How would you change HP's MediaSmart Server ex485 / ex487?
By Darren Murph 
posted April 10th 2009 10:54PM
posted April 10th 2009 10:54PM
posted April 10th 2009 10:54PM
powered by gdgt
HP MediaSmart Server EX487
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Make it easier to upgrade the RAM and/or processor. It was a mess taking this thing apart to upgrade.
I bought one of these to store my videos and stream them to my PS3, which is connected to the home theater. My goal was to have several terabytes of video and music accessible on my home theater. I went this route, because I already had the PS3 and it was hooked up via HDMI. HP advertises that it streams to the PS3. Well, it uses an unsupported 3rd party add-in from Twonky Media to do it and it is nowhere near rock-solid. I had to rebuild the server twice already, because the Twonky service refused to run after I moved my videos over to the server. Tech support was no help and I was more technical than they were. They had no clue what was causing the problem. The product was apparently too new and "no one had tried" doing what I was trying to do. Amazing.
It seems to be fine, if I move a few videos at a time and don't put many on it. This completely defeats the purpose of buying the media server, for me, and does not utilize the storage capacity. If I want to use it the way I wanted, I may have to connect a PC that can connect to the HP media server to the home theater via HDMI. What a waste. ***DON'T BUY THIS FOR STREAMING MEDIA.YOU'LL BE ON YOUR OWN WITH A POOR STREAMING SOLUTION***
I'd love to see better energy efficiency. A lot (most?) people leave this thing running 24/7 but only occasionally access its files.
The MediaSmart, however, consumes more power than a lot of energy efficient desktops that see heavier use.
It needs an 80+ certified power supply at the very least, and I'd love to see laptop-grade energy sipping processors and smarter sleep/wake functionality as well.
I bought a MediaSmart simply because it WASN'T Linux based. I've never had much luck with Linux NAS systems. They tend to require registry hacks (turn of NTLM2), extra configuration, and they are more difficult to use vs. using the Windows Home Server client software.
I'm with you on the system not needing a faster processor and extra RAM, however, and definately with you on reducing the energy consumption!
I think a lot of folks jump on processor and RAM specs because that's what they're used to doing with their desktop computer, but it's not really appropriate for a NAS whose primary purpose is the non-intensive task of serving files.
@Colin; excellent comments which tie back to my experience.
I'd like to be able to set custom sleep/wake so that it isn't running all night long. I like the box because it is low effort to setup, and not knowing much about the details, I wonder if it is possible to put it into a lower power usage when not needed and have it awaken when files are accessed.
Also, I find the fan quite loud; almost on par with my 1st generation PS3!.
@ianakehurst
You may be happy to know that the second gen ex485/ex487 at least allow you to sleep/wake the server overnight.
I agree, however, that ideally the server should consume very little power until the files are being accessed. The Mac Mini draws 15 Watts at idle, but the MediaSmart draws something like 60 Watts! The Mac Mini even has a decent graphics card, Bluetooth radio, Wireless N and other components that aren't in the MediaSmart!
Surely the engineers can figure out how to make a MediaSmart whose energy consumption is closer to that of an energy efficient desktop, especially when the MediaSmart and its files are likely to be accessed relatively infrequently!
The EX485 is my second WHS product, the first one was a home brew that I put together at a pretty reasonable price. The primary reason that I bought the EX485 is the Time Machine functionality for Mac computers in the home. Now that I have a Mac, I wanted a painless way to back them up over the network without having to connect stupid USB drives to the Mac.
The backups themselves to the EX485 are painless, but system recovery is anything but. As HP currently supports this product with Mac computers, recovery is a pain in the ass.
You must reload Leopard, reload the Mac client for the WHS, reconnect to your Time Machine backups, and then manually restore your user/application/documents folders.
This is a really lame recovery system. While I understand and appreciate that Leopard does not support full system recovery over the network, it can be done with non SMBFS shares by mounting them 1st in the terminal and then restoring them.
At a minimum, HP should have provided a utility that could copy the contents of the "Mac" backup share to an external USB drive, which it would format with the right Mac formatting. This drive could then be directly connected to the Mac in question and a painless recovery would ensue.
I can only hope that Apple pulls their heads out and starts supporting remote network Time Machine recovery, especially with WHS backup and recovery working so well... WHS is truly the best product to come out of MS in many a moon.
I'm reading comments that these aren't compatible with Verizon FIOS and ActionTec routers. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Bill
That's not true. I have FiOS and the standard issue Actiontec router and it works fine, if you're not an idiot.
Here's what it won't do:
1. confirm that the remote access is working (test it manually). When I was using Tomato on my wrt54gl (pre-fios), it wouldn't confirm on that, either.
2. allow connections via port 80 (http). Not a problem since you should be using https/ssl, anyway. Verizon doesn't block port 443.
That said, I'm able to securely access the server from the internet (even from my iphone) via RDP, and provide access to my shared files via easy to use web interface over my 20 megabit upstream connection to my inner circle.
I've been using the ex485 for a month now and have been relatively happy. The photo uploader to flickr is unreliable (stops uploading after a few hundred photos - I have a pro account) but that's neither here nor there. With simplify media, you can stream music to the iphone etc very nicely. As for backing up computers, it does that too. WHS is a hidden gem.
