HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

There are two sets of servers that we use. We have several sites where we have VMware clusters using the servers, and also we have standalone servers that we use for physical security applications.

They are both performing very well.

We are on a journey with that. iLO, in particular, helps us manage the servers better, especially as a lot of them are remote from where the IT staff are. We have some locations where we just have not got IT presence at those locations, so iLO really helps with that. We are starting to use HPE OneView to manage them further, so that is where we are going with it. Hopefully, to go and be able to manage them.

1. Obviously, they perform what we want them to do.
2. The added extras, I particularly like iLO.
3. Just to be able to manage them and get information about the servers. That is really good.

At the moment, I feel that there is more there that we could be using rather than things that are missing.

The servers are very stable. They have been in place for about six to seven years. We are refreshing stuff. We are about to refresh a lot of the vSphere servers because they have come to their end of life. They are about five years old, so we are gonna put in some hyper-converged servers instead. 

In theory, they are expandable. So yeah, they fit our needs and I am sure if things changed, when we needed more capacity, we could get it. I am confident of that. 

Technical support is very good. I can't complain. We have had very few incidents, but when we have needed to, we can get through to them and get the right support.

I was not involved in the initial setup. Though, we are going through a new setup and I will be involved in that.

With the DL380, you can't go wrong. There is no risk to go and take them.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Trusting that you will always have the right level of service. Support is key for that, and obviously knowing that the servers are used by thousands and thousands of other people. That they will be tried and tested. It is reassuring.

ML380 ProLiant servers are really excellent servers on the ISMP side. Their performance is very highly satisfying, and it is a good product from HPE. 

On the SMP side, applying 380 servers, it can handle multiple applications and supports a virtual missions environment. It has a good memory, good power storage facility, a redundant power supply, drives, etc. It is a good product on the SMP side. 

Performance is the main feature of this product. For customers, the performance is excellent. It has been performing very well in the DL380 series interaction, and so far now, it is G10, and it is doing well. 

We use, the service comes with three year warranty with next business day support. We would like to enhance it with basic service and a better level of support. It is not required in the 380 series, but it is still widely used. So, a better option would be same day support. 

It is very stable. I can rate it as a 99.99% stable server from HPE. There is zero downtime, especially in the ProLiant 380 series.

It is highly scalable, not like the other servers. This server has a virtual capacity. We can virtualize up to 8 servers, which we have done, and it has been good. 

The scalability is very high in 380, so instead of using the high-end servers, you can use multiple servers and segregate the applications between the servers. The performance is excellent in that area.

We have used their pre-sales, HPE's pre-support services for installation and services, and even our in-house engineers can work with their tech support as well. HPE support works well within our region. They do their job within the next business day.

Initial setup was straightforward.

An investment in DL380 is worth it.

If you have to include the warranty, enhance the warranty support.

No, we were just looking at HPE.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: 

1. The vendor guys should know the product well. 
2. They can recommend the right solution. HPE has a wide range of products in its portfolio. So, the vendor team must know HPE products and provide the right product to the customers.

Our software is working on it, so it's very useful for our company. I'm not using it myself, but we are responsible for selling it together with our software.

We'd like to see better processors, better Intel processors. That's the most important for us at this moment.

Also, the disappearance of the ML150 can be a problem. So we probably have to switch to the ML110, we don't know yet. Wa are also using the DL160, so it can be a problem. And that's why we may have to switch some of our products to a workstation.

It's stable. We sometimes have problems, but globally it's working fine.

It's scalable but we are switching to workstation for some software because the CPU speed isn't fast enough anymore. For some products we were already using workstations, but for some others we now need workstations for the clock speeds.

We are OEM clients, so the support is very good. We have direct contact so support is good. We used to have 13 x 5, but now it's next business day.

When we look to work with a vendor, we look for stability. That's the most important. What is very important is that the systems are delivered on time. At this moment, that's a big problem, because of the hurricane in Houston, probably.

Also the team we're working with, because we have different countries that are ordering. It's on us to follow up on the deliveries.

• It works
• It's easy to implement
• It's really good in terms of maintenance

The new function, which is coming at the moment, with the online firmware updates - that's one of the problems we're struggling with, with our customers, to have downtime - these live online updates are really, really a benefit we're waiting for.

It has been consistently stable over the years.

At the moment, all the migration from the rack mount to the enclosure systems, the implementation of storage - all of this is growing. With HPE, we have no problems in this area.

