This article is part of group review of six 2U servers 

HP claims that its ProLiant DL380 G5 is the most popular rack server in the world and, judging from our findings, it is not hard to see why.

The ProLiant’s slick new front-panel design allows the server to support up to eight 2.5in hard disks, yet still leaves enough room for a large grille to the left that allows air to flow unobstructed through the chassis.

The new Systems Insight panel in between adds some very useful monitoring facilities, providing an at-a-glance view of the status of critical components and early warnings of detected failures.

Internally, a lot of components have been repositioned to improve the cooling. The processors are topped off with the largest heatsinks we have yet seen and have been moved across so they are directly behind the front panel grille. The heatsinks are held in place by a smart clamp mechanism with plastic shrouds guiding air down to the power supply enclosure and out the rear. The price includes a single 800W hot-plug power supply that has been reduced in size so it does not take up too much internal space.

The clever expansion cage design puts a large riser assembly to the side with room for three PCI-E cards, but HP has also managed to sneak a couple of vertical-mount PCI-E slots alongside. One is filled by a Smart Array 400 Raid card, but this still leaves four slots left to play with. The controller also supports the latest Raid-6 dual redundant arrays.

Virtually all HP servers sport an embedded iLO2 remote controller chip that delivers a very well-designed web interface for controlling the server. The Systems Insight Manager software adds to what is already a tough-to-beat server management package.

Next review: Transtec Calleo 302W Server