It NEEDS to serve up small databases. Like Quickbooks, Filemaker etc... There is no reason not to have this feature via a non pool drive. It is just MS wanting us to buy the full SBS.
We have a small little company (2 people) and this thing, if it just did that, would make me happy.
We do have one.
Don't buy this HP crap. I have media vault 2100, after after a while it got corrupt after many attempts to fix, contacted HP customer service, no reply...this was two months ago.
Replace OS. There is only one OS that works for a storage device, and that OS is OpenSolaris. ZFS for the win.
Bringing it to Australia would be a great start :)
Got the 750 GB version when it came out and added 3x 1.5 TB drives. Consolidated all my storage from old USB drives and all my machines. I run Time Machine from iMac and everything works. Best $439 I've spent (+ 3 x $103 for 1.5 TB drives)
Main thing I'd enhance it is including software to organizing all files and eliminating duplicates plus making it easier to catalogue all your stuff. Anyway - I've been able to enhance it with available shareware to the point of making it all work together.
I see it as the center of my connected universe and once I clean up, catalog and recode all I want - it will definitely de-clutter me... now I will have to make an offsite backup of it for it to become a life saver in the event of any disaster.
Not optimal at all for a Mac only environment as it requires a PC for set-up (yes, that is advertised and true even if using VMWare or other emulation). This is a real limit and quite crude. The consolidation of files from other machines never worked well to enable iTunes server to be the only shared file and server on the home network. It is OK, but quite slow, for use as a the primary time machine back-up. Overall I was not impressed with speed, the heavy use of "plastic" in the mechanicals, the limited access to the OS, and the requirement for Mac only on installation. Only 60 to 80% of the functionality was ultimately realized -- I returned the unit for a full refund and am now running a combination of Drobo and WD Sharespace.
I agree. People should just get a Drobo.
It's hilarious how many people commenting are asking for things that the MediaSmart servers already do. *ahem*:
You can hot swap drives without the fear of losing data if you turn on file duplication. It has gigabit ethernet. There is no lag when I am streaming video to my PS3 while using other files off it on my desktop PC. It can be used as a NAS, not just backup. It has a web interface. You can install any damn hard drive you want in it. You don't need a PC running to stream to an Xbox/PS3. Twonky greatly increases the file types you can play, and it comes installed, enabled, and free. It NEVER crashes... if you heard about one crashing, it's probably because the owner installed a bunch of crappy addons.
Now for some things that could be improved:
Fan noise. I built an extra-quiet PC and the MSS kind of cancels that out.
Improve the Flash web interface for streaming music. It doesn't handle large (12,000+ song) libraries well.
Automated backups of the home server!!! Right now you can automate the backing up of your networked PCs, but backups of the server itself (not using file duplication) are a manual process.
Other than that, the thing is incredible. It's cheap for the features it provides. I love mine!
It does sound like Mac users got the short end of the stick with the MSS... I don't have any experience with that, so I can't comment, but the system / file restore from backup on a PC is really easy and convenient. If you are only restoring certain files, it mounts the backup as a drive that you can copy from... if you are restoring a whole system drive, you are supposed to be able to put in the system restore disc and have access to all your backups located on the MSS. I haven't used that feature yet, but I have no doubt that it works as advertised.
how about releasing it in the UK......?????????????????????????
web interface instead of the interface "program" you have to install on the computer you use to control it. partly because the un-resizable interface program is bigger than the resolution of my Eee 901 that i access it with
ship it empty with an install cd, not some itty bitty 750gig drive (or worse, two 750gig's)
Needs a server migration tool!
I want to buy a 485/487 for the Mac support that is not in the base WHS package, but I've got two years of existing backups, users, and shares on a homebuilt WHS. Since these user accounts aren't domain accounts, I have a feeling that just moving the shares will lose ACL data. Plus the users need to be recreated entirely from scratch, and the backups of old computers goes away entirely. Most important, existing computer backups can't be migrated at all. I use that feature to snapshot some computers in time, then rebuild them or install crapware that I know will screw up. No way to migrate these means I'll be stuck with two servers until I can manually migrate all these backups - knowing me that will take several months.
If you accidentally delete a file or folder on the MSS there is absolutely no way to get it back. I have duplication on but all of the files on the server are serving three computers in my home and my website, so there is nothing to restore. "Revert to last" was disabled by HP but is on WHS. Diskeeper has an un-delete program but says it will not work on the MSS but it will on the WHS.
I don't know if anyone still reads this, but this is a big one.
1) For christ sake, span drives, something. It's ridiculous that I'm limited to the size of one drive especially on time machine backups and/or folders. That's great if you want to do it for performance reasons but at the end of the day backup > performance and if I cross the size of a 1TB drive I don't want my backup failing because I can't create a bigger than 964GB contiguous file for you. I'm ok with that.
2) Improved Mac Support. The 'best of show' award is a joke on this. The time machine backup features ugh. It's a great start, but not best of show great. Again, hampered by the 'single drive' thing