HPE ProLiant DL Servers Reviews

We primarily use the product for normal server purposes, for the running of Windows 2016 or 2019. We also use it for custom network monitoring applications, so we may monitor some of our infrastructure. I would not consider the product to be very specific, as the application is dependent on the HP server. We can post it on any server.

While there is nothing specific that I like about HP server products, they are stable, as much so as Dell EMC.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers lack scalability.

We have been using HPE and Dell EMC service products for two years.

We have had no issues with the stability of the product.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers are not scalable. There will be no dependency between the other servers, should we need to scale. Unlike VxRail, it will be completely isolated, the solutions being capable of being scaled up to 64 nodes. It is a pay-as-you-grow solution, which is the one that we are moving on from now.

We have not had occasion to make direct use of HPE technical support, although we we are in regular contact with the contractor who's providing the software running on the HPE. I do not recall any issue involving the hardware.

While the product was delivered by a single contractor, the installation time was that of any other typical server. This only consisted of configuring the ILO, followed by putting on the operating system. That is all. Up to a certain operating level, the configuration of the product would not be a matter of days.

As the business services we provide are of a confidential nature, both for government and military purposes, we deploy strictly on-premises.

The HPE and Dell EMC service products we are using were delivered by the vendor as part of one specific project and it is not up to us to advise which hardware will be provided. Yet, we always take advantage of any internal projects that we have.

We did not need to pay for a license for the use of HPE DL Servers, just for normal hardcore support. 

In addition to HPE server products, we also evaluated Dell EMC and found the two to be equally stable, although the former does not have a strong presence in Qatar. This said, we evaluated Dell EMC VxRail and Cisco HyperFlex for their virtualization player or hyper-converged player capabilities, but did not consider HP for these features.

Due to Dell EMC's strong presence in Qatar, I would recommend use of this product over that of HPE. This does not owe itself to any technical issues, only that Dell EMC has a stronger presence. Of course, the level of support is an important feature for the end-user.

The kind of servers or HPE products we are using with those of ProLiant DL are DL390, 380, gen 10 and HPDL. We are utilizing gen 10 as our latest version of DL servers.

We utilize a total of six HPE Servers, strictly as a monitoring tool. The NOC membership comprises only 10 people.

As I mentioned, HPE ProLiant DL Servers came as part of a project. We will continue to use it for as long as we continue to renew the contract for the solution that is provided by the contractor.

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?

At present, we are using Gen 7, 8. We have used Gen 10 for some of our customers.

We use the solution for providing hotel support. We're into the hotels of mostly Windows operating system, Oracle and SQL database.

Performance and reliability are the most valuable features. 

We have encountered problems. The most pressing issue is that downloads depend at present on the current period. Secondly, in respect of the iLO access license page, iLO features should be included with the server. 

I have been using HPE ProLiant DL Servers for more than 10 years.

The scalability is fine.

HPE technical support is sufficiently good. Support as a side of the business can be purchased. 

The initial setup was easy.

The deployment time varies with the configuration, something which does not take more than two hours. While installing the operating system is a discussion of its own, the actual configuration is easy to do. 

We did not make use of consultants or resellers for the deployment. 

The size of the staff required for the deployment varies with the configuration. It takes just a day to install a single server, but nearly two or three days if making use of visualization and multiple operations. 

The solution comes with a one time perpetual license which is included with the server. It entails costs beyond that of the standard fee. 

The solution is mostly deployed on private cloud. 

I can safely state that we have more than 100 users making use of the solution, since we have installed more than 10 or 20 servers to different locations.

The basic package can include iLO features.

I rate HPE ProLiant DL Servers as a nine out of ten.

Our primary use for this product is our electronic faxing system. We have a number of applications that are hosted on it, working together.

The technical support could be a little faster.

We have been using HPE ProLiant DL Servers for three years. We started using the most recent version, Gen10, a year ago.

We have had our system working for between two and three years with no downtime. We plan to continue using it in the future.

We have about 300 end-users who log into the system to use our applications.

We have to extend our electronic access system for our sites, and we will be purchasing another ProLiant.

There is another team in our company who deals with technical support, and they have a lot of experience with the product. I can say that the support is very good, although it would be better if it were quicker.

We also have a similar solution by Dell, and I find that the ProLiant support is much better.

The initial setup is very easy. The ProLiant was complete, and we just had to plug it into power and check the hardware. We did not have to put in new parts, such as additional hard disks. They are made to order.

We have four or five engineers for maintenance.

This product is within our budget.

In summary, this is a good product and I can recommend it to others.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

My primary use of this solution is for mathematical models that we develop and buy. The mathematical models are being bought from companies like Siemens, General Electric, SMS, and DMAC Group. Primarily these companies give us this software, we buy it from them, they make mathematical models for steel plants and we also make our own models.  

