Hello,

I am a very long term MSS forum lurker. Originally a HP Data Vault X510 WHS 4x1.5 TB owner. Now HP Data Vault X510 Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server 4x2TB WD Red. Firstly I would like to send a shout out to Alex for putting up this board to help all of us who have had our trials and tribulations with the HP MSS more with MS WHS than HP!. This board has been a godsend on any number of occassions to me and the source for my VGA adaptor (best 70$ ever spent). As an ex HP employee this board provided better support than I could get internally!

This post is entitled 'X510 MSS WHS1 is dead Long live the X510 Ubuntu RocketNAS' a deliberately provocative title for this forum I know. I wanted to share with you my journey with the HP MSS. I will not post that now without further permisson from Alex.

If you want to read my story and final very Happy Conclusion reply here and assuming Alex is cool with it I will post my journey from Flaky Drive eating HP MSS WHS to Seriously simple RocketFast Ubuntu Nas server.

Cheers
Spart

Please do share your story, we'd love to hear it and there's plenty of Linux fans (myself included) around these parts. I'm glad the site has been a good resource for you, thanks for the kind words.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
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OK here goes,

First things first. I believe now and believed when I was at HP that the HP DV was an awesome product. HP really had an opportunity to dominate what would become a very lucrative and much sought after commodity. Namely an easy to use, quiet, Green - low power, safe (or seemingly so), repository for all your digital life. So what happened? Seagate and MS for two!

Unfortunately whilst reasonably easy to setup for us teccies, not quite so easy for the uninitiated! Mistakes made at install time are costly in time and complexity later. Re-installing the unit is a hit and miss affair at best involving all kinds of re-plugging of cables much head scratching and reading of crap documentation etc. and trusting to blinking lights!!!

Anyway enough of that, believe me I could rant for hours about these little monsters..... sorry wonders!

My use case is probably not dissimilar to most users of these devices. I have the unit in the comms cupboard so don't really care about the lights etc. OK, so maybe not the same as most users! I It has plenty of air flow and ventilation from the cupboard fans and vents.

Initial Usage

Every user approx. 7 has their own share
Shares for Music, Photos, DVD Backups, Games, Applications, Utilities & OS
Folder Duplication is on for the lot

After setting up and running this unit for a while > 6 mths < 1Yr I started to see problems accessing shares. Unit taking forever to load Control Centre etc. Failing markers on various shares etc.
Restarting the unit would lead to failing markers going away and all seemingly well.

On investigation drives were running very hot! After installing Smart add in, sector re-allocations were going up hourly it seemed. OK failing drive - wait drives! 3 out of 4... can't be. Fans were seemingly working. After much discussion with useless HP support (no mention of the fact that eating the CRAP seagate drives was par for the course and a very common issue so I was told! Finally got agreement from HP (after going through the ludicrous 1st line support crap) to ship new drives out to me as replacements. So another batch of Seagate (CRAP) drives arrived almost a week later. 2 days to re-install and restore most of the data, I did loose some that was not recoverable despite 4 days of work with Spinrite Arrrrgggghhhhhhh! A week of whining users and hassle like you would not believe!

OK machine now back to working complete re-install and re-setup everyone happy. Fast forward another year. Much housekeeping another system partition restore due to some kind of corruption (who knows what no sensible log info etc.) various housekeeping in-between times. Same issues started again, putting bigger fans in cupboard from stuff laying around helped with drive temps. But nevertheless 4th original drive failed. 1 of the replacements as well. NOT GOOD

HP agreed to ship replacement drives again, NOW WE DON"T TRUST THIS UNIT ANYMORE! So lots of reading of forums and hey presto first serious implementation problem with the shipped units came to my attention. YOU MUST DO A FAN MOD NOW! Either bend the pin on the connectors so the fans run at full tilt or buy a VGA adaptor and set the fans to manual 100% and don't forget to turn off the reset fan control or it will reset them to HP default (in other words useless) state after a reboot. So I ordered a VGA adaptor got the new drives and set about re-install after the fan mod. I loaded up the new drives, so we now have 2 new drives and 2 old drives but after checking with spinrite the old ones were OK.

Linux to the rescue... Mounting the old drives in a linux machine allowed me to have a look at the layouts etc. And after a generous session of rysnc I managed to reassemble the folders from the old drives onto a consolidated set of folders on a WD20EFRX that ended up 99% full. Phew!!!

