HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

We value the reliability of these servers.

These servers have provided good scale and performance for our environment.

• Remote management – the iLO 3 (and 4) are still lagging behind DELL in terms of features and value for money and they still do not have a HTML5 remote console.
• Firmware reporting is inconsistent – iLO provides no way of loading new firmware for devices other than the iLO itself. iLO has a very basic disk and RAID reporting with no configuration options at all.
• Out of our many HPE Proliant servers we have had very few failures outside of the common disk failures. We’ve had a few motherboards die but only a very low percentage.

We have used this solution for over three years.

We have not encountered any stability issues. These servers have been pretty stable over the years with only one or two minor firmware issues.

One issue is the way HPE do their drive cage expansion. With two 8-bay cages you need to use an SAS expander which adds cost and requires a PCI-e slot. Only the factory-ordered 25-bay model has this built-in. Other vendors such as DELL typically have the SAS expander built into the backplane which is better in my opinion.

Technical support is good. Most support tickets are handled quickly and replacement parts are generally quick to arrive. Sometimes dealing with language difficulties in their helpdesk can be problematic and often there is downtime with “please send me your logs” back and forth. Hopefully this will improve with the new iLO remote support functionality.

We have used previous HPE/HP generations since G1 as far as I can remember. We typically switch at the time of an asset refresh.

Setup was mostly straightforward, although as I mentioned, the iLO could do with providing more control, e.g. RAID/disk configuration like DELL have. Their intelligent provisioning does help a lot, particularly on their Gen9 range.

The worst part about HPE hardware is their pricing and licensing model. Prices are typically 20% higher than other vendors such as DELL and many of their advanced features are licensed separately, such as iLO advanced and Oneview, adding further cost.

We evaluated some other options. While we were purchasing a lot of HPE hardware we did consider other vendors but it isn’t always easy when you have invested in HPE tools to manage your server hardware. We have considered DELL and Lenovo.

Get multiple quotes, shop around. Keep your management/monitoring tools as vendor agnostic as possible to allow you to be more flexible in your hardware vendors.

It is very advanced at low cost, with good service and a guarantee.

It gives you what you need with peace of mind because the system works. Service usually is provided within four hours.

It is very stable. I see that it works. I don’t find many problems that require calling a technician to solve. It gives you peace of mind.

What we usually do is evaluate our customers’ needs and find a solution that suits them. We don’t sell the same product to everybody, but we consider the size of the company and other factors. It is scalable for small businesses and large.

Technical support is fine, but sometimes they don’t answer that quickly. Sometimes you need to make one phone call after another and wait until they get back to you. Once they do, everything works.

As far as I know, the deployment is smooth and easy. If not, it goes to another department. Usually our technician can help us from far away. We don't even have to come physically. The software and the hardware work fine. Once it's working, it's working.

Often our customers consider Dell as an alternative solution because of the price. Customers say that HPE is much more advanced technically, mainly in terms of storage. It also has much more storage compared to Dell.

• Scalability
• Availability
• It’s robust
• Clustering
• Virtualization

I can do with it almost everything within minutes.

It reduced costs and time.

I would say it's not the top of the line, but it's near the top. We had some cracks in the past but stability is high. It's not outstanding, but it's high.

For these kinds of features themselves, scalability is OK, but I expect much better performance from the scalability. There are some features that are quite slow and we have faced some issues with them in the past.

We have used technical support twice and it was slow. I would give it a rank of 2/5. They are a big organization, but the support teams are very, very slow.

Management decided to move to this solution. I inherited this from them. We were using a solution from IBM. We negotiated a better price with HPE.

Make sure you negotiate yourself a very good service contract.

The most valuable features are its flexibility and stability.

The main benefit was the low price, so it saved us a lot of money.

We are not looking for new features in the DL260. Instead, we are looking at Synergy.

Compared to blade servers, it could use more flexibility to expand with new features, and to connect new storage systems and so on. It’s not so easy and not always possible.

We have had no downtime. It is generally up.

We haven’t really had to scale the product.

Most of the time, technical support was efficient and very fast. Usually, it required a hardware replacement, so it worked every time.

We generally switched from Novell to Microsoft; and then we used HPE. We also previously used Compaq, which I think was part of HPE.

We never looked at Dell or IBM.

The initial setup was very simple.

Buy Synergy. :)

Look for the flexibility of the system; and get everything from one partner.

The most important criteria when we choose a vendor is the range of products available. HPE has a huge range of products: switches, servers, storage systems, and so on.

We find it very easy to train people to use them and their reliability is very high. It’s usually cheaper than the competitor. We don't have any one vendor that we always use, so we tend to go out there and look at the best solution based on metrics such as price, quality, reliability, and HPE usually comes out on top.

Our organization itself is in bit of a transition at the moment. So we're moving towards more up-to-date solutions for our infrastructure. Anything that we do to improve reliability and availability of our services is always good from an IT point of view.

We're looking at things like UCS just now and we are looking for what would blend with our UCS deployment. I know that HPE are heavily involved in that, so it's been a lot of consultation and a lot of fun to get all of that to work together.

Stability is excellent. I've used HPE for best part of 15 years now, including all their data center solutions, and never had any problems. Any problems that do exist are quickly rectified; that's all you need.

Scalability depends on what you buy into. We are scaling out our sales, so it's a bit of legwork to get it done. There are other options to buy into more of a hyper-converged kit, but we haven't yet done that. We're looking at that kind of stuff.

