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
   • 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.
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

Bay 3

WD SATA 249GB hard drive

Logical Drive 02

1x WD SATA 160GB hard drive, bay 4
This logical drive is of type RAID0, so is missing (a) drive(s), its data may presumably be lost, deleting the "drive" may fix the cache error.

Errors

• Logical Drive 02 thinks it's a RAID0, Failed
• Cache Module Status, Failed
  • Logical Drive 02's error may be inhibiting caching as a safety precaution?

The configuration utility is reachable at boot (unknown F key, read screen output)

Passing all drives directly to the hypervisor and letting it handle them may be preferable (maybe not with ESXi)

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 select upload 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
3. go through the wizard, select your ISO on the OS tab and fill in specs as needed (try to be conservative)
4. 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
5. the console tab emulates a display connected to the machine, where you can set up your OS