So clean install, 4 drives, shares structure in place. Samba mount on linux box to copy data back and off we go. Restore overnight. Next day data restored and all well, fans running full, drives now a more respectable 32-5 Deg C not the 42+ of the previous setup. Even then less than a Yr later original drives started showing sector failures and shares going bad. We are now out of warranty. As You know drives are OEM so no warranty.

VGA adaptor had been sitting around for months. Time to bite the bullet and setup a proper Linux NAS server running a Raid 5 array on the HP DV. At this point the only machine running windows was the HP DV. We moved to Ubuntu Linux the previous year for all machines DT and LT, Hosting servers have always been Linux. We have a couple of MS VM's for software islands.

Bought another 3 WD20EFRX drives for 68 GBP each. 3 Yr warranty direct from WD.

At this point I have written this as a guide for anyone else wanting to re-purpose their X501 Ex 495 etc.

Took HP DV down, installed VGA Adaptor and Jumper on mobo from excellent information from this site Reset pins on fans to original state on the way. Plugged in external DVD drive in back usb slots (takes 2 usb ports). Booted into BIOS and set fans to full. Changed VGA memory size to 128 from 256. Changed boot priority to CD first. Left everything else as is. Power down.

Installed 3 WD20EFRX drives in the first 3 slots left 4th empty.
Booted up with Ubuntu 12.04.3 Server Disc. Select country and then Install Server.

Follow instructions setting up network Hostname etc. Until you get to the Partition disks step, then:

Partitioning

AFTER READING LOTS OF STUFF I DECIDED NOT TO CREATE A SEPERATE SWAP PARTITION YOU MAY CHOOSE ANOTHER PATH
I have used Swap Files for years without issue. For me less complexity is better.
If you choose to create a separate swap partition you will need to create 2 partitions per disk (1 swap 1 data)

Select Manual as the partition method.
Select the first hard drive, and agree to "Create a new empty partition table on this device?".
Repeat this step for each drive you wish to be part of the RAID array.
You will now have three drives with 3 Partitions showing FREE SPACE.
Select the "FREE SPACE" on the first drive then select "Create a new partition".
Next, select the Size of the partition. I just set the maximum size. Select Primary.
Select the "Use as:" line at the top. By default this is "Ext4 journaling file system", change that to "physical volume for RAID". Also select the "Bootable flag:" line to change the value to "on".
Then choose "Done setting up partition".

Repeat these steps for the other 2 disks and partitions.

RAID Configuration

With the partitions setup the arrays are ready to be configured:

Back in the main "Partition Disks" page, select "Configure Software RAID" at the top.

Select "yes" to write the changes to disk.

Choose "Create MD device".

Select "RAID5", but if you are using a different setup choose the appropriate type (RAID0 RAID1 RAID5).

In order to use RAID5 you need at least three drives. Using RAID0 or RAID1 only two drives are required.

Enter the number of active devices "3", or the amount of hard drives you have, for the array. Then select "Continue".

Next, enter the number of spare devices "0" by default, then choose "Continue".

Choose which partitions to use. Generally they will be sda1, sdb1, sdc1, (These are the partitions you created earlier) etc. The numbers will usually match and the different letters correspond
to different hard drives. Usually sda (1st Drive, sdb 2nd Drive) etc. We will use this partition as our root partition in the next step.

Continue and select finish.

Formatting

There should now be a list of hard drives and RAID devices. The next step is to format and set the mount point for the RAID devices. Treat the RAID device as a local hard drive,
Format and mount accordingly.

Select "#1" under the "RAID1 device #0" partition.

Choose "Use as:". Then select "Ext4 journaling file system".

Then select the "Mount point" and choose "/ - the root file system". Change any of the other options as appropriate, then select "Done setting up partition".

Finally, select "Finish partitioning and write changes to disk".

IT WILL COMPLAIN ABOUT NOT SETTING UP A SWAP PARTITION IF YOU CHOOSE NOT TO SET ONE UP LIKE ME. JUST IGNORE IT AND CARRY ON.

If you choose to place the root partition on a RAID array, the installer will then ask if you would like to boot in a degraded state. Say yes and see this article for more info: https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/servergui ... ation.html .

The installation process will then continue normally.

Select SSH Server and Samba server from the server install software options.

Once complete remove cd and drive and reboot.

