this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Knowledge Collection about HP Microserver Gen8 (alien.top)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Hello everyone,

I wanted to see if I could collect some more knowledge about the intricacies of the HP Microserver Gen8 (the little server that could and still can). I have 3 of those and just recently wrote together some information that you can't really find anywhere online. A lot of information has been lost when homeservershow was shut down, especially any information about a BIOS hack for more RAM. Although I believe that that was for the N54L and not the Gen8, there have been legends of people running 32GB RAM.

I already wrote down everything I know here: https://dennis.schmalacker.cloud/posts/hp-microserver-gen8-peculiarities/ but I would love to find some more if there are any, since there is also no wiki for the Microserver Gen8 anywhere.

Some notable mentiones:

Upgrade the iLO

There is a bug that will render your iLO NAND unsuable, this was fixed and you should be good with the newest iLO.

SATA Speeds of the onboard HBA/RAID chip.

The onboard SATA/RAID Controller B120i only supports two SATA6 (Bay 1&2) and two SATA3 (Bay 3&4), so speeds will be accordingly. You could choose to get a cheap used HBA and put it into the PCIe, to increase to 4 or more SATA6 ports for maximum speed.

You can put a drive into the ODD but you can't boot off of it...

...at least not with workarounds. One is to put a USB Stick or a SD Card into the motherboard slots and boot off of that (put your GRUB bootloader on there and then boot from the ODD Port.) or create a single disk array in the Smart Array Manager, then you can also boot from the ODD Port.

Some other things I always wondered:

  • Were the colored doors ever available? I would love to have a colored (red, blue, black) door for my Gen8 but there are nowhere to be found. They seem to be a gift of the HP salesmen back in the days.

Let me know what you know about Microserver that I maybe missed and what mods you have, so I can maybe write it down, because I believe the Gen 8 still has a few good years ahead of it before going to the eWaste.

P.S. I have a dream that one day, someone will come around and create a upgrade motherboard that we can just replace (with a newer CPU and newer RAM), but I know that would be pretty expensive and probably unfeasable. Either way, hope dies last.

P.P.S: I am looking for a Electrical Engineer with experience in PCB creation. ;-)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You can fit another 4x 15mm SSDs on the top.

https://imgur.com/a/kieGV3R

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The bios you refer to was for the earlier N series, pretty much everything you need to know about that series can be found in my very old post here

The Gen 8 will only take 16GB RAM, I think from distant memory this was a CPU limitation, cpu supported 32GB but that’s across 4 slots.

Good to capture this stuff on the Gen 8 though, thanks!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

do you know if the Microserver Gen8 support 2 slot gpu?

im looking to upgrade my current gpu (p400) to an intel Arc a310 LP.

gen8 back

Arc a310 LP

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You will probably bump into the Power Cabling with the height of the card.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I have a Gen8 MicroServer running Proxmox Backup Server in an off-site location. It's brilliant for that role, I've no reason to replace it until it actually dies.

A lot of information has been lost when homeservershow was shut down

It should all still be available in the Internet Archive:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220608191352/https://homeservershow.com/forums/forum/88-microserver-gen-8/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

There are two different heat sinks for the Gen 8 Microserver. The most common was shipped with the models that came with G1610T/G2020T (I think the Xeon E3-1220Lv2 as well) processor and is rated for a 35w TDP (Part No. 724983-001). The one that shipped with the i3-3240 SKU is significantly larger and is rated for a 55w TDP (Part No. 832667-001). Often people upgrade the CPU far beyond the 35w TDP of the heat sink they have.

The Gen 8 could be purchased with the PS1810-8G managed switch that has the same form factor as Gen 8 & Gen 10 Microservers so it could stack on top or underneath. It also has a neat feature that allows you to monitor the ILO status of your servers from the switch itself. There is also the HPE PS110 Wireless VPN Router which is also the same form factor but I have never seen one for sale so don't know much about it.

Another workaround for the booting from the ODD is to connect it to the onboard SATA connection and change settings in BIOS to use AHCI or Legacy mode and using a dedicated raid card (Such as the HP P420) for the rest of the disks. The onboard RAID controller is terrible so chances are you may be already adding a raid card so not a huge loss.

You can add additional drives as there are multiple 3d print designs for adding two additional disks to the side of the PSU. There is a molex connector that you can split off from if you wish. You can also use these 3.5" to 2.5" HDD adapters from HP that fit without issue HP Part No. 2654540-001. Usually cheaper than the 3rd party alternatives.

The coloured door kit is Part No. 722320-B21 and the last time I looked was being sold on Ebay by someone in the united states and and a company in Poland kozak.pl - I have had no success in getting a reply from the Polish company if they ship abroad as I have always wanted to have the different colours. They did have all colours available last time I looked. There is also another door for the Microserver which has never Gen 9 style branding for it that was available on the later models sold.

It is possible to fix the ILO problem by replacing the NAND chip on the motherboard. I don't have the replacement chip details on hand but I have so far managed to resurrect 3 by replacing the chip using a heat gun. Once i find out what it is I'll post it. A work around for the issues for the NAND failing is that you can boot into Intelligent Provisioning / Smart Storage Admin by setting up a usb stick with Service Pack for Proliant which has it on it. Only necessary for first time set up as you can access the rest from within the OS.

There are two power supplies as well one is 150W and the other 200W. If I recall correctly the 200W was mostly for the European market.

I think that's everything for now. If I think of anything else I'll add on!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Very happy someone is bringing this to life! I have some stuff to share and also a couple of questions :)

  1. Why homeservershow closed so abruptly? It is a shame that no backup could be made of the content, specially the Gen8 related one.

  2. Did anyone made work AMS service (agentless management service) in Windows 2022? I managed to install the service with the SPP Iso, but the service crashes at the moment I start it with this:

Fault bucket 1802738185465996796, type 4 Event Name: APPCRASH Response: Not available Cab Id: 0

Problem signature: P1: hpqams.exe P2: 10.60.0.0 P3: 57d96be7 P4: msvcrt.dll P5: 7.0.20348.1 P6: 68e1e0af P7: 40000015 P8: 000000000000b0ac P9: P10:

And I have no idea how to fix it. I have all the related ILO (core) drivers installed so no clue what is failing. It would be a nice to have for the storage part.

I bring something regarding power supplies though. My 150 W died so I had to source a replacement, I could fit this one and I am super super happy with it: https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/power-supplies/FX600Platinum/

It is expensive but the huge advantage is that the fan does not spin at all until 50% of the load so it is great for a silent build :)