HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

These servers provide us with very good performance, and the blade technology allows us to do high-performance computing. It's also a really useful product for us because we need its flexibility in adding new components and blades to our existing infrastructure. That's very important for us.

The Generation 9 servers have the new UEFI firmware version instead of the traditional firmware, but we don't have that on our servers. It would be great if they could run UEFI because they have longer boot times, so there's room for improvement there.

They deploy without any issues.

We've had issues where some components fail, but overall the system runs well.

We've had no issues with scalability.

They're very, very responsive, calling us back within 10 minutes when we open a case. Normally, they'll have the problem fixed the next.

We also have a service contract where the HP guys will take care of things like firmware updates. This helps us a lot in our daily work because we don't have to worry about those particular tasks.

With blade technology, there are the blades and then the whole chassis surrounding the blades. This type of technology is more complex than the normal standalone servers.

If you're looking for high-performance computing, then blade technology is the best you can get. Also, if you're looking for GPU power, then these are the servers for you.

We've used HP servers for a while now, and the most valuable features of them all, the DL series included, are the price and the quality. HP provides the best quality for the price.

We were using Dell before and we switched because HP has a range of products that, from our point of view, is exactly what we need. It supports a special power converter that's essential to us that Dell just doesn't have. We don’t need to do a lot of maintenance on the servers, so we need less people needed to manage them. HP provides us with great service as well, which helps us save on costs and other resources.

Although I compare them often to the Dell servers we used to have, these HP servers could be improved with faster memory. They perform well enough, but I might pay more for faster performance.

We've had no problems deploying these servers.

The stability is very good, 8/10.

Scalability is also very good, 8/10.

Technical service is outstanding, 9/10.

The initial setup was very easy and straightforward.

We evaluated Dell and Lenovo.

For us, the iLO feature is essential because it provides us with server management capabilities and we have a distributed-base installation.

We're able to provide greater support services outside of normal business hours, as well as at sites where we don't have service groups.

The big challenge for us is our deliveries for certain countries, such as Australia and some areas of Asia.

We've deployed these servers without any issues.

I haven't noticed any increase or decrease in the performance and stability of the servers. I'd say it's very stable and we don't generally have any problems.

The range of available services from these servers is quite varies, so it's easy to find the right machine for the job. Whenever we've needed to scale, we're able to find the right model for us.

The technical support is very good, especially for onsite support for hardware problems. They're always reliable.

We previously used Dell, but we switched because of pricing and availability.

The initial setup was pretty straightforward.

We don't have an offsite team that helps, so we managed implementation internally with our own in-house team.

I'd recommend them, but make sure you've planned the right management options, power supplies, and other technical specifications. Make sure, also, that you get the extended warranty.

When compared to other servers and even other HP products, the most valuable feature we saw is that the performance is definitely better and it's easier to manage. I can't say that we've faced any problems after standing up these servers.

It's very important for our business that we have a server that's stable and reliable. These servers have been very, very stable and are performing well for us.

The biggest area of improvement I can think of is with more fiber connections. Adding more fiber connections would make them even better.

We've used it for more than six years.

They deploy very well without any problems.

It's stable, the most important factor for us.

They are supposed to be highly scalable servers, but we're using them in a utilization environment. In a utilization environment, I can't say that they're scalable.

Technical support is fantastic.

We evaluated other vendors and compared them with the same configurations, same amount of memory, same CPUs, and HP servers performed the best.

Perform a comparison between the same level of quality, same level of service, and same level of performance, and choose the product. I think you will find it the most suitable one for you.

The most valuable features for us are the stability and scalability of these servers. However, what's truly key is the support we get.

They're very slow to boot up. And we can have issues with the driver sets for all operating systems as well. The blade enclosures themselves, though, are leading-edge technology.

I think the problem is that we're not geared up for automating the build process. We're still manually deploying servers.

We're still using the Gen 8 blades, though we've bought many of the new ones and we're going to install them soon.

We've had quite a few issues doing the initial builds and getting the operating system up and running.

It is very stable. HP products generally are.

It's scalable because you're not using actual discs within storage. You scale by adding additional services. The new Synergy product is going to be much better.

This is the key for us. The support from OCSL is excellent. We don't use them often.

