HP servers? Good? Bad?

amacca

Hi,

Would appreciate any feedback anyone could give me on the below server specs. (If its fit for purpose - about 50 machines accessing interent through it, 200 user accounts) Is there anything I should consider adding/removing - has anyone here had experience of hp servers, do they consider them reliable etc


HP Proliant ML370 G6

Form Factor Tower 4U

Server Scalability2way

1 intel quadcore Xeon e5540/ 2.53 Ghz

6gb ram included

Storage controller RAID (Serial ATA150 / SAS) PCI

2 x 146Gb hot pluggable SAS 15K Hard drive

DVD ROM

3 year manufacturer warranty

1 tb external harddrive

server 2008 64bit version.

Friend asked me what I thought but to be honest I dont know much about servers so said I would try here. Would appreciate any feedback.

joePC

HP is one of the top hardware manufactures out there, very reliable machines.

As for the spec, it really depends what it will be doing, "about 50 machines accessing internet through it, 200 user accounts" will it be used as a proxy server?

If its just for Active Directory then it will be plenty.

Sposs

HP are super reliable machines , and HP provide surprisingly good support on them. It's a nice spec machine , but you'll need to provide more detail as to what you are using it for?

amacca

joePC wrote: »

HP is one of the top hardware manufactures out there, very reliable machines.

As for the spec, it really depends what it will be doing, "about 50 machines accessing internet through it, 200 user accounts" will it be used as a proxy server?

If its just for Active Directory then it will be plenty.

Firstly tks for your help I appreciate it!

Secondly, I think its for both. Asked my friend and the machine its replacing is running windows server 2003. Active directory is on it and users individual machines connect to the internet through the server rather than on their own (that makes it a proxy server too right? im a bit hazy but I always thought that was one of the possible roles of a proxy server)

Anyway, the server has all the logon details and settings of each user. Each machine is connected to the server via lan/network cable and if the server is off/out of commission then individual machines cannot access the internet so that would imply its a proxy server in my book.

If it is a proxy server do you think the specs are adequate for the job it is being asked to do?

Once again tks for your opinion, I appreciate it.

ronkmonster

Maybe it's just the server handling DHCP (rather than the router) which would explain why if the server is done, there is no internet.

funk-you

I'm an engineer with HP working on multi-vendor kit. I have worked for a few others, IBM etc. The ML370 is a good, reliable machine. No major known bugs etc. The 3 year warranty will entitle you to next business day response but there are uplifts available for quicker response SLA's (Only necessary if the system is critical) if you fork out the extra money.

The iLO is easy to navigate and debug problems much like IBM RSA etc. It's a pretty good spec you're looking at for what you want it to do. It's fairly easy to keep up with firmware updates and they're easy to manage from the iLO GUI/Downloadable smartstart CD's.

-Funk

copacetic

HPs are very reliable, however the NBD cover isn't great imo. They generally never make the next day unless you get on to them before 10am and even then tend to draw out investigation before they will send someone. It's more like 2 day cover, so if thats an issue for you upgrade the SLA.

Wookster76

I worked with HP kit for over 7 years.. moved job and now I work with Dell kit... Having worked with Dell for the last 3 years... I'd kill to be back with HP.

With regard to the ML370 never had any issue with those boxes... back when I used them.. Only boxes I ever had issue with where the dl360's g1 next gen of that box sorted it out.

In general HP kit is top quality as is there support. I wouldnt bother with the ilo.. unless you keep your servers off site in a data center.

Static M.e.

It honestly doesnt bother me either way between HP or Dell.

Get a 4 hour response time and your sorted.

What about SUN Servers? Ive started to use them a lot more these days

funk-you

Static M.e. wrote: »

It honestly doesnt bother me either way between HP or Dell.

Get a 4 hour response time and your sorted.

What about SUN Servers? Ive started to use them a lot more these days

Not bad boxes. Fairly reliable.

On the Fire/enterprise range they can be a bit of a pain when there are problems. Faults are rarely straighforward short fixes. Diagnostics and OBP can take a lifetime.

Most new Sun kit I've worked with have been pretty good. A lot of them on various cutomer sites and not many fault calls logged within warranty.

I've worked with a lot of ex-Sun engineers and they tend to be well trained and good at what they do.

-Funk

Wookster76

Static M.e. wrote: »

It honestly doesnt bother me either way between HP or Dell.

Get a 4 hour response time and your sorted.

I've honetly yet to get a turn around on a call from Dell within 4 hours with HP on the other hand over the 7 odd years I dealt with them I had an engineer on site within 4 with parts.

rolion

ML370 good horse power !!
I'll upgrade to RAM to maximum cash available possible,minimum 8Gb advised 12Gb.
Also,the internal storage i'll go for a 3 x RAID5 plus 1 x hot spare configuration.For a 146Gb drives,that will give you ~280Gb of live storage (take 50Gb for OS partition and leave rest for data/appliactions/emails...)

Re support from HP,i'll go for 4h response time and they will give you 4h as most parts are in stock in Santry depot.

Also,do not forget to add the cost of the migration of the AD and existing infrastructure.Server 2008 doesn't have proxy server included just RAS.For few extra cash i'll use SBS2008 (rather than Server 2008),much much better as a future investment.

Enjoy it..

monkeypants

I'd rate HP way above Dell in terms of reliability and service times. The Dell stuff isn't bad, but it breaks more often and Dell take longer to fix.

devnull

In my previous job we had a load of HP and Dell kit that came in around the same time, the Dell stuff was bought by our Irish IT department whilst our European arm supplied the HP stuff, why they went down two different order routes I'll never know, but the HP stuff was far superior both in terms of build quality and performance.

TouchingVirus

To jump on the HP brand-wagon - good reliable servers

monkeypants

devnull wrote: »

build quality

Exactly - that's the difference between them.