A New Edge For HPE: Why The Nvidia AI-Ready ProLiant DL145 Gen11 Server Is A ‘Big Breakthrough’

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is pushing the edge computing price performance envelope with a 2U Nvidia AI Ready ProLiant DL145 Gen11 server priced starting at just $2,065 for a configure to order chassis.

A ‘Big Breakthrough’ At The Edge

Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s new 2U Nvidia AI ready ProLiant DL145 is aimed at once and for all doing away with the size, performance and price barriers that have stopped businesses from deploying the most demanding applications at the edge including AI and machine learning workloads.

The new ProLiantDL145, which is priced starting at just $2,065 for a configure to order chassis, is 50 percent smaller than the traditional DL385 server with better cooling and quieter acoustics yet packs a big AI punch supporting up to 3 Nvidia GPUs with the ability to handle up to 120 VMs (virtual machines).

“This is a big breakthrough for what is needed at the edge right now and in the future,” said Hewlett Packard Enterprise Senior Vice President and General Manager of Compute Krista Satterthwaite. “People’s customer experience depends on the technology that is there at the edge. Right now they are limited in a lot of ways. I feel like this is exactly what is needed at this time at the edge!”

Before the DL145 customers looking for maximum performance at the edge were “saddled with high price, it was loud, it was big and it took a lot of power,” said Satterthwaite. “That basically was the trade off.”

Satterthwaite said one AI use case that is expected to take hold at the edge with the new DL145 is computer vision capabilities that could be used at the edge to prevent retail theft.

HPE has teamed with IronYun, a pioneer in purpose-built vision for AI applications for retailers, with Nvidia GPUs.

“A lot of people have servers at the edge that don’t have the ability to accept today’s GPUs,” she said. “When it comes to computer vision you would need the latest (Nvidia) GPUs and this has the ability to accept three of them.”

HPE said the server, which is 15 inches wide and 16 inches deep, can be mounted on a wall, rack or desk. It is also designed to be quieter so it can be used in customer-facing locations such as retail.

Also making it suitable for edge environments like retail, healthcare and manufacturing are “vibrant tolerant operation” and built in air filtration for dusty spaces.

The HPE DL145, which can be financed as a capital expenditure or as an HPE GreenLake pay per use, consumption model, is available immediately.

A Partner Edge Game Changer

Matt Halcomb, a principal architect for World Wide Technology, the $20 billion solution provider behemoth, said the DL145’s features and functionality allows WWT to position it as the right platform for “both today’s and tomorrow’s” edge use cases at scale.

“It’s great to see HPE expand their ProLiant portfolio to enable the next level of performance and security for edge applications, regardless of whether they are conventional applications out there running at the edge or whether they are AI related to computer vision,” he said.

The AI explosion is driving an unprecedented level of growth at the edge, said Halcomb, a 20-year WWT veteran. “Everything is going to be AI-based eventually,” he said. “All the data is being created at the edge. What we are trying to do is bring AI to your data – not data to your AI,’ This is a big deal because it provides the ability to bring AI to where the data is being created and leveraged and used.”

The new DL145 is a no compromise edge solution, said Halcomb. “This is a product that allows you to deploy an edge solution with the same security and management as you do inside your data center,” he said. “You don’t have to go learn a bunch of new solutions. So if you’re an HPE shop and you are already using Compute Ops Manager you will be able to leverage that knowledge to support and secure your edge applications. That is another key advantage.”

The design of the 2U DL145 with features such as 50 percent smaller than the existing DL385 with better acoustics, making it quieter (HPE claims it is 25 percent quieter than a quiet clothes dryer) make it ideal for edge environments, said Halcomb.

“The ability to put this inside an office environment and not be disruptive is key,” he said. “We have run into that before. Some of the switches we put in are super loud from the fans. They have engineered this to run in an edge location and not in a data center.”

The Soul of A New Edge Machine

The genesis of the DL145 came at HPE Discover 2023 when Sandra Valenti, HPE senior director of US Industries Retail and Insurance, huddled with Satterthwaite to make a case for a new era edge solution being demanded by customers.

Valenti told the HPE team that she had many customers with edge requirements that were simply not being met. The message: the “needs at the edge have changed, we need a different kind of product,” said Satterthwaite (pictured). “We chatted at Discover on the second floor with all the breakout sessions and we connected her with our product management team. That team iterated, iterated and worked with customers to come up with this product.”

Satterthwaite said the DL145 is a classic case of HPE listening to customers and responding to their needs. “Obviously we want to make a product that is the most relevant for customers,” said Satterthwaite. “She (Valenti) had the real time feedback from our customers about what their struggles were and we just went down point by point to design around those challenges and came up with this (HPE ProLiant DL145).”

The new edge offering is also a great example of the full HPE team coming together from sales to product management and engineering, said Satterthwaite. “It was definitely a team effort,” she said.

A Compute Ops Management Time Saver

The HPE DL145 comes bundled with HPE Compute Ops Manager with dramatic cost and time savings for administering the system, said HPE.

In fact, a study commissioned by HPE with Forrester Consulting maintains that the projected total economic impact of HPE Compute Ops Management is 75 percent less time to support remote servers.

A three-year subscription to HPE Compute Ops Manager comes free with ProLiant Gen11 servers unless a customer opts out. It can also be added separately to HPE ProLiant Gen10 and Gen10+ servers.

“You don’t have experts in every store or every office so you can manage this remotely with our secure, cloud-based management called HPE GreenLake for Compute Ops Management,” said Satterthwaite. “It is amazing for edge!”

An executive for a hotel chain with multiple locations told Satterthwaite that the company would only be interested in the DL145 if it supported Compute Ops Manager. “That’s how much they rely on Compute Ops Management,” she said. “You don’t need a management server and a lot of overhead.”

HPE partners are leveraging Compute Ops Management to oversee the computing system of multiple customers, said Satterthwaite. “This allows them to offer it as a service and enhance their business,” she said.

An AMD-Based System To Drive Performance and Energy Efficiency

The HPE ProLiant DL145 is based on AMD’s 4^th Gen EPYC Siena 8004 series processors, providing “low wattage” with a power-packed 8 to 64 cores. The system runs from 90 watts to 200 watts.

“We chose the AMD EPYC processor because of the power efficiency and price performance,” said Satterthwaite. “We’re excited because we feel like this has hit the sweet spot when it comes to performance, power efficiency, acoustics and environmental management.”

HPE said the DL145 supports a wide range of edge focused industry applications including loss prevention and video analytics for retailers and process automation, predictive maintenance and supply chain for manufacturers.

The Call To Action For Partners

The call to action for partners is to leverage the new DL145 to overcome all the challenges that have been holding back the edge market, said Satterthwaite.

“There are challenges with trying to fulfill all the new edge needs with traditional servers that aren’t optimized for edge,” she said. “This is our answer for that. I feel like our channel partners servicing edge customers are really going to see how many problems this solves for those customers around space, power, acoustics and the manageability with HPE Compute Ops Management. I can’t stress that enough. You are flying a little blind when you have all these servers in multiple locations and you can’t see or update them easily.”

Satterthwaite said she could not be more “excited” about the sales potential for the DL145. “The reason I’m excited is it checks off so many boxes for customer needs at the edge,” she said. “Because the edge has changed it has become harder and harder for customers to address. This checks off so many needs all in one small box. The opportunity is growing and this is curated to solve all those challenges at the edge. We co-developed this with our customers and sales team to make sure that it was exactly what was needed at the edge right now and in the future.”