We have 12 of these machines, all with dual 2.8Ghz Xeons. The thing I like most about them is that almost everything is hot-plug. From the drives, to the fans, power supplies to the pci cards. Opening the top cover leads to an incredibly well laid out system. PCI cards can be installed and de-installed (assuming the OS supports it) while the system is up and running. I'd highly recommend you invest in the redundant fan option kit. If you're installing another processor then you really need to have this.
On a downside, the only thing that springs to mind is there is no front USB port available. With floppy discs disapppearing these days, it would have been nice. HP seem to have realised this and on the G4 servers there is now a front USB, and no floppy drive.
Managability wise these servers are fantastic. We went from using old ProLiant 3000 boxes to these and we've managed to save a fortune in management costs. Remember those times when a server has frozen in a datacentre and you need to phone up and get someone to go in there and reboot it? No longer an issue. iLO takes care of all that providing virtual media, power, etc. Again, I'd highly recommend purchasing the iLO advanced pack. It allows you to view the machine as if you were standing in front of it, in a graphical mode - i.e windows, etc. Without it you can only really see the bios.
All in all an excellent server. They also look really nice when you have loads stacked up. One thing I can recommend is that if you can afford the rack space, do the following: Server 1U gap Server 1U gap etc
Without leaving a gab cabling can become quite difficult to manage at the rear. Also, if you are installing lots of these, make sure you use the HP cat5 type KVMs. It's so much easier to get a patch lead cabled to each one than trying to manage those chunky KVM leads.
As I mentioned in the title, the only other thing that is slightly annoying is that the onboard SmartArray 5i has no option to add a battery backed write cache. If you want to do that make sure you go for a SmartArray 5i+ or a different card.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
The HP ProLiant DL380 G4 Storage Server benefits customers by adding increased storage ... more
management functionality and data protection, performance enhancements and print services allowing customers to take control of their storage requirements.
The HP ProLiant DL380 G4 Storage Server benefits customers by adding increased storage ... more
management functionality and data protection, performance enhancements and print services allowing customers to take control of their storage requirements.
Advantages: Slimline, only takes a few U's in the Rack. very reliable. Disadvantages: The new HP Smartstart is not as easy to understand as the original version.
Advantages: Slimline, only takes a few U's in the Rack. very reliable. Disadvantages: The new HP Smartstart is not as easy to understand as the original version.
Mar 13th, 2005
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