
HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus vs. Gen10 Hardware Overview - mchan
https://www.servethehome.com/hpe-proliant-microserver-gen10-plus-v-gen10-hardware-overview/
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vbezhenar
I don't like:

* Pentium G5420 has 54W TDP. That's a lot. It'll be noisy under load. I'd prefer something like Celeron G4932E with 27W. I don't need performance, I need quiet operation and ECC support.

* iLO enablement kit is $100 and need physical delivery. No more $5 ebay key. That's a shame for home consumer.

Also I was not able to find a price. Hoping for the best. Buying Gen8 for $300
with cheap iLO key was a great purchase.

CPU seems to be not soldered, so may be it'll be possible to downgrade.

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DCKing
TDP is such a meaningless stat to criticize. People still caring about TDP is
a huge pet peeve of mine. The TDP is a nearly entirely fictional number your
modern CPU will never operate at.

Especially in a home server, the CPU will be maxed out 0.001% of its life, if
that. The only stat that matters is idle power, which it will be at for the
majority of its life.

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bayindirh
I'm happy to show you quite a few servers which run almost at their TDP for
7/24/365.

Yes, it's not very applicable to home scenarios but spike loads create a lot
of noise at home when a CPU has high TDP.

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DCKing
Surely it's clear we're talking about home and small business servers?

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bayindirh
For sure but what about home servers which do transcoding for example?

They will run at their TDP for some time and, create considerable noise and
heat.

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captainmuon
I've been thinking about getting a microserver. I already have a Synology NAS
but I'd like something a bit more powerful to host Nextclound and a couple
apps.

The Gen8 Microservers seemed neat, but they are getting old and rarer on eBay.
Gen10 seems like a step back performance and feature wise.

With ILO not available (or a $100 upgrade), what is the benefit for a home /
small business / enthusiast user of a Microserver vs. a custom built system? I
could probably build a Ryzen based PC with a better performance / price ratio,
just minus the ILO, and it's probably going to be quieter. Any optinions on
this?

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dsr_
The Microserver line is aimed at corporations who want to send out a local
office server that they will maintain remotely; the local office might not
have a rack or any other infrastructure besides a router-switch combo. Size is
important. HP custom builds the case and the motherboard: repair is expected
to take the form of swapping the whole box, possibly sliding the disks in and
out.

If you don't care about size, you can do much better for cheaper, and be able
to replace everything with standard parts if you have problems in the future.

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closeparen
Wouldn't iLO be even more important if the server is meant to be deployed at a
site with no technical staff?

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snuxoll
iLO is available with an optional kit, though honestly you'd be better off
getting the ML30 if you were buying HPE gear for a remote location.

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a012
I'm disappointed that HPE picked Intel over AMD EPYC Embedded 3000 series for
this micro server line.

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justinclift
Same here. After Intel's decision to not release microcode updates for the
Intel processors I was using (earlier core i7 models) - rendering them useless
- I'm never buying Intel again.

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rb666
This absolutely needs a way to add an SSD for OS and fast storage, so the 4
3.5" slots can be used for a ZFS stripped mirror (Raid10-like).

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biscotti
You should be able to stick an M.2 adapter card in the PCIe riser

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SQZBSCN](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07SQZBSCN)

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blattimwind
Linux will get that, but will the firmware? If not you still need a SATA or
USB DOM to put your /boot on. Annoying.

~~~
naggie
Unless you stick Clover EFI bootloader on a USB/SD card to allow booting from
the SSD.

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znpy
It's sad that we'll be losing the dvd bay. Using an additional sad drive for
as boot disk in there and all the four drives for storage was ideal.

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shric
"That optical bay was often used with an extra SSD. While the Gen10 had an
extra fifth internal SATA port and a Molex power connector which could be used
to add an extra SSD, the Gen10 plus does not have these features. We already
gave the feedback to HPE’s product team and I think we have a solution that we
will show in the full review we will publish for the MicroServer Gen10+."

Hopefully there's still a way.

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mciancia
Sad to see no option for having both nvme drive and 10GbE at the same time.

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z3t4
Why do server hardware need to look cool? Do ppl buy hardware based on the
looks!? So many metal cases with razer sharp corners to cut yourself on,
making it weight a ton. And screws. And more compartments, like a Russian
doll. Making it cost a ton. All you need is a wireframe made in wood or
plastic, a bare board, and a fan.

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aetimmes
> All you need is a wireframe made in wood or plastic

Wood burns, plastic melts. When you have a bunch of racks full of a bunch of
servers undrler heavy load, managing the environmental temperature of the
datacenter is very important.

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z3t4
When you get melting/burning temperatures you are already screwed, and burning
metal is far more dangerous, try turning some metal wool on fire.

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aetimmes
Speaking from experience, it is much, much, much more feasible to reach the
burning point of wood or the melting point of plastic in a datacenter than the
melting point of the metals used in server construction.

One of the jobs of the case is to contain a fire if it starts. A plastic case
wouldn't do this, and a wood case would actively be hazardous.

~~~
z3t4
Do you have a story? I've never experience more then 120°C in electronic
equipment as it's usually the safety limit where it would shut itself off.
Although in theory the silicon would still be fine at 300° where wood starts
to burn.

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aetimmes
Two situations come to mind:

1) Several appliance machines were in a cabinet with water-cooling doors
attached. The doors restrict the airflow from the front of the cabinet to the
back to the point where there isn't sufficient airflow to cart away the heat
from the CPUs. The engineer responsible for those particular systems played
show-and-tell with the melted plastic pins that formerly held the motherboard
in-place for a month after the machines crashed.

2) An 8-year old rackmount machine had a power supply fail spectacularly and
light the entire server on fire. Fire suppression was triggered in response.
Several other adjacent machines were damaged but the fire stayed relatively
contained to the one cabinet.

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Hamuko
Most interesting comparison for me will be the price. The Gen10 is so
inexpensive that it's competing in the same price range as a four-bay Synology
unit. But I imagine this won't be.

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unixhero
Get the Z series workstations from HP instead. They are much better options
for home.

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gertrunde
They all seem to be much more GPU-focused? i.e. completely different product
segment? And mostly (with a couple of exceptions) significantly larger than
something named "MicroServer".

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unixhero
They are perfect for data crunching as well as GPU related purposes.

For IO: My 8 year old one lets me saturate SATA at 500megabyte per second.
With SAS which it also supports it's supposedly 3000megabyte per second, bit I
have never tried it.

For memory: ECC

For processing: Dual Xeon CPU config

For storage: Nice storage pods.

For admin: Out of band ILO like functionality, although I've never tried it

For home: SILENCE! My machine measures at 32db

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bluedino
Can you stick any hard drives you want in there, or do they have to be HP
drives?

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d_k_f
At least up until Gen8 you could use any drive; the bays came in standard
dimensions and took my Western Digital drives without a problem. I don't see
why that should have changed in the meantime.

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hrez
Wasn't there something about fans blowing at 100% with non-HPE drives due to
their firmware?

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egorfine
Since it is now an intel, does it come with an integrated backdoor like the
other "server-grade" hardware?

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marshmellowtest
Why the downvotes? It's a legitimate question: ME/AMT can be neutralized or
disabled.

Bios can be replaced with coreboot.

Some buyers and some vendors actually care about security.

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yjftsjthsd-h
It's x86, so if you count ME/PSP as a back door, then the answer is almost
universally going to be yes. It would be like commenting on the new release of
Ubuntu and asking if it was still using a Bourne-like shell by default.

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m_b
I love the new form factor, and getting away from low performances AMD socks
is welcome. I'd love to see some benchmarks with the Xeon ones.

