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HP’s new Elitebook Folio 1020 is an attractive, powerful system for mobile enterprise

by Philip Sellers June 29, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

For many people, their daily office isn’t in a traditional office building. For them, a lightweight powerful mobile computer is the best way to get the job done. I had the chance to evaluate an HP ultrabook, the Elitebook Folio 1020, during May and June and run it through the paces on a number of different environments. I had several trips, my turn on-call, and a some ‘normal’ workdays to try this system in the real-world. What I found was an incredibly capable system for mobile workers, with fewer concessions than other systems in the ultrabook category.

As I wrap up my evaluation, a few things really stuck out about the system. First, its weight was superb. I forgot I was carrying it at times in my backpack. Touch is a big plus on the Elitebook Folio 1020. It was my first enterprise experience with a touch-capable Windows system. Touch makes Windows 8.1 much more functional and helps the OS make sense. And the display was one of the biggest selling points for me on this system. Let’s dive into each of those areas a little more.

Display & Resolution

The resolution of the 12.5″ screen is nothing short of incredible. With resolution that approaches rivals like Apple’s Retina displays, the Elitebook Folio 1020 is capable of using up to 2560 x 1440 resolution. The display is crisp and clear and provides you with tons of real-estate to operate. With built-in HDMI and optional VGA with a dongle, the 1020 can connect up to external displays and projectors making it easy to use as a primary system, in addition to a mobile companion. The Elitebook Folio 1020 changes my mind about 15″ laptops being a requirement for most advanced users. The Elitebook Folio 1020 provides an display that rivals many 24″ desktop monitors.

From an enterprise perspective, as administrator’s displays have grown to keep pace with their monitoring and management interfaces, it is really helpful to have a mobile workstation that can display the same information and experience in a condensed form. I tested the Elitebook Folio 1020 running some of my go-to monitoring suites – like Dell Foglight and HP Storage Operations Manager – and found the screen resolution great for displaying the complex environment maps that require enhanced resolution.

Touch

The Elitebook Folio 1020’s native touch display is a big asset. Lack of touch was my primary complaint when I reviewed the Elitebook Folio 1040, but HP has corrected this in the newer 1020 model. During testing, I found that selecting precise elements on screen can be a challenge. It may take a couple taps to get exactly what you’re needing with a finger. This isn’t due to hardware, instead, its a symptom of the high resolution screen and how small the the links are on screen.

Design

The Folio 1020 follows a normal laptop design. The metal case on top of the display and around the keyboard exudes a sense of quality. It looks sleek and professional. The overall look got lots of questions and comments from people who saw me using the notebook.

The display does not fold back and the keyboard does not disconnect, but I’m not noting that as a problem. After years of testing alternative designs as my company searches for the right form-factor for tablets and laptops, the traditional design is still the most functional way to create a full computer. Compared to systems with removable keyboard, like the Microsoft Surface, the keyboard of the Elitebook Folio 1020 is much more usable to perform actual work. Even as good as on-screen keyboards have gotten, most users can still type faster on a traditional keyboard and the keyboard design in the Folio 1020 is a great one.

From a hardware perspective, I wish there were some sort of Windows key somewhere other than on the keyboard. I found myself having to move from the screen to the keyboard rather than having a Windows key somewhere to the left or right of the screen as part of the display – like a Microsoft Surface has. Perhaps that can be integrated in a later version.

OS

After testing the Elitebook Folio 1040 last year, I made an assessment and it is the same with new Elitebook Folio 1020. The primary weakness of the device is its operating system. With the Elitebook Folio 1020, it comes pre-installed with Windows 8.1 and Windows 8 straddles somewhere between touch native and desktop interface and its a tough combination.

The benefit, of course, for Windows 8.1 is that you have full compatibility with all your legacy Windows applications and a mix of touch-native applications. And that is reason enough to entice a lot of enterprises to focus on Windows as their touch OS of choice. Windows 10 offers a lot of promise to fix some of the nagging issues of the default operating system.

While the touch screen makes Windows 8.1 a lot more functional than mouse alone, the biggest issue I have is sizing of the elements on screen – the only downside to the incredible screen resolution. Windows 8 includes a number of display options. On the Elitebook Folio 1020, the default display sizing is 150% for screen elements and this is really needed. Screen elements at 100% sizing are WAY too small for even young (or younger) eyes. My older coworkers found the default 150% sizing small to see. You can optionally size things up to 200% and you have some custom settings within the Display settings. At 200%, some dialog boxes and things begin to look a little odd – not completely off, but just something not quite normal with them. But ultimately, 200% works the best for touch on the desktop. With the resolution of the screen, the 200% zoom resembles what you’d normally see at a 1280 x 720 lower-resolution screen, but with higher clarity.

