ProLiant DL580 G2 Quad Xeon 2.5GHz 4U

[mijester]

I just purchased this older server at a an excellent price, but have no experience in setting it up or configuring it.

I intend to use it in a home/office/small business environment and hopefully network it with several smaller and older desktops (PIII & P4) and several laptops CoreDuo, P4 & Athalon, all running XP home or pro. There is also a Mac (sorry) in the environment.

Any direction, guidance and/or assistance to where I can go to read/download/listen or otherwise learn how to set this device up would be greatly appreciated. I intend to go to the HP training areas on installation provided, but am hoping that perhaps someone will be able to provide me an easier way to get it up and running.

I haven't coded in many years, way back in the early 70's, so I'm not really familiar with the new languages, but I'm pretty good on logic. I have a new copy of Microsoft Windows NT Workstation that I could install, but there seem to be so many options available I am uncertain what OS(s) I should use.

I understand I could download and install Unix, but I really don't understand how that would interface with the Windows and/or Mac machines.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[KarloChacon]

hi

if you want to use windows I can recommend you to use SmartStart CD

burn it
create some Partitions for your server
ans install windows


http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=316533&swItem=MTX-0d60a2320d934fca89995666f8&prodNameId=3288116&swEnvOID=1005&swLang=8&taskId=135&mode=4&idx=1

bye

[mijester]

Marvelous-followed the link and when I have some time will read the instructions, download, & burn disk, but when you say install windows are you referring to the NT disk I have or should I use a different OS version? Thanks.

[KarloChacon]

well NT is an old OS my recommendation it is to install W2003 at least you know you can get more help using W2003 (forums, blogs, and so on) than using NT also W2003 it is more compatible with XP(laptop desktops) that NT

bye

[Jim Herard]

I have 2 similar machines. Setup is quite straight forward, I recommend adding 4 drives and selecting RAID 5 configuration. Don't be afraid to boot the machine and press each of the optional configuration F keys offered after the POST test; the on-screen instructions are very good (you'll get to do 1 each boot, so this can take a few boots this way, there's one for networking, one for hard disk and RAID configuration and one for general settings that are the most important ones to use). I set mine up without the benefit of any HP disks
I have loaded several Linux distributions on my units, and Fedora or Ubuntu are good choices.
NT will limit you to 4Gb of RAM, if your box has more you won't get access to it. If you have more than 4Gb and run Linux you'll need to upgrade your linux kernel to a PAE version for this 32 bit machine. There are many good books on Linux available. With Linux you'll have lots of access to the system from other machines, with NT you'll probably want to run VNC so you can use a remote desktop. Each windows client will require a client access license (CAL), so you'll probably need at least 5 of those, which is typical of many out of the box NT licenses. You'll need to go to the Microsoft web site with NT and upgrade to service pack 6 (I'm guessing you've probably got version 4). Without SP6 you'll have limited browser functionality. Happy Computing, the DL580 is a great box.