HP Proliant ML330 G6

HP Proliant ML330 G6

By Mario Morejon

There's nothing pretty about HP servers from the outside, but once you open them up, you will be smitten by the solid engineering. HP certainly sets the bar high as the standard for making servers. The HP Proliant ML330 G6 is a newcomer in the venerable line of Proliant servers, and it proved to be a solid all around tower server, with ample space for extra hardware. Priced at $2,624, the ML330 is a great choice for any small business.

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Design and Setup
As tower servers go, the Proliant ML330 is one of the largest for the SMB, and has all the classic characteristics you expect. For example, it has a roomy case with three PCIe2 slots (one is taken by the RAID card), enough room at the front for non-RAID configured SATA hard drives under the vertically oriented RAID drive bay, and space for two more optical drives. Despite its large size, the server runs quiet. Three fans cool the box, with the largest fan facing the back. The server can fit perfectly in a small network room, and you won't know it's there. HP also sells the ML330 in a 2U case, similar in size as the HP Proliant DL380 G5, which received Editor's Choice last year. The smaller DL380 came with a redundant power supply and two Xeon processors, so it produced more heat and noise.




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The ML330 I tested is a configurable model (as supposed to preconfigured models) that is sold with a single processor, but you can also buy it with dual processors. HP shipped our unit with an Intel Xeon E5506 2.13-GHz, 8GB of memory (9 DIMM slots available for the single processor unit), a HP P410 RAID controller card, three 250GB SATA drives and a DVD drive. We found the 8GB of RAM helped the server boost its performance scores. Outside at the back, there are two Gigabit Ethernet ports, four USB 2.0 ports, and legacy VGA and PS/2 ports. Other models in the ML330 series are sold with different port configurations, so you need to check the specs carefully before buying it. The two network jacks are especially useful if you are configuring your network with two VLANs.


The ML330 board has an iLO 2 ("integrated lights out" management) Chip for managing the server remotely. Administrators can use HP's iLO 2 technology to manage the ML330 and its services via the Web, even if the server is off. iLO 2 is useful for maintaining a constant view of the server and connected devices, regardless of what happens to the network. You can configure iLO 2 through the command line.

The P410 controller card in the ML330 can connect up to eight SAS (serial attached SCSI) ports with a maximum of twelve drives. The card supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and optional 6. Most small businesses, however, are happy using RAID 5 because it is enough to protect data against the loss of any disk on the server. Conceivably, you can add more drives under the drive bay. The case has the extra room. The card only provides internal cables to the drives, so there's no way of hooking external drives to the server. You have to rely on USB or add a new controller card with an external port.

Management software installation is straightforward. HP has always bundled useful management tools, even on the Compaq side before the two merged. Luckily I didn't have to install anything. The server arrives with all the system tools and Windows Server 200 R2 installed.

Management
The Smart Array Configuration utility does what you would expect. It creates logical drives and manages the controller card. The Array Configuration is Web based, so you can access it remotely. The tool provides write caching to accelerate the RAID 5 logical drive, and can also migrate the RAID configuration of logical drives. If you have to troubleshoot the card or the drives, the diagnostic reporting provides lots information on both the drives and controller. The system tools include a command line version of the Array Configuration software.

The other major utility is HP Insight Diagnostics, which is also Web based. Insight is comparable to the System feature in the Windows Control Panel, except that you can compare different server configurations and even view the logical drives.

The System Management tool, which is similar to the Insight tool, takes management one step further by providing visibility of all Web enabled HP system tools. I found the HP system tools complement Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and its other OS management tools.

Performance
The ML330 scored 5,430 with Geekbench 2.1 64-bit, a benchmark for measuring processor and memory performance. I also used the Cinebench R10 64-bit CPU test and tested the server against some very snazzy and powerful workstations in PC Labs. The ML330 scored 10,975 on Cinebench with the multiple CPUs (cores) turned on. According to desktop analyst Joel Santo Domingo, that test was on par with quad-core processors and very good.

The biggest surprise came when I ran the IOzone 3.321 network file system benchmark. The ML330 drive in RAID 5 configuration ran at 1.54 GBps on writes and 2.44 GBps on reads. The score on random read and write access produced an even better 2.38 GBps on writes and 3.28 GBps on reads, so obviously the 8GB of RAM helped. The high random access scores and the way HP configured the server make the ML330 ideal for database intensive applications.

HP is offering leasing and financing deals if you do not want to commit to purchasing the server. This is one of the best times I have ever seen in a long time to get a new server. The business lease for this server is $ 74.60 for 48 months. At the end of the lease term, you can return it. According to HP, leasing also allows you to finance the entire cost of the equipment and software.

Bottom Line
The HP ML330 is a great general purpose server that fits nicely in small computer rooms, even under your desk. Whether you are running the latest Exchange 2010, some other database intensive server app, or just need a dedicated Web server, the ML330 can be adapted to any solution. HP offers the hardware with many different configuration and components, so you're not bound to the one I tested in our PC Labs. No matter what the setup, I highly recommend it.