HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

We use the solution for the DR site and run it on the infrastructure system.

The scalability of the product is the same as the Cisco solution and we have the same number of people working with it.

Technical support are mostly helpful.

The pricing is reasonable. We pay approximately 30 to 35K, which is cheap.

The product is lower quality than its competitors in terms of performance. The hardware  was frequently faulty and sometimes broke down. 

I would therefore give it an overall rating of eight out of 10.

We use ProLiant servers for VDI and Dell VMs, which are agents for backups and SQL, Oracle, and Mongo DB databases. We mostly use DL360, DL318, DL16, DL518, and other models for combustible systems from HPE.

ProLiant DL servers are the best on the market. The models support an extensive list of Intel processors.

The servers should include OneView for intelligence provisioning.

I have been using ProLiant DL servers for about 10 years.

ProLiant DL servers are stable.

The scalability is good.

HPE support is excellent. I rate their support nine out of 10. 

Positive

Setting up ProLiant servers isn't easy, but it's not too difficult. It's a little complicated to install our operating system if you don't have drivers. For example, it's challenging to install with Windows Server and Red Hat. In the case of Windows Server, you need to install intelligence provisioning, but it's not used in most cases. It requires an engineer and a specialist to maintain the solution. 

HPE servers are expensive.

I rate HPE ProLiant DL servers nine out of 10. I recommend HPE servers. It's a good product. If you plan to implement DL servers, you should check the family of the network and storage cards, and you should create a list of components so there isn't a delay in delivery. 

The main use for the last order was for the applications and other items around an electronic fencing system.

The initial setup is very easy.

The solution scales well.

The pricing of the product is fair and not too expensive.

The product is very stable.

The solution is pretty complete, for what I have seen over the past three years. I can't recall if I've felt that any features were lacking within that time.

The technical support is pretty good, however, they could be a bit faster and more responsive.

We've been using the solution for three years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. It's worked for two or three years with no downtime whatsoever. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's pretty reliable.

We haven't had any issues with scaling over the time we've had the solution. If a company needs to scale, it should be able to do so relatively easily.

We have about 300 users that log into the system at any given time.

We plan to increase usage. We have to extend our electronic fencing system to our other sites, and we will likely purchase another product from ProLiant when that happens.

There's another team for technical support. The technical support is very, very good and the experience in our organization has made us interested in buying more HP ProLiant. We're quite satisfied with the level of support they give to us.

While the company hasn't used a different solution, I personally have experience with Dell. I generally prefer to use HP instead.

The implementation is not complex at all. We find the initial setup to be quite straightforward.

The product was ordered and came complete and ready to go. It was basically plug and play, so that there really wasn't a deployment period per se. We just had to power it up and check the hardware. We put in the discs and had the spare parts on hand as well. They deliver it ready to go, so it's pretty fast.

We have five individuals that handle the implementation and maintenance. They are all engineers.

I don't consider it an expensive product. We're quite happy with the pricing so far. It's reasonable.

We're just customers. We don't have a business relationship with HP.

We're using the latest version of the solution. We purchased Gen 10 about a year or so ago.

I'd recommend the solution to other organizations.

Overall, I would rate the product at a nine out of ten.

We primarily use the product for normal server purposes, for the running of Windows 2016 or 2019. We also use it for custom network monitoring applications, so we may monitor some of our infrastructure. I would not consider the product to be very specific, as the application is dependent on the HP server. We can post it on any server.

While there is nothing specific that I like about HP server products, they are stable, as much so as Dell EMC.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers lack scalability.

We have been using HPE and Dell EMC service products for two years.

We have had no issues with the stability of the product.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers are not scalable. There will be no dependency between the other servers, should we need to scale. Unlike VxRail, it will be completely isolated, the solutions being capable of being scaled up to 64 nodes. It is a pay-as-you-grow solution, which is the one that we are moving on from now.

We have not had occasion to make direct use of HPE technical support, although we we are in regular contact with the contractor who's providing the software running on the HPE. I do not recall any issue involving the hardware.

