Topic: Installation report - very small appliance-type server - HP ProLiant Microserver

[Dan York]

Just a quick follow-up to a previous post[1] of mine and confirming another older report[2], I recently installed SME Server 8.0 beta 7 onto a HP ProLiant Microserver and it worked wonderfully.  If anyone is searching for a small, quiet server to run SME Server on, this one is quite nice.  Here's what I ordered from HP:

Item # 658553-001  HP ProLiant MicroServer 1.5 GHz 2GB 1x250
Item # 394791-B21  HP NC373T PCI-E Multi GB Svr Adapter  (NIC)

I ordered direct from HP but the server can be found at Amazon and probably all of the typical online hardware sites.

The hardest part of the installation was, quite honestly: 1) detaching the SATA connector from the motherboard so that I could get the board out to install the NIC; and 2) realizing that although the NIC ships with a full-height metal bracket installed by default, it came with a half-height metal bracket that could be swapped out (as the MicroServer only accepts half-height PCI cards).

I'd note that the server does NOT come with an installed CD drive in this configuration (the least expensive), so I did need to have an external USB CD drive available.

The software installation worked great and it was up and running in no time at all.

The server does have additional bays for a total of 4 hard drives.

[1] http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46796.msg230131.html
[2] http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46724.msg229588.html

[k_graham]

Item # 658553-001  HP ProLiant MicroServer 1.5 GHz 2GB 1x250
Item # 394791-B21  HP NC373T PCI-E Multi GB Svr Adapter  (NIC)

I ordered direct from HP but the server can be found at Amazon and probably all of the typical online hardware sites.

The hardest part of the installation was, quite honestly: 1) detaching the SATA connector from the motherboard so that I could get the board out to install the NIC; and 2) realizing that although the NIC ships with a full-height metal bracket installed by default, it came with a half-height metal bracket that could be swapped out (as the MicroServer only accepts half-height PCI cards).

I'd note that the server does NOT come with an installed CD drive in this configuration (the least expensive), so I did need to have an external USB CD drive available.

The software installation worked great and it was up and running in no time at all.

The server does have additional bays for a total of 4 hard drives.

[1] http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46796.msg230131.html
[2] http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,46724.msg229588.html

How is it at backup - If you for instance have 1/2 or 1 terabyte of Data are you able to use maximum compression of data with DAR and have it copy at near capacity via Gigabit ethernet or via Esata or capacity if to USB?

Are you using Mirrored drives or Softare Raid 5?

You were able to use the embedded and extra ethernet adapter as supplied from HP- both worked correct?

HP advertises some sort of remote access card - this is not applicable if we are planning to use SME server 8 is it?

If the power supply goes could one use a standard PC power supply or is this requiring a special supply for the small case?

Thanks,

Ken

[k_graham]

I forgot to ask - if using DAR and you have a large data backup can you restore a individual file with the WEB interface or does it time out?

Ken

[Dan York]

Ken,

Unfortunately, my current usage of SME Server is simply as a home server/gateway and as a Linux box to run various small applications on.  I'm not currently using it as a file or media server and so I can't really answer your questions about backup and RAID capabilities as I'm simply not using them. 

How is it at backup - If you for instance have 1/2 or 1 terabyte of Data are you able to use maximum compression of data with DAR and have it copy at near capacity via Gigabit ethernet or via Esata or capacity if to USB?

No idea.  I'm not doing anything sophisticated with backup as for what I do the built-in web backup will be fine.

Are you using Mirrored drives or Softare Raid 5?

Neither.  The box has 4 slots for drives of which I am only using 1. Presumably I could use the others and set up software RAID, but I'm not doing that.

You were able to use the embedded and extra ethernet adapter as supplied from HP- both worked correct?

Correct.  Worked great.

HP advertises some sort of remote access card - this is not applicable if we are planning to use SME server 8 is it?

Unfortunately I have no idea.

If the power supply goes could one use a standard PC power supply or is this requiring a special supply for the small case?

I don't know... but I would suspect that it's a special supply to fit in the very small chassis.

I forgot to ask - if using DAR and you have a large data backup can you restore a individual file with the WEB interface or does it time out?

Unfortunately I have no idea because I have so little data on the server.

Sorry I can't be of more help but my use case is obviously vastly different from yours. 

Dan

[janet]

k_graham

if using DAR and you have a large data backup can you restore a individual file with the WEB interface or does it time out?

Using server manager I restored a single 177Mb zip file (of an iso image) from a daily incremental file created using the built in e-smith-dar program.
This was done from a remote location using a Putty remote ssh tunnel connection and remote server manager connection (to localhost).
The whole process took 30 seconds, the file itself seemed to restore in about 5 or 10 seconds.
My backup data is approx 400Gb in total, but I do split each full or incremental file into slightly less than 1.5Gb chunks (or slices) to fit 3 parts on a DVD-R or DVD+R.
A full backup consists of 217 parts or slices. It take about 10 hours to do a full backup, and usually just 5 - 20 minutes to do a daily incremental depending on the amount of changed data, approx 5 minutes per 1.5Gb slice.
I have compression set to 4.
My server is a couple of years old, Intel motherboard, Intel Core2 2.66Mhz, 2 or 4Mb RAM (cannot remember), 2 x Seagate 500Gb drives in software RAID1.
I used a slightly old version of Firefox (3.6.26).
I use 1.5Tb WD USB disks for backup.
The USB backup disk is connected directly to a USB port on the server.
NIC's & switch & cabling are 1Gb/s spec'd (but that should have nothing to do with the backup).

