UK HP MicroServer G7 N54L / 4GB ( servero.co.uk ) £69

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Tcalp

Member
Oct 15, 2020
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Hey Guys,

I was just on the phone with the guys at Servero asking about some GEN10 units they have run out of but they told me that they did have G7 units with the N54L CPUs. For those that are not too familiar with these they have two PCI-E (1 - 16x / 1 - 1x if memory serves (could have been 4x?)), anyhow they can take up to 6 3.5" hard drives with a bit of rigging, and you can throw in a 10GB card in for network, and have an internal USB port for running unRAID.

Anyhow, I figured I would bring it up, as I know they have become rare animals to find in the wild at a low price.

 
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WANg

Well-Known Member
Jun 10, 2018
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New York, NY
Hey Guys,

I was just on the phone with the guys at Servero asking about some GEN10 units they have run out of but they told me that they did have G7 units with the N54L CPUs. For those that are not too familiar with these they have two PCI-E (1 - 16x / 1 - 1x if memory serves (could have been 4x?)), anyhow they can take up to 6 3.5" hard drives with a bit of rigging, and you can throw in a 10GB card in for network, and have an internal USB port for running unRAID.

Anyhow, I figured I would bring it up, as I know they have become rare animals to find in the wild at a low price.

Well, technically, they can work with 40GbE cards (which is what I have on my N40L), but yeah, they are a decent budget choice for something like TrueNAS Core or whatnot. It is getting a bit long in the tooth though.
 
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WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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Sure but the board IO won't allow for that kind of data transit anyhow :p
Yeah, well...a Mellanox 40GbE card like the MCX354-FBCT runs cooler than it’s 10GbE equivalents from, say, Solarflare, so part of it isn’t about throughput as much as other practical considerations...like having it operate in the chassis without heat related issues.
 
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Freebsd1976

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Feb 23, 2018
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my n54l with 16G MEM run omnios+napp-it as file server , use lx zone as plex and download server , also installed win2019 on byhe zone for some test .
now consider install win server 2003 or 2008 or 2012 on bhyve for better performance,maybe 2003 is best for performance but it is EOL .
 
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Vit K

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Feb 23, 2017
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It's capacity is amazing, i have LTO5 drive, 4 regular drives and 2.5 drive all 4Tb, three 200 Gb SAS SSDs , 10gbe card, USB 3.1 adapter and SAS HBA in pci-e x4 and Windows 2012 R2 storage spaces as backup server, works for 5 years without any issues. I even had eSATA case with another 5 drives connected for some time.
 
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Tcalp

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Oct 15, 2020
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It's capacity is amazing, i have LTO5 drive, 4 regular drives and 2.5 drive all 4Tb, three 200 Gb SAS SSDs , 10gbe card, USB 3.1 adapter and SAS HBA in pci-e x4 and Windows 2012 R2 storage spaces as backup server, works for 5 years without any issues. I even had eSATA case with another 5 drives connected for some time.
How do you have 3 cards in yours ?
 

Vit K

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Feb 23, 2017
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How do you have 3 cards in yours ?
Yes, sorry, actually I dropped USB 3.1 card and installed serveraid h1110 on the riser. So only two cards. 200 Mbs is just enough speed for LTO. The thing is I tried to use riser on RAC slot but Microserver not let me to power on. I thought may be riser the fault and even cut a notch from the card to fit it, but it still did not work. So it is not pcie 4x slot at all. I wanted to try PCIe splitters on 16x but forgot about all that altogether several years ago.
 

pippobimbo

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Jan 8, 2021
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It's capacity is amazing, i have LTO5 drive, 4 regular drives and 2.5 drive all 4Tb, three 200 Gb SAS SSDs , 10gbe card, USB 3.1 adapter and SAS HBA in pci-e x4 and Windows 2012 R2 storage spaces as backup server, works for 5 years without any issues. I even had eSATA case with another 5 drives connected for some time.
Hi.

I'm also interested in using LTO5 drive. Which drive did you install please?

Thanks,
Thierry
 

Vit K

Member
Feb 23, 2017
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Thanks for your answer. Which SAS adapter are you using?
ServeRAID H1110 SAS/SATA Controller for System x. It is the most compact HBA I could find.
0.344.gif

It is really cheap on ebay. Back then I bought it for 40 usd of something. Aslo you need a short minisas to SAS cable, like this.
s-l1600 (1).jpg
You also need a riser. I use 4x one, that cut to fit 1x. You can go other way, and fix 1x to fit 4x.
cx06300-01-thumbnail-1080x1080-70.jpg
 
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yulu_enter

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May 2, 2022
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ServeRAID H1110 SAS/SATA Controller for System x. It is the most compact HBA I could find.
View attachment 18263

It is really cheap on ebay. Back then I bought it for 40 usd of something. Aslo you need a short minisas to SAS cable, like this.
You also need a riser. I use 4x one, that cut to fit 1x. You can go other way, and fix 1x to fit 4x.
Hi, Vit K
I just recently bought a used HP MicroServer G7 N54L and HP LTO-5 tape drive, both the same model as yours. As you did, I would like to use the tape drive with N54L. But I met some problems, the tape drive can be recognized on N54L with LSI 2308 SAS Controller, the tape driver can be installed, and it can be operated by LTFS software. Everything looks good, but when I try to write about 100MB of data to the tape, the tape drive stops with some errors (stop and restart repeatedly). I have tried connecting the tape drive directly to the Mini-SAS interface from the N54L motherboard, it doesn't work either. I can be sure that the tape drive and LSI expansion card are good, I put them in another desktop PC and they work fine. I don't know if I need to do extra settings in the BIOS?
Thank you, and looking forward to your reply