HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

I've been using HP for quite a few years, so my knowledge base of HP products is good. We like to standardize on them. We also have good relationships with HP vendors. That's the reason why we've been going with the HP ProLiants.

I really like the way we can do the storage in cells, for putting operating systems on them. The redundancy, as far as power supplies, hard drives, etc. Ease of use is key.

The business benefits - if we stick to one brand, you don't have to have as much people, as far as knowing different brands and stuff like that. 

Reliability - so we don't have to keep repairing them, we don't have downtime, which is key. Most of our plants are 24/7, so we've got to make sure that we don't have downtime. We used them in a Hyper-V environment, that adds in the uptime, as well.

Serial number tracking and trying to get that tied to my account. I have a terrible time with that with HP. I've got hundreds of servers around the country, and when I try to call in and keep the serial numbers straight and things like that. When I try to download drivers for them, the serial number doesn't come up, even though it's under extended coverage. I've not been happy with that part.

Reliability was the reason why we've had them for so many years - they've been reliable.

 The pricing has been good on them.

Dell was the primary competitor. We do have some plants that have Dell systems, but we probably are 90 - 95% HP, as far as company-wide. We've just been happy with the product, and there's not been a business reason to switch.

For me, they key things are reliability, and ease of use. Then the pricing's good as well.

I think the high availability features that are built into the server as our systems require a certain amount of uptime. Having to buy less servers because of built-in redundancy, means I have to buy less pieces of iron. It's a line that I'm comfortable with. I think it's something that HPE has put the investment into for the long-term.

I think it's just the generations that are built on the ProLiant line of servers.

The biggest thing I don't like about ProLiant, and this will be very trivial, is the rails. Every generation, even within the same family generation, the rails are different. It's a pet peeve. It’s not a technical thing. We do rack-mounted servers. Having to deal with different rack - or rail kits - is a real pain. It's not a huge technical thing, but that's the biggest thing for me.

For us it’s been a success year after year, generation after generation. I've used ProLiant for 15 -16 years.

Really none. Again, that may be just familiar with the tools from its initial iterations.

Really none. Again, that may be just familiar with the tools from its initial iterations.

I've never had a problem with support, and dealing with HP is always seamless.

The setup is so easy. It used to be SmartStart, but now they've changed that whole functionality. It's seamless to us. I don't really have any complaints from a "stand-it-up-and-support-it" perspective.

We looked at Dell versus HP. Proliant versus the R-series on the Dell side. When you look at product to product, servers are fairly closely matched. The supportability, or the management of the HP, versus bringing in Dell into my shop was a cost, from an educational perspective for my staff. Understanding the product inside and out was more important than bringing in a new partner.

I rate the ProLiant line very highly because you see the commitment of them building on it, and to me that's important.

It has easy manageability, and with iLO we are able to do everything remotely.

It's just a computer server, so we just use them for whatever things we can't virtualize so it's nothing very special in that regard as far as what sets HPEs apart from somebody else's there.

We're looking forward to OneView management, stuff like that to keep it all in check. But there's not really anything specific. It will provide a single pane of glass for management instead of going out to 50 different servers and configuring things so you get, set up a template, or do the different things through OneView. Just kick it off and replicate and automate what you're doing.

I haven't had any issues with that at all.

I haven't had any issues with that at all.

I've used other platforms in the past, but nothing specific. We wanted to have a single pane of glass for management and have consistency as much as we can so we stick with one vendor overall between blades, between rack mounts, between everything.

Proliant, they're fine. I mean it's compute, it's pretty hard to mess it up these days.

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 ProLiant servers to host our solution. We have around 150 users. 

We have had issues with ProLiant's intelligent provisioning. Sometimes, the drivers do not come up, so we have to install them manually. 

We started using ProLiant a few months ago.

HPE ProLiant is stable. 

HPE ProLiant is scalable. 

The setup can be complex or straightforward, depending on the server model. One person can complete the deployment in about four days. 

I rate HP ProLiant DL servers eight out of 10. I recommend HP ProLiant. It's a robust and scalable product. If you're having problems with the drivers, you can go to the HP forums and get some help. 

We use the server as our hyperconversion infrastructure. When I have an HPE server and network like Aruba, we can manage all the infrastructures as software defined by the OneView dashboard to simplify day-to-day tasks. 360 and 380 are used in small to medium-size businesses. Power Server uses a high processing environment that has heavy workloads. We are partners with HPE and I'm an IT infrastructure engineer.

The product is compatible and flexible for small and medium businesses. Scaling is a big advantage of this solution. It simplifies our processes. I think HPE will have an advantage in the next phase because of their new GreenLake technology that will simplify things for small and medium businesses.

I think the speed could be improved with OneView. At the moment, OpenManage is faster and has a better interface than HPE. 

I've been using this solution for three years. 

We have no real stability problems with the solution. For small and medium size businesses, ProLiant is a stable product.

We haven't had any problems with support. 

The initial setup is relatively straightforward. The configuration is very smooth and can be done in about half an hour. Maintenance depends on the infrastructure of the client and how the solution is configured.

Compared to some of the competitors, HPE ProLiant is slightly more expensive. We have customers who have decided to take a cheaper solution. 

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

We use HPE ProLiant DL Servers as part of our management solution and for some specific applications.

This solution has improved how our organization functions because it enhances the service delivery, as part of the managed solution.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers have good performance and they support different types of applications.

The support lifecycle for the product for the Telco application should be better.

I have been using HPE ProLiant DL Servers for approximately one year.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers have been stable.

In my experience, HPE ProLiant DL Servers are scalable.

We have approximately 45 users using the solution in my organization. We plan to increase usage.

We use a system integrator for support.

I would recommend this solution to others.

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

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.