Enterprise Server Upgrade — Higher-Education University Cluster
Refreshed an end-of-life HPE ProLiant Gen8 cluster at a large public-sector Pakistani university with HPE ProLiant Gen11 + Alletra MP storage and added NVIDIA L40S GPU capacity for research — halving rack footprint and dropping power draw ~35 %.
Challenge
- Eight-year-old HPE ProLiant Gen8 cluster running shared academic services (LMS, ERP, library) was out of warranty and frequently hitting CPU saturation during exam season.
- Research department was provisioning GPU workloads on workstations under desks because the cluster had no GPU capacity.
- Rack space at the campus DC was at 92 % — any refresh had to consolidate footprint, not expand it.
- Public-sector procurement required PPRA-compliant documentation and three-quote pricing transparency.
Solution
- Refresh with HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen11 anchor hosts and DL360 Gen11 compute nodes — fewer chassis, more capacity.
- Two HPE DL380a Gen11 GPU hosts with 2× NVIDIA L40S each for research workloads, provisioned with NVIDIA AI Enterprise.
- HPE Alletra MP 4-node array replacing two aging 3PAR systems — single namespace, NVMe end-to-end, Peer-Persistence-ready.
- HPE Aruba CX 8325 ToR switching with 25/100 GbE for the compute fabric.
- iLO 6 + HPE OneView + InfoSight for unified fleet management and AIOps.
- Data migration from Gen8 + 3PAR to Gen11 + Alletra over a 6-week phased cutover with workload-by-workload validation.
Hardware used
- HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen11 × 6 (anchor)
- HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen11 × 14 (compute)
- HPE ProLiant DL380a Gen11 × 2 (GPU — 2× NVIDIA L40S each)
- HPE Alletra MP 4-node all-flash NVMe (with Peer-Persistence-ready)
- HPE Aruba CX 8325 × 2 (ToR 25/100 GbE)
- HPE Foundation Care 24×7 × 5 years
Business outcome
Rack footprint reduced ~50 % — freed enough rack space for the next refresh wave without extending the DC.
Power draw dropped ~35 % vs the Gen8 baseline at higher utilization.
Research GPU workloads pulled off under-desk workstations onto governed cluster capacity — utilization and uptime up sharply.
Exam-season CPU saturation eliminated; LMS / ERP response times stable across academic peaks.
Five-year Foundation Care 24×7 SLA registered at the customer entity; PPRA documentation pack handed over.
Architecture summary
HPE ProLiant Gen11 (DL380 + DL360 + DL380a GPU) cluster on HPE Alletra MP NVMe primary storage with HPE Aruba CX 8325 ToR 25/100 GbE fabric, iLO 6 / OneView / InfoSight unified management, NVIDIA L40S GPUs for research workloads governed by NVIDIA AI Enterprise.
Related solutions
Related product categories
Technology partners
More case studies
Talk to an infrastructure expert
Datacenter, servers, storage, networking, firewalls — get a sized BoM, deployment plan and price within one business day.