At this point you will be shocked how fast this machine is. It boots from cold in less than 10 seconds! Log in using your username and password.

Now to see what is going on with our array:

Issue the following command at the prompt:

~$ sudo watch -n1 cat /proc/mdstat

The status of your array will be shown and it will be degraded and be re-syncing. In other words it will be building the Raid 5 array.
You can either wait for it to finish (a long time) or carry on anyway and it will continue to re-sync in the background. I carried on.

So press CTRL C to exit the above program and return to the command prompt.

Now setup a swap file on the raid array (I have one it has never been used but hey, best practice). Follow the instructions below. I have a 4GB swap file mounted at /var/cache/swap/myswap

These ares the steps to create swap file and mount it automatically at boot time:

Type the following or copy and paste the following line by line upto the #

sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/swap/ # create a directory that holds the swap file
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/var/cache/swap/myswap bs=1M count=4096 # for 4 GByte
sudo chmod 0600 /var/cache/swap/myswap # only root can access
sudo mkswap /var/cache/swap/myswap # format as swap
sudo swapon /var/cache/swap/myswap # announce to system

Insert the following line in /etc/fstab for swap from the next boot:

sudo nano /etc/fstab
Insert the following line

/var/cache/swap/myswap none swap sw 0 0

CTRL X then Y to save

Type 'free' and you will see something similar to below:

yourusername@YOURHOSTNAME:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2041084 1936160 104924 0 80964 1711064
-/+ buffers/cache: 144132 1896952
Swap: 4194300 0 4194300

nearly finished

type:

sudo apt-get install smartmontools htop
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If you have another computer networked around I am sure you do . Now is the time to get used to working remotely.

Type 'ifconfig' and note down the IP address of the HP DV.

Type sudo reboot now.

Go to another computer and log into the HP DV using SSH (use putty or command line) whatever you are used to. If this is new to you spend 2 minutes on a Google search.

Log into the HP DV remotely using SSH and your credentials.

At this point install Webmin, follow the guide below, it takes only a few minutes and probably the best investment in time you will ever spend on the HP DV.

We will install Webmin using the Webmin APT repository, meaning we will automatically get notifications of newer versions.

We will edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file on your system and add some information :

Type
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
Cut and paste the following lines into the end of the file. You will need to cursor down to the end then paste in the 2 lines below:

deb http://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge contrib
deb http://webmin.mirror.somersettechsoluti ... repository sarge contrib

Press CTRL X and Y to save the file

You should also fetch and install the GPG key with which the repository is signed, with the commands :

sudo -i (become root for a few minutes)
cd /root
wget http://www.webmin.com/jcameron-key.asc
apt-key add jcameron-key.asc
exit

We are now going to update the system and install webmin. With the commands :
apt-get update
apt-get install webmin

Once all installed and finished type:
exit
Then
sudo reboot now

To reboot the system.

Time to start talking to the HP DV via a browser.

Open a browser and type: https://yourHPDVipaddress:10000

If all is well you will see a login and you can login using your credentials.

At this point, well, before Webmin really, you have a working very fast NAS server.

You will need to do a bit of reading on unix file and directory permissions to save yourself some head scratching. Linux is inherently secure so a basic understanding of permissions and rights are key.
You will need to do a bit of light reading on how to configure samba (for the file/printer sharing) for your network and needs. Webmin makes very light work of this.
You can setup users, you can integrate into an existing windows domain, be backup domain controller etc.

You will need to create some shares. I use the /media/ directory for all my data shares. The Users all have their own home directories created automatically under /home/username. You can share these using samba just like any other share with access control etc.

Once you have created the users, directories and samba shares it is time to put the data back on.

You remember I only used 3 of the 4 drive bays. I had my data backed up on the other WD20EFRX.

You can now put your backup drive into the 4th slot and reboot the HP DV from Webmin -> System -> Bootup and Shutdown or using sudo reboot now from the command line.

When the machine comes back up you can log in again via webmin. and in the Hardware section you can check out the status of your Linux Raid partition and Partitions on Local Disks and you will see the 4th drive listed. Clicking on it will show the details and the device name probably /dev/sddx.

You will be able to mount this drive and copy all the data back onto the Raid array. Again a bit of reading on how to mount NTFS drives on linux and how to use the rsync command and you are good to go. I am happy to help anyone achieve this, just ping me.

