HP servers

[johnnnny5]

Hey all, currently I'm using DIY servers. They work alright except because of a venture that I'm embarking on, it's time to upgrade/replace. I have had horrible experiences with Dell in the past so I am staying away from them at the moment (no flame war desired please). I recently purchased HP's nx5000 Linux notebook to replace my last remaining Dell system (Inspiron 8200). I'm very happy with it so far and would like to purchase my new servers through HP as well.

I was looking at their site and was originally planning to but Proliant DL series servers to put in a Compaq rack. However unfortunately because of space constraints I'm going to have to settle for ML series servers (the non-rack models). My plan is to use one model server, but have a couple of them or more, probably two at first... more as needed afterwards. However I am having trouble selecting a model. The primary funtion is web services, hosting a website/company that I'm starting. They will be used mainly for testing, development, beta hosting, and hosting the site until the site exceeds the capacity of the servers and line. Likely, Mysql, apache, etc will be used on these servers.

The ML110 is out of the question because I definately want to stick with XEON (doesn't seem I can get an Opteron server through HP in the ML line-up). I figure the ML570 is overkill. This leaves the ML 330, 350, and 370 models. Among these though I am having trouble deciding. They seem to all be suitable. I was wondering if anybody has experience with any of these and can point out functional differences between each. I can see that the max drives is 5 vs 8 and the max memory is different, but beyond that it seems to become a war of things that I don't really need. About the only thing that would be nice is RAID5.

Anyways, any info that can be given would be appreciated.

 

[AndyHui]

I would have thought that if you are space constrained, rack-mounted models are the way to go. Even if you don't have a rack, the rack-mounted models take up very little space.

Our company bought nearly 20 HP servers last month, some 13 DL320's, 5 DL380s and 2 DL580s. Going by what you want, either get a DL380 or an ML350 if you really can't get a rack model.

I recommend taking the RAID Array.

 

[nageov3t]

as far as the DL's go... I'd recomend a 360 or 380 depending on your drive needs.

HP is one of our primary suppliers where I work (a hosting company). their servers are far more stable than probably anything else we use (Supermicros, Dells, and IBMs). I've never been a big fan of DL140's and DL320's, though, unless you're planning on using un-RAIDed IDE drives.

 

[johnnnny5]

sorry... I should have made myself more clear. Originally I was going to replace the two DIY yourself servers with a 24U rack that had about 6 servers to start plus battery backups, a KVM switch, and a pull-out tray keyboard/LCD-monitor. That turns out to be too much space (I could do it but I'd have little room left for other stuff). Rather than do this I am just going to replace the servers with 2 more powerful HP servers.. possibly three. Since it's not going in a rack, I figure a DL server just isn't practical. Even though I could put it on something, I'd rather get rack mounted stuff when I have a rack, and non-rackmount stuff when I don't. So the ML series is my choice for the moment.

I was looking more on HP's site and noticed that the 370 has some things that I don't care much about. Hot-swap RAM and such. Other than those the 350 is similar it seems. So I guess now it's narrowed down to the 330 vs the 350.