HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

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.

• It helps with work-load management
• It's a reliable solution
• It's easy to fix
• It's easy to work with and manage

I have never implemented them as part of an organization, but I worked with these rack servers while providing support for customers.

During the period of time I was providing tech support for this product line, I was able to see that its fault tolerance is really high, providing the capability of a reaction against a “disaster” and the failure rate is really low.

Obviously, you will still have hardware failures, but it is not something you can easily fix. This is more about the regular hardware failures that you may get on daily basis such as a bad HDD, NIC failure or regular hardware failures that may be present due to the normal workload of the server, meaning that they have or exceeded the lifetime or they are presenting a huge workload.

Regarding the normal functionality of the server as is, the only improvement I would say is to continue with the research and the development of higher workload capacities as the customer needs are constantly growing, therefore the demand for what the product requires to do will also grow, to avoid the demand to elapse behind the improving of the technology needs to be continued. It's tied to the needs of the end users and any new features that they would require in order to better manage their organizations.

I’ve worked with these products for over three years providing technical support for the HP ISS industry customers. I did not need to use them in a production environment.

I was part of the technical support team.

I used to guide customers with the installation, and the initial setup was always straightforward.

I am impressed with the tool’s stability.

I would like the solution to improve its storage and performance. Also, I would like to replicate data between on-premises and cloud in future versions.

I have been using the solution for 14 years.

I would rate the tool’s stability a ten out of ten. I never had any issues with its stability.

We are not concerned about the tool's scalability since our systems get replaced after three to four years.

I would rate the tool’s setup an eight out of ten.

I would rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The most common use cases for HPE ProLiant DL Servers are application servers, web servers, and screen servers.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers are customizable, but when you first deploy them, you basically have to rebuild configurations on them. This is true for large orders. But for small orders, you will be tied up with previous configurations of some other brand like Dell.

I have been selling HPE ProLiant DL Servers for 11 years. I configure HP ProLiant and SimpliVity products every day for the purpose of selling. I am not an engineer. I am a sales executive. 

HPE ProLiant DL Servers is stable. 

HPE ProLiant DL Servers is scalable. 

We are quite satisfied with the technical support. We have a direct contact with our HP support. They are always very useful.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers is easy to deploy. 

We use VMware for the authorization and 3D rendering for AutoCAD for architecture projects. We run several databases on websites and so on - so normal activity.

We get good performance with HPE ProLiant DL Servers. They are really stable. We run all our applications smoothly. We have no problem at all.

In terms of what could be improved, if I could have faster processors with less cores, that would be good. I know that they have a new series with AMD processors, but I have currently no access to them. This would be nice, because we need faster processors for rendering. It is more interesting than having a lot of cores. Overall, I do not see any particular improvement needed, because I think that they are already at the edge and ahead of the competition.

In the next release, I would like to see to more power, because the next generation will always require more computing power, but I'm sure that they are already doing their best for this.

They have a management solution, HPE OneView, but I didn't implement it because at the beginning it can be a bit difficult and we only have a small set of servers. So it was too much work for not enough return. So it could be simplified with better results to have a better return with this.

We are using ProLiant DL380 Gen10 and Gen9 servers.

Because I belong to a small service and we are obliged to use big contracts directly from the European Commission, these were the servers that were in that contract. At the beginning it was not my choice to use HPE, because we were working with IBM, and I was really happy with those servers. But I see that HPE servers are really nice also, and we have had a really good experience with them, so I'm happy with them, too.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers is terribly stable. We have no down-time.

Thanks to VMware, we can always add more virtual machines and then a new server if we need to have more. Because we have big processors and a lot of memory, we have a SAN also, so it's really scalable in that way, but it's not related to HPE. Any server could be scalable in that kind of structural combination with VMware and so on. So it's not related to HPE by itself.

We have not had any issues with HPE technical support. I had a problem with a tape backup, and they reacted immediately, and the next day it all was up and running normally. So I'm really happy with the after-sale service.

We previously used IBM. But I have not touched IBM in years, so I don't know how they compete, and they sold their servers to Lenovo, so I don't know how it evolved. But I'm really happy with HPE now.

At the beginning, the initial setup was a bit difficult because there was a learning curve, but now it's easy and with HPE it is really easy to update the servers. We don't have a lot of servers. We are a small service and we have only five to six servers, but a lot of virtual machines, and it is really easy to upgrade the servers. In combination with VMware you can move your machine, so you have no interruption in the service. It's really easy to do. It can all be done remotely thanks to iLO, so you have a good management. iLO processor is a bit slow. though, it could be faster.

The street price is probably really expensive, but at the Commission, we benefit from a good rebate, so we have a good price. I don't know the price of the competition because it is in a contract. I didn't compare. When I look for some parts, I see that it could be really expensive to have the same servers that we have.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give HPE ProLiant DL Servers an eight.

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.

The most valuable feature is reliability. We virtually have no problems with it. We run most of our applications on ProLiant DLs. We also run Exchange, and proprietary applications such as Attorney Information Manager and an accounting package called ProVantage.

It has improved our organization in terms of providing more speed and reliability while being low maintenance. We're totally dependent upon it as we move forward.

There's nothing that I would add to it, except maybe on the dashboard. There could be a little more analytics. I would like to see some proactive warnings about maintenance issues. If we were to have an issue, I'd like some more advanced warning. I’d like to see some alerting features. We’ve only a few issues, but I would like to see some alerting improvements.

In terms of stability, It's a perfect fit. We have had no stability issues whatsoever.

It's been very scalable. Maintenance wise it's a non-issue.

We have used their 24-hour tech support. They've been very good and responsive. They meet the deadline.

Before choosing HPE, we looked at Dell. Between Dell and HPE, I think you get a lot of similar bells and whistles but I think in the end HPE is the king.

HPE has excellent maintenance agreements. They provide on-site, 24-hour response times. They deliver agreements. We're not ones to readily replace equipment so they have good extended warranties, which we rely on pretty regularly. This was one of the more important criteria because I work for a law firm and they're not big on shelling out money, unless they absolutely have to. We get the biggest bang for the buck with HPE. Again, I think it's the warranty service that you receive from the HPE that makes the difference. It's reliable. You should always shop around for price. Vendors are always willing to compete in the marketplace.

One of our customers wants some on-premises rack servers and AD servers. I suggested buying an HPE server and doing virtualization on that. We are considering HPE ProLiant Gen9 Servers.

The feature that I find the most valuable is that all alerts are integrated with HPE InfoSight. Any problem related to an HPE server can be solved remotely at L1, L2 level.

They can increase the controller cache. Currently, it has a controller cache of up to 4 GB. The RAID controller card comes with a maximum of 4 GB cache in HPE servers, whereas it comes with a maximum of 8 GB cache in Dell servers. 

They can also improve the port size. HP provides a 25 GB port on the server, whereas both Dell and Cisco provide a 100 GB port. 

I have been using this solution for five to ten years.

It is stable.

Scalability depends upon the solution we are proposing.

The initial setup is straightforward. It took a maximum of one and a half hours. The deployment duration also depends upon the operating system.

I would recommend this solution. HPE servers are better than Dell and Wipro servers. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten.