As businesses of all sizes and locations find themselves increasingly needing to extend artificial intelligence (AI) and mission-critical workloads to highly distributed and harsh environments, HPE has expanded its ProLiant edge portfolio to address these needs and deliver workload durability under real-world conditions including severe environments.
HPE said organisations are currently pushing towards the edge for AI inferencing and remote operations, where traditional IT structures are impractical for many industries. Specifically, it noted that edge environments are often widely distributed, lightly staffed and physically exposed.
To this end, the HPE ProLiant Compute EL2000 chassis, the foundation for two new Gen12 servers, and the enhanced HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen11 are part of a portfolio of resilient and secure services engineered for edge deployments, complex environments and disconnected operations. Each platform is now available with an Environmental Ruggedisation Option Kit ideal for harsh locations, including high or low altitudes, extreme temperatures, and hazardous transit.
The HPE ProLiant Compute EL2000 chassis is said to be purpose-built for some of the most rugged and size-, weight- and power-constrained environments that see use in national security, manufacturing, retail and telecommunications. The platform is based on Intel Xeon 6 processors – described as “ideal” for demanding edge environments. Supporting up to two HPE ProLiant Compute EL220 Gen12 servers or one EL240 Gen12 server, the chassis is said to help deliver rugged performance and modular flexibility.
Available only with the HPE ProLiant Compute EL2000, the servers feature scalability from 8 up to 144 Intel Xeon 6 cores; support for space-saving central processing unit Thermal Design Power up to 350 watts to achieve higher performance; reliable operation in extreme temperatures ranging from -40 degrees Celsius to 55 degrees Celsius, as well as up to 95% humidity; and durability in environments with heavy vibration from aircraft or ground vehicles, environmental contaminants and electromagnetic interference.
The range is also available with Nvidia RTX Pro 4500 or Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Server Edition graphics processing units (GPUs), the latter only on EL240 Gen12 servers. Additionally, there is support for Nvidia AI Enterprise, with government-ready software to meet “rigorous” security standards and high-assurance environments.
HPE is also introducing an enhanced version of the HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen11 server, now powered by the upcoming AMD EPYC 8005 series processors – with the working brand name Sorano – which is designed to support distributed and harsh telco environments. The compact 2U system delivers up to 84 cores, and is said to be appropriate for “quiet” deployments from industries such as manufacturing and retail.
It is also engineered to operate in extreme temperatures – up to 55 degrees Celsius. A version of the HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen11 server was validated as the only purpose-built server for edge AI inferencing, based on Nvidia RTX Pro 4500 Blackwell Server Edition GPU, in the latest MLPerf Inference v6.0 results.
The HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen11 Premier Solution for Azure Local is also available for customers deploying Azure services to edge sites, and is designed to support Azure Local Disconnected Operations.
The net result, said HPE, was that its machines could meet mission-critical and ruggedised edge standards. The edge compute portfolio now meets extreme environmental standards, and can be used in harsh and remote locations for high-consequence deployments where failure could lead to disruptive results.
Moreover, the edge platforms offer ruggedisation that adheres to widely recognised industry standards including US national security standards that validate a server’s survivability against real-world stresses such as extreme temperatures and high or low altitudes, with an HPE Environmental Ruggedisation Option Kit that enables systems to meet these requirements across vibration and shock conditions.
There is also adherence to specifications to national security standards that test a system for electromagnetic interference protection and ensure reliable operation. The range also meets telecom network equipment standards that support 5G core and radio access network infrastructure designed for five-nines (99.999%) availability in unattended environments.
Krista Satterthwaite, senior vice-president and general manager of Compute at HPE, said. “HPE ProLiant is engineered with enterprise-grade security, right-sized performance, and a unified approach to managing and automating operations, enabling organisations to easily deploy, manage and scale edge environments with confidence. With these next-generation platforms, customers can address the complexities of edge computing more efficiently and with ruggedised performance.”
The HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen11 Server Premier Solution for Azure Local will be available in May, while the HPE ProLiant Compute EL2000 chassis and HPE ProLiant Compute EL220 and EL240 Gen12 servers will be available later in 2026. The enhanced HPE ProLiant DL145 Gen11 and the Environmental Ruggedisation Option Kit are available immediately.