Once you have copied all data back on to the HP DV, keep monitoring the Raid re-sync using

sudo watch -n1 cat /proc/mdstat

I just leave this running in a SSH terminal session and when completed syncing it will look something like this:

Every 1.0s: cat /proc/mdstat Sat Dec 14 14:51:47 2013

Personalities : [linear] [multipath] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4] [raid10]
md0 : active raid5 sdc1[2] sdb1[1] sda1[0]
3906763776 blocks super 1.2 level 5, 512k chunk, algorithm 2 [3/3] [UUU]

unused devices: <none>

I would also advise installing the lm-sensors package to monitor temperatures of the CPU's and Drives. Just Google and follow instructions it will take less than 5 minutes.

You are done. You have re-purposed the HP DV as a very fast and secure and very capable NAS and general network server. If you look at the system info on the start page in Webmin you will be amazed at how little resources it is using. Don't worry about upgrading memory and processors not necessary. Mine typically uses 140MB and drives are running at 19-21 DEG C with CPU's typically late 30'ws - early 40's DEG C.

File transfers are very fast running at 90+ MB/Sec

Media streaming to various XBMC clients is a breeze we had 5 clients inc 3 Rpi's all streaming Hancock Full Blu Ray at the same time. No hiccups or stutters.

You can install upnp/DLNA servers, I would recommend UMS or just use the XBMC's Upnp feature to share media. The file is always streamed from the HP DV not the XBMC client.

Various backup solutions are available (Google is your friend) but I find CRON Rsync jobs as easy as anything else.

Wow I need to stop writing now. I have probably only imparted a fraction of the possibilities above. Don't be too harse this is my first big post. Probably too big! Forgive spelling grammar etc.

Cheers and enjoy your new HP RocketNAS
Spart


Oh, forgot to add, that once you have finsihed copying the data from the 'spare' drive you can then add it to the raid array as a participant or a spare drive. Use this page https://help.ubuntu.com/12.04/servergui ... ation.html to help and the linked guides. It is really simple if you take your time to understand the principles. Also the Ubuntu support community is very active and extremely helpful if you get stuck. Obviously if you setup your HP DV with 4 drives in the raid array you can also use the external esata port for additional drives.

Cheers
Spart

Wow! Awesome writeup! Thankyou for taking the time to spell out your process, we all are looking for our next step in the server word and there are many Linux based options out there, home grown and oem.
Microsoft seems to not want home servers anymore, they have jumped to the cloud and I see a cloud rental OS in our future, so these Linux solutions may be all that save us down the road

Seagate (Generally Agree, I won't use one). But, I watched an IO safe burn test and they pulled a seagate drive out of it.
Lack of control over cooling (Agree), moving the fan speed controls to the bios, bad, bad,bad.

I don't want to start a rant and I may get scolded: But,
Setup, I have noticed when someone that knows a little something about Linux, seems to think it is easy to use and is the answer to the Microsoft Plague. (Believe me I have my bad moments with Microsoft).

I just redid two x-510 a couple of weekends ago, reset one and copied back 1.2 tb of data and did a recovery with the same data on another x-510 and while switching cat5 cables twice and clicking the mouse a couple of times, I don't think it was anywhere near as hard as what you did. IMHO... I remember Dos command line, I started with Dos 3.0 and don't really want to go back. Someday, when Linux gets a little more GUI then I could totally go there. But when you talk about your average joe home server guy, I just don't see it.

I understand you wrote to us that are a little above the average joe and don't get me wrong, again, awesome work and thx for sharing, but, if you took that same x-510 and put (4) 2tb red drives in it and loaded the SMART addin and located the server in a well ventilated area and kept it clean, I don't get the "dead" part.

I ask this question, if something were to happen to your 510 now and you pulled a drive out and attached it to a windows 7 desktop, what would you see? I know what I would see with WHS.

I totally agree, HP could have done something great with this line (and still could), even without the OS since microsoft decided to make a push for the cloud and move away from home servers. But they seem to just miss the mark, the NL Gen7 a little underpowered, the gen8, 4 bays, 2 of which are sata 2 and the dvd bay being non-standard and 2 gig of ram, how long is it going to take to figure out that 4 gig is minimum?
Don't they think we will pay the price? Some us would like to not have to take it apart right out of the box and would pay extra not to have to.
Does HP do this on purpose, just miss the mark so we will pony up the cash for the next line that might be a little more (almost perfect home like server?) or do they just miss the mark? I wonder, you two may know since you have worked there.

