HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

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.

We've got a whole lot of DL380's which are the standard 2U server. We've been switching more over to the blades using the BL460's. But, the ProLiant line all along just works, they're tanks. About the only thing we've ever had to fix is drives that go bad after a while, but usually that mostly happened after a heat incident. They just run. We've got some that have been out of warranty for four - five years and they're still running. G4s we go back to and love we have no reason to change.

For certain applications that we have to have for external connectivity it runs great. Our main security system has one of these little USB dongles that starts off the back end, I could make it on the blade, but then it'd block up one blade, so having a DL380 is great for us. It does everything we ever need.

I think we started buying HP servers ten years ago, and we've got a couple that may have been from that time that are still working. They're running great. Now we're not running it really heavy, but it's solid. I still like the 3.5 inch drives better than the 2.5 inch drives. They seem to last longer. Other than that, we've been very stable, very solid. You don't have to worry about, "Hey, is my server down today?"

ProLiant's a little tough. We realized that the other day, that we were running out of space on our C: drive. It's like, I can't just add to a physical drive. We ended up having to move that thing, making it a physical to virtual conversion. As far as other parts, if we need more storage on it, you can always add RAM. For the most part with the ProLiants, we generally buy it for a certain purpose and that's what it does so we don't have to do as much. On the SANs, we can always add an extra node, they'll allow you to connect that way. If we need to get larger, we can.

Most of them, we don't really have any issues there, but if you lose a drive and it's still on warranty, we get one. It works.

We were using Dell. Dell was the state recommended choice. Everybody said, "Oh, you got to buy Dell because we've got a relationship with them." They got my boss really mad over some stupid stuff. It was like two-hundred dollar set of rails, and so we said, "Okay, let's try HP's." We loved the first one, and we've been buying them, and Dell has been trying to get back in the door ever since and we just tell them to go away. It's like, "No, I'm not fixing what isn't broken. This works great, so we don't care what you've got."

We've been doing the ProLiants forever. It's getting a little tougher now. It used to be, you had everything on a CD or DVD, you pop that in, you run. Or you had the SmartStart disk. Now, you got their onboard administrator. They got the intelligent deployment guide or whatever the heck it's called. Sometimes it's a little less intuitive. Sometimes it's where technology can bite you, and it might be helpful to have a guy go on and say "Do this." Otherwise you pull it out of the box and go, "Okay, now what do I do?" We work through it, but some of my techs have had a little bit of trouble. I gave them a new server and said,"Deploy it.", and they're like "Well, how do I put an OS on it?" It took us a little while to figure that out. I know that somebody's thinking, "Hey, this is really great. It's all here, it's all inside." Great, some of us need a little more direction sometimes.

I think we looked around, but really it was Dell servers or HPs were about all that we had considered. Since we weren't going to buy Dell anymore, we said, "Well, we want to go with HP." We were never going to be one of those, "I'm going to go buy parts and make something." And, I know some guys do that and it's great, but we like to have at least the ability to go call somebody to get somebody to come and help. That's been probably chief on why we did that.

We've been extremely happy all along. I don't see a reason to go anywhere else. I don't see a reason to even try different things. For us right now getting adventurous is we bought a DL360 instead of a 380 and it's like, wow, that's a little small.

We use the servers to run our student information system. It's an accounting package within the bursary of the university.

We are currently on generation 8 or 9. The solution is hardware, so it's deployed on-prem.

Apart from users, there are five people that interact with the hardware directly. There are others who interact with the services that run from these servers. It's a school environment, so there are about 30,000 or more students and staff.

Previously, when we were using Zimbra for email services, it was run locally. We have stopped using that because we subscribe to Microsoft Office 360 email services, which run from the cloud. That has been taken off the servers. 

Now that other applications are being developed, we hope to eventually be able to cater for the different administrative and academic departments in the university. We are hoping that some of this hardware will definitely have to be replaced. Of course, that will depend on the budget and the availability of funds that the university management is willing to make available. But it's going to be a step-by-step thing. There has to be planning and then budgetary provisions to be able to take care of these items.

We are just customers. We don't have a direct link with HPE, but through the HPE product suppliers. We have a new direct now, and in one of the meetings we had, he came up with the idea of finding a way to having that direct contact with HPE or Synergy and how perhaps we could patronize each other in terms of the servers, in terms of PCs for staff and students, and the kind of technical support that we can equally enjoy from HPE.

