Building a microserver

A couple of months ago I bought a HP Proliant Microserver N54L. I had contemplated buying the original model, N40L, when it was on sale for $200 two years ago but could never justify it. I had plenty of storage at the time. However, as time passed, my storage needs was getting out of hand. I had stored all my movies on the 2TB time capsule, 1.5TB external for a bunch of TV shows. Then there’s storing random stuff locally and/or on other networked computers.

It was a mess.

It also meant that my Apple TV running XBMC could not easily connect to the various shared drives.

So when HP announced the N54L and it was on sale for $300, I jumped at the opportunity.

 

After having it for around one month, I finally decided to buy the harddrives. I settled by 4x3TB WD Reds. I didn’t want to have to think about the potential for Greens to fail on me so I bit the bullet and paid the premium.

Also got myself 16gb of ram. You can find the model number in the pics below.

 

Getting the mobo out was a bit tricky, it meant having to be a bit forceful with the cables. Eventually I got it out and plugged in my ram.

 

The harddrives were really easy to install. The Microserver also comes with an internal usb port, so I bought a high speed USB and booted Freenas off it.

A pretty great setup if I say so myself.

So now my microserver hosts all my media files and does all the torrenting too!

It has an additional 5.25″ bay that I could potentially fit 2 more harddrives in. As of now, I still have 4.55TB remaining out of the usable 9TB (3TB used for parity) that should last me a few years I hope.