Hardware features

The notebook is light and easy to carry. It is perfect for a road warrior but could easily be a primary desktop with some accessories. It is compact and easy to slip into a carry-on or small backpack. With an ultrabook, you sacrifice some things to get the portability, however, there seem to be less trade-offs with this laptop.

The main hardware feature that improved with the Elitebook Folio 1020 from the 1040 is the trackpad. The trackpad is a forced-based trackpad. While the Folio 1040 had a quirky new trackpad that took some learning, the Folio 1020 has a more intuitive trackpad that just works. To click, you just press harder on the trackpad. To right click or scroll, those are two-finger gestures. Scrolling is just using two fingers to slide up or down. Right click is pressing harder with two fingers instead of one. Pinch and spread gestures also work on the touchpad.

The system has a better than expected number of ports for an ultrabook. The system has 2 built-in USB ports, an HDMI port and an expansion port for a dongle or a docking station. There is also a MicroSD port for adding additional storage. The headphone jack is a single integrated port for both mic input and headphone output like you’d expect on a tablet or smartphone.

The fingerprint security is a welcome component on the system. Just swipe your finger across the scanner and you are logged into the system and other software on the system. HP’s Security software suite handles the biometric enrollment and your password store for things that are authorized to use your fingerprint for authentication.

The sound bar across the top of the keyboard is effective. The sound at full blast is a little soft, but for an enterprise focused laptop, this is ok. When I used sound, many times I used a headset while traveling. The one time I used built-in sound extensively was during training and found it to work very well while attending a class hosted online. It seems to be an improvement in terms of sound quality and output versus the Elitebook Folio 1040.

The keyboard is comfortable and the back-light helped particularly while I was traveling on a plane or using the system in a dimly lit room in the evenings. It has a nice feel to it and even someone with big hands (me) can comfortably type on it for long periods without any problems.

Battery life was good. You will find that its probably better than most laptops but less than most tablets. The unit is rated for 9 hours and for general usage, I came close to those numbers, but as soon as you do any graphic intensive things like video, the battery drains faster.

The one hardware feature I was not able to test was near field communication. The Elitebook Folio 1020 is equipped with NFC but I never encountered a time to use the hardware and test it in my field trials.

Conclusions

I work in IT full time as an administrator. This laptop is perfect for my mobile workstation – perfect for taking on-call and on trips. I can imagine it fits nicely for sales and field employees that generally work outside of the office. It is lightweight and very portable. For desk workers, it makes a great mobile companion system. It is perfect for on-call, whether you’re going to the beach, hiking, a theme park or anything in between, it is light enough to carry along.

continue to Part 2 – Field Testing the Elitebook Folio 1020

June 29, 2015 1 comment

Home Tech

Field testing an HP Elitebook Folio 1020 in the office, in training and on vacation

by Philip Sellers June 29, 2015

written by Philip Sellers

In Part 1 of my HP Elitebook Folio 1020 review, I focused on the technical aspects of the laptop. For Part 2, I wanted to focus on usability and how the laptop did while I took it on a tour of duty – from a week on-call, to a week at a conference, to a three-day online training and back to running a VM and using it for primary duty during the day.

My test Elitebook arrived at a perfect time, just a week before I headed to Las Vegas for HP Discover. This gave me a week to get it setup for remote access and do some basic testing with the system. I was able to load up Microsoft Office and other needed software. I loaded VMware Player and a VM image for use with my company. With 8GB of RAM in the unit, it did incredibly well running an enterprise image along side of its own applications.

Corporate environment

Access into a corporate environment is simple over wifi. If you require a wired connection, the Elitebook Folio 1040 also includes a dongle with VGA and Ethernet that quickly attaches and meets your needs. Once on the network, I was able to leverage the touch interface for the first time in many corporate apps. Touch made a lot of things simpler and more accessible for me. I could point to a problem or show someone something and at the same time tap to drill down into that area of a monitoring interface.

