HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen11 Tower Server Review
July 16, 2025The HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen11 Tower Server is for small to medium-sized businesses that need some serious compute capabilities but don’t have a dedicated server room. It takes 4th or 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors and can be outfitted with up to 1.5TB of memory and up to 2x GPUs. You also get a choice of storage with LFF and SFF SAS and SATA storage devices.
Not only for small and mid-sized businesses but also branch and remote offices, this system can support a number of diverse workloads including IT infrastructure, data management, virtual desktop infrastructure, and more. Looking like a miniature multi-level prison facility, you can be confident your data is protected, while you grow your business. Yes, Intel Xeon 6 CPUs are out, but you can still get plenty of performance out of 4th or 5th Gen Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs supported on this platform. Or should we say CPU, because this is a single socket system. By the way, HPE has about 4.5 thousand views of their animated virtual tour of this system after 2-years. Dear viewers, we do hope we can beat that pathetic and downright insulting number.
The stylish bezel has a keylock, which is standard. It is a 4.5U tower that can be rack mounted with a conversion kit to a 5.5U rack mount server. Starting from the front top left of the system. A DisplayPort 1.1a, USB 3.2 Gen 1 port, and iLO Service port. Then a Unit ID button with LED, NIC status LED, Health LED, and the power ON button, also with LED.
Below all that, an optional optical drive then a media bay that can be used for a tape drive or RDX removeable disk cartridge, which is also used for data backup. Below that, several options for storage.
Ours has 8x 2.5-inch storage bays in box 1. Below that, the option to install another drive cage that can support 8x more 2.5-inch drive bays in Box 2 for up to 16x hot-swap drive bays total. The other option includes 4x or 8x 3.5-inch drive bays. Again, with the 3.5-inch bays, box 2 can be outfitted with an optional storage cage. For the 3.5-inch bay chassis the drive bays are non-hot plug. Below that a large fan to pull in fresh air.
Around back, again starting at the top, there is the option to install a hot plug boot optimized storage device. It has 2x M.2 drives installed, and is seen by the OS as a single NVMe drive. It offers a hardware RAID 1 for resilience and is completely turnkey.
PSUs on the side offer 1+1 redundancy with 2x PSUs installed but the second PSU is considered optional. Power supply wattages are variable depending on the configuration of the unit.
Below the PSUs there is an OCP 3.0 mezzanine card slot that can be used for a NIC or OROC module, which is a storage controller compatible with the open compute project standards. Then a few PCIe slots and an I/O panel that includes a VGA port, 2x USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, a dedicated integrated Lights Out port to manage the system remotely, and 2x GbE ports. There is a small knock out panel for an optional serial port right next to the VGA port.
For management of the system, HPE provides integrated Lights Out 6.0 Standard with Intelligent Provisioning. iLO6 accesses the server management processor embedded on the system board and offers basic remote access for monitoring and management of the system. For additional features, iLO 6 Advanced provides access to the remote console, and enables multi-user collaboration. For more comprehensive management of the system, there’s HPE OneView. OneView can be downloaded and used to manage your entire network including storage appliances and switches. To access systems remotely, you will need one OneView Advanced plus iLO Advanced and licensing for each server you would like to administer.
Loosening the thumb screw on the back allows for removal of the side panel. A small padlock loop and Kensington lock slot are standard equipment. Inside the chassis, there is also the option for an intrusion detection switch. Prominently displayed is an air baffle, and once removed, you can see the general layout with a single CPU socket and 16x memory module slots.
Also, 2x slots for SATA or NVMe M.2 drives that can be used for additional superfast storage or to boot the system if you decide to go without the optional boot device.
This system is limited to CPUs with up to 32x physical cores and 64x virtual threads, and thermal design power rating of up to 185W. Given that, no need to look at those top end Platinum CPUs as only Gold, Silver, or Bronze meet that criteria. That goes for both 4th and 5th Gen series processors.
Both series also support an 8-channel memory architecture and DDR5 Registered DIMMs. The full memory capacity of 1.5TB is achieved with 96GB memory modules in all slots. Memory speed is dependent on the memory type, processors model, and memory configuration. The top memory speed listed for 1 DIMM per channel is up to 4800MT/s but many of the CPUs don’t support that speed with some topping out at 4000MT/s, and perhaps even less with 2x DIMMs per Channel.
Default PCIe slots on this system include 2x x16 slots with a x16 connector width, those are slots 1 and 4. An optional GPU riser kit provides 2x additional slots. Slots number 2 and 3. All slots are PCIe 5.0. you can install either 2x single-width GPUs or a single double-wide GPU. A double-width GPU can only be installed in slot #2, which will cover up slot 3. To enable RAID support with the M.2 drives on the system board, a VROC key is required and offers limited RAID. HPE also offers a few other RAID controllers, which you will need for SAS storage devices or just for more control over your storage in general.
We tried to keep it short and sweet. This is a very flexible platform with some serious compute from the Intel Xeon Scalable processor plus GPU options for a little computational acceleration. Interested in purchasing this system or any other system? Contact IT Creations at 800-237-0402 or visit our website here.