I wish you lots of luck and little to no problems with your server, you should come back this time next year and give us an update on how it has gone.

I think the x-510 is anything but dead, I have (4) 2tb reds in my main server, I use (2) 4tb red drives as non-pooled backups and take the vac to it every weekend when we clean the house. I have 10 clients and 5 users and don't see retiring the 510 anytime soon.

But believe me I wish the Linux world would progress faster and give average joe something that would work instead of windows....

I have said more then enough and will shutup now...
Wishing you and yours a great holidays....

X-510'a Rock

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

Gardian,

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I did write the article with tech savvy readers in mind. However almost all of what I did after the initial install of the OS could be done using point and click via the web browser and Webmin. Including managing the raid partition mounting and unmounting drives copying/restoring data, editing of files/shares etc. I just find the command line very fast and without a lot of time invested in no more than a handful of commands very easy to use. But if you're addicted to gui simply choose it at install time or use a one line command line command to install a lightweight desktop environment and you will have a full desktop available.

The main point really is that THIS IS A SERVER, its job is to sit quietly around and serve!



Most peoples house are generally not a good place for tech. Ambient temperaturs are high they are dusty etc. as I said in my write up mine is in a comms cupboard with powered ventilation, dust filters etc. The dead part was in relation to WHS not the X510 which as I said I think is an awesome product.



By something was to happen you mean to the HW so the array was not accessible? Well I could fix the H/W and then mount the array again, or I could put the drives in an external enclosure and mount it on another machine. If you are talking about DRIVE failures then as long as 2 drives did not fail at the same time, my server would still be up in a degraded state and I could pull the drive and replace it and rebuild the array using less than 5 lines at the terminal all whlist still running with visual monitoring, and the articles I pointed to will provide all info needed with little intelligence required on the part of 'joe'. Clearly if that happened in WHS whatever data was on the failed drive would be gone and if I was unlucky enough to not have folder duplication on for a folder then I would get incomplete folders at best.

What we have built is a proper RAID array using technology tried and tested over years in every DC on the planet. Not some software fudge of a file system! We are using the same technologies that most of the internet and most of the corporations of the planet use to protect their data. Yes we're doing it on a smaller scale but nevertheless we have the same power available to us. If we are really serious about protecting our data then would you really want to trust MS code to do it! If we wanted we could build a higher availability array using Raid 6 or 10 by selecting this raid level at config time and ensuring we used 4 drives, or more using the external port. This would reduce our available usable space (no diffrerent to WHS folder replication) but would survive multiple drive failures and still boot and provide services whilst we replaced the failed drives and rebuilt the array all whilst still being up and running. The HP DV using the guide I provided and 4 drives will support upto raid 10 with double redundancy of data and drives.



I agree on the new MicroServers, overpriced and rubbish specs really. re: underpowered, DVD drive and Ram, this is only if you are trying to run the latest bloated server OS from MS. 2GB of Ram is more than ample for a linux server and the processors are more than capable for the types of uses most people would be putting these to using Linux!

Your comments do hint at what the real trouble is out there. The MS marketing machines in cahoots with the manufacturers would have you believe you need a Core i7 with 8 gigs of ram to browse the web and do your college homework and send a few emails and interact with your friends. Why! Bloated, leaky, lazy code! Nonsense, all of it. They are all in it together. The reality is you can run a full featured desktop environment, socially connected, with office applications and cloud connectivity etc. etc. on a very modest spec machine running a modern linux OS. I still have a toshiba portege M200 touch screen from 2005 that runs ubuntu fine. Ubuntu just works these days. My family has been using Linux DT and LT's for years. If you want to do high end gaming. Get a PS3 or 4 Although now steam has moved to linux who knows.



My comments about 'dead' were really in relation to WHS or any other MS server OS for these machines.



