Monday, December 17, 2012

ICY TIP: How to Upgrade to 2.5” Hard Drive or SSD in RAID and Expand your Storage Capacity on your HP ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Server

How to Upgrade to 2.5” Hard Drive or SSD in RAID and Expand your Storage Capacity on your HP ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Server

The HP ProLiant Ultra Micro Server System

The HP ProLiant Microserver N40L is a great compact server for a lot of home users, and small business owners. It can be a great NAS server, especially for those on a lower budget or the smaller design. But because of its smaller design, there isn’t much room to upgrade components or expand outside of the available 4 x 3.5” SATA hard drive slots. But, by omitting the DVD slot on the N40L, this opens up possibilities for storage options such as: A SSD as your OS, a mirrored RAID 1 of your OS, or boosting your write performance by using L2ARC on SSDs. We’re going to show a few ways you can easily add hardware to your server to dramatically improve your system performance.

The ICY DOCK ToughArmor Series
The ToughArmor series maximizes the available space in your system, with several varying flexible configurations in either a single 5.25” or 3.5” device bay. The main focus is to make sure your drives are fully secured and protected, which is done by the unit’s full metal design. This also doubles as a passively cooled solution, while either a single or dual fan are included on the rear to provide an active cooling solution. The EZ Slide Mini & Micro Trays are included in the ToughArmor line, with each model using interchangeable trays for their compatible counterparts. The ToughArmor series are also designed with a hot-swapping ability that makes it simple to exchange hard drives in case of failure. Within seconds, you can recover from a drive failure by swapping out the drive with a new one, then inserting back into the enclosure. Ensuring your drives are secured, protected, and ready for any situation is what the ToughArmor series provides.

The ToughArmor series suggested applications include: Medical & Military systems, Media servers, NAS server and IPCs, approved and used by Tier 1 companies.

1 Bay Solution
ToughArmor MB991IK-B 2.5” SAS/SATA Mobile Rack for 3.5” Device Bay
Drive Fit:
1 x 2.5” SAS / SATA Hard Drive or SSD
Tray compatible with MB994 series
(Supports 7mm, 9.5mm, 12.5mm & 15mm height drive)
Applications:
Uses a high speed 2.5” SAS hard drive or SATA 6Gbps SSD for OS and maximizing the system performance
Things You Need:
‧ ToughArmor MB991IK-B x 1
‧ 3.5” to 5.25” front bay converter kit x 1
‧ 2.5” SAS / SATA hard drive / SSD x 1
‧ Onboard Internal SATA port x 1
‧ PCI-E x4 SAS controller card x 1
  (Optional, for SAS hard drive / SSD only)

2 Bays Solution
ToughArmor MB992SK-B 2 x 2.5” SATA Mobile Rack for 3.5” Device Bay
Drive Fit:
2 x 2.5” SATA Hard Drive or SSD
Tray compatible with MB996
(Supports 7mm & 9.5mm height drive)
Applications:
Uses 2x high speed 2.5” SATA hard drive or SSD in RAID1 for OS for maximum OS / data protection
Things You Need:
‧ ToughArmor MB992SK-B x 1
‧ 3.5” to 5.25” front bay converter kit x 1
‧ 2.5” SATA hard drive or SSD x 2
‧ 2 / 4 ports PCI-E x4 SATA RAID controller card x 1

3 Bays Solution
ToughArmor MB994IPO-3SB 2 x 2.5” SAS / SATA Hard Drive / SSD + 1 x Slim ODD Mobile Rack for 5.25” Bay
Drive Fit:
2 x 2.5” SAS / SATA Hard Drive or SSD
Tray compatible with MB994, MB991 series
(Supports 7mm, 9.5mm, 12.5mm & 15mm height drive)
1 x SATA Slim Optical Blu-Ray / DVD Drive
Applications:
Uses 2x high speed 2.5” SAS/SATA HDD/SSD in RAID1 for OS for maximum OS / data protection while keep the Blu-Ray or DVD drive active
Things You Need:
‧ ToughArmor MB994IPO-3SB x 1
‧ 2.5” SAS/SATA hard drive or SSD x 2
‧ Onboard SATA port x 1 (For Blu-Ray / DVD drive)
‧ 2 / 4 ports PCI-E x4 SATA RAID controller card x 1

