I'm bringing back to life an old Microserver that I failed to turn into
a NAS a while ago. It looks like it might be a Gen7, and I have it more
or less up and running Ubuntu 20.04.4. It has a couple of 3TB drives in
it which should be fine for my present needs once I get it on my LAN,
but (obviously) booting will speed up with a little SSD as the boot drive.

I've got the serial number off the back (5C7228P4F2) and the PID
(658553-421) but the only HP "model lookup" links that I have been able
to find are ancient, and no longer working.

Unusually, the Crucial site is no help.

I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but
warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!

TIA

Steve

On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 5:34:50 PM UTC+1, newshound wrote:
> I'm bringing back to life an old Microserver that I failed to turn into
> a NAS a while ago. It looks like it might be a Gen7, and I have it more
> or less up and running Ubuntu 20.04.4. It has a couple of 3TB drives in
> it which should be fine for my present needs once I get it on my LAN,
> but (obviously) booting will speed up with a little SSD as the boot drive.
>
> I've got the serial number off the back (5C7228P4F2) and the PID
> (658553-421) but the only HP "model lookup" links that I have been able
> to find are ancient, and no longer working.
>
> Unusually, the Crucial site is no help.
>
> I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but
> warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!
>
AFAIK it is trivial to fit an SSD to any generation of Microserver. Any
particular reason you think there might be a problem?

On an earlier generation than yours I just took the Sata port that was
intended for the CD-ROM drive, and put an SSD on the end of the cable.
I can't remember what I did for power, there might have been a
Molex to SATA power cable adapter involved.

No particular BIOS issues that I can recall. I was also running Ubuntu,
although earlier than 20.

I have also, again on the earlier Microservers, booted from an
SSD 'Disk On Module', which fitted directly into the SATA socket on
the baseboard.

On 19/04/2022 18:04, jkn wrote:
> On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 5:34:50 PM UTC+1, newshound wrote:
>> I'm bringing back to life an old Microserver that I failed to turn into
>> a NAS a while ago. It looks like it might be a Gen7, and I have it more
>> or less up and running Ubuntu 20.04.4. It has a couple of 3TB drives in
>> it which should be fine for my present needs once I get it on my LAN,
>> but (obviously) booting will speed up with a little SSD as the boot drive.
>>
>> I've got the serial number off the back (5C7228P4F2) and the PID
>> (658553-421) but the only HP "model lookup" links that I have been able
>> to find are ancient, and no longer working.
>>
>> Unusually, the Crucial site is no help.
>>
>> I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but
>> warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!
>>
> AFAIK it is trivial to fit an SSD to any generation of Microserver. Any
> particular reason you think there might be a problem?
>
> On an earlier generation than yours I just took the Sata port that was
> intended for the CD-ROM drive, and put an SSD on the end of the cable.
> I can't remember what I did for power, there might have been a
> Molex to SATA power cable adapter involved.
>
> No particular BIOS issues that I can recall. I was also running Ubuntu,
> although earlier than 20.
>
> I have also, again on the earlier Microservers, booted from an
> SSD 'Disk On Module', which fitted directly into the SATA socket on
> the baseboard.

Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before
shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
give me comfort.

One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical
drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
will need to have a play.

On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 8:28:18 PM UTC+1, newshound wrote:
> On 19/04/2022 18:04, jkn wrote:
> > On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 5:34:50 PM UTC+1, newshound wrote:
> >> I'm bringing back to life an old Microserver that I failed to turn into
> >> a NAS a while ago. It looks like it might be a Gen7, and I have it more
> >> or less up and running Ubuntu 20.04.4. It has a couple of 3TB drives in
> >> it which should be fine for my present needs once I get it on my LAN,
> >> but (obviously) booting will speed up with a little SSD as the boot drive.
> >>
> >> I've got the serial number off the back (5C7228P4F2) and the PID
> >> (658553-421) but the only HP "model lookup" links that I have been able
> >> to find are ancient, and no longer working.
> >>
> >> Unusually, the Crucial site is no help.
> >>
> >> I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but
> >> warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!
> >>
> > AFAIK it is trivial to fit an SSD to any generation of Microserver. Any
> > particular reason you think there might be a problem?
> >
> > On an earlier generation than yours I just took the Sata port that was
> > intended for the CD-ROM drive, and put an SSD on the end of the cable.
> > I can't remember what I did for power, there might have been a
> > Molex to SATA power cable adapter involved.
> >
> > No particular BIOS issues that I can recall. I was also running Ubuntu,
> > although earlier than 20.
> >
> > I have also, again on the earlier Microservers, booted from an
> > SSD 'Disk On Module', which fitted directly into the SATA socket on
> > the baseboard.
> Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before
> shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
> semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
> give me comfort.
>
> One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical
> drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
> will need to have a play.

I sold my old Microserver last year so I can't be 100% certain - but I know it
had the SSD fitted in the CD-ROM bay, and it booted from that. I may have
had to update the BIOS to allow this, but I really don't recall any issues. I've
have a few Microservers and Proliant machines that I have used as servers;
I've had approximately zero headaches with them.

newshound <sradcliffe544@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before
> shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
> semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
> give me comfort.
>
> One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical
> drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
> will need to have a play.

