The beginning of the second quarter of 2019 was marked by the renewal of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise server portfolio. At the same time, this update brings back to us the "lost little brother" - the HPE ProLiant DL100 series of servers. Since over the past years many have managed to forget about its existence, I propose to refresh our memories in this short article.
The "hundredth" series has long been known to many as a budget solution for architectures that do not involve explosive growth and scaling. With a relatively low cost, the 100-series servers fit well into architectures with a limited budget. But after the 7th generation, HPE decided to rethink its server portfolio to optimize manufacturing costs. The result was the disappearance of the 100th series and, as a result, the difficulties in designing budget architectures on HPE solutions. Until now, we have only had the 300 series, which has outstanding performance and configuration flexibility, but is not as tolerant of budget constraints.
Due to fierce competition, HPE decides to return the 100th series to its portfolio. Starting from the current generation (Gen10), "hundreds" are returning to the Russian market. Since the beginning of April, HPE ProLiant DL180 Gen10 is available for order, and ProLiant DL160 Gen10 will appear in the summer. Since the new DL180 fell into my hands, I decided to go over its main pros and cons. Since the 380th series is initially positioned as a simpler and budget version of the 180th, any review will inevitably lead to their comparison. Which I will do when comparing the DL10 and DLXNUMX GenXNUMX currently on the market.
Both models are dual-socket, two-unit (2U 2P) general-purpose servers suitable for almost any use case. This is the only common feature of the "brothers".
As already noted, βhundredsβ are distinguished by a limited number of supported options and, in general, the flexibility of configuring the system. The DL180 servers (as well as the DL160 in the future) will only be available as BTO - Built to Order.
This means a pre-prepared set of articles, which are assigned to specific CPU and RAM models. To be more precise, at the moment there are only 2 variations: single-processor configurations based on the Intel Xeon-Bronze 3106 and Xeon-Silver 4110 CPUs, both with pre-installed 16Gb PC4-2666V-R RAM memory and a basket for 8 SFF disks.
The number of RAM slots has been reduced to 16 compared to 24 for the DL380. Everything has disappeared from the list of supported memory modules, except for the one installed in the basic configuration: HPE 16GB (1x16GB) Single Rank x4 DDR4-2666 CAS-19-19-19 Registered Smart Memory Kit. Options with Dual Rank or Load Reduced DIMM are currently not available.
If we talk about data storage, then the hundredth series noticeably loses to the three hundredth:
- One disk cage for 8 SFFs
- Built-in S100i controller
- Optional controllers E208i/E208e and P408i
In the future, it is planned to add additional optional baskets for 8 SFFs (up to 2 per chassis) and a new chassis for LFF drives.
For network access, the chassis is equipped with two 1 GE ports, which can be expanded to two 10/25Gb ports using an optional FlexibleLOM adapter.
The number of slots for PCI-E modules has not changed, the following options are available (for a two-processor configuration):
- 3+3 PCI-E x8 (FlexibleLOM requires dedicated riser module)
- 1 PCE-E x16 + 4 PCI-E x8
Due to the novelty of the released model, there is some confusion in the documentation. So, according to QuickSpecs, only hard drives with a SAS interface (300/600/1200 Gb 10k) are indicated. But the presence of the built-in Smart Array S100i raid controller, which supports only SATA drives, suggests inaccuracies in the documentation.
Most likely, all Gen10 SATA drives from other server models are supported, as it was before. And subject to the installation of a discrete raid controller HPE Smart Array E208i, it will be possible to use SAS drives.
Due to the freshness of the release (let me remind you that it took place in early April 2019, that is, less than 3 weeks ago since the publication of this article), there is no complete list of supported options yet, but we can assume the absence of NVMe drives and graphics accelerators, since the power power supply has a limit of 500W.
In the bottom line, we get a confident "middle peasant" in terms of performance, with sufficient capacity and the same "goodies" from HPE, which do not need too much introduction.
Despite, or rather, due to the limited number of options, the 100 series models turned out to be a good solution for projects with limited budgets. If your tasks require the scalability and performance of the DL380 Gen10, but you couldn't afford it financially, then the DL180 Gen10 is made specifically for you. It remains only to wait for the full list of options and LFF chassis, which will appear on the Russian market along with the DL160 Gen10.
Source: habr.com