4 Bays Solution
ToughArmor MB994SP-4S 4 x 2.5” SAS / SATA Hard Drive / SSD Mobile Rack for 5.25” Bay
Drive Fit:
4 x 2.5” SAS / SATA Hard Drive or SSD
Tray compatible with MB994, MB991 series
(Supports 7mm, 9.5mm, 12.5mm & 15mm height drive)
Applications:
Uses 4 drives for RAID5 array, Have dual RAID1 arrays for dual OS setup or create a RAID10 array, SSDs to boost write cache to improve system performance
Things You Need:
‧ ToughArmor MB994SP-4S x 1
‧ 2.5” SAS/SATA hard drive or SSD x 4
‧ 4 ports PCI-E x4 SAS/SATA RAID controller card

ToughArmor MB994SP-4SB-1 4 x 2.5”SATA Hard Drive / SSD Mobile Rack for 5.25” Bay
Drive Fit:
4 x 2.5” SATA Hard Drive or SSD
Tray compatible with MB994, MB991 series
(Supports 7mm, 9.5mm, 12.5mm & 15mm height drive)
Applications:
Uses 4 drives for RAID5 array, Have dual RAID1 arrays for dual OS setup or create a RAID10 array, SSDs to boost write cache to improve system performance
Things You Need:
‧ ToughArmor MB994SP-4SB-1 x 1
‧ 2.5” SATA hard drive or SSD x 4
‧ 4 ports PCI-E x4 SATA RAID controller card

6 Bays Solution
ToughArmor MB996SP-6SB 6 x 2.5” SATA Hard Drive / SSD Mobile Rack for 5.25” Bay
Drive Fit:
6 x 2.5” SATA Hard Drive or SSD
Tray compatible with MB992
(Supports 7mm & 9.5mm height drive)
Applications:
Maximize your storage capacity. Capable for JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, RAID5 and RAID 10 plus additional storage drive, SSDs to boost write cache to improve system performance
Things You Need:
‧ ToughArmor MB996SP-6SB x 1
‧ 2.5” SATA hard drive / SSD x 6
‧ 4 ports PCI-E x4 SAS/SATA RAID controller card x 1
‧ Onboard SATA port x 1
‧ Onboard eSATA port x 1
‧ SATA to eSATA cable x 1 (Convert the onboard eSATA port to a SATA port)

The ICY DOCK DuoSwap MB971SP-B

The DuoSwap is a very flexible single 5.25” device, allowing different hard drive combinations as it single 2.5”, 3.5” or even both hard drives at the same time to produce the maximum storage capability. Inserting two drives into the DuoSwap gives you many benefits. With two drives inserted you can easily boost your write cache performance, or hot swap either drives if required. This makes DuoSwap a perfect tool for swapping a 3.5” SATA hard disk drive or 2.5” SATA solid state drive.
Drive Fit:
1 x 2.5” SATA Hard Drive or SSD
(Supports 7mm, 9.5mm, 12.5mm, 15mm height drive)
1 x 3.5” SATA Hard Drive
Applications:
Uses SSDs to boost write cache to improve system performance, hot-swap any 2.5” or 3.5” SATA hard drives within the server.
Things You Need:
‧ DuoSwap MB971SP-B x 1
‧ 2.5” or 3.5” SATA hard drive / SSD
‧ Onboard SATA port x 1
‧ Onboard eSATA port x 1
‧ SATA to eSATA cable x 1 (Convert the onboard eSATA port to a SATA port)
‧ 2 / 4 ports PCI-E x4 SATA RAID controller card x 1 (Optional)

More Information:

HP Micro Server Used with ICY DOCK:

Quick links to the Product Pages:
1 Bay
2 Bay
3 Bay
4 Bay
5 Bay
Internal Docking Station

Taipei County, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Tel : +886 2 2999-3251 
Fax : +886 2 2999-3478 、+886 2 2999-8099 
Sales e-mail:  roy@cremax.com.tw
Support e-mail: marketing@cremax.com.tw

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