Is anyone familiar with HP DL360 / 380 G5, G6, G7 series?

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DrStein99

If it does not exist ? I am probably building it.
Feb 3, 2018
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I want to buy a used older model HP DL rack server, but I am confused. I would like a large array of hot-swap 2.5" SATA interface trays, and 2 power supplies. I am building my 2nd freeNas server, and the one I have now has out-grown it's hardware.

Does anyone here know the variation differences on these HP GEN-5/6/7/8 series rack servers? What confuses me (unless I am reading things wrong) is that the same HP dl 380 G6 appears to run the same series XEON processors as G7, using the same PC3 registered ram. I am having trouble choosing a model. I was hoping someone here could have some insight with their experience, please?
 

ecosse

Active Member
Jul 2, 2013
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G6->G7 - Higher memory support. Higher core CPU support. Better power management. Better ILO. Better PCI-E expansion (all in theory from reading quick blurb). Things like that.
If the NAS is going to be on 24x7 I'd look for the best power efficiencies using low powered CPU's (60W). Gen8 would be preferred, that generation supports PCIE3
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Gen8 also supported more drives in form of a 25SFF but it’s actually not upgradable from the base 8SFF model like the gen9 is.
Gen8 with e5 v1/v2 uses considerably less power compared to gen6/gen7 systems.

I guess the difference is you can probably get a gen7 for so close to free just take it away from me vs having to pay some money for Gen8
 

DrStein99

If it does not exist ? I am probably building it.
Feb 3, 2018
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New Jersey, USA
For what I need out of it now - a G8 is double the cost of a G7. I probably do not even need 2 processors, since it's just about going to be on idle mostly the entire time. I want 8 bays, it looks like the DL380 is it. The G6 and G7 are closely priced and I am not planning to install more than 32GB of ram, for this unit.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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<obligatory "why do you want an HP?" post incoming>

If you only want a server for it having eight hot-swap bays, IMHO there are a dozen better options than buying an HP system* - especially if you already think you're unlikely to need a 2P system. If noise is a concern at all you'll want to stay away from most rackmount kit until you've done very heavy research on making sure the the bastards will be quiet (although if you BYO it's entirely possible to make 3U or 4U systems run very quietly indeed; 2U is harder but still achievable).

* (Disclaimer: I work in an HP shop and even with a fully paid up "how much?!" support contract their idiotic firmware and driver support practices combined with incompetent account management and mediocre support have sworn me off them forever)
 

DrStein99

If it does not exist ? I am probably building it.
Feb 3, 2018
115
4
18
50
New Jersey, USA
<obligatory "why do you want an HP?" post incoming>

If you only want a server for it having eight hot-swap bays, IMHO there are a dozen better options than buying an HP system* - especially if you already think you're unlikely to need a 2P system. If noise is a concern at all you'll want to stay away from most rackmount kit until you've done very heavy research on making sure the the bastards will be quiet (although if you BYO it's entirely possible to make 3U or 4U systems run very quietly indeed; 2U is harder but still achievable).
The HP DL parts are really easy to find to repair or upgrade. It will fit nicely on my rack of many other DELL servers (once I manage to get the rack rails for the lunch money prices I am only willing to pay). Rack chassis are easy for me to get into, maintain, put back together - turn back on and be done. I would buy another DELL server, except I compared the prices to HP for used equipment and HP is less expensive, it seems due to their excessive numbers. In the past, I have found HP equipment is far more advanced than Dell, but I used Dell because it's less expensive.

I do not care about server fan noise does not bother me at all. I find it odd that you would spend alot of time and / or money just to reduce the noise of cooling fans. I actually have to wear ear-plugs to drown out the awful ambient noise of other people babbling nonsense in the background.

What other system besides rack mount would be more ideal and cost effective?
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Yes HP is robust, there will be lots more G7 parts around though. As I said advantage of that vintage is very low cost.
 

DrStein99

If it does not exist ? I am probably building it.
Feb 3, 2018
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New Jersey, USA
There is also IBM, Super-micro, and I think Intel makes servers too - but I am not familiar with that hardware. It took me a few days to understand what I know about HP DL servers, and it would take at least that much time for me to study anything else. I know for certain, between Dell and HP - there are plenty of them for sale, and I won't run out of places to look for cheap parts that are practically never used. A lot of times big businesses just buy extra back-up servers that are not even unwrapped - and go back to the leasing company unused, and then sold to me for lunch money! Wowee, it would be nice if I owned a business that could afford to do that....
 

DrStein99

If it does not exist ? I am probably building it.
Feb 3, 2018
115
4
18
50
New Jersey, USA
<obligatory "why do you want an HP?" post incoming>

If you only want a server for it having eight hot-swap bays, IMHO there are a dozen better options than buying an HP system*
Ok, I think I discovered what you could have been talking about - maybe. There are SAS array SAN appliances, "NETAPP" makes alot of them. Looks like a housing with 14 or 24+ backplane for 2.5" hot-swap SAS drives with double hot-swap power supplies and double redundant controllers (which look like blade CPU servers). This way I could have a larger array for playing with even more hard drives.

Or they have the SAS array shelf, with 40-gigabit connectors that I can wire up to an existing server with a 40gb PCI card in it, to attach the array to that, instead of combining the big array and the server into one large electric burning heat-fan itself.

