HP ProLiant DL385 G5p review

You'll need to purchase an advanced feature key for the iLO2 but with this applied you get the power management package which includes HP's Power Meter and Power Regulator options. A graph provides views of peak and average consumption and you can set the server to dynamically control power consumption by throttling the processors back when demand is low. Alternatively, you can set them to run at their lowest speed or highest performance.

HP's SmartStart helps with server installation by gathering together user and system information, loading drivers for all devices and automating OS installation. Next up is HP's Systems Management Homepage which provides a complete status report on all server components plus colour coded alerts. Lastly, there's HP's Systems Insight Manager (SIM) software suite which delivers enhanced browser-based remote server monitoring. Any HP server with an Insight agent can be accessed remotely and SIM provides a detailed report on system operations plus extensive alerting facilities.

The ProLiant DL385 G5p is undoubtedly a well designed system that looks good value. Server management is up with the best but overall power consumption is high considering the modest specification making the new Xeon 5500 systems a better bet for virtualisation platforms.

Author: Dave Mitchell