As it happens I (very) dusted off my N36L yesterday, installed Ubuntu 22.04
and it's chugging along with 4 HDD nicely. The desktop actually worked
fine, although slowly, in 1GB RAM (which is what happened to be in there).

On these, there was a workaround for Windows XP. XP had no AHCI drivers out
of the box, so the optical drive port presents as a PATA disc so XP can boot
from it. There was a BIOS hack to enable the option that allows configuring
that port as AHCI like the others, which can probably still be found on a
forum somewhere.

Linux shouldn't care, although there might be a small performance downside
from pretending to be PATA - but it may not matter once Linux has control.
I'm pretty sure the optical drive port should be fine to boot from either
way.

I had previously done the BIOS hack on this one and all the ports are
configured as AHCI. However to allow fitting a fifth SATA disc I had
previously installed a SATA to USB adapter and hung the DVD off that, going
to the internal USB port, freeing up the fifth SATA port. Since the DVD
didn't get used much and wasn't very quick, that was fine. I have unhitched
that setup for now and just have 4 HDD, the SATA DVD and a USB stick as the
boot drive - I'd use a spare SATA SSD but don't have one handy at the
moment.

Theo

Am Dienstag, 19. April 2022, um 17:34:49 Uhr schrieb newshound:

> I'm guessing I should be able to fit a SATA SSD easily enough, but
> warnings/suggestions would be very welcome!

Does it have SATA ports?
If so, a SATA SSD should work.
If it doesn't have a SATA port, you can get PCI/PCIe SATA controllers.

On 19/04/2022 22:23, Theo wrote:
> newshound <sradcliffe544@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before
>> shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
>> semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
>> give me comfort.
>>
>> One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical
>> drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
>> will need to have a play.
>
> As it happens I (very) dusted off my N36L yesterday, installed Ubuntu 22.04
> and it's chugging along with 4 HDD nicely. The desktop actually worked
> fine, although slowly, in 1GB RAM (which is what happened to be in there).
>
> On these, there was a workaround for Windows XP. XP had no AHCI drivers out
> of the box, so the optical drive port presents as a PATA disc so XP can boot
> from it. There was a BIOS hack to enable the option that allows configuring
> that port as AHCI like the others, which can probably still be found on a
> forum somewhere.
>
> Linux shouldn't care, although there might be a small performance downside
> from pretending to be PATA - but it may not matter once Linux has control.
> I'm pretty sure the optical drive port should be fine to boot from either
> way.
>
> I had previously done the BIOS hack on this one and all the ports are
> configured as AHCI. However to allow fitting a fifth SATA disc I had
> previously installed a SATA to USB adapter and hung the DVD off that, going
> to the internal USB port, freeing up the fifth SATA port. Since the DVD
> didn't get used much and wasn't very quick, that was fine. I have unhitched
> that setup for now and just have 4 HDD, the SATA DVD and a USB stick as the
> boot drive - I'd use a spare SATA SSD but don't have one handy at the
> moment.
>
> Theo

Thanks Theo and jkn, nice to have this extra info

On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 at 10:23:16 PM UTC+1, Theo wrote:
> newshound <sradcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks, I just wanted to check that I was not missing something before
> > shelling out some cash. I'm always a bit more nervous about
> > semiconductor memory than spinning rust, which is why sites like Crucial
> > give me comfort.
> >
> > One of the web sources suggested that you couldn't boot from the optical
> > drive connector. Anyway I have ordered a small Samsung SATA so I guess I
> > will need to have a play.
> As it happens I (very) dusted off my N36L yesterday, installed Ubuntu 22.04
> and it's chugging along with 4 HDD nicely. The desktop actually worked
> fine, although slowly, in 1GB RAM (which is what happened to be in there).
>
> On these, there was a workaround for Windows XP. XP had no AHCI drivers out
> of the box, so the optical drive port presents as a PATA disc so XP can boot
> from it. There was a BIOS hack to enable the option that allows configuring
> that port as AHCI like the others, which can probably still be found on a
> forum somewhere.
>

That rings a bell ... I might have done the BIOS HACK as well, even though
(as you say) Linux wouldn't have needed it.

jkn <jkn_gg@nicorp.f9.co.uk> wrote:
> That rings a bell ... I might have done the BIOS HACK as well, even though
> (as you say) Linux wouldn't have needed it.

This is the info: (should apply to N36L, N40L and N54L)
https://n40l.fandom.com/wiki/Bios
The link to the 2014 web page still seems to work. I think the last BIOS
shipped for these was 2013, so that is still the latest version.

I had forgotten there are actually 6 SATA ports - there's an eSATA port on
the back as well.

It's a nice chassis - I just wish there was a way to fit a more modern
motherboard. Some SFF boards may be small enough, like this one:
https://www.asrock.com/MB/AMD/X300M-STX/index.asp
but the usual problem is insufficient SATA ports[*]. I might just end up
using it as an external drive cage for a separate PC box.

Theo

[*] There is this:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internal-Non-Raid-Adapter-Desktop-Support/dp/B07T3RMFFT
but I don't view JMicron as a serious SATA controller and am concerned it
could struggle when being pushed hard, as it would be in a RAID setup.