Where there is a need to actually expand on the capacity, it's easily done, especially when more memory is needed.

We have been experiencing a problem with the power pack. It gets fried and then we have to do a replacement.

There is a challenge sometimes with having quick access to some of these components when you need them. It takes a lot of time to get spare parts from genuine sellers.

You need the memories for servers. They're delivered. You put them in, and the system doesn't come up, so you have to return them. For me, that has been the major challenge.

In the day-to-day running, there's always room for improvement. If you need assistance in real time, it would be helpful if there was such a room where someone could be there and help you solve the problem in real time.

The number of people you are serving is increasing by the day, and they need immediate solutions to their issues. Sometimes you have limitations as to getting solutions to some of these issues that come up, but you are dependent on the information available to you. Being the product manufacturers also, I'm sure they have a lot of solutions to the different issues depending on the feedback they've been able to get from the field all across the world, especially those using their products. I think that would go a long way in helping.

I have been using this solution for more than 10 years.

The main challenge we actually have is the issue of having a good, steady power supply. Whenever there's a power outage, it forces the server to go down. That in itself increases the rate of failure of the hardware. By implication, the services that have been provided are truncated at one point or the other. Management has promised to see how they can intervene in that respect, but that is left to be seen.

The scalability is fine for the limited number of services and the need to actually scale. Because of this same power issue, I had to virtualize where we have to run different services on the same hardware server. That is where the issue of expanding the memory capacity came in. 

In terms of the processor, we have not been able to do that. The reason is because you send for a part, it is brought in, you plug it in, and then there's a mismatch. Then the system doesn't run well. You have to return it. But I think it will expand our memory and expand the storage. We haven't been able to expand or increase the processing and the processor capacity. But we would be glad to have any other information we need to know or other skills that we need to learn to allow us to manage this equipment better and to maximize or to optimize their usage, that would be good enough.

Technical support has been okay regarding looking for solutions on the internet. When you have certain challenges and make a post in the forum seeking an immediate solution, it all depends on who gets those queries and is able to respond. In most cases, we have been able to get the solutions from the past experience of others who have had similar issues that have been put in the repository. 

On the whole, I think it's good enough even though we haven't been able to directly chat one-on-one or about issues.

It can only get difficult depending on what application or operating system you want to install. Then it all depends on how good or how skillful one is with the particular application. But the installation and configuration is never a problem. There has never been a problem with the hardware that I can say, apart from the issues I have already mentioned.

We have different people for different specific assignments. For each team, we have a good number of people. We are thinking of expanding because the university is a multi-campus university, and it has about four campuses, even though the whole thing is being centrally run. We are thinking of having these services run 24/7, and then we would need to have more hands so no one is overwhelmed with the work on ground. Currently, for those manning the server, we have about five people.

Implementation was completed by our own technical team from within the ICT directorate.

I would rate this solution 8 out of 10.

We primarily use it for our own servers. Basically, we use it for anything we need to have it for, including our servers, our appliances, and virtualization.

The solution has excellent management capabilities. The iLO is very good. It's got excellent stability and provides a solid performance.

The hardware is reliable.

To deploy one server takes less than a day. You don't need too many engineers.

The solution should work to be more scalable.

The pricing of the product needs to be better. Right now, it's quite costly.

I've been using the solution for five or six years at this point. It's been a good amount of time.

The scalability varies. However, you need to buy the size, and then you are stuck up to that level for the most part. Gen8 I wouldn't describe as scalable at all as you can't get Sparx for it. The solution is changing, however. Maybe in a few years, you will be able to. However, in general, the scalability is lacking.

We have 50,000 users and they all, in one way or another, use the servers.

We plan to continue to use the solution until its end-of-life.

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

To install one server, it takes less than a day. Most of the time there aren't any issues.

You don't need too many people to deploy the product, however, it depends on how many servers you are setting up. For a few servers, you need few engineers and no more than that.

We installed the solution ourselves. We did not need a consultant or implementor to assist us. It was handled in-house.

The hardware is expensive. It needs to be cheaper. If they could work on that a bit, it would be very helpful to customers.

