HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

Previously, I was working as an IT contractor for several companies, so the model depended on the size of the business. They were using the smaller, cheaper series of HP ProLiant servers. My current company is relatively large, so they use rack-mounted DL servers that are designed for bigger companies.

HP servers are deployed physically in your office, and you need to maintain them. You are responsible for keeping them online and servicing the end-users at all times. We have about 1,000 users. It's a hybrid environment. We have the same services on the cloud and on-premises, so they are redundant and faster.

HP ProLiant servers provide redundant solutions for almost everything. You can set up multiple power supplies, with a primary power source and a secondary power supply connected on UPS. If the power goes out in the building, the UPS will supply power to the host at all times. The solution can run on batteries for many hours, depending on your battery and UPS capacity. 

ProLiant servers also offer multiple networking interfaces, so they can be connected to various network equipment concurrently, allowing you to avoid disruptions from the network or internet connections. They are redundant in every area.

I would like to replace a hard drive that might be saved on the fly, on the server that I'm using currently, but I can't do that. I'm forced to power off my virtual machine, turn off the server, disconnect it from the power, replace the drive, rebuild the storage, and power it on again. 

That's a lot of downtime, and it affects the services. I know that HP provides this kind of solution to another series for a bigger budget of course. 

I've used HP ProLiant servers for at least six years, but I worked with a different series in the past. 

ProLiant servers are highly stable. They're redundant in every area. We have counted on them for years, and we are satisfied with them.

I would say ProLiant servers scale well. Servers come with multiple storage loads that you probably won't ever use, but they are available to extend your storage if necessary. 

They have removable power supply interfaces that let you extend your redundancy. This applies to CPUs. You can add CPUs, memory, etc. 

They have been using ProLiant since before I joined the company. I don't know why they decided to use HP. However, I've used Dell servers as well. Personally, I think HP servers are easier to implement and maintain. Maybe that's why.

Setting up ProLiant servers is straightforward. In the past, you needed deep knowledge to configure a server from scratch, but now they have a temporary web interface that allows you to connect to the server and configure everything on a wizard-like installer. If you know what you want to achieve, the implementation is easy.

Once you get the HP part from the vendor, it takes a couple of hours to put it on the rack, install the hard drive and CPU, install the operating system, and connect it to your network.

You only need to pay for the hardware, but you can also purchase a license for Integrated Lights-Out technology, which gives you the option to connect to the server like you are physically on site connected with the mouse, keyboard and screen directly on the server. 

It's an extra feature that you need to pay for, but we are not using it. It's an amazing feature, but I have no idea how much the license costs.

I rate HP ProLiant DL Servers 10 out of 10 because I never had a breakdown in six years, and the price is decent. ProLiant gives you something that's stable, reliable, and powerful for an excellent price.

The only thing that we might need is an extra interface to connect the server to the network with the fiber instead of a copper connector. It's something that we never did. And I would advise someone to implement this from the beginning because it might be a bit hard to configure. It will be fantastic if you do it before it goes into production. 

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.

We do work for defense and government clients. 

ProLiant servers are more reliable than other platforms.

My customers are tilted toward GPU users, and the mixed version of the enabled hard drives require — flash drives, SSD, NNL, and PLAS — all mixed and matched in a single box. These are requirements I've already shared with the HPE account manager. 

Customers want the tiering concept inside a box, which is currently part of the storage system, but customers require it in a server. They want the operating system over PLAS and the IO-related things on SSD.  The rest of their data is on NLSF. 

I've worked with ProLiant servers for 10 years. 

Stability is where HPE dominates competitors like Dell and Cisco. The servers are highly reliable, and we are impressed with the technology HPE offers.

Scalability in terms of GPUs and storage is a concern. 

I have a direct connection with the HPE account manager responsible for the government and defense verticals. I am happy with the person. We rely on our own in-house support for servers. However, we use a professional service for storage and three-power or CI systems.

HPE servers are highly user-friendly. It takes two or three hours from start to finish for bare-metal installation. With virtualization, it'll take four to six hours.

We are working with the customers in government and defense, where HPE already has a foothold. The requirements come from the customer, and they use HPE, so we do, too. We have to consider the customer's stability and comfort level. 

I rate HPE ProLiant Servers nine out of 10. In my country, it's better for customers to rely on the vendor who delivers the solution. We think the HPE server is better than others for that.

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.

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.

Our primary use case of HPE ProLiant DL Servers is virtualization. We also host three servers on it: our active directory, file server, and web server. 

One of the most valuable features is iLO, which is very good. Another thing is the HPE support is very good. 

We have been using this solution for two and a half years. 

This solution is stable, and we use it daily. 

HPE ProLiant is scalable. 

In our organization, we have 100 users of this solution. We are using it for our entire data center. 

The technical support is very good. For the initial level, they provided me very good support for the installation of the servers and all the things after that. Somehow one hard disk crashed, so we logged a call at HPE and an engineer came the next day to replace the hard drive and explain how to prevent this type of issue. So, we have been a customer of HPE for more than 10 years. 

The initial setup is a little bit complicated, but after that, it's very easy to deploy the server. 

We had a third-party vendor help us with deployment. 

We have seen a ROI. We have improved because there is an entire platform moved on virtualization. Also, there is good support of HPE, so we have minimized our data center downtime 0.1%. 

This was a one-time purchase for us because it's hardware that we purchased from HPE. There aren't any licensing costs. 

I rate this product a nine out of ten. To those considering implementation, I would advise them to calculate their commercial as well as their data load and user load. After that, you can choose a solution from HPE. 

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.

We are using it for serving the VMware environment and creating all of our virtual servers and desktops.

The GPU units, processor speed, and capabilities are most valuable. Desktop video conferencing is also valuable. It supports desktop video conferencing much better for graphics.

They should work with Microsoft to make licensing costs better. That's because the physical servers have processors with all these cores, and Microsoft now licenses Windows virtual server desktops based on the number of cores and the serving servers. So, if you got to build 10 or 20 servers on that desktop, you got to license them all with Microsoft. They should have a partnership with Microsoft to decrease the virtual licensing of servers in partnerships so that when you purchase the servers, you also get licensing for Microsoft on top of them. That's because it gets very expensive to license virtual operating systems to run on physical servers.

I have been using this solution for 10 years, but these are refreshed. So, they're new. We have hardly used them.

It is solid. We didn't face any issues.

Its scalability is great. We have 150 users, and it is being used heavily. We are taking every bit of life out of it we can. We don't have any plans to increase its usage.

Their technical support is great. It is fantastic.

We have only used HPE.

It is easy. Getting them up and running is a piece of cake, but getting the VMware environment operation on them is very complicated.

It has been a couple of months so far, and we're still working on it.

We are implementing it in-house. We are growing that skill internally. I got a rockstar guy doing all that. I don't do it on my own. 

For its maintenance, we have one network administrator.

They need to work with Microsoft to make the licensing costs better and more efficient.

It is a good product. I would rate it a nine out of 10 because it has good support and good performance.