After testing the system and with a lack of touch on my desktop in the office, I miss having the touch screen. Touch makes Windows 8.1 a whole lot more bearable. Windows 8.1 is not my favorite operating system although I have grown accustomed to the Windows Server 2012 interface and that helped me, too, this time when evaluating a Windows 8 system.

I have a lot of meetings when I am in the office and the Elitebook Folio 1020 is a great to grab and go from meeting to meeting.

In Training

I had a remote, instructor-led training class for three days during the eval. While my other experiences did not rely on a lot of sound, the class did and I was able to get a sense of how the speakers projected during my training class. The class was delivered over a WebEx with the teacher lecturing over VoIP. There was no interruption and everything went as smoothly as possible with this laptop.

Even more, when it came time to do the hands-on-labs for the class, I really appreciated the touch screen and made things faster for me to get into the interface and perform the things outlined in my lab guide. This was really where I noticed the issues with precision of touch. Decreasing the resolution (which made things larger on screen) really improved my experience for this particular case.

With big, chunky fingers, its hard to touch exactly where you want in Windows. As I mentioned in Part 1 of the review, I played with adjusting the sizing of screen elements from 125% to 200% in an effort to help with my touch issues. The problem is when everything is sized at 200%, you lose use all that screen real estate I love so much – so there is definitely a trade off. But sometimes, functionality wins.

Traveling

I tested the Elitebook Folio 1020 more on the road than anywhere else. During my trip to HP Discover, I used it for the occasions where I needed remote access into the office. It was easy and capable and it is the first time I’ve had touch available with my corporate systems. Our corporate systems have not included touch, but for anyone who has grown accustomed to using a tablet, touch seems to come second nature.

I used the system while on call at the beach one weekend, too. I was able to pair the laptop with my phone for Internet and never had to leave my sandy oasis. Even in sunlight situations, I was able to get in and get things done – granted – like most laptops, high light situations make the screen much harder to see due to glare.

I was able to Skype with my kids and show them the hotel room during my trip to Vegas. The video camera was clear and crisp and the microphone and speakers both seemed to work really well for this.

I added the Pluralsight app for Windows 8 from the Windows Store. This let me download some training courses I had really been wanting to complete and have them available offline for my 4 hour plane ride.

On the plane, the size of the laptop was perfect. It was neither too big nor too small and the display made it easy to watch the training videos. I also prepared a couple blog posts while I was in the air. The keyboard and size made it easy to use, even in the confines of an airplane. It was easier to use than my 15″ laptop because the screen and overall size of the laptop was smaller. It fit better onto a tray table with that passenger in front of me reclined.

Conclusions

After using this test unit for several weeks, it really does a great job as my mobile workstation. While I rely on a desktop with two large monitors for most of my daily work, having the resolution of the Elitebook Folio 1020 was really nice. Having the standard 8GB of RAM was exceptional and allowed me to run a VM when needed and keep as much running as I needed without exhausting system resource. I liked it so much, in fact, I’m asking at work to allow an exception and let me have it imaged as a corporate system to continue to use. It’s be a huge leap forward compared to our standard issue laptops.

When I reviewed the Elitebook Folio 1040 last year, I said it was the first laptop that made my consider giving up my Mac. I ended up using my 1040 extensively while writing, testing code and developing scripts for the book last year. But I never considered it for a primary work system, although the 1040 would have been great, too. But the Elitebook Folio 1020 has really impressed me to a point that I want to continue using this at work and I do not want to give it up. The Elitebook Folio 1020 is a great combination of hardware and features at a

June 29, 2015 0 comments

Home Tech

STOP shipping adware to customers through Installers

by Philip Sellers July 22, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

Attention Software Vendors!! I kindly request that you STOP shipping adware to customers through your Installers. Twice this week, I have had installers attempt to add software onto my system that I never agreed to. CNET’s installer offered me a dose of extra adware for a program I needed on my Mac and today a vendor, whose product I had PAID for, attempted to install adware on my system without giving me the option to opt out. Its a common practice to include browser bars and other search helps with free software. Big vendors like Oracle are paid by search vendors to package their products with Java installers. But I’m not complaining about them, specifically, because Oracle is asking before throwing the crap browser bars onto your system.

No, today, I experienced a new low. I have used PowerISO for a few months now and I was honestly happy with their product. Today, it prompted me to update to its latest version and I clicked the button to download and install this update. On download, however, without any further prompts, it attempted to install SearchProtect by Conduit, which is a browser hijack malware. Luckily, my antivirus caught this attempt and blocked it. Much to my surprise, SearchProtect persistently attempted to install SEVERAL more times. This is absolutely underhanded.