Tech support is perfect. We have HPE engineers on-site, and also the delivery of parts, it works really well.

The problem with the updates is sometimes our internal customer with the validation and qualification of the system. But the tools which HPE offers are working. It's really a question of change management.

We have a good relationship with HPE, they offer the products we need. They come back with solutions. It's uncomplicated to deal with HPE.

It's easy to set up for the whole firm. Nobody has trouble with it.

• Easy to configure
• Reliable

It's perfect. It could go faster all the time, but the next generation is always faster.

Consistently stable. It is 99.9999.

We only use it on single machines, and for VMware we use another product from Cisco.

I am not responsible for the tech cases, so I can't comment.

It's straightforward. We use Red Hat, it's straightforward. We go from five to six or seven. It's no problem.

When our company looks to work with vendors, we look for

• first the price
• then the support 
• then the ease of use.

I think the most valuable features are the CPU version which is very advanced, and the machine itself is very reliable in terms of how long we can use the hardware. Some of our customers are using it for five years, six years without the need to even replace a single part or use the service from HPE.

HPE is expanding the CPU very quickly, like every few months you get a new CPU and new technology in the field. That's very good for us because we can give our customers a very advanced server. Every three to six months we can upgrade their server if they like; or if we need to upgrade it in terms of using a stronger server such as more cores, etc.

We are using, in Israel, a company called Arrow to distribute, and they are very very good for shipping, packaging, in replacing the front panel. They work on HPE a lot. They are doing it very quickly, they distribute it very quickly.

I think that for us, we have is what we need. I'm not sure that we would like to see any new advanced features because we're not using such advanced features. I'm sure there's always places to improve but we are not using all of the advanced features that are in HPE.

Perhaps the one thing is support globally, or distribution globally. Today we distribute in the United States and, over there, we have a center that can distribute for us, but I don't think they have such in the Eastern part of the world. So that could be an area for improvement.

Stability is very high. We have not needed to refer to the warranty, during the three years that we got. Sometimes customers hold their products for five, six years without the need to use any of the warranty or services, so that's very reliable for use.

I can tell you that through the years we definitely wanted to upgrade the servers, scale them up in terms of replacing CPU or even adding CPU for some of the servers that use one CPU, or RAM, or disks. We haven't had any trouble with that. That has been very easy.

I use technical support from time to time. It's very easy to open a case, very quick response and, most of the time, the first response that we are receiving solves the problem. We aren't getting into long discussions or things like that.

We have Hebrew customer support, actually. 

We used Dell and it wasn't as fast and accurate. 

Very straightforward. Today, you have built-in the option to use SmartStart so it's very easy to set up the first time. It's very intuitive. For us, once again, that's very important.

We always look at other vendors, Dell, IBM. Right now we are checking into the option to buy storage so we are looking to, of course, 3PAR versus NetApp and EMC.

I think that the most important thing that you need to look at is a company that will give them end to end support. HPE does that.

HPE iLO remote console, Its hot-plug design is in almost every part of its servers.

HPE servers always deliver stunning stability and performance to our customers, and support from HPE is always nice and fast.

More cloud and mobile features for monitoring.

2.5 years.

No.

No.

Excellent.

It's straightforward and clear if we read the manual.

There’s Dell PowerEdge R series, but I prefer HPE for more agile and great management tools.

• They're incredibly reliable and we have no issues running them.
• We rely on the central management because we have a lot of remote locations where we have only limited IT staff.
• We only need to upgrade every five to six years.
• We can buy hardware from any vendor that will work with these servers.

Not only are they reliable, but the management interface is also great for us. Also, HP's support team knows the drivers of our system, so we can rely on them. We're confident that HP will deliver the latest drivers for the DL series to allow us to run the latest Microsoft applications.

We run many apps on it, such as MS Exchange, test development systems, and SQL servers. For development, we run RHEL.

There's always room for improvement somewhere.

I personally used HP servers since I entered the IT game back in '97, and then still continue to use HP servers in different companies.

We've had no issues with deployment.

We're very satisfied with the stability.

We have about 1,600 users worldwide. We have 2 ProLiant servers running all our EMEA and Asia mailboxes.

The technical support from HP is one of the reasons why we're still running HP ProLiant. Anytime we have a technical issue such as a hardware exchange, we just call HP and they take care of it.

The DL series it's quite easy to use. It's a commodity product and you can buy it at any reseller. If you have any technical reliability issues with other vendors, switch to the DL series.