While the product was delivered by a single contractor, the installation time was that of any other typical server. This only consisted of configuring the ILO, followed by putting on the operating system. That is all. Up to a certain operating level, the configuration of the product would not be a matter of days.

As the business services we provide are of a confidential nature, both for government and military purposes, we deploy strictly on-premises.

The HPE and Dell EMC service products we are using were delivered by the vendor as part of one specific project and it is not up to us to advise which hardware will be provided. Yet, we always take advantage of any internal projects that we have.

We did not need to pay for a license for the use of HPE DL Servers, just for normal hardcore support. 

In addition to HPE server products, we also evaluated Dell EMC and found the two to be equally stable, although the former does not have a strong presence in Qatar. This said, we evaluated Dell EMC VxRail and Cisco HyperFlex for their virtualization player or hyper-converged player capabilities, but did not consider HP for these features.

Due to Dell EMC's strong presence in Qatar, I would recommend use of this product over that of HPE. This does not owe itself to any technical issues, only that Dell EMC has a stronger presence. Of course, the level of support is an important feature for the end-user.

The kind of servers or HPE products we are using with those of ProLiant DL are DL390, 380, gen 10 and HPDL. We are utilizing gen 10 as our latest version of DL servers.

We utilize a total of six HPE Servers, strictly as a monitoring tool. The NOC membership comprises only 10 people.

As I mentioned, HPE ProLiant DL Servers came as part of a project. We will continue to use it for as long as we continue to renew the contract for the solution that is provided by the contractor.

The iLO. To me, its the differentiating factor of the ProLiant server and the biggest reason I'd choose to run them versus competitors. The iLO provides all the management features needed and is a consistent experience across all form factors, sizes and lines of ProLiant.

The Gen8 and Gen9 hardware provides agentless monitoring and management using the iLO, so we don't have to run agents and rely on software to get hardware alerts. These all come across directly from the iLO. OS level alerts still require agents, but all the basic hardware monitoring does not.

These predate my time with the company. I've been with the company for 10 years and the ProLiant were several generations older, so I would say we had original generation one DL 380s, so it probably goes back at least 15 years.

Very few in recent models. Most any issues are resolved with firmware and driver updates from the HPE Service Pack for ProLiant, their cross-tested bundles. On top of this, HPE has done a lot of address issues for administrators. A couple of generations ago, with the Gen8 ProLiant debut, they hit twenty different improvements that I care about as an administrator. Predictive memory enables us to know when memory is going to fail. Instead of having a hard failure or a crash in the middle of the night, it's got predictive memory so it lets us know when not to pull a drive. So if we're wanting to pull a drive for a fail-back point or something, it's got a little indicator that says "Don't pull me right now". It's got an "X" mark on it, so I don't crash a system just trying to do something preventative, but there was a wealth of different things that they added into the systems that I can appreciate as an operations guy.All of that stuff came directly from feedback of customers like me and got integrated into the next product cycle, so I'm a huge ProLiant fan.

No. You can scale-out with ProLiant, but each generation increases the memory and CPU capabilities exponentially, so from that perspective it's usually just a refresh cycle from scale discussion. But that is kind of how we approach it, is we need to increase capacity within inside of our VMware farms, we replace the hardware with a new generation, generally increase the amount of RAM and CPU configuration.

7/10 - it can be hit or miss. We get better luck with our premium support levels. We have a named TAM for some of our systems, that works out well. Escalation managers are always good. There is good technical talent, it's just sometimes hidden by first level support. That can be difficult and frustrating at times, but over ten years working with them, I would say today it's probably a little better than when I first started. Actually, I would say it's probably improved a good bit since I first started working with them, but it's still got some room to go.

They were dead simple. You rack them, power them on, then you can use Intelligent Provisioning to install and configure the system. They just make a lot of sense. It's easy.

I think it's the best server you can possibly buy. I have recently had more exposure to Dell and Cisco products to compare with and I stand by the DL line as the best server and it is primarily because of iLO.

