Airplane

A generously donated HP ProLiant DL380p Gen8.

Hypervisor

Proxmox VE

A.k.a PVE, an open source type 2 hypervisor based on QEMU/KVM and LXC. wiki
Apparently takes ~36GB to install, while using ~1.7GB ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Installation

1. put their ISO on a flash drive
2. boot from the flash drive
3. get lucky, else try again
   • if it ends in can't find cdrom
     • explicitly booting from USB (F11) may help
       • Issue, keyboard doesn't work unless it's a cold boot (no F11 on attached keyboard when rebooting)
   • the [firmware bug] ... Corrupted Hw-PMU ... (MSR 38d is 330) message is a negligible warning.[1]
4. continue the installation process
   • the RAID1 is shown as a 136GB drive
   • consider using the hostname airplane
5. upon completion,
   • the server boots into PVE even if its boot priority is set to USB first
     • It won't do this the next time, change boot order if you want to boot from hdd next time.
   • a web based interface is reachable via https://airplane:8006
   • it is reachable via SSH
     • Address this before exposing this device to The Internet!

Updating

Without a subscription, apt tries to get the enterprise packages anyway.

Commenting out the single line in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list
and running

echo "deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve stretch pve-no-subscription" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-install-repo.list

should fix that.
If not already present, it may also be necessary to run this,

wget http://download.proxmox.com/debian/proxmox-ve-release-5.x.gpg -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/proxmox-ve-release-5.x.gpg

[2]

Storage

This server takes 2.5" SAS and SATA drives in G8 (8th generation) trays, and breaks compatibility with G7 and earlier trays.[3]
it has 2 "boxes" with 4 bays each, currently bays 1-4 are occupied, bays 5-8 are missing trays, $7.5-8 seems like a typical price (missing chip/LED?). (3D print? [4])
(microserver gen8 tray != proliant gen8 tray)

SAS/SATA controller

On-board smart array SAS/SATA controller.

Logical Drive 01

2x HP SAS 146GB hard drives (15K rpm) in RAID1, bays 1 and 2

Controlled via the smart array SAS/SATA controller.

Disk Name: /dev/sda

BTRFS JBOD

Consists of Logical Drive 2 and Logical Drive 3, created with ssacli.
BTRFS managed by proxmox (created with mkfs.btrfs -d single /dev/sdb /dev/sdc).
LD2: 1x WD SATA 160GB hard drive, bay 4 /dev/sdb
LD3: 1x WD SATA 249GB hard drive, bay 3 /dev/sdc

Errors

• Cache Module Status, Failed
  • Persists after fixing (previous) logical drive 02's error, may be a capacitor issue.

Array Configuration Utility

The configuration utility is reachable at boot (F5)
There is also a commandline utility equivalent for linux known as ssacli, previously known as hpacucli, setup instructions can be found here.

Passing all drives directly to the hypervisor and letting it handle them may be preferable (maybe not with ESXi)
The simplest way to do this seems to be to make a Logical Drive consisting of 1 Physical Drive in the array controller.

Fans

This server was named for the sound it makes at liftoff.
It can run quietly in normal usage yet currently does not, this should be addressed...
Fancontrol may be of use but be cautions (you fry it, you buy it).

VM setup

Web interface

1. Upload an ISO via Datacenter > airplane > local where you can click the upload button and pick a file on your computer.
   • If a suitable ISO is already on the system you can skip this step.
2. Click Create VM at the top right and go through the wizard, select your ISO on the OS tab and fill in specs as needed (try to be conservative).
3. After clicking Finish, your VM should appear to the left under Datacenter > airplane, clicking it will bring you to a summary, and allow you to start it via the button at the top.
4. The console tab emulates a display connected to the machine, where you can set up your OS.

LXC setup

Web interface

1. This step is similar to the first of VM setup, except you click the template button and select a template for a system or turnkey container to download.
   • for more templates, see PVE's wiki about pveam
2. This step is again similar to the second of VM setup, with the added requirement of providing a password.
   • By default it wants you to provide a static IP, switching this to DHCP may be advantageous.
3. See steps the third and fourth steps of VM setup.