Before taking to my blog, however, I did send my feelings to the company in the form of the email below, but I doubt it will do any good. In the least, take it from me – don’t use PowerISO.

To: [email protected]
Subject: SearchProtect Malware in Update
I am HIGHLY disappointed that after purchasing your product, when I was prompted to download an update that the update attempted to install malware. On download, the updater attempted to install SearchProtect by Conduit onto my system which my ANTIVIRUS caught and stopped from installing. I paid for your product and I do not appreciate you attempting to sneak other adware onto my system. I am searching for an alternative product to meet my needs, but it will not be your product. You have lost my trust.

Sincerely,
Philip Sellers

July 22, 2014 1 comment

Home Tech

Customers lose with Microsoft’s takeover of NoIP domains

by Philip Sellers July 2, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

You may have missed the news yesterday, but Microsoft coordinated a takeover a over 20 domain names held by dynamic DNS company NoIP. Microsoft took control of the 20 domains NoIP offers to customers as free dynamic DNS subdomains. In doing so, Microsoft was seeking to disable domains used by a couple of malware attacks that were being carried out using NoIP’s free address and DNS services. The downside to yesterday’s takeover is that there were millions of innocent users of NoIP’s services that have been affected. For its part, Microsoft says that was a technical error that should be corrected, however, the domains I use with NoIP’s free service are still unresolving more than 24 hours later.

For customers, neither company is really doing what’s in the best interest of the general public. Microsoft may be playing the white knight seeking to put down malware providers, but by taking over all of NoIP’s free domain names, its targeted 18,472 targets were only a small percentage of the millions of addresses that have been taken offline for legitimate users. To me, Microsoft clearly overstepped here.

And, does Microsoft want to talk about how its own software is the underlying cause of the malware attacks and how the two targeted malware, Jenxcus and Bladabindi, operate on Windows? Microsoft should also be examining how to prevent unauthorized software from executing in Windows which is the larger root cause of this whole debacle. Signed software and software execution policies should be the norm at this point in an operating system. Microsoft should be looking at giving administrators and users whitelisting capabilities at the root of its OS and it should be doing more to prevent these things from running to begin with. I’m not going to knock Microsoft’s responsiveness to issues when exposed, but what is Microsoft really doing to cut down on attack surface in their OS? It doesn’t look like much to me.

NoIP asserts that of the 18,472 targets Microsoft was going after, less than 2,000 were active yesterday morning when the takeover occurred. Well, lets be honest, if you knew near 2,000 subdomains active in malware attacks were there, why didn’t you do anything about it? NoIP should have been taking steps to stop known malware propagating through its service and should have been working with security researchers to put this out of business. NoIP should have been more responsive and should have proactively taken steps to work with third parties on complaints. The lack of cooperation has tarnished is reputation and will leave it in a precarious position as customer seek alternatives from other vendors.

In the wake of all of this are the customers, who should be cheering at a partially effective disablement of malware and jeering if they’re a legitimate NoIP user. I say its partially effective, because the malware writers will adapt and change their tactic in light of this takeover. Microsoft has only delayed an inevitable re-flare of the problem because they’ve done nothing to fix the underlying problem – Windows.

I don’t often rant on my blog, but in this case, the NoIP takeover affects me as a legitimate user and I’m a full-time, senior-level Windows administrator who has to deal with the lack of built-in security functionality that Microsoft delivers to customers. For as much as Microsoft is trying to be the white knight, they seem to be missing their major obligation to patch and fix the main platform for distribution of malware – Windows… That’s my two cents.

July 2, 2014 0 comments

Datacenter Home Tech

HP Pro 612 tablet aims to replace your work laptop

by Philip Sellers June 13, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

It wasn’t much of a surprise that when the HP Printers and Personal Systems group arrive to the blogger’s briefing, they were showing off a tablet. To be exact, HP’s PPS group brought the Pro 612 tablet to show off.

HP Pro x2 612 detachable The HP Pro 612 is targeted at business users and includes the full range of security offerings that consumer products are missing. Starting at just 2 lbs., the tablet has a range of processors including an Intel i5, offering desktop quality processing inside a tablet. The Pro 612 includes the HP Sure Start BIOS, which offers a primary and backup copy of BIOS in the event of corruption or infection, it includes a smart card reader and an optional finger print reader. It is equipped with LTE and WiFi and features one USB 3.0 port.

The tablet is loaded with Windows 8.1, but has options for running Windows 7 also. This is still in response to customer request who are not ready for Windows 8. On an interesting note, HP staff said that the tablet display also integrates Wacom technology and an optional pen may be used with the tablet for precision needs. Based on prior feedback, the unit includes a ‘garage’ to store the pen.

In terms of accessories, the tablet can be coupled with a travel keyboard or with a power base. The travel keyboard is a very thin keyboard and stand with adjustable positions and includes an additional USB port. The travel keyboard takes the total weight of the tablet to 3.1 lbs.

The power base features a number of connectors including VGA and Display Port for graphics, an RJ45 connector for wired network, and a couple USB 3.0 ports. And best of all, it includes additional battery power – taking the tablet’s 7 hours of battery life and extending it another 7 more hours. HP staff said they expect users may buy multiple keyboard docks – one for work and one for travel or home – just transporting the tablet back and forth.

Bundled with the power base, it becomes the HP Pro x2 612 and is targeted as a laptop replacement and becomes a detachable system.

Retail pricing and availability date for the Pro x2 612 has not been announced and the units we got to see were development demos. For additional details and to sign up to be notified when the laptop is available, head over to the HP Pro 612 page at hp.com.

Disclaimer: HP invited me to HP Discover as a blogger and covered my expenses to attend the event. I also spoke at a session during the event. As always, the views and opinions stated on this blog are my own. HP was given no editorial control over content or topics for my posts.

June 13, 2014 0 comments

Home Lab Home Tech

Home lab update for Christmas

by Philip Sellers January 1, 2014

written by Philip Sellers

This Christmas, I stumbled upon a full height rack at a local closeout warehouse. My wife and I like to shop second-hand or closeout stores – we have a couple in our area that deal in merchandise from big box stores that didn’t move at clearance or were slightly damaged. We have had good luck finding deals in the past – like my HD video camera (still worth more on eBay than I paid 4 years ago), my TV/Mac Pro 27″ monitor (under $100 a year ago) and toys for the kids.

Saturday, I had one of those finds. I had seen an ad on Craiglist and I thought the photo showed a server rack, but I wasn’t sure. The description was generic and so my wife and I decided to check it out. This was a new business (to us) we had not been to before, but we will be returning. They seemed to have a lot of nice quality stuff and tucked in a back corner, I spotted the rack. My hunch was confirmed, it was a metal 42U rack with door. It was clear the owners didn’t know what they had – the wife even asking what I planned to use it for – she said she had so many ideas. We should have asked how she would use it! It was priced at $100. It included two generic set of rails to hold a rack-mount server and two slide out shelves – an additional bonus. The metal alone was probably worth over $100, if recycled… So, we bought it and brought it home.

I was able get it into the house – thanks to a neighbor’s helping hand – and it is very well made and heavy! I rolled it into my office and it cleared the door with just a millimeter to spare. I’ve mounted some of my lab equipment in the rack and some other pieces are still works in progress.

I didn’t really have room in my office for a full rack, but at that price, it was difficult to say no. I like having the door for noise reduction and it gives me plenty of room to expand. I’ll probably run out of power before I run out of space. A rack has been on my wish list for a while for the home lab I’m slowly building. I had searched eBay and other places and I could fine 12U or 18U racks – mostly audio racks – for around $150-$170, but not a server depth rack. I’ve found some really cool vintage racks and equipment that has been removed from use on eBay – unfortunately, most racks either ship freight for a couple hundred dollars or are local pickup only in locations on the west coast. I had not been able to find anything relatively local on eBay.

I rearranged my office to make room for the new rack and so far, its working really well. The sliding shelves inside the rack were perfect for holding my HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 and PS1810 switch. I need a pair of mounting brackets for my Procurve 2510 switch. I had also found a SuperMicro 1U rackmount chassis on eBay for under $50, so I picked it up a few months ago. Now that I have the rack, I decided to move my whitebox server into a rackmount chassis. Although I like my PowerMac G4 mod, the cabling inside did not work out like I wanted and the wires were hitting the cooling fan on the processor from time to time – not a good situation.