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.

Our software is working on it, so it's very useful for our company. I'm not using it myself, but we are responsible for selling it together with our software.

We'd like to see better processors, better Intel processors. That's the most important for us at this moment.

Also, the disappearance of the ML150 can be a problem. So we probably have to switch to the ML110, we don't know yet. Wa are also using the DL160, so it can be a problem. And that's why we may have to switch some of our products to a workstation.

It's stable. We sometimes have problems, but globally it's working fine.

It's scalable but we are switching to workstation for some software because the CPU speed isn't fast enough anymore. For some products we were already using workstations, but for some others we now need workstations for the clock speeds.

We are OEM clients, so the support is very good. We have direct contact so support is good. We used to have 13 x 5, but now it's next business day.

When we look to work with a vendor, we look for stability. That's the most important. What is very important is that the systems are delivered on time. At this moment, that's a big problem, because of the hurricane in Houston, probably.

Also the team we're working with, because we have different countries that are ordering. It's on us to follow up on the deliveries.

We value the ease of management in terms of the firmware. The hardware is very toolless to work with, so when you have to do a part replacement it's very hands-on friendly. You don't have to grab any quick tools nearby to swap out modules and such.

The layout is quite nice as, for the most part, you don't have to tear the machine half apart to get to a piece. So, sometimes when they have on-site technicians to replace a part, we don't have to send a senior technician out there to do it. They can pretty much easily find it and get the parts swapped.

Parts fail, that's part of the IT business, but the ability to be able to get in there quickly and get parts swapped is a very big benefit.

I've already seen quite a bit here at the conference that looks good. Well, one of the areas that I really am excited about is the iLo 5 (integrated lights out technology) on the HP blade technology where they're allowing a lot of the firmware flashing to take place through the iLo, which means I don't have to go through the OS, so that beats a lot of our servers.

Run Unix in a form that we can't reboot them more than twice or maybe less in a 30-minute maintenance window. The fact that I can flash a lot of the hardware from the iLo and not have to go through the OS means a far reduced outage time maintenance window, so that really helps take the pressure off us.

We have machines that go back quite a long time in terms of almost back to the mid-nineties on some of the servers. So stability-wise, yes we've had some pretty good results even in the old, old hardware from HP specifically. So yes, we've been happy with them so far.

Scalability has been pretty good. We just buy more. We just buy a lot of everything. So scalability hasn't really been an issue for us because we have pretty sizable data centers, but yes, certainly it has been a good product overall.

I have used technical support quite a few times. It has been quite useful.

HP has been very helpful in terms of getting a technician on-site, and parts available if we need them. They have always offered us a technician to actually do the repair, so that takes a lot of the workload off us.

Sometimes on some of the higher-end systems where there is a lot more money involved in the hardware, it just helps to take the pressure off to where we don't have to really put our hands on that equipment, especially when you're talking about a server that costs over $20,000. I'd rather have the HP guy work with it just for liability reasons.

We have a different team that does all the initial setup.

So the two biggest competitors are primarily, obviously Dell and HP. If I had to compare the two - I was at the Dell conference not too long ago just for investigation purposes - I would say that HP, in the long run, from my experience as I've worked with companies that have both, HP is just more stable, in the long term.

Like I said before, you want to avoid hardware fails, right? That's just a part of IT, but how the customer is being handled is important in terms of if we have a bad blade or we have a bad motherboard, because every now and then we get a blade that's just bad out of the box, right? The fact that the customer or the vendor, whoever that is, if they come out and do the right thing, just swap the part out with very little hassle, that's all right.

I don't have to go through a purchasing program where I have to do a repurchase or return process, and that's really helpful in terms of just doing the right thing, getting the parts swapped out, reducing our downtime, and that's our biggest paying point with the customer. Because we have customers too that scream when our stuff goes down, right?

If they're not using HP today, I would highly suggest them to take a deep look at it, in the long run, even just as a starter. I'm not saying that Dell or others are bad, it's just, in the long run, I like the hardware layouts better in HP.