually you try to get the components with the lowest power usage for your needs. The build is very similar to building a desktop system.
Usual system components
CPU: Pentium or Celeron
Motherboard: B85 (or other cheap one with lots of SATA ports) - No hardware raid required as most systems use software raids now
RAM: Depends on your RAID - 2-4Gb for simply RAID5
HDD - Depends on how much space and redundancy you want
The decision for the OS is the hardest. There are simple versions like FreeNAS or CentOS which are streamlined Linux versions. I personally went with Ubuntu as it gives me the most flexibility for hosting my own cloud, webserver and MySQL server.
@kingmw: Only reason I looked at the Micro Server was for size and power consumption. Having a desktop perform these tasks seems not as convenient. I couldn't imagine a desktop pc having similar power consumption to the hp?
@m0tyrider:
My current server is a Pentium G3220, Asrock B85 Motherboard, 16G of Ram, 250Gb HDD (for OS) and 4x3Tb (Seagate and WD Red Mix). The power draw on idle is ~48W. I did buy a Corsair VS350 which isn't even a 80PLUS power supply.
Other home servers builds have similar idle power draw which is similar to a MicroServer but has way more processing power when needed.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/mini-itx-freena…
http://blog.brianmoses.net/2014/06/diy-nas-econonas-2014.htm…
Sorry accidental neg while replying.
Found another good guide as well.
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recomm…
HP N54L is the best, in my opinion. If you want, you can try to build your own, if you want a bit more flexibility and power.