HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

I like their scalability. The fact that where I have 24 drives in one of my servers, I can basically turn it into its own little storage tray if I want to, and then attach a server to it. It's really good for applications that you use really heavy disk IO.

For us, we use the DLs more on a piece by piece basis, so when our clients come to us with a very specific demand that really doesn't fit well with our blades, which is our preference, then we go to the DLs, and then we scale it out for whatever they need.

I'm not a fan of their rails. I hate how those things rack, as they're just not nice.

The server itself is quite good, easy to use. Configuration of it is a little bit tedious, you've got to be willing to spend a couple of hours just to get it set up before you can even start using it, because the reboots are ten - fifteen minutes long, and that'll kill you.

The cost per compute. I pay as much for a ProLiant DL as I do for a Blade. It requires more power, more cooling, more space for essentially the same function, if I wanted to, with the exception of additional storage. So for me it really does come down to cost.

We haven't looked at competitors in a very long time for those. We basically have stuck with HPE. It's a known name, so I don't want to give my customers something that might work, I want something that will work.

Get on it with OneView, because it's that single pane of glass, you can manage your blades, your DLs, and your 3PAR, all using that one tool.

I've been a ProLiant customer for years, since the late '90s. The ProLiant series has been very innovative over the years, compared to some of the competition that are not so innovative. It's very dependable, and they keep maturing the product more and more. Especially now, I'm looking at the Hyper Converged 380, so they're re-inventing new ways to use that technology. That's a great thing right there, with the Hyper Converged space as well. The management of them is valuable. I specifically don't use them on a daily basis, I have my engineers that do since they can easily manage the servers.

It's more of a rack server, it's more of a commodity kind of device. I know what I'm buying when I buy from HPE. I get that reliable server, good service, good support, and it works.

This server is separate from the next one and I'd like it to be integrated so it becomes all-in-one.

It's very stable.

Over the years that I've been involved with a lot of different server manufacturers as far as rack managed servers, Cisco C-Series, IBM X-Series, and a lot of HPE. They're comparable in many ways but we choose a lot of HPE because we know we're getting a good, reliable product and at a good price point.

It was very easy.

I had HPE do it.

Look at the Hyper Converged as everything's going to virtual, so look at the ProLiant in a Hyper Converged space.

It’s very powerful, so we can offer good services for our network. It offers a very reliable framework for our judicial needs. Hyper-V software gave us more capacity to consistently meet our judges' needs. I think the most valuable feature, from my end, is that HP is a strong platform on which to host our services. It has good life-cycle performance and it will work continuously. In general, it’s a very good machine.

We’ve got 30,000 lawyers connecting every day, and we needed to serve them in an efficient manner. This is done by managing their dockets well and automating the process in a streamlined manner. By allowing our lawyers to automate the process, we are able to better serve their needs.

We honestly don’t have any problems. It’s a well-built machine, and there are no problems with the servers.

It’s pretty stable. We are using the DL-380 line, and we have 14 servers that go into three racks for two data centers.

It’s scalable, and it doesn’t take that much effort to do so. When you prioritize simplicity, it’s much easier to scale quickly and you don’t need to buy much more.

It was never a big problem for us. When a part breaks, it doesn’t take long for us to replace the part. It was easy for us to switch in third-party servers temporarily while waiting for the spare part to arrive from HP, and it would work just fine.

We were using Compac. In the public sector, when you buy, you do it through a public process. You can’t choose, you write the specifications of your needs, and then vendors offer their products. We do our buying through our RFP process.

Very easy. It’s always an easy thing for us to install, as our staff has good knowledge.

We also looked at Dell and Lenovo. We always look at multiple vendors to compare pricing, which, for the public sector, is extremely important. With HP, the prices weren’t too different from other vendors, but for us it was the right choice when considering the total cost.

We have a private-cloud data center, but we also host publicly for some customers. The software that we’re offering to our buyers is web-enabled for both internal and external users. So the servers needed to be powerful and simple to use.

For me, in the public sector, it was never that concerning for us to get the latest release of servers. Our users were satisfied with using older servers that served their needs just fine, and it saved us a lot of money as we didn’t have to pay the premium for the newest servers.

HP has been very good for us. I would recommend buying exactly what you need and the same line of the hardware to be consistent.

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.

Our customers are having additional VMware environments which we are converting into one because of the backup advantage. We can do the complete backup of VM within approximately eight to ten seconds.

The speed of the backups and having the system be immune to ransomware are the main advantages. Additionally, It is very user-friendly, repairable, flexible, and anybody can easily learn it.

