Today's Project: HP N54L Microserver – Goodbye WHS

If I was starting from nothing I’d almost certainly have just bought a DS216Play with 2 x 2TB WD Red drives and a 2TB USB drive for backup, but this was a repurpose exercise.

Why Windows? Because I know it a lot better than I do any Linux distro and now W10 Pro is a tenner any cost argument is gone.

I want something more than just a plain vile fault like FreenNAS. The plan had always been to check out Amahi, but some digging threw up problems like this and the fact it likes to be the DHCP and DNS server.

I’ve always had issues with setting share permissions on Linux boxes, it’s very arcane compared to tick some boxes and choosing options from drop downs.

Storage Spaces: I have no idea on rebuild times or how it deals with uneven sizes, but parity takes one disk. So in my 3 disk pool that’s a third of it.

Backup of PCs: The server is just the target for the backup software on the PC. I use the inbuilt Backup and Restore (Windows 7) but it could be your favourite backup app. I created a shared folder on the server called Backup and create a folder for each PC inside that.

Backup of the Server: I’m looking at this. One thing that won’t be backed up is the backup folder. Like my Synology boxes it’ll probably do a nightly data backup to an attached USB drive and a weekly archive to Amazon Glacier. Glacier works brilliantly with Synology but I haven’t tried a Windows client yet.

EDIT – one problem with  J1x00 (and AM1) boards is only 2 SATA ports as have most mitx boards. Might as well just get a Gen 8 HP G1610T for £129 after cashback. The Gen 9 Pentium G4400 is only £105!

Good point but the choice of backup client isn’t really the focus of this, I’m looking more at the server end where it’s just a recipient for whatever client meets your needs.

For the server itself (not the data) I may just image the system drive and keep that safe as barring windows updates nothing is going to change. I think that’s why servers are so reliable, that don’t have to put up with users installing and uninstalling software and generally dicking about.

EDIT – perhaps a quick explanation of Amazon Glacier would help make sense of this post.

Amazon Glacier gives you storage at their data centres around the world. Speed isn’t an issue so it’s down to where you want (or may have to) store your data. There are 3 in the EU, Ireland, Frankfurt and now London. You choose a location in which you create a vault. That vault contains folders into which you can upload folders or files from your local PC. Your vaults are protected by a set of keys associated with your account. Most clients will let you compress data (saves time, space and $) and encrypt it. It’s called Glacier as it’s very slow to recover data from as it’s meant as an archive, not a general backup and restore app. Think offsite backup with the ability to keep all previous versions of files if you want. It’s extremely cheap, I’m currently archiving 2 small businesses plus all my own data and last months bill was $1.42, so just over a quid.

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I had a look at Arq but as I’m going down the skinflint route I’ve decided to give Fast Glacier a go. It’s extremely easy to copy a folder to a vault but it makes you realise just how good the Synology client is.

There is no way to schedule a task in Fast Glacier but there is a folder sync tool with a command line option. Once the vault has been populated I’ll try that out with a small test vault and if I can get my head around it the Windows task scheduler should be all I need.

Also encryption and / or compression aren’t turned on by default and you have to create rules. These are very flexible and can be at region, vault, folder or file level.

So it’s free and powerful but can be complex if you’re new to Glacier. It’s also way faster than the Synology but that is only an issue when you create a large vault. After that each job is incremental so quick.

Well it’s been at it over an hour compressing and encrypting, working the CPU and this shows how cool it stays. Ambient is the temp at the fan exhaust not the room. That’s at about 12C (unheated integral garage). The Turion is good for up to 95C and 25 watt TDP.

HD 5 is the external USB drive, 0 s the system drive and 1-3 are the parity pool where the data is coming from.

Well it’s hit the video folders and some big files, so it’s spending more time just shovelling parts of files onto the Ethernet rather than encrypting and compressing them. Temps are down to 33c core, 24c ambient and the HDDs by a few degrees. Have to say I’m impressed.

Most of the time it’s approaching the maximum 10Mbps upload speed of my FTTC connection, but could still have another 40+ hours to go until it’s shifted the remaining 95GB. But as I said that’s only an issue for the initial upload, subsequent jobs will be an incremental file / folder sync.

That’s why it’s best to get your folder structure right as any major reorganisation will be seen as a load of file deletion and additions. It’s not the $ cost, that will be trivial, it’s the time.

From my Santander Business Account: (Debit) CARD PAYMENT TO Amazon web services,1.45 USD, RATE 0,82/£ ON 03-01-2017  = £1.22

The official base rate on that date was 0.8170 GBP = 1 USD so I don’t feel too ripped off 🙂

It’s a heck of a lot cheaper and easier than any other way of doing off site “backup” but actually it’s a weekly archive against total disaster.

The daily backup of files that warrant that treatment (and I don’t include my music, photo or video collections in that category) are to an external USB drive.

Comparing a few years of Synology experience with half a lifetime of Windows experience I’ve learned 2 things.

1. Just how powerful these cheap Wintel HP servers are and just how far you can go with Windows 10 as an o/s to run them.
2. Just how easy it is to deploy a Synology and the breadth and ease of use of it’s available apps.

I haven’t changed my mind on the advice to buy Synology if starting from scratch and I still can’t emulate Cloud Station. They make it so easy to get the essentials up and running quickly but still with very powerful features.

I have been pleasantly surprised by just how far Windows has come and what you can do with (relatively) low power hardware, but of course it’s the availability of £10 Windows Pro that has made this viable. The full whack £140 pays for the difference between the entry level DS216se and the DS216Play capable of transcoding or a 4TB NAS HDD or 2 x 2TB.