HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

We are using HPE ProLiant DL Servers for all the databases and services in the bank I work at. We use HPE ProLiant DL Servers for service and for core banking and other computing systems, we use the HPE BladeSystems.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers are easy to use and the GUI is rather simple and intuitive. The Americans know how to make things beautiful. Their Japanese counterpart has outdated GUIs. There is a lot of other services and software that HPE provides for the server. The software can connect all the infrastructure to form a unified management or monitoring system.

In the HPE ProLiant DL Servers generation nine, there was a problem when the expansion cards were installed on the server. There was only a small amount of room for the top expansion cards that hand could insert or remove the cables inside.

I have been using HPE ProLiant DL Servers for approximately 10 years.

The stability of the HPE ProLiant DL Servers is very good.

I worked with HPE ProLiant DL Servers in different places and in different situations, I remember that there was a time we were having a disaster with high humidity in the room but we did not have any problems with the operations of the solution.

I have not used the technical support from HPE.

I have previously used the HPE BladeSystem.

When comparing the HPE ProLiant DL Servers to the HPE BladeSystem, the HPE BladeSystems are compact and need less space for installation. They can provide the same computing as the HPE ProLiant DL Servers in the same unit and are a lot easier to manage.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers have a higher price than Dell servers. However, the Japanese counterpart has the lowerest priced servers. The price of the HPE ProLiant DL Servers could improve, it could be less expensive.

I rate HPE ProLiant DL Servers an eight out of ten.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers are easy to maintain. When we need to update the firmware or we need to log on remotely via the IO management interface. It's very convenient, easy. The supply chain is fast when we need to replace some failed hardware, such as hard drives or power supplies. Most of the time, it only takes a few days. The HPE ProLiant DL Servers services are officially certified for Red Hat usage which is a big advantage.

The solution could improve by providing more best practices from an architectural point of view. What are some recommended configurations for use, such as in a VM environment? HP provides some best practices but they are based on VMware, not on Red Hat. It would benefit for others to see the different use cases. How the HPE ProLiant DL Servers were used in the context of Red hat virtualization, and some configurations as an example to allow us to identify some points that we can improve in our platform. We could make our system more reliable and scalable.

I have been using HPE ProLiant DL Servers for approximately three years.

The stability of the solution is good.

The scalability is good, but it depends on the virtualization software that is used. It does not only depend on the hardware.

All of our employees use this solution because all of our infrastructures are on HPE ProLiant DL Servers.

We open support tickets when needed with HP. They answer pretty fast and the HP engineers are knowledgeable. The agents answer specifically to our needs and we don't have any issue with them.

The solution is web-based making the installation straightforward.

The time it takes for the full implementation depends on the project. The time can vary if it is a small, medium, or large project. This time could also vary between the specific platform that we need to build. The time it takes is typically between three to four weeks.

We did the implementation ourselves.

I would recommend this solution to others.

I rate HPE ProLiant DL Servers an eight out of ten.

We use it for all of our needs. We use it for our servers, appliances, and virtualization. We have Gen8 and Gen10 models.

Its management, IOs, and stability are the most valuable features. It works fine. 

It has all the features of a typical server. All that can be done has already been done. 

The scalability of Gen8 models should be improved. They can also improve its price.

I have been using this solution for five or six years.

It is very stable.

Gen8 models are not as scalable as Gen10. You can't get parts for Gen8, but you can get parts for Gen10.

We have about 2,000 users, and they all use these servers.

It is fairly decent. It is straightforward most of the time. It takes less than a day for a server.

We installed them ourselves. The number of people required depends on how many servers you are deploying. 

The hardware should be cheaper.

HPE servers are pretty decent. We will definitely keep using them until their end of life. I am quite satisfied with this solution.

I would rate HPE ProLiant DL Servers an eight out of ten.

We use HPE Proliant DL Servers as rack servers.  

There were a number of incidents, but overall it is stable. I think that we had a problem with a drive bay. Once we replaced the drive bays, everything is now working fine now.  

Surely it is possible to scale the product. If you want to pay to upgrade the hardware like the processor and RAM cards it can be scaled.  

We try to support the local suppliers most of the time and so we are working with them instead. We do not have a direct agreement for technical support with the team at HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise).  

I can recommend HPE Proliant DL Servers to other users.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate this product as an eight-out-of-ten. To make it ten-of-ten, would be two things. First, when they make a sale they should provide support for the product to the buyer. I think they also need to make the hardware as relevant as possible as it is not completely up-to-date. For example, the drive bays generally seem to need to be upgraded.  

I just like the reliability of them. I've never had an issue with them.

We only have about 400 employees citywide but if they go down for a day, that angers our citizens so they have to be up all the time and I can't have down time. This gives me the ability to do that.

Being in Canada, and with exchange-rate fluctuation, it would be good if I could get a better price point.

Since I have been in this position, for the last seven years, I have yet to have - knock on wood - any failure at all. I don't know if they use better parts or whatever, but they just don't fail. It's one less headache for me, so that's what I like.