They take a long time to set up and they're quite complicated to build as well.

We're pretty much an HP shop.

The DL380 generation 8 has slots for hard drives in the front. This really separates it from competitors such as Dell. I need that kind of local storage space for each server, which I can make from eight drives. This is like a RAID 6 set-up so that I don't have to worry about just one broken hard drive. We'll automatically get an SNMP problem error from the broken drive.

Very simply, we needed a stable server, and this is a stable server.

I'm worried that with the new model, HP will get rid of the processor ILO port that enables us to have a separated management network. I don't think it'll be feasible to have some models with the ILO port and some without.

I'd also like to see faster memory chips.

I also think that there's an issue with the Smart Array firmware, which is the RAID controller. It corrupts RAID 6 so that if you have an entire setup that's based on RAID 6, the whole RAID will also be corrupted.

We haven't had any deployment issues.

It's quite stable.

I don’t need to scale. Their cage is stand-alone boxes.

I haven't used them for these servers, but I've found them slow for other things.

We were using Dell, which were almost the same as the DL380.

It's straightforward. Putting that kind of server into the rack now is something like 50 minutes.

They are very easy to build and very reliable. On a server, that's the most important thing: reliability. Everything is locked together. They're just nice and quick and easy.

Servers are all about reliability and the HP ProLiant is well priced. You can get other reliable servers, but you're going to pay much more. These are very well priced for what they are.

I find the software for the servers can sometimes be a bit flaky. Upgrades can be flaky, too. For example, you get the HP easy set-up when you want to set up one from scratch. It's not uncommon that when you have to phone HP, they say, "Well you can't use the latest version, go back two versions," or that kind of thing. I would say where they control the servers, that's where they let themselves down. They let themselves down on their software.

They're very stable. With HP servers, you turn them on and you can forget about them. That's why we use them; that's why we like them. Very rarely will HP servers actually go down and give you a hassle.

Scalability depends which ones you buy. They are scalable and you can add to them the whole time. You can add drives and processors. You just have to make sure that the server you buy is scalable because there's no point buying a single processor server if you think one day you might need four processors. You've got to allow for scalability when you buy the server. You've got to be thinking forward.

On the whole, I would say their tech support is quite good. They always come back to you. The only people I can really compare them to in that price range would be Dell. You can't compare as the HP tech support is much, much better than Dell. It's easier to get through and they're more helpful when you actually get them on the phone.

At this price range we've bought Dell and we've bought IBM. We wouldn't go back to either of them. We would, however, go back to HP with no problem. If someone really wants a cheap server, they should go with Fujitsu because it's good value for money. But you can't compare their build quality to HP. HP build quality is much better.

Dell servers are very nice although sales service is diabolical. IBM -- just didn't like the build. Very fiddly, not easy to put together, wasn't intuitive. HP servers -- you get the parts and it's intuitive. You know exactly what you're doing; it's easy. Also, the IBM servers were very, very noisy. With Fujitsu, it just comes down to price.

They're reliable and they never break. They're very manageable. The management tools that are available are excellent. We've looked at other solutions in the past, and we always conclude that we don't want to move away from ProLiant and the BladeSystem. They just work, which is basically what our requirement is.

Particularly in the pre-HP days, with Compaq, we used to buy bigger servers, but we've got to a point now where we basically only buy two types of servers, either the ProLiant DL380 or the BL460 Blades. We don't buy any other hardware.

We're a very small IT group within the enterprise and we haven't got the money or the time to be spending tons of time configuring stuff out and messing around with it, fixing it when it breaks, and that kind of thing. It's a low-maintenance solution. Essentially, we don't have to do much of that with ProLiant, so it's absolutely a good fit for us.

The only improvement would be cost. If they keep driving the costs down -- and I don't think they're expensive for what you're getting -- they'd keep everybody happy.

We've been using HP ever since they were available as Compaq.

We've never had any deployment issues.

We've used them for many, many years and we get very few hardware issues.

It scales just fine.

They're really good. I've never had any issues. The few times that we do have to call HP, they always help us out.

It's quite hard comparing other solutions because I've been solely on ProLiant for so long now I don't have too much to compare to. Although, I looked at Fuji Systems a couple of years ago and it's just massively complex for no apparent reason. I don't see a better fit for our company.