Quad8

So after doing some reading, I decided to take the advice from others that I needed a UPS for the FreeNAS project, I'd rather not lose my entire data store because of a power outage. I went through my usual sites and could not find anything that stood out, I’ve only seen Eaton and APC UPS units used in office environments and data-centres so I decided to aim for one of those since I assume they would have a good rep. Thought I might give Gumtree a shot, never used the site since I like having a fall back if someone decides to sell something dodgy. As I was going through gumtree I found one UPS unit that stood out (HP t1500 G3), so I decided to call the guy and ask a few questions about it. Had a chat on the phone and asked the following questions How old is the unit? – “it was bought in 2012 and used as a UPS for the VOIP phone system”. What are the condition of the batteries? – “they were good” (more on this later) Asked if the unit was heavily used at all – ” no it was mayb...

So the microserver arrived on Friday! like a kid in a candy shop I have been performing tests (memtest/CPU test and all the ports using a boot USB) to ensure there was nothing wrong with the item and as far as I can tell the seller was spot on about it being brand new. The shiny glory of new hardware I could not find a single fingerprint on the thing and even the drive caddy screws felt band new as I had to ‘crack’ them with a proper screwdriver because the supplied HP tool felt a bit inadequate. They use those apple Torx screws so that was a little frustrating. guess HP took a page outta apple's book I loaded a bunch of old exNAS drives into the server to see if the server would pick them up. I had 2x4tb and 2x2tb collecting dust in my room so I figured I would check them out and make sure that they were suitable for the NAS/microserver (make sure that the SMART was good on them etc.) and you can see by the picture I already did a check on the 2 4tb drives...

So I ended up buying one of these last night on a whim. After hearing my instructor and uncle rave about these things a while ago, I saw a good deal on eBay that once again was one of those rare things that are great to snap up. It was going for $290 but thanks to eBay they had a 10% off so I paid around $260 for a new(or so the sale claims) Gen8 G1610T HP Microserver and to top it off it had free postage! The guy even messaged me after informing me of when he would be posting the item out! I am hopeful that I won't get bitten from this deal, but I feel mostly safe dealing though eBay + pay-pal. Its reasonably safe but everything has its risks and I’ve only ever gotten stung once (by a generic Chinese seller none the less) who sold fake micro SD cards. I’ve learnt my lesson with the eBay sellers of SD cards, but that is for another day. Why a HP microserver when I already have a powerhouse of a server you ask? Well, I’ve been reading up on FreeNAS and NAS solutions and the ZF...