We refresh our hardware every four years, even if we don't have to. I have ProLiant servers that are still running, and they're eight years old. Obviously disks and stuff like that have been replaced just for my peace of mind. Like I said, I've yet to have one fail.

I like their customer service better than Dell's. When I do have to have a call or if I have a small little bug or something like that, it's easier to find support for it.

I had an issue with Dell before so that's why I went away from Dell and went to HPE. I briefly used HPE at former positions, so I knew what they're pretty much about; they were my next step, to put it that way.

Just make sure you size it right off the bat. Make sure you know what you want.

What is good about HPE servers is that you have a consistent way and how to manage them across all the lines. You don't have to learn something for one type of server and then have to learn something else for a different type of server. If you have different types of servers, you can always build on the knowledge you have and you have a unified way to approach things in configuration, in setting up, maintaining, and so on and so forth.

The organization is always hamstrung by the staff people they have available to run these systems. If you have a trained staff, you don't want to throw all this training overboard just to get a new server. You have an evolving but steadily moving ecosystem of how you get these things set up, connected, maintained and so on, so forth. That's probably even more valuable than just, "Hey, competitor A or B has 2% more efficiency or 2% more power to deliver".

It's always the next generation of hardware, of course: Who does the better job? You also can look at things and say, "Hey, we were going all blades. We were going with virtual connect.”, and do specific things in that way. We learned certain lessons doing that, of course.

For the next generation, we probably won't have that many blades. We will probably revert to rack-mounted servers, but have bigger servers instead of the smaller servers. That also evolves with the workloads you have. Over the period of time we typically run these systems, such as five years, there's a lot of change in what the users request from us. Of course, there are new developments. For example, before we started VDI, we said, “OK, if we want to do VDI going forward, we probably want to incorporate some GPU into that.” That would probably lead to new architecture and then we want to do other stuff like high-performance computing, as well, on that. The next generation probably would look completely different from what we have now.

We have been using HPE servers for a very long time. The current implementation was done in 2013 and 2014, but we have been using HPE servers for 20 years or more. It was not necessarily called HPE at that time but one of the companies they acquired over the decades.

Stability is a non-issue. As long as you don't touch anything, nothing will really happen. If you update everything here and there, you have to really pay attention. We have a complex setup with storage and servers and networking, storage networking and so on and so forth. Once you change one component, all the others might blow up in your face if you don't do it correctly. Especially in the storage space, we rely heavily on HPE to mix and match, make sure that the matrix is correct to do all of the maintenance on that level.

Scaling is fairly easy. With the blades, I think the only barrier here is, once you fill up the enclosure, you need a new enclosure. That's the primary barrier. As long as you can grow inside the enclosure, that's a non-issue. Otherwise, you have a steeper investment, but then again, it scales up from a single server to the full enclosure, to the full rack.

We never had to go that way, though. Everything we did always fit into one enclosure in one rack. We had two of them, spread across sites. Even in a situation where one of our data centers fails, we can still have all of the workload running out of the other data center. By the means of the software stack we have around it, that works without a mishap. You don't really even notice it with the storage and the virtualization layer. That all happens in the blink of an eye, automatically, which is very important for us. It’s also reproducible, of course. And, you can do it backwards, unlike some solutions, where you can failover but if you want to failback, you would need a myriad of highly skilled IT professionals to do that move back with data synchronization, but this solution really does it all.

Support on the hardware side is a little bit more challenging than on other sides because there are so many components involved, if you look at servers. There are many vendors who provide components to HPE. You have to mix and match everything. You really need a professional support organization with that to help you. If you do the wrong thing, do the wrong update, that might hamstring you with the whole operation because you don't get anywhere, anymore.

The setup is quite straightforward. It's really a bunch of servers but, of course, that involves getting all of the components together, having everything configured to order and then having it configured to the software stack. We incorporated HPE partners to do that for us and then we took over and said, "Okay, from now on, we involve this system until its end of lifetime." We went from the one version of the hypervisor to the current version of the hypervisor, and we're going to the next, and the next, and the next. Setting up is the first step but from that point on, you can take it yourself and drive it yourself.

For the blade offerings, most of the competitors have similar capabilities. However, they probably have evolved them only within the last five years, whereas I would say HPE has a much longer runway into that. They have a much more established, esteemed platform there. The C class of BladeSystems is something that's there for years now. I think we have the second procurement of those. At the end of its lifetime, we're running it for 10 years, whereas others have changed their blade strategies two or three times. I think that's the worst thing you can do, if you have to change it on there.

The C7000 and C3000 have been around for 10 years, maybe 15 years, already. Everything that came afterwards, such as Synergy or the Superdome X, they all build on top of that. The C9000 and whatever they call the Synergy enclosure, it really takes the best from the established path and then just adds the latest technology to that.

If you have that knowledge and ability, and you can leverage that, you have a big advantage over all the others who come to the market with a new solution and try to find customers.

For the server technology, most of the features you can nowadays find with most of the vendors, so they're probably at the stage where HPE was five years ago. The ecosystem is so mature and still evolving. There's nothing like, "Hey we have this feature, we don't change it." The management, the procurement, the provisioning, all of that is really kicking off going forward. Probably with the next generation, I’d gave it a higher rating.

