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Home labs – adding and modding a dual port Gigabit NIC to the HP Microserver N40L

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I wanted to add more physical NICs to my HP Microserver N40L machine to use with vSphere. The box comes with an onboard 1GBit NIC, but I wanted to play around with VLANs and multiple uplinks in my home lab. The problem is finding an affordable solution – most dual port NICs that are any use with ESXi (Intel chipset based) cost almost as much as the Microserver itself which is quite off-putting!

After trawling ebay and the VMware HCL I found that that the HP NC360T PCI Express Dual Port Gigabit Network Card would work well with ESXi 5.0 and that I could get these NICs (used) fairly cheap. I picked up a used card off ebay for only £30 ($46.97 US), which was in my budget. Problem was I could not find a card with a low-profile bracket, so I thought I would just make do with the normal bracket and either remove it, or modify it to fit.

The NIC itself has two 1GBit ports, and is based on the Intel 82571EB chipset and offers a 4 lane (x4) PCI Express bus. This means that I could use it on the HP Microserver’s 16x PCI Express slot (which is downward compatible of course). Apparently there are also mods out there that can be used to get this card to work in the x1 slot if you don’t have the x16 slot free – but I haven’t attempted this yet.

I first tried it out without the bracket (by just removing two screws that hold the bracket to the PCB). This worked fine, but was really not a permanent solution, especially for plugging/unplugging cables whilst the machine was powered up.

not a good solution - the NIC without bracket - way too flimsy

 

So out came the tools as I decided to modify the existing bracket to fit the Microserver’s low-profile chassis.

The Intel card's bracket next to the Microserver's blanking plate.

 

HP NC360T PCI Express card with bracket removed

 

Step 1 – I drew a line at the point where the 90 degree bend in the bracket should be for a low-profile card. I then took a junior hacksaw and “scored” this line out (saw a little bit in to weaken the metal).

Step 2 – Now with the score mark in place, I simply used two pairs of pliers to bend the bracket along the score mark, which was now easy and accurate.

bending the bracket on the score mark

 

Step 3 – I marked off where the 90 degree protruding point of the bracket would end, and used the hacksaw to remove the excess. I then cut out a small notch in this top piece for the screw that holds the PCI card in place normally. I attached the bracket back to the NIC and installed in the Microserver.

 

The HP NIC fitted with modified bracket

 

And here is the final result after ESXi 5.0 recognises the new hardware –

The NIC recognised under Network adapters view - ESXi 5.0

If you have managed to find any good PCI Express NICs for the HP N40L Microserver, or have any advice or experiences with mods for hardware and the Microserver, please post in the comments section!

 

Announcing vMetrics for WordPress

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vMetrics is a small plugin for WordPress that works in conjunction with a PowerCLI Updater Script. You install the plugin, add the Widget to your sidebar in WordPress, configure which stats you would like to show, then run, or schedule the PowerCLI script against a standalong ESX/ESXi host, or vCenter server.

 

 

I have been working on this in my evenings whenever I find spare time over the last couple of weeks. It is based off Nicholas Weaver’s excellent WP-vSpherestats plugin, but has been re-worked to be more customisable, offer more metrics and statistics about your vSphere environment, and offers a PowerCLI Updater script, meaning you can easily change or customise the information that is brought back into the plugin.

You can find out more, or download the plugin over here.

 

Free Virtualization Icon set

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For a recent personal project I have been working on (vMetrics for WordPress), I had a requirement for some Icons, all virtualization related. I had a quick look around but couldn’t find many that had no strings attached. I therefore decided to create my own set. These are all original and I have created them myself. You will of course recognise some of the designs from the vSphere Client – these I used as inspiration and re-created from scratch.

 

 

Feel free to use these in your own projects, charts, or presentations. All that I ask is that you drop me a comment below to let me know if they were useful or not 🙂

 

[download id=”18″]

 

vSphere Home Lab / whitebox builds – 16GB RAM in a HP N40L Microserver

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I recently purchased a HP N40L Microserver for my home vSphere lab, with the intention of buying a second unit to create a small vSphere cluster for lab work. This would take me away from having nested virtual ESXi hosts. You can actually currently get great deals on this hardware – with HP offering £100 cashback on the purchase cost. I ended up paying around £260.00 for my HP Microserver, getting 100 off, which means it only cost about £160.

 

Great deal - £100 cashback on the HP N40L Microserver

 

For this price, this microserver makes great hardware for a home lab cluster build, however the one thing that has always been a downer on this is the fact that all specsheets and official documentation from HP list the maximum amount of RAM supported as 8GB for the Microserver. This doesn’t leave much room for VMs to run per host.

 

Today I received an interesting e-mail in my inbox from Serversplus.com. They claim to have tested running 16GB of Crucial ECC DDR3 Unbuffered (2 x 8GB modules) in the HP N40L Microserver! This, if it is true (which I am sure it is, as they are now selling bundles with 16GB RAM), is great news for us looking to build home labs on the cheap. Sure, 8GB modules are much more expensive than 4GB at the moment, but we now know that there is no 8GB limit on the N40L Microserver – rather 16GB. As soon as I can afford the two 8GB modules for a total of 16GB, I’ll be looking at upgrading my current Microserver to 16GB. If this works, I’ll definitely be purchasing a second unit.

 

Here is a screencap of the e-mail I got from serversplus.com –

If you are UK based, you can grab the full bundle from Serversplus.com.

 

AutoCorrect hell – VMware

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If you are like me and can’t stand it when Office Applications change the casing of Pronouns such as “VMware” to “Vmware” for example, there is a quick fix you can do. Most may already be aware, but this has hassled me one too many times today, and I therefore sought out the option to prevent it from happening. I was using Excel 2010, however similiar steps should apply to all Office Applications.

 

  • Go to the File -> Help -> Options -> Proofing menu.
  • Click “AutoCorrect Options” -> make sure the tickbox for “Correct two INitial CApitals” is either off, or alternatively and the better option, click “Exceptions”.
  • Add an entry called “VMware” under the “INital CAps” tab.
  • Apply

For a fun list of VMware spelling derivatives be sure to check out Darren Woollard’s “VMware, it’s all in the name” blog post.