HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

I am a technical manager and have technicians who go out to schools and look at their network. We have two servers that are linked to a SAN and run virtual servers to form a cluster. This is done so that the servers will always stay on even if one of them goes off. 

In regards to the components that you can put into the servers, I feel that HP provides a wider variety of parts in comparison to Dell. For example, there is the ILO which is a network cable that goes into the server and reports back with an abundance of information about the server, even when it is off.

I do not believe that improvements need to be made on the hardware side. 

On the software side, I would like for the management of the server overall (including reviewing its health) to be a bit easier. Right now, we have something that sits on the server to make sure all hardware drivers and other thing are up to date. This is a pain to set up.

We have been using this solution for a couple of years.

I like the stability. There are rarely any issues with the servers.

This is a scalable solution and I am able to put as much RAM in as I want.

We have not needed to contact support as most issues are able to be resolved by our in-house team and have yet to be severe enough to need to contact support.

The initial setup was not complex and took about half a day for one technician to set up. We have one technician who looks after the servers, but there is not much that needs to be done to them in regards to maintenance. Over holiday breaks we perform maintenance checks to ensure that everything is working properly.

We bought the server and desired bits and then had an in-house hardware technician come and put in the bits and install the service software on it through the ILO. 

We are able to get a few years out of the servers.

I like the price of this product and the add-on components. It is cheaper than Dell and is a one-time hardware purchase with minimal ongoing costs.

It is important to note that on some of the servers, you can only insert 2.5 inch drives, so, maximizing the SSDs may be a bit expensive.

Other than that, I would advise working with HP because they have reliable products that rarely have any issues and, when there are issues, they are easily resolvable by us. In the rare event that we cannot fix it, we are able to make returns at no additional costs.

Overall, I would rate the DL Servers a nine out of ten.

The solution is used for storage.

The solution is stable. I have not had any problems with it.

The product must provide time travel features. Oracle Flashback Database provides such features. If there’s an error, we can travel back in time and revert it. If someone imports a wrong request, we can ask the system to go back in time so that the system has no problem. Backup and recovery are the most important features.

I have been using the solution for 20 years.

I rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten. We had a problem three years ago. We fixed it. It’s normal for such issues to occur.

The tool’s scalability is adequate for our company. We have 150 users in our organization. It is not extensively used. We do not have plans to increase the usage. We might migrate to the cloud in the future.

I have used IBM. It was very expensive and was not scalable.

The solution is deployed on-premises. Our organization bought and installed the solution, and we use it.

The return on investment is quite good.

I have little knowledge about hardware. I recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

We have installed VMware on DL Server, and the operating system sits on this DL Server host.

This is all I've ever used. These servers are strong, and they have very few failures on them. They are also easy to manage and monitor.

They are pretty solid servers, but, just like all servers, they become obsolete after some time.

They can maybe provide a console to monitor the health of the servers. There should be some kind of console to which you can log in to remotely check on the health of a server, even when the server is off.

The servers that we have are only scalable to some extent. They have got a limited amount of hard drive that you can insert. Their scalability should be improved.

I have been using this solution for more than ten years.

They are pretty stable servers. The hardware failures are very minor. We do have one or two hardware failures but very far spaced. The major failures are mostly operating system failures, but on the hardware, they have been working pretty well.

They are scalable to some extent. For instance, you can only put a specific amount of hard drive on the base. You can insert the hard drives of a limited size, which makes them not very scalable. This could be dependent on the servers that you have. There are probably models that are more scalable than what we have.

We have about 200 people on the site, and they use it on a daily basis.

We have not contacted them. We didn't have any major issues to escalate. The few issues that we had were easily resolvable. You can also use online support to check. There are quite a number of people using these servers. You can share problems and get some advice from someone who has faced the same problem before.

We will be switching to a combination of Cisco and Dell EMC. For computation, it will be Cisco, and for storage, it will be Dell EMC. The main reason for this switch is group policy. The group has decided that we move from HP and use Cisco with EMC Storage.

The initial setup is a simple process. The old ones used to have a CD that would guide you through the process. Newer ones should also have a system where you go step-by-step and install your operating system and configure it.

I deployed it myself. I got servers from a company and then installed and configured them. All servers were not deployed at once. I deployed just one server at a time. Typically, deploying a server, including the operating system and everything else, takes less than two hours. I also do the maintenance.

Proliant DL Servers have a reasonable cost. They are not as expensive as the Cisco servers. Everything is included when you purchase a server. You just have to install and configure it.

I would recommend these servers. I would rate HPE ProLiant DL Servers a nine out of ten.

The robustness of the design of the server is the most valuable. HP servers are easy to use and user-friendly. The server is not complicated, and it is easy to use ILO systems.

In DL 500 systems, the flow of air is not good enough, and some components get overheated. IBM systems have better airflow and scalability. 

We have a data center that has limited physical space. Therefore, we need to maximize the processing or compute systems that we use. In HP servers, such as DL 500, there are only four processors, whereas IBM servers, such as SR 916, have eight processors.

We don't get any support from HP because of our geographical location. We solve all problems ourselves by doing research on the internet. It would be good to get HP support.

We have been using HP products for six or seven years. We use HP Proliant DL 300 family and DL 500 family and blade servers like Enclosure C7000.

It works fine for general use or specific use of most enterprises, but for mission-critical servers, I don't think it is the best fit.

IBM systems have better scalability.

In our company, we have about 4,000 users. We also have a lot of outside users.

We haven't had any technical support yet because our country is not in the technical support area.

We have been using HP products from the beginning.

In the latest versions, such as G9 or G10, we have a very user-friendly installation. It took about 30 minutes to 1 hour. RAID is easy to install, and so is the server, but in earlier products or versions, it was somehow challenging. 