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2014 2 comments

Devices Home Tech

A Nation Addicted To Smartphones

by Philip Sellers December 2, 2013

written by Philip Sellers

I know that I’m addicted to my iPhone and I’m certainly not alone – whether you’re an iPhone, Android or other user. In celebration of Cyber Monday, take a look at these stats of a Nation Addicted to Smartphones.

A Nation Addicted To Smartphones

This Infographic is produced by Coupon Audit (provides Finish Line coupon) and Techazine.

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December 2, 2013 0 comments

Datacenter Home Lab Home Tech Projects Storage

Endless possibilities for a MicroServer

by Philip Sellers October 1, 2013

written by Philip Sellers

ReviewMicroserver

Lots and lots of Possibilities

This weekend, I was able to get the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 setup and powered on in my lab. Its currently burning in and I’m doing some testing with it. What do I think? Well, you’ll have to wait until I have had more time with it before I share my impressions. But that hasn’t stopped me from thinking about use cases.

Use Case – Creating a Lab environment

Beyond the stylish exterior, the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 can fit into a lot of possible environments and use cases. The first one that comes to mind is my own – the home lab. As an IT professional, its become imperative that I have a lab environment at home where I can test software and solutions. I have gotten lots of offers for trials and software from blogging and for solving my problems at work.

Many of my peers build their own whitebox systems and I have attempted recently, too. I hadn’t built a computer in close to a decade. And my first experience trying to build a whitebox has been bumpy. I’ll admit, I have enjoyed using a soldering iron again, but it can be frustrating trying to piece together a compatible solution. I’d prefer to buy something ready made and that makes the MicroServer Gen8 really compelling to me. Time is valuable, so the time I’ve spent tinkering could have been more productive if I just bought a ready-made system.

Use Case – Networked Storage

With four drive bays, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is capable of up to 12TB of storage on board with 3TB drives in each bay. That makes it a viable candidate as a NAS solution for home or business. There are so many implementations like FreeNAS and Openfiler to turn the MicroServer into a NAS appliance.

In addition to just file sharing, these software storage solutions have lots of add-on functionality to take basic file storage and make it useful in the home for being your media repository of movies, TV shows and music and being the source for streaming to your TV-connected box, your Android or iPhone or even some home stereo systems. Add-on a VPN solution and it becomes your personal media cloud when you’re away from home, too. FreeNAS can also serve as a destination for TimeMachine or other backup software solutions, so now not only primary storage but backup of your PCs and Macs.

Even again in a home lab situation, NAS distributions support iSCSI and NFS, making the MicroServer a viable storage target for VMware and other virtualization in a lab environment. The NAS proposition has uses in so many ways. In a lot of ways, this use case of a Proliant MicroServer offers a better performing and possibly lower cost alternative to a Synology or Drobo NAS device. And if your needs change, you can alway repurpose or hand-me-down this server, where the others are only ever capable of being a NAS.

Use Case – Virtual Host

Running a hypervisor on the MicroServer should just be reserved for the lab – its capable of prime time. A lot of small businesses don’t have space or need for racks, rackmount hardware or even pedestal servers. In many cases, these small businesses run on three to five physical servers anyways, so consolidating these aging physical servers to two or three MicroServers would allow the business to save power and footprint.

The Proliant MicroServer Gen8 has a remarkably small footprint, low power consumption and small heat output. It can easily sit on a desktop or a shelf and is not nearly as obtrusive as a tower, pedestal or rackmount server. While not as condensed as a blade, it could serve a similar purpose in a small business environment.

Use Case – Microbusiness

There are a lot of one and two person businesses and the number of micro businesses seems to have exploded in recent years. Perhaps its a combination of the Internet lowering the barriers of entry and the terrible economy pushing people out of traditional jobs. These businesses still have traditional needs and while many use the cloud, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 offers a compelling self hosted solution at a price point that is competative to many cloud solutions. A micro business may need to file or print share, have a VPN or prehaps run Remote Desktop to host a local accounting or line of business application. And a MicroServer hosted onsite provides those features – along with the ability to access a Remote Desktop session from a mobile device on the road.

Use Case – App Server

A lot of small businesses who have either outgrown or need more tailored solutions than Quickbooks and those accounting packages usually require databases and other shared access. This server is more than capable of running SQL Express or full Microsoft SQL and an application on bare metal along with the application. Then there are all the customized line of business applications – from hotels, to legal, to doctor’s offices, restaurants and even mechanics. While a lot of these have cloud solutions, many companies still rely on installed, local software to run their business and a MicroServer fits nicely. Specifically thinking about point of sale in restaurants as a use case – having deployed several of those in my time – a compact server like this would be a welcome platform – especially at the price of these boxes.