We get our technical support through a third-party.

We are willing to look at anything. Just now, we do have some Dell and some Cisco kit. We tend to go with major suppliers, rather than any bespoke vendors. We certainly don't have any of the kind of model hyper-converged kit, like SimpliVity, or Nutanix. So across the board, it's either HPE or Dell. We went with HPE because their technical support is of a higher grade. You would get more reliability and better support through HPE.

I've used them for over 15 years now and all data-server solutions and there have been issues, but they have always been solved quickly. Dealing with HPE as a company is always nice to do.

In a vendor, good technical support and product reliability are key. If you ask my head of finance, it will be money. Availability, support, reliance, and reliability are absolute.

We've just found them so reliable and used them for so many years. We have found the quality and backup support reliable. They just tend to do what we want to do with them. So, they are very flexible, upgradable and versatile. Sometimes, you do have some issues but they tend to get repaired/replaced/fixed within a good time.

For us, it is more of reliability even though we have hardware maintenance.

Generally, we'll do 10 calls a month globally. With our offices all over the globe, 10 calls in a month are very minimal since we have 600 pieces of DL hardware. It's quite small.

A lot of where they can improve the product would be related to hot flexibility. If you want to change a DIMM, you have downtime to upgrade. It would be good if you could have hot DIMMs and hot CPUs, also for hard disk power supplies and bits. Hopefully, then there shall be no downtime. The biggest problem with our user base is downtime.

Stability is very good. Once the product is in, it seems to work. We do general maintenance. It's good.

Scalability can be a little bit difficult sometimes due to changing of CPUs which we try to over-spec. We don't need to scale up; we tend to replace after three years.

It gives us more because with passing time as technology increases, things get faster and better for us. There is more improvement.

We have looked at Dell and just recently looked at Dell FX2.

We will probably stick with HPE because of the long-time factor that we've had with them and other factors such as reliability and knowing the product. We know we're looking at HPE ConvergedSystem for our offices and that will be the next stage.

I've been in my company for 14 years. Initially we were using Compaq and now moved over to HPE. Thus, the setup took place a long time ago.

Have no doubts you'll be getting a product that will work. It will do what you want, as long as you follow the guidelines and best practices. You should speak to other people. The product will just tick along for its lifecycle. You will get the odd issue but it's fixable.

We've been more than happy with the DL product that we've used. We never buy them when they first come out; we always wait 6-12 months to buy them. Let somebody else do the testing during the first six months, even though they should be tested.

The most valuable features are redundancy, flexibility, and compatibility with operating systems.

The cost and the user experience are two of the main benefits.

In the next release, I would like to see more redundancy of the CPU. That would be great.

The solution is very stable. We have had it for more than ten years, for several generations of the product. It's a very stable solution.

The first version was not so scalable. Today’s versions are very scalable. We are very, very happy with this new version.

We have a maintenance contract for support from the HPE team around the world. We don't use it so much because the solution is very stable. When we do use it, the quality depends on the country. For example, in France, it works very well. However, when we try it in China, it can be a little bit tricky.

We used another solution from another company. However, the cost vs. benefit was not so good. For that reason, we switched to HPE services.

I was involved with the setup. It was very easy to apply.

We worked with Dell and IBM, but we chose HPE.

When selecting a vendor, it's good to have a real relationship in order to get a reliable, ascertainable, and a flexible solution. With this solution, you can close your eyes and you can use it because it's a very stable and personable tool. There is a real relationship between HPE and the customer, and they support you during all the steps you take.

The commonality between the systems is very valuable, and it is very easy to manage.

It helped us a lot because it's a very stable solution.

It's not changing very much in terms of handling from generation to generation. So every time they introduce a new ProLiant generation, it's very easy for our operations team to adopt it; and it's very easy for us to adapt to the new features.

Because of the commonality between systems, we also have a very lean and optimized process for replacing people when resources need to be moved around. I think that's the main benefit of the ProLiant platform.

My personal opinion is that the rack-mount kits in generation four were the best. The current ones are kind of overcomplicated to mount, so I would really like to go back to how the rack mount worked when we had the G4. This would really be an improvement.

It's rock solid. I have never seen a ProLiant server breaking down for no reason.

I think for us the scalability is definitely sufficient. We have the two-socket series and the four-socket series. We did not look beyond that because it's just not in our requirements; but we are fine with what we have.

They are very efficient, fast and friendly. They know their products. It was a good experience.

When I joined the company, we were on Compaq ProLiant and we stayed with it. For HP, the ProLiant series is still a strategic product. If you look at other vendors, say IBM, they even sold the X86 server business. So there are not too many vendors in the business who have a very strategic X86 server series, and HP is obviously one of them.

It's a data center. Things go in and out. I was a system administrator myself many years ago, so I set up a lot of HPE ProLiant systems. They were very easy to set up in the past. They have become even easier. I would say that half of the strength of the ProLiant servers is the software and the additional tools that HPE provides.

IBM fell off our short list of vendors because they just gave up the business.

Dell didn’t have the same level of stability, maintainability, and range of products that we have with the ProLiant series.

Investigate some use case scenarios relevant for your daily business perspective, for example:

• What do you need to do to change defective hardware in your system?
• What do you need to do to upgrade your systems?

Check the workflows:

• How easy is it to change the parts?
• How easy is it to access the server?

Do you have the right documentation already in the server, like it is for HPE; or do you need external sources to know what you are doing?