Hewlett Packard HP Compaq DL320 Server Review

Bottom-Line: If you are looking for a 1U rack mount single-purpose server with powerful processing potential the HP Compaq DL320 (G3) might very well fit the bill.

I have worked with all manner of server from all of the major server vendors; IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, and Compaq, and all offer a variety of servers to fit individual needs.  We have a number of legacy applications that run on HP Compaq 1U, 2U and 5U servers including the HP Compaq DL-320 (G3) 1U rack mountable server.        

The (G3) in the description of this server stands for third generation of the DL320 (G3) server.  Proceeding generations of the server have sported Pentium II and III processors, and have been free standing as well as rack mountable.  The DL-320 (G3) is available in only in rack-mountable configuration.    

The 1U rack-mount DL320 (G3) is optimized for space-constrained data center installations and was designed to act primarily as a cost-effective front-end/ application server. To this end the DL320 (G3) can be configured with (1) 3.4 or 3.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 Processor 660 with HT Technology and EM64T /w 2MB L2 cache, running on a 800MHz Front-Side Bus (FSB).  Alternatively, the DL320 (G3) can be ordered with a lone Intel Celeron D Processor running at 2.93GHz on a 533MHz FSB w/ 256KB of L2 cache.     

The server uses the E7221 chipset and is also fitted with an embedded U320 Smart Array 5i controller, which can control up to (2) Ultra 320 SCSI drives.  Alternatively, the server can be ordered with up to (2) SATA drives, or SCSI attached storage (SAS), and up to 4GB DDR1 400MHz SDRAM.

The incorporation of the Intel Pentium 4 Processor 660 operating at either 3.4 - 3.6GHz each with 2MB of L2/L3 cache-makes the DL320 (G3) a cost effective alternative to more expensive two processor servers that utilize dual 3.4  - 3.6GHz Xeon processors.  

Along with Intel Pentium 4 Processor 660, you'll get Intel's EM64T chipset.  EM64T is a set of 64-bit extensions to the 32-bit x86 instruction set designed to bring 64-bit computing to the Intl platform at minimal cost. Microsoft has started shipping a 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003 that can take advantage of the 64-bit extensions.  HP also supports the 64-bit Red Hat and Suse Linux, which do use the EM64T extensions.

Use

Because of its small size the DL320 (G3)'s flexibility is limited.  With only two hard drives, both of which will be committed to a mirrored set (if you are smart), so that two is trimmed to one, the DL320 (G3) is best suited for duty as a front-end web or application server.  With a maximum internal storage of 144GB (1TB with SATA drives), the amount of storage space is inadequate for even workgroup-class long-term file storage; i.e. use as a file server.  I recommend utilizing the DL320 (G3) in the following roles:     

• AD Services; e.g. Domain Controller, DHCP, DNS, and or WINS server;
• Front-end Web Server;
• Front-end Application Server;
• Front-end MS Exchange Server;
• Print Server;
• General Purpose Server

So what does the DL320 (G3) do for our business?  It runs a legacy (non-Microsoft) application for one of our specialty departments.  Since the server is running a non-database application we installed (2) 36GB Ultra320 hard drives in each bay configured for mirrored (RAID 1) redundancy.  We also opted for the Pentium 4 processor, and 1GB of RAM in two banks.   

Since being brought on-line some 1.5 years ago, the servers have never suffered a failure of any kind, which speaks volumes of the reliability of HP Compaq servers.  And it is worth noting that the server is on-line 24/7/365 with very little scheduled down-time for maintenance.      

Conclusion

Though most of our NOC is equipped with Dell servers of various makes and models, our complement of DL320 (G3) servers are in no way considered inferior; they very much hold their own against their black and gray competitors.  And they suffer from far less down-time.  But if one of the servers were to go down, they would be easy to service, thanks to the large number of hot-swap components.  If you are looking for a small, but robust (somewhat expandable) general use, or specialized application 1U rack mount server with limited storage potential, the HP Compaq DL320 (G3) might very well fit the bill.