Qualifications: I am the manager (Network Administrator) of a medium-sized server farm in the Mid-West, which consists of some 150 Dell PowerEdge and HP Compaq ProLiant servers of various models and designs. These models include PE-1750, 1850, 2650, 2850, 2500, 2600, & 6650 as well as HP ProLiant DL-370 (G4) & DL-380 (G4) servers, running Windows 2003 Standard Server or Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition.
Disclaimer: This review is intended for those with intermediate or advanced server knowledge, or those individuals seeking in-depth information on Enterprise caliber server equipment. Few if any of the terms used throughout the review are expounded upon.
As I stated in my review of the
Dell PowerEdge 2650, and the
HP Compaq ML-370 (G4) when you open the door to any modern Network Operations Center (NOC) and you are liable to find all manner of rack mounted servers contently humming away within. From the small 1U's to the power hungry and space happy 6U’s servers are the life’s blood of the NOC; in fact they are the only reason such facilities exist at all. I have worked with all manner of server from all of the major server vendors;
IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, and Compaq, and all offer a variety of servers to fit individual needs. We have a number of legacy applications that run on HP Compaq 2U and 5U servers including the
HP Compaq DL-380 (G4) 3U rack mountable server.
The
HP Compaq DL380 (G4) continues Hewlett Packard/Compaq’s long tradition of building quality enterprise-class server platforms; indeed the
ML380 line of server is one of the companies most popular and best selling. And according to HP, the DL380 is
“the world's largest selling server.”
The (G4) in the description of this server stands for fourth generation as in this is the 4th generation of the
DL380 (G4) server. Proceeding generation of the server have sported Pentium II and III processors, and have been free standing as well as rack mountable.
The 2U rack-mount
DL380 (G4) is traditional chassis design that incorporates (6) Ultra320 hot-swap hard drives into a neat package. If one of the drives is omitted, a DAT-72 TBU, can be put in it place. On top of the drive bay cage HP placed the floppy and CD-ROM/DVD-ROM drives. One the far right of the chassis you will find the power switch, several LED indicator lights, including status lights for Ethernet activity, as well as power supply status indicators. All of the Ultra320 SCSI drives come mounted in industrial-strength metal carriers, and the maximum (native) storage is 1.8TB utilizing 6x300GB Ultra320 15,000rpm drives.
Access to the inside of the
DL380 (G4) is via an easy to remove to latched access panel. The internal design of the
DL380 (G4), like its larger cousin the
DL370, is neat, efficient, and orderly; all pertinent interfaces are mounted on the leading edge of the motherboard right next to the devices they are serving, cutting down considerably on extra cabling. The hard drives are of course in the front of the unit, with the floppy drive and CD-ROM drives mounted on top for east removal.
Right behind these drives are (6) hot-swap cooling fans all in a line abreast of each other. Next on the far left of the chassis sits the Intel E7520 Chipset and associated chips. To the right of these sit a bank of six DDR2 DIMM sockets; The
DL380 (G4) was one of the first enterprise-class servers to ship with the new PC2 memory configuration. The
DL380 (G4) ships with a pair of DDR2-400 (400MHz) 512MB SDRAM memory modules in a dual channel configuration. DDR2 memory modules in addition to being noticeably smaller than DDR modules also use lower voltages (1.8 volts vs. 2.5 volts for DDR) and higher clock speeds, which allow for faster throughput. Lower voltages also translate into less heat. DDR2 memory utilizes FBGA (fine ball grid array) packaging that allows chip density to be significantly increased. Currently, HP can ships 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB modules.
The two Intel EM64T Xeon processors sit immediately aft of the memory banks and of course can be swiftly removed via a large easy-to-use clamp on the side. Smallish heat sinks cover each process, and an additional two hot-swap cooling fans are fitted in back of each processor to help direct airflow and promote cooling.
To the right of the processor and memory banks sit the expansion card daughterboard that can be easily removed to insert up to (3) 64-bit PCI-X cards. And to the left of the processors and memory banks sit two hot-swappable power supplies. The base
DL380 (G4) ships with a single hot-swappable 575W power supply which is of coursed accessed at the rear of the chassis, but for fault tolerance a second power supply can be added.
As touched on above, there is some room for expansion within the chassis of the
DL380 (G4). HP equipped the box with (3) 100MHz/64-bit PCI slots. The
DL380 (G4) is also equipped with an integrated HP NC7782 Dual Port PCI-X 10/100/1000T Gigabit network adapter. Dual Ethernet adapter are expected in enterprise-class servers, and one has to look critically at one that does not ship with a dual adapter.
