Dave Koelmeyer

I’ve recently acquired an HP ProLiant ML110 G7 tower server for evaluating for use in a small business environment, specifically running OpenIndiana. Following are a few short notes regarding my impressions of the box.

Pros:

Price-wise, for the base spec model, in my case with the Intel Xeon E3-1220 CPU, it’s an incredible bargain (and even more so bearing in the mind the below pros). Consider that even with an 8GB RAM upgrade and dual 1TB drives it’s not that much more than say a well-specced Dell business desktop PC.

It’s built like a tank. Nothing chintzy about the materials, nothing flexes, wobbles, rattles. In short, it oozes build quality.

Access to user-expandable options is super easy, as you’d expect.

There is ECC RAM support – ideal for extra peace of mind when using ZFS storage arrays. On that note, OpenIndiana oi_151a7 installs and runs just fine, with no driver nor hardware issues out of the box. Installing KVM on OpenIndiana, and installing and booting guest VMs poses no problem – it “just works”.

Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports are standard.

A Lights Out Manager is also included as standard. Sadly, the remote console functionality is a paid extra, but the included remote power management and monitoring functionality is quite impressive.

Cons:

Remote console, remote virtual media and other LOM options are sadly licensed extras. Unless you pay extra for this expect to potentially be making site visits from time to time. Kinda wish HP would just throw this in with the LOM as standard – Sun did, for instance.

There is nothing much in the way of physical redundancy for the server in its base spec.

One review made mention of the ML110′s quiet operation and how it would not be noticed in an office environment. Well, unless your office happens to be on the factory floor of an air conditioning manufacturing plant, you’re going to notice this thing…

Maximum physical RAM capacity is 16GB, which is a tad on the small size.

And although I haven’t checked, extending the warranty out from the standard one year period would probably cost a fair bit.