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My VMware hosts are aging and it’s time to replace them. My preference is to stick with HPE servers as I’m comfortable with them. I’m just getting frustrated with my usual places for purchasing them as I can’t seem to find much on HPE servers that doesn’t seem dated.

Are Gen 11 servers so new or so rare that they aren’t generally available?

I want to get newer Intel Scalable Xeon CPUs (Gen 3 or Gen 4) but these seem fairly rare in the HPE servers based on my searching and the ones that are available are Silver or Gold 5xxx.

I’m just wondering what the best HPE servers are that are typically available that will serve well for two or three node VMware environment. My VMs are fairly general purpose (AD, file servers, MySQL server (moderate workload), and a simple web server). I have no VDI.

Any suggestions?

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What sources ha e you tried. Maybe a CTO version is where you should look. Do you need a lot of storage or do you have a independent SAN or NAS?

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I just did a call with HPE last week since I’m replacing my Gen9s. They brought along a VAR in the call that actually helped me get some of the features I have been looking for: primarily SSD storage. Prices were very competitive and based on pricing, we are considering buying two for our cluster. I’ve been doing HP/HPE servers since the NetServer series, so been around the block and received the grey hair that comes with it.

This is a new vendor for us, but were vetting by HPE. I have a meeting in an hour to discuss if we will be buying from them. PM me and I’d be happy to share if we do go that route and what the experience was. Since we haven’t decided and they are new, I’m not dropping names just yet.

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I have looked at CDW (a semi-regular place for me), the HPE Store, and just random searches that resulted in NewEgg, etc. I used to have a local VAR but the owner retired and closed down that business.

I need minimal storage in the system since I have a NetApp NAS for my storage so I was looking at 1U DL360s, which is what I’ve primarily used in the past. My current three servers are 128GB RAM each and I’m thinking of going to two hosts with slightly more RAM as my servers don’t do a lot of compute and I only have nine VMs, half of which are quite small.

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The HPE website and looking at the HPE ProLiant QuickSpecs are always a great place to get information on HPE products. Go to www.hpe.com/proliant . At the bottom of the page you’ll see a section titled “Explore the HPE ProLiant portfolio” where you can find the QuickSpecs. Be sure to change up the part I circled in red so you can look at all of the servers. Also, there’s that green radio button that has the Rack and Tower family guide and is a great place to find an overview of the Gen11 servers.

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I have several videos I’ve done on HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers. Here’s my playlist of them:

Here’s briefly what they are and the ones I suggest you watch * based on what you said:

  1. * Next Generation HPE ProLiant Compute | Chalk Talk is an overview of the HPE ProLiant Gen11 strategy and includes the AMD-based servers that were the first ones announced with Gen11 in November 2022.

  2. * Next generation HPE ProLiant: intuitive, trusted, and optimized | Chalk Talk goes a bit deeper on Gen11 than I went in the first video.

  3. * HPE ProLiant Gen11 servers with 4th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors | Chalk Talk focuses on the Intel-based servers that were announced in January 2023.

  4. * What’s new with HPE iLO 6 | Chalk Talk - iLO is an important part of the ProLiant server family and this talked about what was new with iLO 6 and in general what it provides.

  5. Trusted Supply Chain and HPE ProLiant Gen11 | Chalk Talk looks at what HPE does with our partners to protect the security of our servers.

  6. HPE GreenLake for Compute Ops Management | Chalk Talk. This is the solution to help with a cloud operating experience you get with Compute Ops Management.

  7. The HPE ProLiant RL300 Gen 11 | Chalk Talk is a product that is more for service providers or end users who want a “service provider” compute infrastructure.

  8. Introducing HPE GreenLake for Compute Ops Management OneView Edition | Chalk Talk - not relevant for you as this is a solution for customers using HPE Synergy and OneView.

Based on what you said, if I had to guess, you should be looking at the DL320 (Intel), DL325 (AMD) but gotta say, the DL380 is a workhorse of a server.

Tagging Mark who is another HPE guy here and is on the HPE ProLiant team - meaning he knows a LOT more than me.

@mark-hpe

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CDW and HPE direct show in stock.

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I use CDW and our rep is awesome. He will leverage his HPE team (or any other vendor) to get on a call identify our needs and get a solution that meets our requirements.

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I don’t use CDW enough to have an account manager anymore so I have to go through general sales. It took more than a week to just to get a quote for some Windows Server licenses. I did pricing there but didn’t try to contact sales yet.

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Honestly, I find the HPE website to be mostly full of fluff and marketing speak with limited technical information. I did watch a couple of the videos and that helped far more than the website ever did. I also find the store to be effectively useless if you want to do any customization. As much as I like HPE hardware, I just felt frustrated by the information available on the website.

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Just as an update to this, I ended up reaching out to a reseller (Ivoxy) that I’ve worked with previously and had a meeting with their server specialist. He was very helpful in helping me scale the servers to my workloads and future needs. I haven’t seen pricing from them yet, but I was very pleased with the conversation as it helped create some clarity around servers.

What’s ironic is that I used to spend much of my time in the server and storage world with my previous employer and almost 0% with desktops. It’s now just the opposite. While spec’ing CPUs for workstations is relatively straightforward, I have found it somewhat daunting on the server space just because of the wide variety of CPUs available and how different the workloads are versus workstations.

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We’re running DL360 and 380 Gen10 Plus’ for ROBOs because of supply issues. Avoid physical TPM modules unless they are needed for PCI\SOX\Gvmt compliance needs as they have some "gotcha’s "that complicate long term support. Also shy away from intel NICs as we’ve had several firmware driver issues. Generally I have found these boxes to be pretty bulletproof. Forsyth and Insight are preferable if you want to standardize on exact hardware builds for the extended lifecycle ( IE if say in a year, you need to build out a cluster to 4 nodes and want an exact box down to the processor on a CFTO, you’ll be able to get it from them.) This level of VAR usually has added services that small to mid-sized businesses can benefit from…like license and support contract management, streamlined purchasing and build\configure set.

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I can’t argue with that - that’s why I pointed to the QuickSpecs. Those are written by technical people and get to the “meat” of products.