HPE ProLiant Compute DL340 Gen12 review: An appealing alternative to dual-socket Xeon 6 rack servers

It isn't often we get to see a completely new rack server from HPE, but the Compute DL340 Gen12 is its first ProLiant model to deliver a single socket (1P) Intel Xeon-powered solution in a 2U rack chassis. This market space has traditionally been held by HPE's DL345 rack servers, as their AMD EPYC CPUs have the core densities to make them good alternatives to more costly two-socket (2P) servers.

The DL340 Gen12 targets a wide range of data centre and service provider duties, and the high core counts of Intel's Xeon 6 CPUs allow it to offer a balanced mix of performance, storage capacities, energy efficiency. And, of course, costs. It supports plenty of Xeon 6 models, so you can choose from P-Core CPUs up to 86 cores and E-Core CPUs up to 144 cores, or pick from all six P-Core 'Rich I/O' models with up to 80 cores that are specifically optimised for 1P deployments.

Memory capacity is good, as regardless of the CPU model chosen, the server can present up to 4TB of HPE's DDR5 Smart Memory – only its speed is determined by the CPU. That extra 1U of chassis height brings a lot of storage permutations into play too, as it can handle a diverse range of LFF, SFF, and EDSFF storage devices.

HPE simplifies the acquisition process as it offers three CTO (configure to order) options where you take the base model, add a CPU and memory, and select a drive backplane. The third CTO option has AI workloads firmly on its radar as it supports up to four front-mounted double-width (DW) or single-width (SW) GPUs.

HPE ProLiant Compute DL340 Gen12 review: Build quality and cooling

As we've come to expect from HPE, chassis build quality is excellent, and good internal design offers easy access for upgrade and maintenance tasks. Our only complaint is that the two M-XIO cables, along with the power and signal connector cables for the NS204i-u boot device, are excessively long and look untidy.

The CPU socket sits towards the front and is flanked on each side by banks of eight DIMM slots. HPE supplied our system with a 32-core 2.5GHz Xeon 6730P CPU topped off with an impressively large high-performance heatsink complete with two large radiator bars that extend forward and sit close to the front cooling fans.

A key feature of the DL340 Gen12 is air cooling is supported for all specifications, so you don't need to worry about the extra expense of liquid cooling. You have two fan choices, and the 512GB of memory in our system dictates that we need the six hot-plug high-performance fans.

HPE ProLiant Compute DL340 Gen12 review: Storage choices

The DL340 Gen12 scores highly in the storage department as it employs a three-box design at the front with each one supporting a variety of configurations. For LFF hard disks, the three, quad-drive boxes are arranged horizontally with the top one also supporting two SFF devices and an optical drive.

SFF configurations use different boxes with vertically mounted devices and you can have up to 24 hot-plug HDDs and SSDs or use the first one for two stacked drive bays and an optical drive. It gets even more interesting for EDSFF drives as each box supports up to twelve E3.S NVMe SSDs, and you can mix and match these with the standard SFF boxes.

The DL340 Gen12 scores over AMD servers which don't have embedded RAID controllers. Its motherboard sports Intel's Virtual RAID on CPU (VROC) for HPE ProLiant Servers embedded, which is specifically for up to 32 NVMe SSDs with direct to CPU connections and supports software-managed stripes, mirrors, and RAID5 arrays.

For other storage devices, there are HPE's 'MR' hardware RAID controllers and choices abound as HPE offers three OCP and two PCIe versions. Our system was fitted with the rear-mounted MR408i-o OCP 3.0 card with 4GB of energy pack protected cache, plus support for SATA, SAS4, and NVMe device,s and all the usual RAID array suspects.

There are plenty of placement options for HPE's NS204i-u V2 boot optimised storage device, which can be fitted at the front or at the rear above the PSU bays or next to them. It comes with two hot-plug 480GB or 960GB M.2 NVMe SSDs preconfigured in a mirror for running an OS or hypervisor.

HPE ProLiant Compute DL340 Gen12 review: iLO7 management

Remote management features are outstanding with HPE's new iLO7 controller implemented as an OCP-compliant DC-SCM (data center secure control module) board. Platform security and supply chain integrity are assured as the iLO7 silicon root of trust (RoT) digital firmware fingerprinting is future-proofed against next-generation quantum computing threats, and it is endowed with HPE's patented Secure Enclave - a physically tamper-resistant security processor for storing sensitive data such as encryption keys, passwords, and security configurations.

The slick new iLO7 web console is designed around workflows and presents a customisable home page dashboard with up to six cards. Colour-coded icons show details such as host health and security issues, and each one provides hot links so you can quickly drill down for more information

We run HPE's OneView on a Hyper-V host for on-premises monitoring of our HPE systems and had no problems importing the server's iLO7 into its console. Next up is HPE's GreenLake Compute Ops Management (COM) cloud service, which connects directly to the server's iLO7 controller and provides a portal for viewing your entire infrastructure, managing server deployments, automating system lifecycle compliance policies, and loading AI-powered insights.

HPE ProLiant Compute DL340 Gen12 review: Is it worth it?

The ProLiant Compute DL340 Gen12 is a versatile rack server that will appeal to businesses seeking a more cost-effective and energy-efficient alternative to expensive dual-socket Xeon 6 servers. It offers a high CPU core density and big memory capacity, the 2U chassis presents impressive storage options and expansion potential, while HPE's iLO7 controller delivers outstanding platform security and remote server management services.

HPE ProLiant Compute DL340 Gen12 specifications