HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

There are concerns about the HPE team in the Southeast Asia region, suggesting a need for improvements in terms of responsiveness. There have been instances where the response time was slow, causing challenges during urgent situations. Its stability also needs to improve. 

I have been using the product for five years. 

We haven't received any complaints about the tool's stability. It works properly in a five-year lifetime. 

I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten. 

The product's competitor is Dell. 

The solution's deployment was easy. 

The solution's pricing is high. It needs to be more flexible. The flexibility would be beneficial for our clients, especially in a competitive market. Adding additional features and addressing complex requirements on top of the price can be challenging for us as a reseller.

In project tenders, system requirements are specified, including the number of cores, storage, and personnel needed. The information is shared with the HPE team to prepare a BQ specifying the server model to be used. The tool is a good physical server. 

The choice of server category or type is not specific and varies case by case. Customers may initially purchase higher servers than their immediate requirements, anticipating future use cases. It's a complex decision and depends on individual circumstances.

The product's roadmap seems to be good. Its deployments are mostly on-prem due to government regulations.

The product is purchased specifically for security solutions, not for the entire data center stack. It is recommended for medium to enterprise-level customers. 

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We have several HPE ProLiant DL Server models in use, DL360, 380, and 580.

We use the servers for multiple business services.

The quality and the technical support are the most valuable features.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement.

I am currently using HPE ProLiant DL Servers.

The solution is scalable.

The solution is expensive.

I give the solution a ten out of ten.

We have one SQL server, one repository called Solidworks Designs, and one called Karmatic.

The most valuable feature of the solution is scalability.

The licensing fees are expensive and have room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for three years.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We purchased enough resources to ensure we could meet our requirements.

The initial setup is straightforward and took a few minutes. The deployment was simple. We only needed to install a Windows server.

The implementation was completed in-house.

We have to pay for an annual license which is expensive.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We have twenty people using the solution in our organization and plan to increase that number to 30.

We require five people to maintain the solution consisting of managers and automation engineers.

I recommend the solution to others.

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.

The most valuable feature is consistency to the cost. We understand what we're going to get, and we also understand the price-point that we're entering into.

Some of the features I'm already seeing over there, i.e., really moving more towards a software layer that helps us to manage the infrastructure that we're purchasing from HPE. To use a competitor's term, as to what Nutanix is doing, HPE should be moving in a similar direction, which they are now, both in regards to a free product and a paid product; I'm actually very happy about that.

We've been using the HPE Proliant DL380s for seven years or more, and the DL580s only during the last year.

The product has been consistently stable. We have had no issues.

Scalability with the hardware alone requires a bit more than just hardware, but we are using it in a scalable architecture. If you look at what we do with our EBS system, we use the DL580s with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) to allow it to scale.

The technical support is very good. We recently just had to use it and the items were resolved in a timely manner, so I've been happy with the support.

With some of the new software changes, the setup is getting easier and more consistent for us to apply across the globe; it's improving for sure.

The most important criteria while selecting a vendor are the costs and then, the other long-term factors such as reliability and quality.

We do actually evaluate solutions every year. We still buy other servers but not as many as we buy from HPE. Still, we do buy some stuff from Dell, just because we're in three regions of the world, but most of our stuff goes through HPE.

We're a bit of an HPE shop. We've used Dell in other places, too, but generally, in terms of the price-point and quality of service it has always led us to HPE, so these are the main driving points for us.

For companies like us, we want more than a server. When we buy servers then we want some level of software orchestration on top of it to help us deploy OS or hypervisor plus some form of high-level capacity/environment review. This is sort of happening with Generation nine and ten hardware but not as refined as what you get with Nutanix.

We value the ease of management in terms of the firmware. The hardware is very toolless to work with, so when you have to do a part replacement it's very hands-on friendly. You don't have to grab any quick tools nearby to swap out modules and such.

The layout is quite nice as, for the most part, you don't have to tear the machine half apart to get to a piece. So, sometimes when they have on-site technicians to replace a part, we don't have to send a senior technician out there to do it. They can pretty much easily find it and get the parts swapped.

Parts fail, that's part of the IT business, but the ability to be able to get in there quickly and get parts swapped is a very big benefit.

I've already seen quite a bit here at the conference that looks good. Well, one of the areas that I really am excited about is the iLo 5 (integrated lights out technology) on the HP blade technology where they're allowing a lot of the firmware flashing to take place through the iLo, which means I don't have to go through the OS, so that beats a lot of our servers.

Run Unix in a form that we can't reboot them more than twice or maybe less in a 30-minute maintenance window. The fact that I can flash a lot of the hardware from the iLo and not have to go through the OS means a far reduced outage time maintenance window, so that really helps take the pressure off us.

We have machines that go back quite a long time in terms of almost back to the mid-nineties on some of the servers. So stability-wise, yes we've had some pretty good results even in the old, old hardware from HP specifically. So yes, we've been happy with them so far.

