HP ProLiant SL2x170z G6 review

The status of all critical components can be viewed and the PEF (platform event filtering) feature allows you to select components and assign actions that will be carried out if they fail. You don’t get the power metering or capping tools as provided with the iLO2 but you can upgrade the 100i to add KVM-over-IP and virtual media features.

We found the remote control upgrade is well worth having as it comes into its own during OS installation. Each node must be booted with the supplied Easy Setup CD which provides wizard assistance but to use a USB optical drive you’ll need to drop the mouse as each node only has two USB ports.

Initially, we encountered a problem when trying to install an OS on each node as none of them could see their associated hard disk. The system had been supplied with all drives connected to the sixth SATA port and we found the solution by moving the drive to the first port. As far as we can see, although each node has six SATA ports, only the first four are active.

The DL2x170z achieves its aims with power frugality with the review system measured at 19W in standby. We then powered each node up and took measurements with them running in idle and with SiSoft Sandra pushing all cores on each one to near maximum utilisation.

In idle we saw one, two, three and four nodes draw a total of 90W, 142W, 195W and 242W and under pressure these figures peaked at 132W, 220W, 312W and 408W respectively. Each node did have a minimal specification but, nonetheless, this is still low when compared with four separate servers.

The lack of storage redundancy for each node is an issue but the SL2x170z is good value and achieves its aims of lowering power consumption for rack cabinets. Overall build quality is good and the trays are hot-swappable making it a lower cost alternative to blade servers.