The world is not without options, I tell you. I was thinking I could use ISCSI initator to attach a FreeNas box to a SAS array, but that SAS array actually has to have the whole CPU/motherboard thing on it already to manage the RAID, cache, i/o etc - so, that would defeat the purpose of an external FreeNas appliance, if I had to have another machine to manage the data that was managed by the first machine. In the case of the NetAPP boxes, they all have dual-redundant controllers for either load balancing or backup purposes and each of those controllers are actually a whole computer system each itself with its own ram CPU's and pci bus.

What I picked out was this hp dl360 GEN 7, it has 8 SAS drive bays, (1) Xeon 5660, and PC3 ram. This should get me started and running for hopefully a year or two before I outgrow that again, then figure out how I would continue to insure the safety of many terabytes of data, since it isn't like I can just grab another hard drive off the shelf and back that stuff up to that while I make another new SAN/NAS storage server.
 

weust

Active Member
Aug 15, 2014
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Also keep in mind that if you want to download drives/firmwares/etc for your server, you will need a support contract with HP.
If you don't have it, you're not downloading anything.
 

Stefan75

Member
Jan 22, 2018
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I'm using a DL380 G6 as my windows file server... been quite happy with it so far.
Got it for about $100 with 24GB ECC RAM.
ILO2 is a painfully old (IE11 needed) and needs a licence for all functions.
But I could download all drivers/firmware that I needed without a contract.

Disks are in a SC846A 24bay case.. connected using a LSI 9201-16e
 
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WANg

Well-Known Member
Jun 10, 2018
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Ok, I think I discovered what you could have been talking about - maybe. There are SAS array SAN appliances, "NETAPP" makes alot of them. Looks like a housing with 14 or 24+ backplane for 2.5" hot-swap SAS drives with double hot-swap power supplies and double redundant controllers (which look like blade CPU servers). This way I could have a larger array for playing with even more hard drives.

Or they have the SAS array shelf, with 40-gigabit connectors that I can wire up to an existing server with a 40gb PCI card in it, to attach the array to that, instead of combining the big array and the server into one large electric burning heat-fan itself.

The world is not without options, I tell you. I was thinking I could use ISCSI initator to attach a FreeNas box to a SAS array, but that SAS array actually has to have the whole CPU/motherboard thing on it already to manage the RAID, cache, i/o etc - so, that would defeat the purpose of an external FreeNas appliance, if I had to have another machine to manage the data that was managed by the first machine. In the case of the NetAPP boxes, they all have dual-redundant controllers for either load balancing or backup purposes and each of those controllers are actually a whole computer system each itself with its own ram CPU's and pci bus.

What I picked out was this hp dl360 GEN 7, it has 8 SAS drive bays, (1) Xeon 5660, and PC3 ram. This should get me started and running for hopefully a year or two before I outgrow that again, then figure out how I would continue to insure the safety of many terabytes of data, since it isn't like I can just grab another hard drive off the shelf and back that stuff up to that while I make another new SAN/NAS storage server.
No, Netapps, Isilons and etc are completely different beasts. They don't run standard Linux/BSD out of the box, and I am pretty sure most of the nicer features (like dual controller/seamless failover) requires licensing. If their controllers (which are typically Xeon SoCs if I remember my dearly departed FAS2240-2) die, you are still dead in the water.

So yeah, dedicated storage servers - I generally do not like the idea of making my storage server do too much, and I don't like machines where the RAID/volume configuration is stored on the same unit as the machine serving out information.

In my old gig the server responsible for capturing/storing data dumps from the CME data feed is just a dual socket blade with a 10GbE card connected to an Infortrend Eonstor DS1016v2 (which is a standalone array that deals with the RAID/disk management logic, has 16 drives and talks iSCSI through the expansion 10GbE adapter) - it was a Dell R620 running Nexenta until I got sick and tired of dealing with constant lockups (that has more to do with not enough RAM than anything else. All I do is go into the Infortrend once to setup the RAID as I see fit, setup the iSCSI extents, config the iSCSI ports, push the config to my CI repository and then setup the blade to initiate the iSCSI connection to mount the drive. If I need more firepower? Swap the blade out for a stronger blade. If something happens to the blade? Eh, the data is stored on the Infortrend on an iSCSI extent, anything will be able to mount it as long as the iSCSI network info is understood. As long as I monitor the Infortrend (which warns of impending drive failures) the entire thing is bulletproof. And even then, I still run physical backups - dual layer BluRays at the beginning, LTO4 tapes after the trade volume increases (the exchange requires us to do encrypted backups offsite for legal reasons).

Basically, if you get into the scenario where you grow out of your server by the end of 12 months, either you are spending money/wasting power on a soon-to-be-obsolete server, or you should use something more robust in the first place, like maybe start with a SuperMicro 826 chassis.
 

BeTeP

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Mar 23, 2019
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I have no idea why I am responding to an old thread but the title literally made me LOL. It's only like the most prolific server platform in the whole history of humankind.

Personally the Gen7 is where I draw the line - nothing older than that for me. I would have preferred to stick with Gen8 and newer for the time being. Gen8 also has an option of going with the dirt cheap DL380e instead of DL380p (E5-24xx CPUs instead of E5-26xx). The DL380e 25SFF barebones (i.e. chassis + mainboard + 2x PSU + 2x heatsink) sells for like $120 shipped. But unfortunately Gen8/9 disk trays are twice as expensive and if you are planning to get a lot of drives - it will add up.
 
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