HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen10: Small Chassis, Full Platform

The ProLiant DL360 Gen10 is HPE's two-socket 1U server from the Xeon Scalable era, and its appeal is that very little about the platform is cut down to make it fit. Two LGA 3647 sockets, 24 DDR4 DIMM slots, up to ten small form factor front bays, Smart Array hardware RAID, and iLO 5 management: the same core feature set as the 2U DL380 Gen10, minus expansion slots and drive count.

Compute and memory

Both sockets take first-generation (Skylake-SP) and second-generation (Cascade Lake) Intel Xeon Scalable processors, from four-core parts up to 28 cores. Support extends to 205 W TDP, but the high-wattage SKUs require the high-performance heatsink and fan kit and come with inlet temperature restrictions. In a 1U chassis those are enforcement details, not suggestions.

Memory follows the platform rules: six channels per socket, two DIMMs per channel, 12 slots per CPU and 24 total, reaching 3 TB with 128 GB LRDIMMs. Treat that 3 TB figure as conditional rather than automatic: twelve 128 GB modules is 1.5 TB per socket, above the 768 GB per socket standard first-generation parts address and above the 1 TB per socket standard second-generation parts address, so the top of the range needs M-suffix processors. Populate six DIMMs per CPU for a balanced layout, twelve per CPU when you need the capacity, and avoid odd counts that leave channels empty. First-generation processors run DDR4 at up to 2,666 MT/s; second-generation parts reach 2,933 MT/s at one DIMM per channel, dropping back to 2,666 once the second DIMM per channel is filled. HPE also offered persistent memory options on this platform, but those configurations have specific processor and DIMM placement requirements, so treat them as a deliberate build rather than a drop-in.

As with any Xeon Scalable machine, a system carrying older System ROM firmware needs a BIOS update before it accepts second-generation processors.

Storage: the chassis decides, not the firmware

Front bay capacity on the DL360 Gen10 is set by the drive cage and backplane that were built into that specific unit: four LFF, eight SFF, or ten SFF configurations exist, and an 8 SFF machine does not become a 10 SFF machine by adding a cable. The universal media bay option on some builds adds front USB and VGA, an optical drive, or additional SFF bays depending on the kit installed. When you are evaluating a used system, the front panel tells you more than the model number does.

Controller options are worth checking with the same care:

• S100i ? chipset SATA with software RAID. There is no RAID engine on a card here, so the RAID mode depends entirely on operating system driver support and is not available under VMware. Fine for a boot pair, not for a production array.
• E208i-a ? 8-port SAS controller without cache, good for HBA-style pass-through to ZFS, Storage Spaces, or vSAN.
• P408i-a ? 8-port controller with cache and a Smart Storage Battery. If this card is installed, verify the battery reports healthy; a failed pack disables write cache and array performance falls off a cliff with no obvious error.

NVMe drives, where the chassis supports them, connect to CPU PCIe lanes rather than through the Smart Array controller, so there is no hardware RAID across NVMe. Redundancy for those drives lives in the operating system or hypervisor.

FlexibleLOM and PCIe: the Gen10-specific detail

Gen10 uses HPE's FlexibleLOM slot for onboard networking, which is a proprietary adapter form factor. A 4 x 1GbE FlexibleLOM can be swapped for a 10GbE SFP+ or 25GbE card without spending a PCIe slot, which is the main reason to care. The important compatibility note is that Gen10 Plus moved to OCP 3.0: FlexibleLOM cards and OCP 3.0 cards are not interchangeable, so do not plan a parts pool across the two generations.

Beyond the LOM, the chassis supports up to three PCIe 3.0 slots across a primary and secondary riser, all low-profile. The secondary riser depends on the second processor being installed, so a single-CPU DL360 Gen10 has fewer usable slots than the spec sheet headline implies. Double-width GPUs do not fit this chassis; 1U here means low-profile cards only.

iLO 5, firmware, and what changes when the warranty is gone

iLO 5 provides out-of-band management with HPE's Silicon Root of Trust firmware validation. As with the Dell equivalent, the useful remote features are licensed: remote console, virtual media, and directory integration come with iLO Advanced, while the standard license covers health, inventory, and power control.

There is one difference from Dell that matters specifically for secondhand hardware. HPE gates firmware downloads, including the Service Pack for ProLiant, behind an active warranty or support agreement, whereas Dell publishes BIOS and iDRAC updates openly. It is not a reason to avoid the platform, but it does mean you should ask what BIOS and iLO revisions are currently installed rather than assuming you will patch it yourself on day one.

DL360 Gen10 next to the Dell R640

Attribute	HPE DL360 Gen10	Dell PowerEdge R640
Sockets	2 x LGA 3647	2 x LGA 3647
DIMM slots	24 (6 channels per CPU)	24 (6 channels per CPU)
Front bays	Up to 10 SFF or 4 LFF	Up to 10 x 2.5" or 4 x 3.5"
PCIe 3.0 slots	Up to 3, low-profile	Up to 3, low-profile
Onboard NIC	FlexibleLOM	Network daughter card (rNDC)
RAID	Smart Array S100i / E208i-a / P408i-a	PERC H330 / H730P / H740P / HBA330
Management	iLO 5 (Advanced for remote console)	iDRAC9 (Enterprise for remote console)

The two are close enough on paper that the decision usually comes down to what your team already runs: existing iLO tooling, spare FlexibleLOM cards, and familiar firmware workflows are worth more than any line in that table.

Where to go from here

Look through the available HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen10 systems to see which drive cages, controllers, and processor pairs are in stock configurations. If you want a specific CPU, memory layout, and controller combination rather than an as-listed build, configure it on Build Your Server and submit it as a quote request. We will confirm the parts fit the chassis you picked before quoting it.