Hpe ProLiant Microserver Gen10

BIOS bug prevents loading of FreeNAS and BSD based variants. Good news is that for free NAS the workaround is simple: use default ISO, press 3 followed by ESC to get to the OS prompt during boot, enter: "set hw.pci.realloc_bars=1" followed by "boot". Once installed, you can use the GUI via web browser on a different machine to make the change permanent - under System->Tunables, click Add Tunable, add the following: Variable: hw.pci.realloc_bars, value: 1, type: Loader It comes with a power adapter for a 3.5" floppy drive, bot for a SATA device, needs an adapter of a little soldering to use the top slot for a more common peripheral. The top slot is no longer big enough to fit a 5th 3.5" hard drive as in prior versions; you need a nibbler and 15 minutes of work to make room for one (still fits after nibbling the plate which is in the way). Make sure the drive electronics do not short to the case! Working fine with FreeNAS 11. 2U5, 16GB EEC RAM added for a total of 24GB and 5 * 8TB Barracuda 5400RPM drives in ZRAID2 (raid 6, 20.7TB usable for data). It comes with a Clear OS stick - I could make it work using RAID 6 with 4*8TB disks (5th being a 256GB SSD for the OS), but I prefer ZFS and the bit rot protection it offers over other file systems. Clear OS may be better if you need a mail server, etc. though you may be able to use the jails in FreeNAS to run separate Clear OS or even Windows machines under FreeNAS. Very easy to access the internals for adding cards, etc. - a big positive improvement over prior versions.

I was looking for something to upgrade to from my aging hardware running WHS 2011; after much research I landed on the MicroServer Gen10. I put in 4 4TB HDD and a 500 GB SSD. It's small, unobtrusive and quiet. After much research (again), decided to trial unRAID as my new OS. I liked it so much I'm going to stick with it. I have already installed WHS 2011 into a VM to cover what I was using the physical WHS for so I could retire the old hardware. Over time I will do yet more research into the best way to do the things WHS is doing for me. The Gen10 is a great little box for a running a NAS, but can also handle VMs and dockers.

This was probably the best small office home office server that I’ve ever seen. Fast and inexpensive, with room for expansion and bundled with my favorite server operating system. It’s that last piece that was the reason HP only got four stars; the installer bundled on a USB key inside the chassis simply did not work, it failed to install the operating system, and could not recognize new and clear of data hard drives installed in the drive bays. One other problem I noticed, that was not an issue for me in my used case, but is a problem when a company decides to bundle their server with an operating system that does not support the onboard raid controller. If you’re going to partner with a OS vendor to provide one of the most flexible cost/value solutions that I have ever seen-the lack of a driver for devices that will very likely be using raid in most use cases is just bad form.

I've been looking for a low-power hardware that I can run freenas 24/7. This one is perfect for me with 4 drive bays and only consumes ~18watt because it also runs some containers for plex, gitlab, etc. Nice!

Device arrived as specified. Purchased this to study for IT certifications.

Amazona Design; Strong performance; Good expansion options; Excellent value

If you like to DIY and tinker with servers, there's almost no reason to buy a more expensive popular branded NAS over this. Proxmox works great in this server. The 4-bay HDDs stay very cool. The loss of one star is for the lack of an easy SATA installation in place of the CD-ROM drive. You have to search around for a special 4-pin floppy power cable and supply your own SATA cable. Or purchase the "SATA enablement kit". Why not just have it pre-wired, HP? Of course if you plan to use FreeNAS then the internal USB connector is available. I suppose you could even wipe the ClearOS USB drive that it comes with.

Build a virtualization lab and needed multiple small nodes for my office. The MicroServer Gen 10 with the X3421 provides a cost effective platform for many uses. Do have to keep in mind the limitations of the platform (32GB of RAM), but the flexibility is quite good. I added an HP H220 HBA with 1x 250GB SSD and 3x 2TB HDD to underpin by VM lab. I am able to run the full VMware Suite at version 6.7 (ESXi, vSAN, NSX, VRA, etc.) on only 3 nodes.

Well built. Can put in SAS drives I have not fully setup this microserver yet, but so far I was able to add 4 SAS dives, and I installed a SAS/RAID card. I moved the mini sas from the motherboard to the raid card. Was pretty easy. to get the card show up in the bios, I had to enable Legacy rom. So the bios of my raid controller shows up and it detected the drives. I am going to try to install a server os (windows server) soon or esxi. So far I am impressed about about the construction of this device. The microserver has a built in usb port and it has a 8gb flash drive in it from HP. so upon first boot, it gives the option to install CLEAR OS or ESXI on a hard drive. So setup is pretty straight forward, as well you can run a diagnostic or test Anyways the microserver I received had 8GB DDR4. The description of the product is incorrect. There is no 1TB hard drive. the server has 4 hard drive bays, and a cdrom bay or SSD bay. This is very useful, since booting can be done on the SSD, and the 4 hard drive bays (3.5") can be for the raid storage.

I purchased this server to replace my 2013 HP ProLiant Micro Server NL40L which still runs good. I was hoping to be able to WHS 2011. NO CAN DO. There seem to be no WHS 2011 or W7 drivers for this box available either from MS or HPE. The box I ordered came WITHOUT an optical disk drive although the picture shows one and it was quite laborious to find a way to install OS from a bootable USB drive. You can use the internal one which is USB2 (WHS 2011 does not have drivers for USB3). That was not the show stopper, the Marvel SATA was. It seems to be able to take the newer versions of Windows Server Essential but those were too expensive for my taste. I was able to run W10 on it though but that also did not fit my needs. I ended up returning it and settling for Asustor AS6404T which does the same job with less headache about the same price