Like most HP Compaq servers including the
DL370, the
DL380 (G4) ships with a separate integrated 10/100BaseTX Ethernet adaptor that is used in conjunction with the with an ILO (Integrated LightsOut) remote management control system. ILO allows you to manage and monitor the server remotely via a web browser much the same way HP printers equipped with Ethernet adapters can be managed. With ILO an administrator can monitor the status of the server, view installed internal components, reset the server, as well as power the
DL380 (G4) off and on. It is a powerful tool, and one I certainly appreciate since I sit on the sixth floor and the server is in the NOC in the basement of the building.
The back of the
DL380 (G4) is tightly packed but efficient. On the far left sit the (3) expansion slots and next to these are a lone 9-pin serial port and VGA monitor port. Next stacked on top of one another are the ILO Ethernet port and (2) USB 2.0 ports. Following to the right are the Integrated HP NC7782 Dual Port PCI-X 10/100/1000T Gigabit network adapters, positioned to the keyboard and mouse port, which are themselves positioned next to the (2) hot-swappable power supplies.
Use
So what does the
DL380 (G4) do for our business? It runs a legacy (non-Microsoft) application for one of our specialty departments. Along with its mate the
DL380 (G4) is pretty much stand alone; connected to our environment but not interacting with it in any significant way. Since the server is running a non-database application we installed (5) 36GB Ultra320 hard drives in each bay with one hot-swappable spare giving the
DL380 (G4) 180GB of storage space. We also opted for one processor, 4GB of RAM in four banks, and two power supplies.
Since being brought on-line some 1.5 years ago, the servers have never suffered a failure of any kind, which speaks volumes of the reliability of HP Compaq servers. And it is worth noting that the server is on-line 24/7/365 with very little scheduled down-time for maintenance.
Conclusion
Though most of our NOC is equipped with Dell servers of various makes and models, our complement of
HP Compaq DL380 (G4) servers are in no way considered inferior; they very much hold their own against their black and gray competitors. And they suffer from far less down-time. But if one of the servers were to go down, they would be easy to service, thanks to the large number of hot-swap components. If you are looking for a small footprint but robust (somewhat expandable) 2U rack mount server with plenty of storage potential, the
HP Compaq DL380 (G4) might very well fit the bill.
HP Compaq ProLiant DL380 (G4) Server Features and Specifications:
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Rack Design: 2U Rack Mount Chassis;
o
Processors: Single or Dual EM64T Intel Xeon (Dual-core) processors (3.0GHz to 3.8GHz), w/ 800MHz Front Side Bus and 1MB or 2MB of L2 cache (two processors included in High Performance models);
o
Chipset: Intel E7520 Chipset;
o
Memory: 1GB PC2-3200R (DDR2-400/ 400MHz) Advanced ECC Memory (single processor) expandable to 12GB w/ online spare capabilities (2 GB included in High Performance 2-processor models); support for dual-rank 400MHz DDR2 memory; eight slots;
o
SCSI Controllers: SAS (Serial attached SCSI) models include the Smart Array P600 Performance SAS Array Controller with 256MB Battery-Backed Write Cache. SCSI models include the integrated Smart Array 6i Ultra320 Array Controller with optional 128MB of Battery Backed Write Cache (BBWC standard on all high performance models);
o
RAID Controller: Embedded Smart Array 6i or Smart Array P600; Ultra320 SCSI;
o
Drive Bays: (6) hot-plug Ultra320 SCSI drive bays; internal hot plug capacity 1.8TB standard (6 x 300GB HDD), or five hot plug hard drives and one DAT 40 or DAT 72 hot plug tape drive.
o
Ethernet Controller: Integrated HP NC7782 Dual Port PCI-X 10/100/1000T Gigabit network adapter;
o
Video: ATI Rage XL graphics chipset with 8MB SDRAM;
o
Server Management: Integrated Lights-Out (with 10/100BaseTX port) industry leading remote management with new support for two-factor authentication, schema-free Microsoft Active Directory integration, Power Regulator p-state reporting, USB key virtual media and VLAN on the shared network port;
o
Power Supply: (2x) Hot Plug Power Supply’s;
o
Chassis Access: Tool-less access to all system components for easy in rack serviceability;
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Expansion Slots: Three 64-bit PCI-X slots (2 available on SAS models), including two non-hot plug 100MHz slots and one non-hot plug 133MHz slot or optional PCI-X Hot-plug cage or Optional PCI Express Non-hot plug Cage (U320 SCSI Models only);
o
Backplane: Optional dual channel drive backplane (2/4 split) for U320 SCSI models (Included in SCSI High Performance Models); optional dual channel drive backplane (2/4 split) (Included in High Performance Models);
o
Floppy Drive: Optional floppy disk drive (Included in High Performance Models);
o
CD-ROM/DVD Drive: 24X Max CD-ROM (High performance models include DVD-ROM drive);
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USB Ports: USB version 2.0 support, one front port/ two ports in the rear;
o
Status Indicators: Front LEDs (show server status) and Unit Identification button/LED (for easy in rack server identification)