I suggest you reduce your compression to 4, as higher than that places too much load on the CPU and it takes longer to create the whole backup.
It is a trade off between backup time and backup file size, you cannot have both.
I also suggest you split you backup file into manageable (system wise) chunks like the 1.5Gb I mention (it's actually slightly less so 3 parts fit onto a DVD).
This does not affect the integrity of the whole backup.

Your previous comment/concern/interpretation about the integrity of the whole backup being affected if the last "part or slice" is not saved, appears to me to be incorrect.
This comment in the wiki (backup with dar article) really means or refers to the last part of a daily full or incremental backup (when split into slices or parts). If the last slice is not saved then that days backup is useless. All the previous days backups are still intact and can be used to restore from.
This applies to WinRAR too I believe.

So that example works OK for me, you must have some issues or problems unique to your system or configuration.
What size file are you really trying to restore, is it 100Gb as mentioned before ?
What is your current server specs where you have the restore problem, and specs of your backup disks etc ?

[k_graham]

k_graham

Using server manager I restored a single 177Mb zip file (of an iso image) from a daily incremental file created using the built in e-smith-dar program.
This was done from a remote location using a Putty remote ssh tunnel connection and remote server manager connection (to localhost).
The whole process took 30 seconds, the file itself seemed to restore in about 5 or 10 seconds.
My backup data is approx 400Gb in total, but I do split each full or incremental file into slightly less than 1.5Gb chunks (or slices) to fit 3 parts on a DVD-R or DVD+R.
A full backup consists of 217 parts or slices. It take about 10 hours to do a full backup, and usually just 5 - 20 minutes to do a daily incremental depending on the amount of changed data, approx 5 minutes per 1.5Gb slice.
I have compression set to 4.
My server is a couple of years old, Intel motherboard, Intel Core2 2.66Mhz, 2 or 4Mb RAM (cannot remember), 2 x Seagate 500Gb drives in software RAID1.
I used a slightly old version of Firefox (3.6.26).
I use 1.5Tb WD USB disks for backup.
The USB backup disk is connected directly to a USB port on the server.
NIC's & switch & cabling are 1Gb/s spec'd (but that should have nothing to do with the backup).

I suggest you reduce your compression to 4, as higher than that places too much load on the CPU and it takes longer to create the whole backup.
It is a trade off between backup time and backup file size, you cannot have both.
I also suggest you split you backup file into manageable (system wise) chunks like the 1.5Gb I mention (it's actually slightly less so 3 parts fit onto a DVD).
This does not affect the integrity of the whole backup.

Hi Mary;

I made a backup Saturday night with the 4 compression to a Workstation but the selective restore simply doesn't provide a list of anything to restore. I thus started a backup Sunday and will see if a selective restore works with 1 compression. Its over a network with 1 GB speed so should actually work better than to USB - but isn't  - but perhaps my server is too old something in a AMD a bit later than a Pentium 4 with 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM. Because of concerns about it I am likely going to buy a

HP ProLiant ML110 G7 E3-1220 1P 2GB-U LFF HP 350W PS Server with Xeon processor

I figure this should have the power to create DAR compressed data and if it works out a 2nd one for 2nd location  - probably putting a 4Gig RAM in 1 and moving the 2nd 2Gig RAM to the other so both end up with 4 Gigs. The one thing I don't like is a comment on a feedback list that the drive caddies aren't included and difficult to get.

Were you able to check if backing up to alternate USB drives causes missed files. That is if you create new individual text files for each day of week labeled as days of the week do they show on both drives or do you end up with Monday Wednesday Friday files on one and Tuesday, Thursday, files on another as I suspect?

Ken

[janet]

k_graham

I made a backup Saturday night with the 4 compression to a Workstation but the selective restore simply doesn't provide a list of anything to restore.

I wonder if your backup is really happening ?
Maybe your drive on the workstation is not being accessed or mounted properly ?
Maybe it is just too much data or too big a backup file(s) ?

Did you run the check to Verify the backup.
This will test if the backup is OK or not.
You should wait for it to finish which may take a few hours if you have lots of data and lots of files.
Try different browsers.

I suggest you trouble shoot by creating a smaller backup data set, use the tweaks here
http://wiki.contribs.org/Backup_with_dar#Adding.2FExcluding_Directories_and_Files_from_the_backup_list
to adjust what gets backed up and only include a few folders with a few Mbs or Gbs of data (for test purposes).
Prune say all of /home folder to exclude your big amounts of data.

