HPE ProLiant ML350 Gen10
A top-value Xeon Scalable tower with a flexible range of upgrade options to cope with future demand
SCORE PRICE Model 877621-031, £1,799 exc VAT from ebuyer.com
HPE’s ProLiant ML350 Gen10 is a perfect expression of the company’s “buy now, upgrade later” mantra. Prices start low: the cheapest pre-configured model (877619-031) costs just £1,443, with a six-core 1.7GHz Xeon Bronze 3104 CPU, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and an embedded S100i SATA controller. Every part of the specification can, however, be upgraded to suit your needs.
We stepped up to the 877621-031 model, which costs another £356 but offers a lot more power. It features an eight-core 2.1GHz Xeon Silver 4110 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a Smart Array P408i-a RAID card, which supports 12Gbits/sec SAS 3 drives.
Storage choices are extensive: the ML350 Gen10 uses HPE’s standard 8+8+8 drive bay layout, which means the single SFF hot-swap cage in our system can be supplemented with two additional cages for a total of 24 drives. If you want the highest storage capacity, you can also choose a model that comes with 12 LFF bays certified for 12TB drives. Want the server to host high-demand apps? That’s no problem either: a dedicated cage can be fitted in the centre location to take up to eight super-fast NVMe SSDs, which attach to two riser cards fitted in the first and third PCI-Express expansion slots.
The P408i-a RAID controller meanwhile occupies a dedicated slot at the top of the motherboard; it supports every conceivable array type, and features 2GB of batteryprotected cache. Ours was cabled directly to the SFF drive cage, and adding HPE’s SAS expander card allows it to manage all 24 bays.
The motherboard offers dual CPU sockets, so you can install a second processor to match the first, or move up to a more hefty model – the entire Xeon Scalable family is supported. A set of 24 DIMM slots allows the server to be expanded to a massive 3TB of memory, and if the quartet of Gigabit Ethernet ports isn’t enough, you can always drop a 10-Gigabit Ethernet card into one of the system’s eight free PCI-Express slots.
All entry models come with two cooling fans fitted at the rear of a large plastic air shroud covering most of the motherboard; note that many upgrades (including dual CPUs and the 24-drive chassis), require you to add an extra set of four hot-swap fans behind the drive backplane.
The ML350 Gen10’s remote management facilities are excellent thanks to HPE’s iLO5 chip, which provides a web interface packed with useful information about critical components. If you want to take advantage of power metering, full OS remote control and virtual media services, however, you’ll need to shell out for an Advanced or Essentials licence - features which other servers give you for free.
The iLO5 also offers great security, with Secure Start, Secure Recovery and breach detection technology. Firmware is validated during startup using HPE’s clever fingerprinting technologies, and the server will refuse to boot if it detects firmware tampering.
It’s alternatively possible to use HPE’s iLO Mobile iOS app to remotely access the iLO5; we found that with this, our iPad provided the same level of detail as the standard web interface. And adding the server’s iLO5 details to the lab’s virtualised Hyper-V HPE OneView app enabled us to monitor all our ProLiant servers, view power usage and temperatures and manage remote control sessions.
In all, the ProLiant ML350 Gen10 offers a perfect balance of value, features and upgrade potential, making it a great choice for a small organisation with an eye on future expansion.
SPECIFICATIONS
2.1GHz Xeon Silver 4110 processor (max 2) 16GB 2,400MHz DDR4 (max 3TB) HP Smart Array P408i-a SR Gen10 SAS3 RAID supports RAID0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, 60, ADM/10 no disks supplied (max 24 SFF/12 LFF) hot-swap SFF 8-bay backplane 4 x Gigabit Ethernet 8 x PCI-Express 3 800W hot-plug PSU (max 2) HP iLO5 Standard 175 x 685 x 466mm (WDH) max 205W TDP 3yr on-site NBD warranty
“If you want to host highdemand apps, a cage can be fitted in the centre location to take up to eight superfast NVMe SSDs”