HP ML350P Gen8

I’m playing with a HP Proliant ML350P Gen8 server (part num 646676-011). For HP servers “ML” means tower (see the ProLiant Wikipedia page for more details [1]). For HP servers the “generation” indicates how old the server is, Gen8 was announced in 2012 and Gen10 seems to be the current generation.

Debian Packages from HP

wget -O /usr/local/hpePublicKey2048_key1.pub https://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/hpePublicKey2048_key1.pub
echo "# HP RAID" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/local/hpePublicKey2048_key1.pub] http://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/downloads/MCP/Debian/ buster/current non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

The above commands will setup the APT repository for Debian/Buster. See the HP Downloads FAQ [2] for more information about their repositories.

hponcfg

This package contains the hponcfg program that configures ILO (the HP remote management system) from Linux. One noteworthy command is “hponcfg -r” to reset the ILO, something you should do before selling an old system.

ssacli

This package contains the ssacli program to configure storage arrays, here are some examples of how to use it:

# list controllers and show slot numbers
ssacli controller all show
# list arrays on controller identified by slot and give array IDs
ssacli controller slot=0 array all show
# show details of one array
ssacli controller slot=0 array A show
# show all disks on one controller
ssacli controller slot=0 physicaldrive all show
# show config of a controller, this gives RAID level etc
ssacli controller slot=0 show config
# delete array B (you can immediately pull the disks from it)
ssacli controller slot=0 array B delete
# create an array type RAID0 with specified drives, do this with one drive per array for BTRFS/ZFS
ssacli controller slot=0 create type=arrayr0 drives=1I:1:1

When a disk is used in JBOD mode just under 33MB will be used at the end of the disk for the RAID metadata. If you have existing disks with a DOS partition table you can put it in a HP array as a JBOD and it will work with all data intact (GPT partition table is more complicated). When all disks are removed from the server the cooling fans run at high speed, this would be annoying if you wanted to have a diskless workstation or server using only external storage.

ssaducli

This package contains the ssaducli diagnostic utility for storage arrays. The SSD “wear gauge report” doesn’t work for the 2 SSDs I tested it on, maybe it only supports SAS SSDs not SATA SSDs. It doesn’t seem to do anything that I need.

storcli

This package contains both 32bit and 64bit versions of the MegaRAID utility and deletes whichever one doesn’t match the installation in the package postinst, so it fails debsums checks etc. The MegaRAID utility is for a different type of RAID controller to the “Smart Storage Array” (AKA SSA) that the other utilities work with. As an aside it seems that there are multiple types of MegaRAID controller, the management program from the storcli package doesn’t work on a Dell server with MegaRAID. They should have made separate 32bit and 64bit versions of this package.

Recommendations

Here is HP page for downloading firmware updates (including security updates) [3], you have to login first and have a warranty. This is legal but poor service. Dell servers have comparable prices (on the second hand marker) and comparable features but give free firmware updates to everyone. Dell have overall lower quality of Debian packages for supporting utilities, but a wider range of support so generally Dell support seems better in every way. Dell and HP hardware seems of equal quality so overall I think it’s best to buy Dell.

Suggestions for HP

Finding which of the signing keys to use is unreasonably difficult. You should get some HP employees to sign the HP keys used for repositories with their personal keys and then go to LUG meetings and get their personal keys well connected to the web of trust. Then upload the HP keys to the public key repositories. You should also use the same keys for signing all versions of the repositories. Having different keys for the different versions of Debian wastes people’s time.

Please provide firmware for all users, even if they buy systems second hand. It is in your best interests to have systems used long-term and have them run securely. It is not in your best interests to have older HP servers perform badly.

Having all the fans run at maximum speed when power is turned on is a standard server feature. Some servers can throttle the fan when the BIOS is running, it would be nice if HP servers did that. Having ridiculously loud fans until just before GRUB starts is annoying.

• [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProLiant
• [2] http://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/faq.html
• [3] http://downloads.linux.hpe.com/SDR/project/fwpp/