I also have around 40 portals that I'm running on that I had developed and maintained. I use the DL servers to host the databases and the portal.

We make steel and the manufacturing also requires software. These servers are the ones that we prefer. Since the beginning, we were tied with HPE and I have an annual maintenance contract for all of my servers. I have around 3,000 computers, 800 are servers including Alphas, from HPE. I have very few Dell EMC servers. I don't prefer Dell EMC primarily because the availability of the service engineer is not like HPE. It's not weird that Dell or IBM servers are not as good as HPE. Because I have the facility, the advantage of HPE is that they have been here since the beginning and so I prefer HPE. Since it's distributed across India, a very large area of almost 30 other square kilometers, I cannot house every one of them in one common platform. All of my Oracle lower databases or HPE server databases and all of the software I've accepted all the Alphas and even I use Windows platform operating systems. These particular servers have served very well.

Stability and a lower failure rate are the most valuable features.

I would like to see more of a hard drive base.

IT keeps on changing the versions of their products. There have historically been great differences in time than when the G server, the Gen8, nine, and now 10 generations of DL ProLiant server have been available, the time differences are much less. Specifically for G9, G10 even less than one year, now there is no way people like us will keep on upgrading servers without having proper ROI. HPE needs to allow us to replace the CTUs of a higher generation.

It is quite stable. They do not fail easy.

DL3 is not scalable. You cannot scale them versus replace scalable hardware, like going to Itanium servers. 

I have not needed to contact their technical support. 

We also looked at Dell EMC and IBM. The most important criteria when selecting a vendor, apart from costs, is service. Service will ensure stability. 

I would rate them eight, primarily because of the service that they provide and stability that the hardware gives.

For any other person who wants to buy any hardware, the first thing that he should look for is who is going to support him locally. He should then evaluate cases of the availability of that particular vendor's hardware. Buying any such systems is not a big task. He should see if he can maintain these servers in the long run. By long run, think ten years. He should be comfortable with the people that are going to help maintain and comfortable with the equipment that he's going to buy.

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.

The server hardware is valuable and it works. It's a server platform. It's comparable to everything else on the market. It works in a pretty reliable fashion.

As a cloud service provider, we have to provide compute to customers with reliable hardware support.

I can't think of any new features I would like to see. I'm really happy with it. I know that they're moving towards OneView.

It's a server. You plug it in and it does what it is supposed to do. It’s compliant with the HPE server line because they assemble all of the drivers that they install. The drivers have typically been extremely buggy, but we removed them from our builds. I would be nice if those drivers weren't causing critical system failures every other version, but it doesn't affect us anymore.

The platform stability is good. There are some drivers that are extremely unstable.

It's a server platform, so it's not getting more or less scalable than anything else. It's not like Flexpod or other architectures.

We've called technical support for broken programs and things like that. It really depends on who you get. There are some HPE support staff who are really, really good and there are some who are atrocious. It is really hit or miss, depending on which product you call in for. For the 360s, the support has typically been pretty good and the engineers will come on site are helpful for us.

We do a lot of server cycling, every two years or so, and we evaluate it. Our work platform allows us to standardize. It's been HPE during the time when I've been here.

They used the DL client before I started. I've been with this company for four years. As a service provider, we install the product for our customers.

We are doing another evaluation cycle right now. We will be evaluating Dell, Super Micro, and UCS.

When choosing a vendor, honestly, it’s the support that I’m looking for. Everyone gets their hardware from the same couple of places in Taiwan or wherever. What really matters is being able to get the hardware delivered on time. We've actually built relationships with the manufacturers and vendors for support. If we can't get things replaced in a timely fashion, then we have to get our heads around it and say, "I know we're a five grade data center, but we may be down for another 12 hours, or whatever, because we can't get the part in". They chose HPE before I got to the company. We've continued to work with HPE because we've had a good relationship with them. Maybe 80% of our servers, our server hardware, our storage hardware, and switches, etc. are HPE.

It is solid hardware. I'd give them a list of the drivers to rip out before the builds. I've done that before, actually, because most of the drivers that I'm talking about cause hard crashes. The will cause a blue screen, and that impacts customers. Some versions are safe, and some versions are not safe.

We use the solution as a second node backup.

Compatibility is the best feature of the solution.

The technical support response time has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for 13 years.

I give the stability a nine out of ten.

I give the scalability an eight out of ten.

We have 8,000 users.

Technical support sometimes takes time to resolve the issue.

Positive

We used IBM servers and switched to HPE ProLiant DL Servers because of the better price.

The initial setup is easy. I give the initial setup a ten out of ten. The deployment took between one and two days.

Three people were used for the deployment.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of an external consultant.

I give the cost a ten out of ten. We pay an annual licensing fee.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

We require two people for the maintenance.

I recommend the solution to others.