End of Sale: The HP DL360E G8 Was a Quiet Legend

From 2012 to 2026, this unassuming 1U server outlived expectations, outlived DDR4 pricing spikes, and earned its retirement.

A generation story that started in Doetinchem

In the early days of NovoServe's data center operations in Doetinchem, the HP DL360 G7 was our core bare metal product. When HP released the G8 generation, it came in two versions — the DL360E and the DL360P — with one frustrating catch: the two were hardware-incompatible with each other. Different memory, different CPUs, different upgrade paths. For a hosting provider that likes things clean and consistent, that was annoying. We picked the DL360E, doubled down on it, and never looked back.

The "E" stood for "Entry", but it didn't feel that way in practice. It was a well-built, reliable 1U server with a solid LFF or SFF storage layout, dual-socket Intel Xeon E5-2400 v1/v2, and — most importantly — power consumption that was genuinely low compared to the P-series. For hosting providers, power is one of the biggest ongoing costs. The DL360E made economic sense from day one.

Low power, long life — and a DDR3 plot twist

The first customers started receiving DL360E G8 servers in 2012. Over the years, as servers came back from customers or were upgraded, we refurbished them and put them back into service. A second life. Then a third. Then a fourth. At NovoServe, we're a company that refurbishes bare metal servers as a core part of what we do — we use bamboo pens and recycled paper notebooks not as a PR stunt, but because it reflects how we actually think about waste. Every year a server stays running is a year it doesn't end up in a landfill.

Then something unexpected happened: DDR4 memory prices spiked. Suddenly, a well-specced DDR3 server became competitive again on price. The DL360E G8 — a machine that many had written off — had a genuine market comeback. It's a small but satisfying story about how "old" hardware can keep being the right tool for the right workload, especially when affordability matters more than bleeding-edge specs.

We gave these servers a second, third, and fourth life — extending their service to almost 15 years. With DDR4 price increases, they made a final comeback. Optimal low-waste.

End of sale — but not end of support

As of now, the HP DL360E G8 is officially end of sale at NovoServe. We won't be offering them to new customers. But if you're already running one, nothing changes — we still have spare parts, our data center team will keep servicing them, and power and network services continue as normal. Retiring a product line doesn't mean abandoning the people using it.

What's next: G9, G10, and a lot more

If you're looking for an affordable bare metal server now, the good news is the lineup that replaced the G8 generation has matured nicely. The G9 and G10 HP server families offer a significant jump in performance — better CPU architectures, DDR4 memory, improved storage flexibility — while still being available at competitive price points because they're a generation or two behind the absolute bleeding edge. That's the sweet spot for a lot of workloads.

Depending on what you need, there are setups worth exploring: high-density storage servers if you're running backups, media archives, or object storage; NVMe-equipped machines if you need serious IOPS for databases or caching layers; or straightforward compute-focused configs for web hosting, game servers, or self-hosted applications. We host servers in the Netherlands, with connectivity into both Europe and North America.

So: thank you, DL360E G8. You were a quiet workhorse that outlived most predictions, and powered thousands of projects across nearly a decade and a half. That's a good run.