I deployed it myself. We have about six persons for the deployment and maintenance of the servers. They are system administrators for physical servers. For virtual environments, we have different teams to administer the use of our environment.

We have ILO licenses. We use this feature.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers are easy to use and suitable for mid-range users. HP has other products for enterprise users. I don't compare them with this family. We had the physical servers for all services, but now we are migrating to virtual servers using VMware.

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

My primary use of this solution is for mathematical models that we develop and buy. The mathematical models are being bought from companies like Siemens, General Electric, SMS, and DMAC Group. Primarily these companies give us this software, we buy it from them, they make mathematical models for steel plants and we also make our own models.  

I also have around 40 portals that I'm running on that I had developed and maintained. I use the DL servers to host the databases and the portal.

We make steel and the manufacturing also requires software. These servers are the ones that we prefer. Since the beginning, we were tied with HPE and I have an annual maintenance contract for all of my servers. I have around 3,000 computers, 800 are servers including Alphas, from HPE. I have very few Dell EMC servers. I don't prefer Dell EMC primarily because the availability of the service engineer is not like HPE. It's not weird that Dell or IBM servers are not as good as HPE. Because I have the facility, the advantage of HPE is that they have been here since the beginning and so I prefer HPE. Since it's distributed across India, a very large area of almost 30 other square kilometers, I cannot house every one of them in one common platform. All of my Oracle lower databases or HPE server databases and all of the software I've accepted all the Alphas and even I use Windows platform operating systems. These particular servers have served very well.

Stability and a lower failure rate are the most valuable features.

I would like to see more of a hard drive base.

IT keeps on changing the versions of their products. There have historically been great differences in time than when the G server, the Gen8, nine, and now 10 generations of DL ProLiant server have been available, the time differences are much less. Specifically for G9, G10 even less than one year, now there is no way people like us will keep on upgrading servers without having proper ROI. HPE needs to allow us to replace the CTUs of a higher generation.

It is quite stable. They do not fail easy.

DL3 is not scalable. You cannot scale them versus replace scalable hardware, like going to Itanium servers. 

I have not needed to contact their technical support. 

We also looked at Dell EMC and IBM. The most important criteria when selecting a vendor, apart from costs, is service. Service will ensure stability. 

I would rate them eight, primarily because of the service that they provide and stability that the hardware gives.

For any other person who wants to buy any hardware, the first thing that he should look for is who is going to support him locally. He should then evaluate cases of the availability of that particular vendor's hardware. Buying any such systems is not a big task. He should see if he can maintain these servers in the long run. By long run, think ten years. He should be comfortable with the people that are going to help maintain and comfortable with the equipment that he's going to buy.

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.

We have multiple use cases for HPE ProLiant DL Servers, such as setting up VDS software.

The most valuable features of HPE ProLiant DL Servers are convenience and the interface is good.

The price of the solution could be less expensive to be more competitive.

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

The stability of HPE ProLiant DL Servers is very good.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers is a scalable solution.

We have three to four clients using this solution.

The support from HPE ProLiant DL Servers is good.

I rate the support from HPE ProLiant DL Servers a nine out of ten.

Positive

I have used Dell and Lenovo, I found that HPE ProLiant DL Servers are a better solution.

The initial setup of HPE ProLiant DL Servers is straightforward. The full implementation process took approximately six days.

I rate the initial setup of HPE ProLiant DL Servers a nine out of ten.

I have seen a return on investment using HPE ProLiant DL Servers.

There are less expensive solutions than HPE ProLiant DL Servers. However, there is a lot of value in this solution.

The price of the solution could be less expensive.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I rate HPE ProLiant DL Servers a nine out of ten.

Our primary use case is as our domain controller and file services, our local CR applications, and our ERP, local ERP. The main service we're using is the local ERP with Oracle DB.

Technical support is helpful.

It's very easy to set up.

The product has a more flexible infrastructure and management consultation in comparison to Dell.

It's energy-efficient. It's consumed less energy than the previous solution and the performance is great.

We'd like the solution to be more energy efficient so that we need less cooling or less dependence on a cooling system. 

Its management console could be better. There should be some tools and tips added so that, if a beginner's level goes for management, you can easily find tools and tips, and help them manage everything in case of emergency before going to technical support from HP.

We've used the solution for a year. We started using it last March.

The on-premises version is quite stable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. In the time we've used it, it has been issue-free.

It's easily scalable and you can expand it pretty well.

We are 48 in-house users, and our remote users are more than 200.

Technical support is very cooperative and helpful. 

We have a contract where they can give us support. Within the next 30 minutes, they will respond, for HP and for VMware as well. With VMware, we can get support online and from a remote desktop or remote services. They will always provide us support for hardware and technical support from HP, which we have contracted. The largest delay we deal with is the next business day, however, typically, they come to us within 30 minutes to one hour time.

We replaced Dell with this solution as Dell is no longer present in our country. While we were satisfied with Dell, we had to replace it. There are only a few Dell vendors left however they aren't so good in terms of support anymore now that they aren't in the country.

The initial setup is straightforward. It's not overly complex or difficult. 

Our deployment took less than 15 days. 

Setup assistance was provided by HP as well as VMware. They moved our VM from the old infrastructure to the new one.

In terms of ROI, for what we have invested in it, we are getting the same amount out. 

We purchased the license for HP with technical support included.

We have a three-year license that we pay for yearly.

It is affordable. After three years, we are going to have SLA with them, like the way we previously had with Dell.

I'm just a customer and an end-user.

We are using the on-prem version of the solution as the connectivity is not very stable. We cannot afford a cloud solution.

We have a service contract with VMware and HP as well for support.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.