HP ProLiant DL380 G5 Rack Dual Intel Xeon 5160 3.00 GHz 4 GB DDR2 Servers 2 x Dual-Core Intel Xeon 5160 (3.00 GHz, 80 Watt, 1333 FSB) 4 GB (4 x 1 GB) PC2-5300 Fully Buffered DIMMs (DDR2-667) 418315-001

Pros: We have these at work, and we are using them for ESX servers. With 8 SAS drives, they are awesome. As far as the other comment about the apple. I don’t think 3 SATA drives qualifies as the same as 8 SAS drives – they are fast! Its makes for a great SQL Server : 2 dsk RAID 1 OS, 3dsk RAID 5 DB + spare, 2dsk RAID 1 TLOG

Cons: Heavy, but what would you expect w/ such a beefy server.

Pros: The very good.

The engineering of the server is superb in terms of airflow, copper and heatpipe tech. The ILO is excellent and user friendly. The pro pack essentials or whatever it is called makes initial installation and configuration incredibly simple in that your entry level guys can do it. The little front panel hardware status led monitor is neat too. Hp does think of the little things.

Cons: The Possibly very bad.

I am not a fan of 10k rpm 2.5in form factor disks. They are in reality fast spinning laptop disks. Because they are scsi disks, they have more complicated controller hardware packed in there as well. How long can these drives last? Regular SATA laptop disks give you like 3 years on average. This is probably why you cant get the 15k rpm disks in this form factor.

We purchased 7 of them, and one died about 3 months later but we have the 3 year Cadillac warranty which makes it a non issue.

Pros: It’s about par for the course. E just got these in at work, and they are plenty powerful thanks to the dual Intel XEONs.

Cons: Form factor. Explain to me how Apple can get the same kit in a 1U for the same price? It also seems to generate a lot of heat. We had to beef up the cooling in the server room, and in the past, the 5160’s have been some of the coolest CPU’s I’ve had the pleasure to use.

Overall Review: If it weren’t impossible to get support for a Server 2003 running on an XServe, I’m pretty sure I’d have gone with that option instead.