Been here for years. Does require breaking away from the MS brainwashing though, I agree. Also these days requires very little intelligence to achieve what I have set out......freedom..........long live the revolution baby

I may have a look at building a kickstart file and repackaging the Ubuntu server iso to provide a complete turnkey installation that installs the server with configurable defaults i.e. IP address, Hostname, Number of drives, Raid level, Username and password etc. or just installs with defaults like 192.168.0.100, MediaServer, 3, Raid 5, Administrator, Password

You would only need to boot it with the cd and then sit back and watch it install and configure a fully working system. Afterwards you could simply log in using a browser and configure the shares, change any settings etc. pretty much the same as you do now. Hmmm food for thought

Please take the above in the friendly spirit it was intended. I have been around the IT industry for over 25 yrs starting out as a mainfrme programmer, most of that time working for the 'big boys' both SW and HW. I am appalled at their antics most of the time. At least Apple makes no excuses for its overpriced 'cool' tech


Spart

Thx for the extra info, the home server and options are what make this site (IMHO) the best place on the net for media smart info.
And yes "Please take the above in the friendly spirit it was intended"
I did and hope you didn't feel like I was against your setup, I have kept an eye on the "other side" and believe someday MS may not be the top dog anymore and we will all benefit from that..

I miss the days when a program fit on 1-2 floppy disks and did a great job and totally agree with the idea behind the distros....
Goodluck and great holidays!!!

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

Hey sparticle,

Enjoyed reading your post and will read it again when I have more time to better absorb the information. I have 2 server builds planned soon and it occurred to me while reading your post why not build a Linux based server and a small Linux Client to play with. I have been around so long I feel at times like a dinosaur. I am a throw back to the days of punch cards, hard copy terminals, acoustic coupler modems when CP/M was in use before it was replaced by Messy DOS. I grew up with the command line and remember the GUI was viewed as a joke for those who could not learn how to use a computer.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I stumbled onto a Unraid build when I was watching HomeServerShow and it looked very easy to setup.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA9AKLOVOKk

A big part of WHS for me is being able to pull those drives and read them. I don't know enough about the other OS'es to know if that is possible.

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

I here you on the dinosaur We started on Punched Cards writing COBOL at Uni.......



Yes, it looks interesting if you want to dedicate a machine to nothing but NAS. My reason for using Ubuntu was to have a 'standard' linux OS container, that allowed me to get at the myriad software apps that are worth also running on the NAS and utilise the enourmous power of the E5200 and 2GB memory to do something other than idle c.95%+ of the time I have a E5800 sitting about if I need a bit more poke and the 2GB can be upgraded to 4GB easily enough.

If I were to out grow the confines of the HP DV (realistically 12TB (raid5) 8TB (Raid 6) usuable) excluding the external esata, I think I would be tempted to buy their case and build my own Ubuntu NAS server in it and re-use the drives I currently have. It looks great and would sit nicely in my rack and give me expansion capability and modular upgrade options for a long while. Of course I could upgrade my mobo, OS etc, without worry about the array as it would be mountable by any standard Linux OS.

Writing the initial article has got me thinking though. I am thinking about how to repurpose the HP DV or any of the MSS's without the need for keyboard or VGA adaptors. I think creating an image that can be written to the first drive and then booted might be the answer (it is exactly what happens now with WHS) You would need to boot from an internal HDD to avoid having to edit BIOS. After booting up, you could easily convert the OS partition to Raid 1 or above for resilience. And then build the Raid (5/6) data array afterwards and mount it as /media/mediaserver/ . You would then not need to install a vga adaptor as all interaction would be via SSH or Webmin or VNC if you configured a Desktop enviroment on the inital image.

Just scouring ebay to see if I can find a cheap DV or MSS to have a play with.....

Cheers
Spart

Helo again,

Its been awhile since I re-purposed my HP DV X510. I thought I would post an update.

I decided after reading a few articles on Raid to re do the configuration of my RocketNAS to provide more resilience and move the / (root) filesystem off the raid partition.

Essentially the only difference was to change the partitioning layout. I now have 4x2TB WD Red drives each has the following layout:

sdx1 50GB ext4 partition used as the root filesystem (well over the job but you never know)
sdx2 remaining 1.86TB ext4 RAID 5 partition (raid device md0 = 4 x 1.86TB drives Raid 5)

I chose to write the boot loader to all 4 drives!

I have a rsync cron job that backs up the primary / partition to the other 3 primary root partitions every night. So i have 4 copies of my / filesystem using the frist 50GB partitoin on each drive.

I have to say it has not missed a beat since I built it. It's fast, reliable, secure and simple.

I am happy to help anyone with furtehr information on how to seup and use these devices.

Best regards
Spart

Hello again, not sure how many of us there are left out there........