We use a mix of versions, mostly Gen8 and Gen10.

We've been quite satisfied with the solution overall. It's good hardware. I'd recommend it to organizations that mostly would be using Dell or HP servers.

I'd rate the solution, on a scale from one to ten, at an eight. We've been quite satisfied with the level of performance we get, and their general stability.

I believe it is much easier when you are trying to install something or trying to figure out any issues with it. Even though the booting up process itself is a little bit slower, it is easier to work with the HPE 360s and 380s.

I like the way the installation process goes. It's much easier to understand what you're doing. It's easy to troubleshoot and if you are stuck with any of the hardware issues, HPE comes on site. They don't come with just one part which is affecting it, but they come with other parts as well. This makes it easy, because they don't have to make multiple visits and the solution will be repaired in just one visit.

The downtime on the systems is less frequent. If one machine is out of the cluster, we call HPE and tell them about any of the hardware defects that we have. They come up with the parts pretty quickly. The engineer who comes is really knowledgeable and knows what he or she is doing. The process is much faster.

I would like to see the booting process be a little bit faster. Instead of going through the circle loading image, it would be more interesting if it would show what it is doing during each stage of the loading process.

The HPE servers are really stable. There are hardly any issues with them. There are rarely any hardware related issues, such disk failures or a need to replace the memory on the server. They are much more stable than other servers that we have used.

We do scale and the scalability is good. We have thousands of servers.

I would give technical support a rating of 8/10.

We have multiple servers, such as from Dell, in addition to the HPE servers. We deal with both of them. My personal preference is HPE, because they are hassle free. The selection of tools is done by solution architects. I don’t take part in that process.

I was not involved in the initial setup, but from what I heard, it was pretty straightforward. It was not that complicated. If it would have been, they would have called an engineer from HPE to help us.

The solution is worth it. You should invest in it, go for it, and have fun with it.

Most valuable for us are ease of use, the ability to quickly view the system for health and how to get into the consols.

It reduces the amount of work that we have to do. In the old days we used to have to go downstairs and basically plug into a computer and do stuff like that. Now, we're at our desk and we just walk right up to a computer and if you know something is going on you can easily open the case with HP and have them come out and take a look at it.

I can't think of anything right now regarding improvements except perhaps the price. I think more involvement with us, the customer would be good too. They are doing better with that now though. We've had meetings with them and we really discussed the problems that we've come across. I'd say we're going in the right direction, that's for sure.

Stability is definitely encouraging. The other system was weak. We had a lot of problems with the memory. The memory would go out every time we did a patch. We'd have to reboot the server and as it came back up, 10 percent of the time, we'd have a memory issue but over the last year or two, it's been much improved.

Scalability is pretty good. I'd say it's a lot better than it used to be, definitely.

The technical support is very good. There's always somebody available. We have an on-call number.

I wasn't involved in the initial setup.

Mostly we look at reliability, maintenance and support. Those are the big ones to consider when choosing a vendor. Since we have a relationship with HP, that's it regarding any alternative vendors.

As I said earlier, look at their maintenance support. The number of companies that they actually support. Those are big factors. And disaster recovery. That's what I would say.

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. 

At present, we are using Gen 7, 8. We have used Gen 10 for some of our customers.

We use the solution for providing hotel support. We're into the hotels of mostly Windows operating system, Oracle and SQL database.

Performance and reliability are the most valuable features. 

We have encountered problems. The most pressing issue is that downloads depend at present on the current period. Secondly, in respect of the iLO access license page, iLO features should be included with the server. 

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

The scalability is fine.

HPE technical support is sufficiently good. Support as a side of the business can be purchased. 

The initial setup was easy.

The deployment time varies with the configuration, something which does not take more than two hours. While installing the operating system is a discussion of its own, the actual configuration is easy to do. 

We did not make use of consultants or resellers for the deployment. 

The size of the staff required for the deployment varies with the configuration. It takes just a day to install a single server, but nearly two or three days if making use of visualization and multiple operations. 

The solution comes with a one time perpetual license which is included with the server. It entails costs beyond that of the standard fee. 

The solution is mostly deployed on private cloud. 

I can safely state that we have more than 100 users making use of the solution, since we have installed more than 10 or 20 servers to different locations.

The basic package can include iLO features.

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