HP E5000 G2 Messaging System for Exchange 2010

[RRinTetons]

A vendor is heavily touting the capacities of the HP E5000 G2 Messaging System as a platform for Microsoft Exchange 2010. It's a turnkey solution for a messaging server, sized for 500 accounts at the minimum and with lots of headroom. It provides lots of storage, lots of processor, lots of memory and lots of redundancy.it also costs a lot of money, or at least so it seems. Here's a link to it on the CDW site:

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/HP...S-Messaging-System-e-mail-server/2518807.aspx

I could certainly believe it's a great platform for an Exchange server. The question is, at that price, what other options might I have? Maybe this platform really doesn't have compelling features that make it preferable?

Does anyone have any experience with this device?

Any other thoughts on Exchange servers in general?

-
Richard Ray
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

 

[Zelandakh]

Never heard of it.

I'd look at an HP DL 380 latest version and some form of DAS on the back - likely to be far cheaper and expandable too.

Equally, a Dell Poweredge server and the Dell DAS would do the job just as well.

Note the spec of the E5300 and get a price for the same sort of thing with a DL or a Dell.

My last cluster cost less than that...

 

[cajuntank]

That product line from HP was built specifically for a quick and easy Exchange 2010 implementation. It's a small blade system in essence coming with 2 blade servers and a storage shelf built into one box. It comes with Windows 2008 R2 Ent licensing but not with Exchange licensing; you buy that separately. I do know that a good chunk of the money for this system is in the form of the standard 3 year 4hour onsite warranty and 3 year 24x7 hardware and software support for both Server and Exchange. Probably after everything is said and done, the hardware is not too out of line compared to piecing it out, it's the support and service side of it that's bundled in that's your "unseen" cost.

I would also play around with HP's Exchange 2010 sizer utility

http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/us/en/sizers/microsoft-exchange-server-2010.html

You can plug in your user count and proposed mail profiles (maybe one profile for so many heavy message users and another for light message users, etc...), needs for redundancy, archiving, etc... and it will spit you out some configs based on it's recommendations and/or recommendations that you help tailor (i.e. you might not want blade server(s), you might want DL or density line servers, or you might want tower servers, AMD processors instead of Intel, etc...)

I'm not saying take the E5000 system out of play...for you, this might end up being your better solution in the long run depending on your experience with Server and Exchange as you'd be covered pretty much hardware and software for 3 years by HP, or you might have a local qualified support company you'd feel better relying on, or you would take it upon yourself to maintain support for it.

You might also want to engage additional vendor(s) for better competitive pricing and configuration designs. Good luck.