HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

The most valuable features for us are remote management, high load, and resilience. We're a small team but we have servers in Moscow, Milan, and other places. This is a solution that allows us to be in those different places.

We only have support staff in North America and in Europe, so it enables us to offer support globally in our other offices. If there's an issue in the Sydney office, we can log on remotely, needing very little work. The main benefit is less manpower, which means that if there's an issue at 3:00 in the morning in the US, I can do the work rather than having to get somebody else to do the work.

I'd like to see more features in the iLO as it currently only provides a basic overview. Sometimes the part or serial numbers are missing, for example. We've had issues where power supplies or hard drives have become defective and the information gets pulled back into the error logs. We then have to physically look into the server. This is highly inconvenient and an annoyance which could be solved with more iLO features.

We get the odd hard drive or power supply or general failure issues, but there aren't major stability issues we've noticed.

If we've got clusters with a specific chip set, we can't easily introduce more once the chip becomes end-of-line. We have to build an entirely new cluster and migrate things over with the way we've implemented it.

We have technical support through a third party and through HP. It seems relatively straightforward -- just go online, fill in the details, and you normally get contacted in 30-60 minutes.

I've primarily been with HP throughout my career. I've used IBMs and Dells in the past, very briefly, but I've never really got on with them. I find that the support and the tools that come with HP servers are far better.

I've only been with the company about 18 months. The majority of the setup was done prior to me joining.

Make sure you get what you actually need rather than overpaying for something. Consider the different chips and memory that you can buy off the shelf. Make sure you're not over-spec or under-spec. Take your time.

Reliability and supportability are the most valuable features. We can upgrade our drivers and other software and smoothly to roll it out to the enterprise.

From my point of view, most of what we do with our servers is fairly common. So we could get the same solution elsewhere. It's about the manageability and the way that we are able to do it in the scope of the resources we have.

The ProLiant does what it needs to do. It's not entirely perfect. It could run at lower power, for instance, and it could run cooler. I guess all of that comes at a price.

These servers are very stable.

It scales in a kind of linear fashion so it's not amazing. We expected it to scale, and it does. But it's not like it scales very high. Each server is managed individually anyway so it's, maybe, not a fair question about ProLiant.

I think technical support is fair to good. Not outstanding, but fair to good. Although, having said that, we don't very often call them. So that is a good thing itself.

We've always had HPE servers, but as a proportion of our environment we have fewer HPE ProLiant servers now. We have fewer HPE hub servers than we did previously, because we're now a dual vendor. We started that about five years ago, but it's a double-edged sword. Now, we are in two environments and we have another vendor to manage. You drive down price, but it's two lots to manage. Learning how to handle this internally is quite difficult as well.

I was not involved in the initial setup. That's done by our engineering team.

We've got two vendors that have comparable products. We have essentially the same as the ProLiant with our alternative vendor. They have the same processor, the same type of memory, and the same memory speed. In terms of performance, we wouldn't really see that there's much difference between the two. The main differentiator is the manageability and getting it to and onto the floor.

My main advice is to standardize your internal offering. So, if you are buying something you're going to sell internally, which is effectively what I am doing, I'm selling a service, try to standardize it to a degree rather than having custom fixes for every internal customer. Then you've got some uniformity across your offering internally.

When choosing a vendor, there are two main requirements. One is for a solid, stable product. That's number one. The second thing is the ability to be able to make the deal. With our vendors, we have kind of a mixed bag. One of them doesn't really deliver on the stability and the manageability, but is excellent on service and cutting a deal. The other one is not too good at cutting the deal, but actually we know that that's the kit we want because it is very stable and very manageable.

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.