Then test it all again.

...perhaps my server is too old something in a AMD a bit later than a Pentium 4 with 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM.

That server spec should perform reasonably OK, but just be a bit slower due to processor speed.

Were you able to check if backing up to alternate USB drives causes missed files. That is if you create new individual text files for each day of week labeled as days of the week do they show on both drives or do you end up with Monday Wednesday Friday files on one and Tuesday, Thursday, files on another as I suspect?

I did virtually exactly what you suggest, I tested this to be sure, and each days test files do appear in that nights and subsequent nights incremental backup files, so all files do appear on both backup USB disks (obviously after each disk is used). While it is being called incremental it appears to be differential.

Upon further testing I did notice that a Full Restore objects to having missing incremental files, so this method is problematic, as it will not do a full restore "as is".
As a workaround I was able to rename the incremental files on the backup disk ie where there was a full, inc 001, and inc 003, I renamed them so then there was the full, inc 001, & inc 002 on the disk, and a Full Restore then worked OK.
So it's best to leave a single disk in for multiple nights & then swap disks or force a full backup every night, I'm still testing to see if incrementals happen on the same disk after the number of backups in a set is exceeded.
I'm not so happy with that solution though.
My daily changeable data is too important to not remove it offsite on a daily basis, and it is usually too big to backup comfortably over the Internet every night, so swapping local USB disks is the best answer for me.

I am looking at Affa again, I don't think it will have that problem when swapping disks daily.
I used Affa extensively before, for a couple of years, both for local and remote backup at multiple sites and it is very good & versatile.
Just need to test out the scenario's mentioned again.

[janet]

k_graham

Re your backup & restore issues, this may be applicable (about upgrading e-smith-backup)
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,47277.msg239743.html#msg239743

[k_graham]

k_graham

Re your backup & restore issues, this may be applicable (about upgrading e-smith-backup)
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,47277.msg239743.html#msg239743

I see the backups as 299 dar files - just the partial restore times out, never lets me see anything to restore. I will see if the new unit shows a partial restore - in the meantime I am still doing  separate Winrar data backups as well - one thing I like about Winrar is it allows one to specify a recovery record in the order of 1 or 2 percent, which will actually let the entire file restore even if a small amount of the drive is damaged this used to be quite useful with floppies.

I did order the 1st HP server Monday - the smallest Xeon equipped unit with 2 Gigs RAM - ordered a 4GIG HP memory upgrade with it. I figured to run 4 GIGS and assuming I buy a 2nd unit add the 2 GIGS to the 2nd unit so both end up at 4 GIGS which if its like Windows is as much as a 32 bit operating system will make use of.

I am using SME 7.5 with all updates, are you using SME 7 or SME 8?

Thanks,

Ken

[janet]

k_graham

I'm using sme 7.5.1

I see the backups as 299 dar files - just the partial restore times out, never lets me see anything to restore.

I'd say you more than likely have a browser issue, and/or insufficient hardware resources on the workstation that is running server manager. I doubt it's a server issue.
What are the specs of the workstatiuon you are using to initiate the partial restore ?
What web browser and version number are you using.

I used an old Celeron 500 with 512Kb of RAM to restore from a full (v7.5.1) backup (400GB of 217 parts) to a Core2 3GHz 4Mb server (sme8b7), and the restore did not display the full list of files, BUT it did appear to complete the restore, I could watch the progress with df -h and see the drive space being used gradually over about a 4 hour period.
At the end I saw the USB drive was unmounted (IIRC), so I then manually ran the reconfigure & restart commands.
My conclusion (guess) was the RAM was insufficient, or it may be a browser issue (old v3.x Firefox).
There is a bug report re sme8
Bug # 6645 Selective Restore fails with modern browsers
I didn't pursue it further as that is only a test machine, I would not consider to use that workstation for anything serious.

[k_graham]

k_graham

I'm using sme 7.5.1

I'd say you more than likely have a browser issue, and/or insufficient hardware resources on the workstation that is running server manager. I doubt it's a server issue.
What are the specs of the workstatiuon you are using to initiate the partial restore ?
What web browser and version number are you using.

I doubt its the Graphics workstation - its a i7 processor and 12 gigs RAM running 64 bit windows 7. Web browsers are updated to latest, Firefox, Google, Chrome and Internet Explorer - I use the Workstation to run Winrar  nightly backup which does the compression and if I want to restore a file takes about 30 seconds for the directories to show so I can select a file.  However its the Server that must do the work of decompressing dar files so I assume the issue is the server - I haven't tried a restore of a full dar backup, it might work fine but I wasn't about to rely on a strategy that did not allow me to restore individual files which is something likely to occur considerably more often.

I will let you know how the Xeon processor HP works once I have that server in place - I suspect it will be much more capable even though its the cheapest Xeon.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF25a/15351-15351-241434-241646-3328424-5075942.html?dnr=1

Ken

[janet]

k_graham

Have you tried running the restore from the console, using the text based server manger ie log in as admin & select server manager ?