I found HP Virtual Connect (VC) technology to be the most valuable. VC technology simplifies networking configuration for the server administrator using an HP BladeSystem c-Class environment. VC adds a hardware abstraction layer that removes the direct coupling between the LAN and SAN. Hence, it reduces the number of cables required for an enclosure, the number of edge switches, enables direct server-to-server connectivity within the BladeSystem enclosure and more. This feature can significantly reduce the time required to complete a service event.

Without VC, changes to server hardware (for example, replacing the system board during a service event) typically implies changes to the MAC addresses and WWNs. The server administrator must then contact the LAN/SAN administrators, give them the updated addresses, and wait for them to make the appropriate updates to their infrastructure. With VC, a server profile keeps the MAC addresses and WWNs constant, so the server administrator can apply the same networking profile to new hardware. Additionally, VC Flex-10 and VC Flex-20 technology further simplifies network interconnects. Flex-10/Flex-20 technology allows you to split a 10 Gb or 20 Gb Ethernet port into four physical function NICs (called FlexNICs). This feature lets you replace multiple lower-bandwidth NICs with a single 10 Gb or 20 Gb adapter. Prior to Flex-10, a typical server blade enclosure required up to 40 pieces of hardware (32 mezzanine adapters and eight modules) for a full enclosure of 16 virtualized servers. Using HP FlexNICs with Virtual Connect interconnect modules reduces the required hardware by up to 50 percent by consolidating all NIC connections onto two 10 Gb or 20 Gb ports.

As server technology moves forward, I expect HPE server solutions to be compatible with the advancements such as supporting 40+ GbE network adapter and further reducing the complexities in a network topology such as fewer cables, edge switches and simple administration.

This seems to be important to me because in today's competitive environment, the end users expect to have a high-speed SAN network, which majorly depends on the network adapter's speed and performance. In my opinion, the product must support high-speed network adapters in order to meet the customer's expectations.

I've been working on the HP server technology for almost three years now.

I encountered stability issues, particularly with HPE DL-580G8 and DL-360G9 servers. With a network topology similar to be used by an end-user, I encountered server failures such as server freeze, slow booting, and difficulties scanning the LUNs when performing a boot from SAN.

I did not really encounter any scalability issues! I would say the product is quite stable as far as scalability is concerned.

The initial setup (such as network connections) is quite straightforward. The configuration part too is simple, considering that one must know what he/she is doing.

Server technologies nowadays are expensive. Be it HPE, Dell or EMC. In case of large network deployments, nothing can beat HPE Blade Server Technology (with/without VC technology). It provides simple and efficient configuration and administration.

One must be aware of the objectives he/she is expecting. Thorough research about the product and the reviews is always advisable from my end. If it fits in, the user can very well carry on.

The nice thing that we have with the whole ProLiant platform is there's a lot of commonality among the platform. We buy enough servers such that we always have spare parts on hand. When we do need spare parts, HPE is quick to provide them to us. Likewise, when we have issues that require more technical support, the support from HPE has been pretty top notch.

The way that we have used the ProLiant platform within our business, being that it's such a widespread usage, it gives us the capability to develop in-house expertise with those systems, provide assistance to our 300+ divisions when they have issues with either their system or they need some sort of help internally. We have the capability and the knowledge to reach out to them from a global IT team.

I would say that it would be nice if there was a more streamlined approach to getting drivers or looking up system information from HPE's website. That's the one thing that I did appreciate on the Dell side, you put in a serial number, you see the exact build, you see all the drivers associated with that machine. That is probably the only thing that I see missing from the HPE side is a very easy to use method to get this. It does exist, there is a method to get the information, but it's not as streamlined.

I want to say if we've had any issues with stability, there's always going to be issues that servers encounter. The nice thing with the ProLiant series is that you also get alerting as to the health of the system. That has helped us to stave off any issues with those servers or services because we are able to get a transition to another host or we're able to repair it within a timely window before it goes bad.

Everything is scaled out exactly how we always anticipated it to.

We have used it a couple of times over the last year. We had an issue with some disk platform extensions on a number of ProLiant servers. HPE was able to quickly diagnose the issue and get us back up and running.

Within our IT group, we do have some older HP UX Blade infrastructure. We do have some other platforms such as Cisco's Unified System. Not much else besides that.

Initially within my company's IT space, I was not involved with the initial decision to go with ProLiant. I'll be honest, I came from a Dell background. The division that I had worked for prior to our globalization in our IT group was primarily Dell. There have been a number of elements to using HP's that have been more beneficial from my point of view.

I always have colleagues who are looking to implement new servers within their divisions. As part of my responsibility, I am the conduit by which divisions can seek out additional assistance for getting servers. I am in that space a lot. I typically go over the benefits that we see within our global IT group and explain to them the efficiencies that can be seen by going to the ProLiant platform. Showing how the system can provide good alerting, good stability, and explaining that within the global IT group, if they have additional concerns or needs, that we can support them because we use the platform.