When it comes to security there can always be room for improvement. If there was an option to build security into the system it would be an advantage.

The solution could improve by providing local support here in Sri Lanka, we do not have a local office.

I have been using this solution for approximately five years.

The solution is scalable.

We have approximately 500 customers using this solution.

The support structure from HPE is excellent. When comparing the support to Dell and Huawei, they cannot match the level of support HPE provides. I have experienced great response times and the engineers are very talented with precise information. When they give a solution to a problem we do not have to question if it will resolve the issue.

HPE frequently checks its competitors' capabilities to ensure they deliver the best service. This is something valuable this is why they are one of the best.

The installation is easy. The hardware installation takes approximately 20 minutes and the Windows installation takes another 20 minutes.

We have support engineers for the maintenance and implementation of the solution.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers are one of the best-selling solutions in this industry. There is not a license required for this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others.

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

The fact that they are consistent. I don't have to relearn for the 80 sites I support.

Stability and reliability. It's rare that it fails and, when it does, we have HPE support, with a four hour turnaround. It gets fixed.

I would like to see the simplicity of having the option of loading with something like SmartStart instead of having to make the external connection. There are issues with the startup that make it a little cumbersome. It takes us more time. Even though hardware and support might be rated higher, considering how much time we spend setting things up, that impacts us a lot. That's where the points get taken off my rating.

Scalability is about the number of drives and the number slots for memory and storage. We put in what we want. If it's not right, we put in more.

We have used technical support, and it can always be better. But everyone can. Sometimes I feel like I'm dealing with someone who is reading from a script, rather than with someone who understands the technology.

We knew we needed to invest in a new solution, because of lack of driver support. In the new Windows version, some drivers don't work with old MSAs and you have to get new ones. We used a previous generation of HPE servers before this.

When choosing a vendor, we look for support, reliability, durability, and not something that is end-of-life in a year.

I was involved in the installation. We ran it from the SmartStart CD to the online connection. (I don't know what they call it now.) It came with a supply kit and we could install it without an external connection. That's where we support it. In gaming, there is no connection to the outside world.

I would recommend HPE, but you have to be careful. Check if everything is compatible with what you currently have. You might upgrade part of a server, but not all of it. There can simply be incompatibility issues.

It's just a solid server. You put it up and it just kind of runs. It's not a whole bunch of jumping through hoops or anything to configure it. It's pretty straightforward. It's really all you can say about the ProLiant servers.

It gave me more insight to our actual data usage on our disk arrays. Before that, we were using the P2000 G3 disk array from HPE MSA series; just not a whole lot of insights in that.

Providing areas with room for improvement is a tough one. We're running AMD right now, so we're not running the latest gen. We're running a gen 8, something DL series. I honestly can't provide areas with room for improvement until I see the next version of what that's going to be. I mean, it’d be nice if AMD got off their butts and provided a new chip for us to use, but right now it's all Intel.

I wish there was a clearer-cut way to back up the BIOS and restore other machines. That'd be really the biggest thing I could see an improvement on, which I think they did fix in gen 9 and 10.

I rack them and throw them in there. Once you put them on a rack, as long as you don't mess with it, they just run.

With the DL series redundancy line, just keep throwing them in the rack and plug it into your cluster and it goes. You're not stuck on a blade mid-planner waiting for all your blades to go out of the mid-plane on the enclosure with half of the access; that's why we moved to the DL series. They give us that reliability and we can do redundancy with it; unlike the blade enclosures, where you have to purchase two separate blade enclosures to get genuine redundancy, which is a very steep purchase.

The technical support leaves a lot to be desired. I find it amazing that I paid for extra for support for the 3PAR and I wait on the phone for 30 minutes. For that extra support, when I'm paying for the premium support; so it's US-side support, US-based support, I should mention. If I call the regular number without the extra support, I talk to someone instantly.

It's, "What care plan are you on? What care plan are you on?" That's the question of HPE, "Are you on the SA plan?" "Are you on this plan?" You got to dig through this matrix of plans to figure out which phone are we going to call. It's absurd.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

I do all of the implementation myself.

We use the solution as a second node backup.

Compatibility is the best feature of the solution.

The technical support response time has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for 13 years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

We have 8,000 users.

Technical support sometimes takes time to resolve the issue.

Positive

We used IBM servers and switched to HPE ProLiant DL Servers because of the better price.

The initial setup is easy. I give the initial setup a ten out of ten. The deployment took between one and two days.

Three people were used for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of an external consultant.

I give the cost a ten out of ten. We pay an annual licensing fee.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We require two people for the maintenance.

I recommend the solution to others.