Update on DV X510 (or any other MSS I believe)

I perfected booting these machines off the network and autoinstalling Ubuntu 14.04.1 server and various utilities.

Required:

A dhcp server to assign an initial IP address
A tftp server - to serve the Ubuntu image

All that is required is to pull the drives and power on the machine. If it cannot find a system drive it will attempt to network boot (not the same as pressing the reset button).
It takes a little while to timeout and then it will get an IP address from the DHCP server which will point it at the TFTP server which will server a boot image. Once loaded you can SSH into the DV on the IP address configured in the config file on the TFTP server.

You will be presented with the Ubuntu setup menus. You can then push the system drive back in and instruct Ubuntu to search for hardware. You can then partition as you see fit and finish the installation. Once complete the DV will reboot and be available for further configuration via SSH.

Sounds complicated but is actually quite straightforward. I have tried this process on multiple X510's a 490 and a 495. All worked without any issues.

What you end up with is a very fast NAS server capable of running almost any raid config with very little system overhead (runs in about 100MB ram). Full access to all of the Ubuntu software repos. I run MySQL server to serve video and music DB's to all of my Kodi clients as well as media.

Webmin is installed automatically for web based point and click management/SMART/RAID reporting etc.

Re-purposing one of these server takes less than an hour. Ping me if you are interested in the configs etc.

I am now working on trying to get an Intel Xeon L5430 (low power Quad Core) to work in the MB by hacking the BIOS

Cheers
Spart

I am very interested in you setup, as I recently acquired 2 HP machines a HP MSS EX475 and a HP DV X510.

But.... I was originally thinking of a FreeNAS setup. What are your thoughts on FreeNAS?

I have been using WHS since version 1, and later WHS 2011, but only in a DIY setup, at first utilizing the software included with the MSDN sub @ work for in house development file/data/media server.
Later I purchased WHS 2011/ DIY built a for a complete home networking, multimedia, file server and backup solution.

4 Years later......
Mid-summer I acquired the 2 HP units sans O/S and stored them until, a few weeks ago, when I dusted them off and breathed new life to one unit after using the VGA/KB debug cables.
I completed the installation of this cable in an HP MSS EX475 and look forward to completing another installation to the X510 when the second cable arrives hopefully this week.

I have successfully installed WHS2011on the EX475,
((thanks largely due to the technical genius of Mediasmartserver.net forum poster cakalapati. . ))

Was a little frustrating though. I was able to only once get my USB key to boot and install only to hang 1/3 of the way into the WHS 2011 O/S install.
I had tried several times to get it to boot from the USB KEY but no joy.
I had to give up trying to fresh install on the EX475 and use another separate computer to install Windows Home Server 2011 via internal DVD, until the point of rebooting to starting the OS.
Next I removed the Drive and then reinstalled it to the EX475 bottom drive bay slot #1. Powered the EX475 up and completed the WHS 2011 O/S install.
3 weeks operational, knock on wood, no problems so far.

As soon as the second cable arrive I plan to use DV X510 to setup FreeNAS, and probably a few FreeNAS plugins as well.
(Asterisk phone server, to thwart telemarketing callers via automated blacklisting)

Excuse me in advance for, I am relatively new to Linux and FreeNAS, but perhaps this method would work for to installing FreeNAS on an MSS EX47x or other models of these HP MediaSmart Server or DATA Vaults units?​

Hope with you advice and help, to give Linux on my X510 a whirl, soon as the second cable arrives.

_________________
EX475 w/4x4TB (WD Red's)
Stock Processor, 2GB Memory Upgrade

X510 w/4x4TB (WD Red's)
Stock Processor, 2 GB Memory Upgrade

@MerlinCan

Hello,

Over the years I have installed and run most 'nas' distributions. I started of running FreeNas many moons ago when 40GB IDE drives were 'BIG' . It was OK, and ran for a number of years. I used to work for HP and when the Data Vault was announced I bought one. WHS v1, the only MS software we had on the network. All servers being Ubuntu by then. I had many trials and tribulations with WHS v1 and a few with the DV (fan speeds costing me a number of disks). I finally had enough of WHS after losing data and decided to re-purpose these machines to Ubuntu Server after much googling and reading of other peoples experiences. I purchased a VGA adaptor and set about installing Ubuntu. Which as it happens was reasonably easy. I made the fan mod (bend pins for full fans) and the rest is history.

