HP ProLiant DL4x170h review

In idle we saw one, two, three and four nodes draw a total of 115W, 163W, 214W and 250W and under pressure these figures peaked at 152W, 235W, 315W and 393W respectively. These figures are very low but do bear in mind that the nodes in the review system all have a very basic specification.

The embedded Lights Out 100i controller on each node shares the second Gigabit port and provides a basic remote management feature set. From its web interface you can reset the node, power it off and on and do a hard reset. 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.

Unlike HP’s iLO2 controller, the 100i web interface doesn’t provide any power metering or capping tools. However, integrated into the chassis is HP’s new PIC (power interface controller) and using the basic PPIC Windows command line utility allows you to apply node performance throttling settings to the entire system.

We would strongly recommend upgrading the 100i with the advanced package as the extra KVM-over-IP and virtual media features were invaluable when it came to installing an OS. If you run a locally managed install you’ll need to lose the mouse when adding an optical drive as each node only has two USB ports. Note that the Boston Quattro servers have these features as standard.

The DL4x170h delivers a big processing density in a compact 2U rack server with a low starting price. Storage options are good but the cluttered internal design and lack of node or cooling fan hot-swap capabilities makes it a poor choice if downtime is a dirty word in your server room.