HP ProLiant ML150 Gen9 review
A compact but powerful tower that’s ideal for SMBs and remote offices
A low starting price and plenty of room to expand makes this tower server a top choice for growing businesses
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Good internal design and expansion potential; E5-2600 v3 Xeon support; Generous storage capacity; Top value
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Huge and confusing range of storage options
Internal design and storage choices
Build-wise, the ML150 Gen9 is a winner as inside the solid, lockable metal chassis is a well-designed interior. All the important bits are easy to get at for upgrades, and the memory and CPU sockets are covered by a sturdy transparent plastic air shroud that's simple to remove.
For the review, HP fitted four 500GB SATA drives for us to play with but you can choose from a big selection of storage configurations although the sheer range can make it confusing. An extra four-drive cold-swap bay can be added and the server's embedded Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID controller has a spare connector for it.
If you don't mind losing the 5.25-inch bays up above, the B140i also lets you add two more LFF SATA drives for a total of 10. If you want more, you can add HP's H240 PCI-e RAID card which supports 8 hot-swap 12Gbps SAS SFF drives - or go for a P840 card and max out at 16 drives.
For hard disks, you're spoilt for choice as HP offers a huge range of LFF and SFF drives plus SSDs. SATA, Midline-SAS and SAS are available and HP has now certified 6TB and 8TB LFF SAS helium drives for this server.
HP's embedded Active Intelligent Provisioning makes light work of OS installation
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