HP Proliant DL380 G4 - Can this server still perform in 2011?

Posted by BSchriver on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by BSchriver
Published on 2011-03-04T22:52:44Z Indexed on 2011/03/04 23:26 UTC
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Can the HP Proliant DL380 G4 series server still perform at high a quality in the 2011 IT world?

This may sound like a weird question but we are a very small company whose primary business is NOT IT related. So my IT dollars have to stretch a long way.

I am in need of a good web and database server. The load and demand for a while will be fairly low so I am not looking nor do I have the money to buy a brand new HP Dl380 G7 series box for $6K. While searching around today I found a company in ATL that buys servers off business leases and then stripes them down to parts. They clean, check and test each part and then custom "rebuild" the server based on whatever specs you request. The interesting thing is they also provide a 3-year warranty on all their servers they sell.

I am contemplating buying two of the following:

  • HP Proliant DL380 G4 Dual (2) Intel Xeon 3.6 GHz 800Mhz 1MB Cache processors
  • 8GB PC3200R ECC Memory
  • 6 x 73GB U320 15K rpm SCSI drives
  • Smart Array 6i Card
  • Dual Power Supplies
  • Plus the usual cdrom, dual nic, etc...

All this for $750 each or $1500 for two pretty nicely equipped servers. The price then jumps up on the next model up which is the G5 series. It goes from $750 to like $2000 for a comparable server. I just do not have $4000 to buy two servers right now.

So back to my original question, if I load Windows 2008 R2 Server and IIS 7 on one of the machines and Windows 2008 R2 server and MS SQL 2008 R2 Server on another machine, what kind of performance might I expect to see from these machines?

The facts is this series is now 3 versions behind the G7's and this series of server was built when Windows 200 Server was the dominant OS and Windows 2003 Server was just coming out.

If you are running Windows 2008 R2 Server on a G4 with similar or less specs I would love to hear what your performance is like.

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