Developing the direction of level servers , Hewlett Packard Enterprise does not forget about the needs of customers of small and medium businesses.
Often, though not always, the process of searching for computing power for new tasks within the small and medium-sized business (SMB) customer itself is difficult to predict and unpredictable: needs grow, new urgent tasks spontaneously appear, all this is accompanied by an attempt to understand the resulting architecture, and the purchase of new capacities is from the category of buying a new Rolls-Royce. But is it all that scary?
Someone's server room, perhaps our days.
Let's speculate: what kind of server are our SMB customers waiting for and can it be available?
What small businesses need
We and our customers are seeing a steady increase in the need for computing resources, while small and medium-sized businesses, in terms of IT, have their own specifics:
- resource requirements are of a spasmodic nature: there are growth peaks during reporting periods and seasonal sales growth;
- tough pressure from competitors and, as a measure, the need to constantly try new approaches and solutions, often written βon the kneeβ, without appropriate support from the developer;
- hardware requirements are not defined and, as a result, the need to have a "bottomless" server box, on which you need to place many systems at once with completely different requirements;
- the location of small business equipment far from service centers imposes the need for self-repair by the customer himself.
All these tasks are most often transformed into such technical requirements for the server as 1-2 processors with low frequency parameters, up to 128GB of RAM, 4-8 disks in various combinations, RAID fault tolerance and 2 power supplies. I think many will recognize their needs in such a request.
To summarize, we see just a few criteria that guide small businesses when choosing server hardware:
- low price of typical server configurations;
- sufficient scalability of the underlying platforms;
- high reliability and acceptable level of service;
- convenience in the administration of equipment.
It was according to these criteria that one of the most popular entry-level servers, the HPE DL180 Gen10, was recreated.
A bit of history
Let's take a look at the HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 Tenth Generation Server.
As many of you know, the more affordable DL2 series has long been present in the HPE server portfolio along with the classic 300-socket DL100 series data center models, which have a flexible design and maximum expandability. And if we recall our article on HabrΓ©, dedicated to the announcement of the generation , this series was planned to launch in the fall of 2017. But due to the optimization of server product lines, the release of this series to the market in 2017 was postponed. This year, the decision was made to bring back the DL100 series, including the HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 server.
Rice. 2 HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 front panel
What is the DL180 anyway? These are 2U servers aimed at small and medium businesses. They have everything you need and, at the same time, the price segment of small and medium-sized businesses is preserved.
In general, the 100th series of HPE ProLiant servers is rightfully considered legendary. And especially loved by small businesses, as well as medium and even large customers. Why?
Easily adaptable to a variety of workloads and environments, the HPE ProLiant DL2 secure 180-socket rack server delivers high performance with the right balance of expandability and scalability. In the new model, this approach has been preserved: now it is a server with all the "goodies" of Gen10, designed for maximum versatility and fault tolerance, with the right balance of reliability, manageability and performance.
HPE DL180 Gen10 Specifications
The 2U chassis accommodates two Intel Xeon Bronze 3106 or Intel Xeon Silver 4110 processors, eight hot-plug SFF SFF drives, 16 error-correcting DDR4-2666 RDIMMs, and up to six additional PCIe Gen3 expansion adapters.
The number of PCIe slots is a headache for SMB customers, as it is often necessary to install special cards for software, connectivity expansion cards, and various interfaces. Now there is no need to install an additional server, even buying the initial server configuration.
A distinctive feature of the HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 is a large number of expansion slots
To increase the fault tolerance of the server, it, like in older server models, uses redundant fans (N + 1), and it is also possible to install additional disk controllers with support for hardware RAID levels 0, 1, 5 and 10. There is also the possibility of installing power supplies redundant and hot swappable.
Rice. 4 HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 chassis top view
A distinctive feature of the HPE DL180 Gen10 servers is the ability to install a large number of drives, of various types, both SAS and SATA, but, unlike older server models, there is no possibility to connect media of the new NVMe format.
Rice. 4 HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 drive cage
While the HPE DL180 Gen10 targets the affordable rack server segment, HPE has not compromised on manageability and security. The server is already in the basic configuration equipped with the same HPE iLO 5 remote control controller as the representatives of the older series, and, which is important for many customers, a dedicated RJ-45 port is immediately wired on the server to connect iLO to an Ethernet network at a speed of 1Gbps. You can read more about the capabilities of this controller, which provides the best server protection in the industry, on our website in the article already mentioned above with the announcement of the generation .
Predictive analytics of a new type for small and medium businesses.
Like all other Gen10 servers, this model allows both offline and online driver and firmware updates using HPE SPP and HPE SUM (Smart Update Manager) software and is supported by the management platform HPE iLO Amplifier Pack.
Recall that (Integrated Lights-Out) is a large-scale inventory and update management tool that allows owners of large Hewlett Packard Enterprise Gen8, Gen9, and Gen10 server infrastructures to quickly inventory and update firmware and drivers. This tool also assists in manual and automated recovery of systems with corrupted firmware.
Rice. 5 HPE InfoSight. Artificial intelligence for platform infrastructure.
This gives our customers the ability to perform predictive analytics across their entire server infrastructure with to optimize performance and proactively identify and prevent problems. HPE InfoSight for Servers allows you to almost completely eliminate problems and save time by changing the way you manage and maintain your infrastructure. HPE InfoSight for Servers analyzes telemetry received from AHS systems on all servers to provide recommendations for troubleshooting and improving performance. If a problem is found on one server, HPE InfoSight for Servers learns to predict the problem and recommend a solution for all installed servers.
Enterprise-class support
In response to the wishes of customers, the company also improved the warranty conditions for this model compared to the previous generation HPE DL180 Gen9 model: in the previous generation, the standard warranty covered the service engineer and repair of the server on the customer's site (subject to certain conditions) only during the first year after purchasing the server (in addition to the standard 3-year warranty on parts), then the HPE DL180 Gen10 model already includes a 3-year warranty in the basic delivery of the server (3/3/3 - three years for components, labor and maintenance on place). At the same time, the design of the server is such that most of the parts in the event of a breakdown are replaced by the user, and only a small part of the replacement work requires the participation of an HPE service engineer.
If we compare this model with its "big brother" in the form of HPE DL380 Gen10, we can note the following key points:
- HPE DL380 Gen10 supports almost the entire range of Intel Xeon Scalable family processors versus only two models in HPE DL180 Gen10;
- the ability to install 24 memory modules in the 300th series versus 16 in the 100th;
- in the 100th series, the possibility of installing additional disk baskets is not provided;
- in the 100th series, a much smaller set of options is offered (controllers, disks, memory modules);
- in the 100th series, the installation of NVMe drives that are gaining popularity is not supported.
Despite these limitations, the HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 Server is one of the best choices in the server market for small businesses and large corporations looking for an affordable workhorse for their growing data center needs with industry-leading security features. and time-tested warranty and service support from the world leader.
Bibliography:
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Source: habr.com