Scalability has been pretty good. We just buy more. We just buy a lot of everything. So scalability hasn't really been an issue for us because we have pretty sizable data centers, but yes, certainly it has been a good product overall.

I have used technical support quite a few times. It has been quite useful.

HP has been very helpful in terms of getting a technician on-site, and parts available if we need them. They have always offered us a technician to actually do the repair, so that takes a lot of the workload off us.

Sometimes on some of the higher-end systems where there is a lot more money involved in the hardware, it just helps to take the pressure off to where we don't have to really put our hands on that equipment, especially when you're talking about a server that costs over $20,000. I'd rather have the HP guy work with it just for liability reasons.

We have a different team that does all the initial setup.

So the two biggest competitors are primarily, obviously Dell and HP. If I had to compare the two - I was at the Dell conference not too long ago just for investigation purposes - I would say that HP, in the long run, from my experience as I've worked with companies that have both, HP is just more stable, in the long term.

Like I said before, you want to avoid hardware fails, right? That's just a part of IT, but how the customer is being handled is important in terms of if we have a bad blade or we have a bad motherboard, because every now and then we get a blade that's just bad out of the box, right? The fact that the customer or the vendor, whoever that is, if they come out and do the right thing, just swap the part out with very little hassle, that's all right.

I don't have to go through a purchasing program where I have to do a repurchase or return process, and that's really helpful in terms of just doing the right thing, getting the parts swapped out, reducing our downtime, and that's our biggest paying point with the customer. Because we have customers too that scream when our stuff goes down, right?

If they're not using HP today, I would highly suggest them to take a deep look at it, in the long run, even just as a starter. I'm not saying that Dell or others are bad, it's just, in the long run, I like the hardware layouts better in HP.

We've got a whole lot of DL380's which are the standard 2U server. We've been switching more over to the blades using the BL460's. But, the ProLiant line all along just works, they're tanks. About the only thing we've ever had to fix is drives that go bad after a while, but usually that mostly happened after a heat incident. They just run. We've got some that have been out of warranty for four - five years and they're still running. G4s we go back to and love we have no reason to change.

For certain applications that we have to have for external connectivity it runs great. Our main security system has one of these little USB dongles that starts off the back end, I could make it on the blade, but then it'd block up one blade, so having a DL380 is great for us. It does everything we ever need.

I think we started buying HP servers ten years ago, and we've got a couple that may have been from that time that are still working. They're running great. Now we're not running it really heavy, but it's solid. I still like the 3.5 inch drives better than the 2.5 inch drives. They seem to last longer. Other than that, we've been very stable, very solid. You don't have to worry about, "Hey, is my server down today?"

ProLiant's a little tough. We realized that the other day, that we were running out of space on our C: drive. It's like, I can't just add to a physical drive. We ended up having to move that thing, making it a physical to virtual conversion. As far as other parts, if we need more storage on it, you can always add RAM. For the most part with the ProLiants, we generally buy it for a certain purpose and that's what it does so we don't have to do as much. On the SANs, we can always add an extra node, they'll allow you to connect that way. If we need to get larger, we can.

Most of them, we don't really have any issues there, but if you lose a drive and it's still on warranty, we get one. It works.

We were using Dell. Dell was the state recommended choice. Everybody said, "Oh, you got to buy Dell because we've got a relationship with them." They got my boss really mad over some stupid stuff. It was like two-hundred dollar set of rails, and so we said, "Okay, let's try HP's." We loved the first one, and we've been buying them, and Dell has been trying to get back in the door ever since and we just tell them to go away. It's like, "No, I'm not fixing what isn't broken. This works great, so we don't care what you've got."

We've been doing the ProLiants forever. It's getting a little tougher now. It used to be, you had everything on a CD or DVD, you pop that in, you run. Or you had the SmartStart disk. Now, you got their onboard administrator. They got the intelligent deployment guide or whatever the heck it's called. Sometimes it's a little less intuitive. Sometimes it's where technology can bite you, and it might be helpful to have a guy go on and say "Do this." Otherwise you pull it out of the box and go, "Okay, now what do I do?" We work through it, but some of my techs have had a little bit of trouble. I gave them a new server and said,"Deploy it.", and they're like "Well, how do I put an OS on it?" It took us a little while to figure that out. I know that somebody's thinking, "Hey, this is really great. It's all here, it's all inside." Great, some of us need a little more direction sometimes.

I think we looked around, but really it was Dell servers or HPs were about all that we had considered. Since we weren't going to buy Dell anymore, we said, "Well, we want to go with HP." We were never going to be one of those, "I'm going to go buy parts and make something." And, I know some guys do that and it's great, but we like to have at least the ability to go call somebody to get somebody to come and help. That's been probably chief on why we did that.

We've been extremely happy all along. I don't see a reason to go anywhere else. I don't see a reason to even try different things. For us right now getting adventurous is we bought a DL360 instead of a 380 and it's like, wow, that's a little small.

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.