(Credit: HP)
HP ProLiant DL380 G6
HP's name has long been associated with quality. It produces a
plethora of hardware products, from the simple calculator to
high-end blade servers and network storage. All HP products are
backed by excellent software, which ensures its equipment can be
established and maintained with a minimum of fuss.
HP claims great manageability for this server thanks to its remote management software including Integrated Lights Out (iLO). Its claims of reliability are based on redundancies and good quality parts; this unit features dual-power supplies and N+1 fan redundancy.
HP also claims a high standard of performance and efficiency, with separate RAM banks for each CPU to ensure the best possible performance per Watt.
This ProLiant server was supplied to us with an Intel Xeon X5550 processor. This is a hyperthreaded quad-core CPU clocked at 2.67GHz. Also installed was 8GB RAM, filling four of its nine memory slots (like the IBM x3650 M2, the second processor (if installed) has its own bank of nine RAM slots). Altogether, its maximum memory capacity is 144GB.
HP provides plenty of disk space, starting with two 2.5-inch 146GB SAS drives, and providing six more empty bays ready for future expansion. The ProLiant, like many of the other servers tested, is not restricted to just the drives that can be contained within the main box; RAID controllers can be linked to external HDD banks as well.
Under the lid of this machine, very little is visible — apart from its fans and drive cables. The CPUs and RAM are hidden under a shroud, which ensures good airflow past these components. Everything else is hidden under the PCI riser cage, which is well engineered for strength and precision positioning, but has a lot of thumbscrews and latches to secure it.
This assembly was supplied to us with a single riser card, holding two full-height PCIe x4 cards and a single (thin) PCIe x8 card, which can just squeeze in over the power supplies. An addition riser card can also be installed. This can further add one full-height and two half-height PCIe cards.
All its cabling is neat and minimal so as not to confuse or inconvenience maintenance efforts.
The HP has a great diagnostic display on its front panel. Each CPU, RAM slot and power supply has its own LED positioned on a diagram that will make it really easy to identify anything that fails, without having to refer to the manual to identify an error code. So often, diagnostic panels lack any real clarity or depth. The IBM x3650, for example, provides detailed diagnostics, but relies on a two-digit readout to actually report the problem.
| Benchmark | Test | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Cinebench | 1 CPU render | 37 seconds |
| 16 CPU render | 10 seconds | |
| Sungard | 351.4 seconds |
Contents
Verdict
When compared to the IBM x3650, the performance results for the HP ProLiant DL380 G6 appear quirky.
Both the Cinebench and Sungard tests are processor benchmarks. The
ProLiant performed roughly 20 per cent slower than the IBM x3650 in
the Cinebench tests, and only half as well as the IBM on the
Sungard test. However, with a second processor installed (and
another 4GB RAM) the HP ProLiant was able to exceed the IBM's
Cinebench performance by about 20 per cent.
In the Sungard test it still fell behind the IBM machine by about 20 per cent. These results are interesting, considering the processors in the IBM machine should theoretically perform better. Perhaps Sungard is a better judge of CPU performance (although it may be that some other component in the HP is lower in spec or in need of a driver update). Nevertheless, performance was still good — as one would expect from a set-up like this.
Energy usage by the ProLiant is 215W at peak and around 112W idle. The Enex TestLab pegs its average power usage at 153.4W. This is a pleasing score for the performance observed (remember, these figures will depend on configuration, adding another CPU and 4GB RAM increases the peak power usage by 84W).
The starting price for a DL380 is $4400, and the unit as tested in this review would cost $9851. We'd say, therefore, that HP has produced a quality product for a fair price. The unit comes with a three-year warranty combined with on-site, next-business-day service. On-site service is great for major issues, but it is likely that most simple problems will be dealt with in-house, so it would be nice if an administrator could quickly penetrate its casing to undertake repairs. Nonetheless, well done HP.
| The bottom line | A well-made and highly scalable server at a good price |
|---|---|
| Vendor | Hewlett-Packard |
| Price | $9851 as supplied |
| Warranty/support | Three-year warranty combined with on-site, next-business-day service |
| The good | Very user-friendly diagnostic LEDs on front panel |
| Good performance on a single CPU | |
| Components firmly secured | |
| Excellent scalability | |
| The bad | Too many latches and thumbscrews holding down the PCI riser cage |
| SAS drives are very expensive |
Great article, a few little things i think that would be worth mentioning tho.
Remote access, I work for a large IT Solutions Provider and one of our big cosiderations even for smaller clients is the ability for remote access Dell has DRAC HP has iLO etc. and the differences here are amazing. From experience IBM being worst then dell with HP at the top with their new iLO2.
The other thing that is a selling point of some of these servers is noise (remember we are talking mid market so alot run these in offices) and driver support, ie how hard it is to find drivers for the components and more importantly a fresh install of Windows will the generic drives work enough to get to the website to download them? The DL360 for instance won't install nic drivers with a raw install of win2k3, but if you install with the smart start cd all is well. I'm sure the others have similar features.
Interesting about the SATA Vs SAS tho, most of these servers have the ability to combo, ie 2xsas 3xsata which seems to be a good compromise as from experience the SATA drives especially in a exchange 07 (sbs08) environment seem to fail in extremity fast succession.
But overall good article.