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The new ProLiant ML110 G7 is designed primarily for small businesses with limited on-site IT skills looking for their first server. It’s also the first HP product to sport Intel’s latest Xeon E3 processor. It goes head-to-head with Dell’s PowerEdge T110 II, also equipped with an Intel Xeon E3, which took over at the top of the A-List last month as our favourite pedestal server.

Can this ProLiant topple the newly crowned Dell? It certainly makes a good start. The HP scores higher for remote server management, since it features an ML110 embedded iLO3 controller. This is the same controller that’s found in all the high-end ProLiant servers, first appearing in the ProLiant DL380 G7.

The iLO3 shares access with the first of the server’s two Gigabit Ethernet ports, but you can buy an optional upgrade that adds a dedicated management port. These features make the ProLiant ML110 G7 well suited to remote sites or IT providers, since it can be accessed easily over the internet for full remote diagnostics and, with the optional upgrade, remote control.

The ML110’s power options are also superior: either a fixed 350W supply or up to two 460W hot-plug supplies. The review system included a 460W hot-plug supply with a second module costing around £155 exc VAT extra. The server is easy on the power, too, with our inline power meter clocking the HP at only 35W with Windows Server 2008 R2 idling. With SiSoft Sandra fully exercising the eight logical cores of the Xeon E3 processor, this peaked at only 97W.

HP is offering a host of processor options: along with Core i3, there’s a choice of five Xeon E3 models. The 3.3GHz Xeon E3-1240 in the review system sits in the middle of this group, but you can save cash and opt for the slightly slower 3.1GHz E3-1220. This is fitted in the base server model, which costs only £455 exc VAT.

The HP’s storage is exemplary. A lockable front panel hides a hard disk cage with four removable drive carriers. In the base model the cage is wired directly to the embedded B110i SATA RAID controller, which supports stripes, mirrors and cold-swap drives. For hot-swap and SAS support you can specify an HP Smart Array RAID P212 or P410 PCI Express card. The latter has a pair of quad-port SAS connectors, and with this in place you can use the optional SFF bay that supports eight hot-swap 6Gbits/sec SAS, nearline SAS or SATA hard disks.