Reddit reviews HP 658553-001 ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz 2C 2GB (1 x 2GB) 1 x 250GB LFF SATA
We found 8 Reddit comments about HP 658553-001 ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz 2C 2GB (1 x 2GB) 1 x 250GB LFF SATA. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Only 64GB? Haha, you pleb.
This + This + These + Stickmount
Seriously though, walking around with a cable dangling from the device is not ideal.
I bought an HP micorserver for mine. I actually use it as an esxi host, and run a freenas install as a VM. Its dead silent, can take 8GB of Ram, has a dual core 1.5 GHz amd chip, has 4 drive bays, and I believe 8 USB ports. I have no issue running 7 Linux VMs on it with the NAS, including a soft firewall (smoothwall), Wiki (twiki), and a few other misc boxes (backtrack, Damn vulnerable linux, etc). It is all of one cubic foot.
My current config is a Zpool of 2X 2TB raid 1, with a hotspare, via 3 internal 2TB drives, and 2 External 2TB drives. This gives me 3.6TB of usable space. If I want to expand, I just remove the hot spare, slap in another 2TB disc, make a mirror, and then add it to the Zpool. Redundant, easy to expand storage. The writes are slow, running about 4MB/s, but the reads are more in the 12MB/s range. Fine for media. Freenas does automatic smart warning via email, has easily configuarble shares, SNMP reporting, snapshotting, ZFS data autohealing, etc. Its beautiful.
A warning: Freenas loves Ram, so it worth going from the stock 2GB to 8 right off the bat. 4GB sticks run about $40 each.
Why not a HP microserver?
In the UK they are pretty much < £120 due to HP having £100 cashback on them. They're small and efficient.
I'm in college, similar aspirations. I bought this HP Proliant N40L
How to I connect it to the iMacs? The photos I edit are in RAW and they are huge files sizes so USB would be too slow.
I hope you're using wired Ethernet ports, as 30 WiFi radios in a small space will be not fun.
My stock recommendation for SOHO is a http://www.amazon.com/HP-658553-001-ProLiant-Server-System/dp/B005KKJPCO/ which can take up to 4x 3 TByte SATA drives. It can be upgraded with a remote administration card and up to 8 GByte ECC DDR3 memory. It is possible to install the OS (Linux, *BSD (e.g. FreeNAS), Illumos or Windows) on the internal USB slot on a large high-speed USB stick. Installing the stick is trivial, installing the RAM and the remote administration card will require unplugging the motherboard and sliding it out, which can be daunting to hardware novices (and will cause some fingertip wear and cursing even for seasoned N36L and N40L buyers as moi).
Make sure to use at least mirroring for your drives, or higher RAID levels (raidz2/raidz3 or RAID 10).
I personally enjoyed my Synology NAS, but I outgrew it quickly. Not in terms of storage space - in terms of what I could physically do with it. If you get one, I would recommend an x86 based model rather than ARM-based. Or, look into an HP MicroServer. Not the most powerful specs out there, but cheap, and can run Windows/Linux/FreeNAS.
Edit - This is the HP I'm referencing. However, I wouldn't recommend it at this price point. Newegg puts it on sale all the time for less than $300.
HP 658553-001 ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz 2C 2GB (1 x 2GB) 1 x 250GB LFF SATA https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005KKJPCO/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_OvDWtb0DQ8GJFJT8
Yeah I bought one of these guys about 6 years ago and it has been running strong ever since. Handles all my plex needs fine along with a couple of other VM's.