I tried out FreeNAS etc. but to be honest a minimal Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS build with Webmin and full access to the full Ubuntu software repo was a better bet for me. I can install any software I want easily and chances are most of it is being developed on Ubuntu or certainly Ubuntu is a Tier 1 platform for it. My DV's really have not missed a beat and the MD Software Raid implementation is awesome. The support eco-system is large and responsive should you run into any difficulties. IF, I was to use another approach I would probably install UnRaid.

The standard E5200 with 2GB of ram is not really taxed most of the time, serving upto 10 clients streaming TV and Movies. I cross replicate 2 of these units for full data protection and they backup all of the clients. We also run another NAS with 48TB of storage for business purposes. That also runs Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS.

The biggest tip I would give you is DO THE FAN MOD! A replacement fan is about 5 GBP and takes about 30 minutes to install. Lots of people have different views on what flavour of Windows to run on these machines. MS has done a great job on brainwashing a lot of them that they need the next version of windows that needs the next greatest processor and lots more memory to run a basic file and backup server! And don't even get me started on the whole raid on windows thing!

For me the best thing I ever did was re-purpose these machines to Ubuntu Server (see my previous posts). One of the most widely used Enterprise Grade server OS on the planet available for the cost of a download and providing the same level of performance and security and storage management used by the largest corporations. If you really need a gui you can install Gnome/Unity Desktop and remote desktop into it just like the MSS desktop on WHS. Web based management via Webmin provides me with all I really need on a server and comes with plugins for most server related applications (Web/MySQL/Mail/SAMBA etc.)

I bought up a number of these machines for spares and experimentation and have successfully modded the BIOS with microcodes for the Xeon 5000 series LGA 771 chips just for fun. And after having perfected my headless install process they are easy to install and manage. I love them and was very disappointed with HP's mediocre efforts to market and support them.

Good luck I will wait with interest your experiences with FreeNAS or Linux.

Cheers
Spart

Just a quick update if anyone still looks here for 49X or 510 information.

I successfully modded the bios to include the Xeon L54xx 1067a codes and installed an Intel Xeon L5420 Quad Core CPU. It cost me 15GBP + 1GBP for an adaptor all information can be found here http://www.delidded.com/lga-771-to-775-adapter/ for this mod. It runs awesome. Is cooler than the stock E5200 and a lot faster. See below CPU information. This CPU has full Intel VTx virtualisation so can run VM's should you want to. Runs Ubuntu server great installed as per my previous guide fully headless no VGA adpator etc. needed.

RocketNAS:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
microcode : 0xa0b
cpu MHz : 2003.000
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 0
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 4987.92
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
microcode : 0xa0b
cpu MHz : 2003.000
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 1
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 4987.92
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor : 2
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
microcode : 0xa0b
cpu MHz : 2003.000
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 2
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 2
initial apicid : 2
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 4987.92
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor : 3
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 23
model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU L5420 @ 2.50GHz
stepping : 10
microcode : 0xa0b
cpu MHz : 2003.000
cache size : 6144 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 4
core id : 3
cpu cores : 4
apicid : 3
initial apicid : 3
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm dca sse4_1 xsave lahf_lm dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority
bogomips : 4987.92
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 38 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Cheers
Spart

For those of you that want to get the LED's working in linux read on.

After much googling and reading of forums etc. over the last year or so. The last issue I needed to resolve was to get rid of the flashing system LED and enable the drive LED's.

I finally found an answer thanks to this guy https://github.com/merelin/mediasmartserverd what a superstar.

I checked out this git archive and compiled the mediasmartserverd daemon. using the following commands on the X510 Ubuntu server.
sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/merelin/mediasmartserverd.git
sudo apt-get install make g++ libudev-dev
cd mediasmartserverd
make

When finished compiling you will have a program called mediasmartserverd in the current directory. Copy this to /opt
sudo cp mediasmartserverd /opt

edit rc.local to look like the following:
sudo nano /etc/rc.local

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.
/opt/mediasmartserverd -D --activity --update-monitor --brightness=10
exit 0

Save the file and reboot. If all is well you will see the flashing system LED is now gone and the drive LEDS will now be reflecting disk activity. if you simply want them lit with no activity remove the --activity flag from the command and set the brightness to suit 0=off 10=max.

The final piece is now complete - LED lighting for my Ubuntu RocketNAS Quad Core Xeon server etc. etc. etc.
Spart