Use Case – Policy, Accounts and Security in the Small Business

Then, there is always the business whose growing beyond the two or three person mark and needs to begin thinking about accounts, security and enforcing policy and automating some management. The Proliant MicroServer is great for a basic AD implementation, too. With a domain controller deployed, accounts and policy becomes possible, file shares can be more tightly secured and controlled and systems can be tied down to accounts that offer access from multiple devices. I implemented so many of these small office when I was a consultant. Managers or owners needed to lock down systems or ensure that only certain employees had access to some resources and AD makes that all possible. Add solutions like WSUS and patch management becomes streamlined and managed.

The biggest competition for MicroServer

But the biggest competition for the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is cloud, possibly more than the bigger Proliants in the portfolio. Cloud adoption may be least resistant in the small business where the MicroServer aims for adoption. There are certainly a lot of businesses who are abandoning their client-server applications in favor of cloud solutions, but its not for everyone. But the days of client-server are far from over.

Disclaimer: HP provided me with both the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 for review at no charge. The opinions and views of the hardware written here are entirely my own and have not been influenced or outlined by HP. The hardware came with no strings attached.

October 1, 2013 3 comments

Compute Datacenter Home Tech Storage

Introducing the mystery product – an HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8

by Philip Sellers September 26, 2013

written by Philip Sellers

ReviewMicroserver

I teased you earlier that I had a special product coming to review and, today, I’m glad to announce that my HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 has arrived. Since I had other things going on yesterday evening, I didn’t even get to unbox it, but it will be soon. So, you may be wondering – what is the Proliant MicroServer?

HP introduced the Proliant MicroServer line in 2010 as a general computing server platform aimed squarely at the micro to small business and home office markets. In June, the company released the Gen8 model which features a nice facelift and changes under the hood.

Like all of the Proliant Gen8 hardware, the MicroServer got a little bling treatment with an aluminum grille/door – making it a very sleek-looking unit. While the previous version looked like a generic half-sized tower, the Proliant MicroServer Gen8 is almost a perfect 9″ cube. It is equipped with either a Celeron G1610T or Pentium G2020T processor and can scale up to 12TB of storage and 16GB of RAM. Preconfigured models come with 2GB of RAM.

The Proliant Microserver Gen8 features a tool-less chassis, four cold-swap drive bays, a DVD drive, several USB ports inside, on the front and on the back of the server. Even though the form factor deviates from the norm, the inside of the Microserver is still very serviceable, upgradable and accessible.

And one of my favorite things with the MicroServer is, just like all other Proliant servers, it includes iLO – or Integrated Lights Out management for those who may not be as familiar with HP. iLO is HP’s flavor of an IP management interface (IPMI) and its a solid implementation for remote management for a server.

I’m very curious how this little guy compares to the ML, DL and BL Proliant models that I run in the datacenter. I’m curious to know if the iLO is as robust or scaled back, how the unit performs and how easily I will be able to integrate this into my ESX home lab.

A picture’s worth a thousand words…

I got my first look and feel at HP Discover earlier this year and I’ve posted a few photos below that I took of the show floor to whet your appetite. Don’t forget, one of these could be yours, too. More to come…

Disclaimer: HP provided me with the HP Proliant MicroServer Gen8 and also sponsored my trip to HP Discover this year. The opinions and views of the hardware written here are entirely my own and have not been influenced or outlined by HP. While they provided me with opportunities, those opportunities came with no strings attached.

September 26, 2013 4 comments

Home Lab Home Tech Projects

A mystery product is on its way to review…

by Philip Sellers September 25, 2013

written by Philip Sellers

ReviewTime

That’s right readers. I’m expecting something to be delivered any day now for me to review. I’m incredibly excited to get my hands on this particular hardware and I have been admiring it since it was released this summer. I’ll give you a clue – I work with this particular hardware’s big brothers every day in the datacenter, but this particular item is built for the small office or home office. I imagine there are lots of inventive ways this thing can be put to use. And best of all, not only do I get a review unit, but you’ll have a chance to win one, as well. Stay tuned…

September 25, 2013 1 comment