Question 1

How many ram slots does the mobo have?

Accepted Answer

There are a total of 4 RAM Slots.
Max Installed Ram is 32G. (4x8G)
Comes with 1 2G Piece installed.

Question 2

suitable to be a small business web server?

Accepted Answer

Most certainly. With a Xeon CPU, as long as you have the bandwidth and the Web server is set up correctly, it can handle several hundred thousand "average sized" page hits per day. We have 30 web sites on one of them, and 2 of the sites are fairly busy (thousands of pages served per hour). Plus, we initially ran it with only the 2 GB of RAM and it worked OK (Win-7 Pro Workstation OS, 64 bit w/ Apache 2.4), but we did add 2 more GB of RAM to bring it up to 4GB (we do it with all of our smaller machines - our larger servers have 64 GB of RAM - these are 32 Max).  We also use this same server as a backup server for one of our internal search engines with 30 million+ patent documents indexed on a small external Solid State array, and it handles the load quite well. We did beef up the RAM to 16 GB for the search system applicaiton.  For the web server we used a 128 GB Solid State Drive (Crucial brand) for the OS and all Web server files and data (it backs-up to an external USB drive each night).  For the Search system we installed a 256 GB Solid State Drive (also Crucial) as the system drive and search-software-work-area for the searchers. We are very happy with the price and the performance. There is room for only two 3.5" disks in the chassis, but lots of room for a bunch little solid state drives! It runs cool - lots of air flow through the chassis.

Question 3

Has anyone used a standard off the shelf SATA drive in this model?
Hp lists a part number that resolved out to a hot swap sata dive in a tray when I GOOGLED the PN.

I know DELL servers choke on drives that are not on the DELL approved list but can not find a drive compatibility list for the HP server.

Accepted Answer

My ProLiant ML10 has been running FreeNAS for a year with two Seagate SATA drives in Raid 1 for over a year with no problems. I didn't consult any list prior to installing them, just plugged them in and they've worked fine ever since.

Question 4

How many external and internal drive bays does this come equipped with?

Accepted Answer

1 - 3.5", 1 - 2.5".  These two can be used at the same time.  I put an SSD and a SATA drive in.

Question 5

Does this server have HDMI port?

Accepted Answer

no, you would need a seperate graphics card or a vga to hdmi adapter

Question 6

How many 5.25 inch drive bays does this have?

Accepted Answer

There is 1 x 5.25 bay

The "HDD enablement kit", sold by HP, also occupies this slot with a non-standard 5.25 to 3.5 adapter.

Question 7

It seems odd that a server would only have room for one or two extra hard drives, even if it's intended for a very small business.  I read the Specs page and the reviews but it still seems like there is something I don't know.

I'm guessing that the PCIe slots can be used for a SATA expansion card (correct?) but if there is no room in the case for extra drives...where do you put them?

Am I missing something?

Accepted Answer

Note that the HDD enablement kit is a very bad design. It's a fixed cage of 3 drives, but they cannot be accessed easily to replace a failed drive. It requires almost complete disassembly of the machine to pull the cage out to swap a drive. You even have to remove the CPU heatsink (!?) to make enough room to pull the cage out. That said, it does work, but don't expect to be able to quickly swap a drive without downtime.

Question 8

Are the motherboard and power supply removable? I have another case that has more room and want to swap motherboards with a desktop my wife uses (she doesn't need more than 1 SSD)?

Accepted Answer

Yes they are standard size items and in fact I relocated mine to a Node 804 Fractal case and it works fine.  The MB is a Micro ATX form factor and the only issue is the PS only has 4 sata power connectors and fairly small gauge wire.

Question 9

ok silly question time

would it be possible to use this as a pc?
I was figuring its a cheap way to get a great processor
has board that can handle lots of ram
or is it just not the right board?

Accepted Answer

People do this all the time.  Just note there isn't allot of room in the case :)

Question 10

product specs says

Networking
Ethernet Controller
1Gb NC365T Ethernet Adapter 4 Ports per controller

Does it REALLY have NC365T Ethernet Adapter?
According to HP website, it is HP NC112i 1-Port Ethernet Server Adapter.

Accepted Answer

I believe that the product description is in error. This system has a single Ethernet controller, which shares the port with the ilo controller.

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82574L Gigabit Network Connection
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NC112i 1-port Ethernet Server Adapter
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
        Memory at f7fe0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
        I/O ports at 4000 [size=32]
        Memory at f7fd0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
        Capabilities: [c8] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [d0] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
        Capabilities: [e0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [a0] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=5 Masked-
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
        Capabilities: [140] Device Serial Number 9c-b6-54-ff-ff-b6-73-e4
        Kernel driver in use: e1000e

Questions & Answers