Tag: HP

Lab Environment – New HP ProLiant DL360e G8

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Today a blog about my Home Lab. At the end of 2017, it was time to replace the old Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with something new. Currently, I was running two R710 servers for my lab environment.
These servers are ‘powered-on for a couple of hours a week to test new products and learn for certifications. My other environment described on this page is running 24/7 is providing a full set of infrastructure services.

Because of the price and I’m very familiar with the DL360 G8 it was a no brainer. Over the last couple of years, all my virtualization projects were based for 75% on the DL360 Gen8… so we have a lot of history together ;).

Technical specifications – HP DL360e Gen8:

  • Chassis: Small Form Factor (8-bays)
  • CPU1: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2430 v2
  • CPU2: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2430 v2
  • Memory: 128 GB (8x 16GB DDR3 1600 MHz)
  • Disks HDD: 2x Seagate Constellation SAS 1TB
  • Disks SSD: 4x Samsung EVO 850 250 GB
  • Storage controller: HP SmartArray P420 with 1 GB FBWC
  • NIC: 4 port 1 Gbit
  • Rack mounting kit, cable arm, and security front bezel

The spinning drives provide “safe” storage because they are configured as a mirrored volume. The SSD drives are configured as JBOD drives for performance without data protection (if I want protection I just create a virtual machine back-up to one of my storage arrays).

HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 - SFF
HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 – SFF
HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 - SFF with Bezel
HPE ProLiant DL360e G8 – SFF with Bezel

Update 2018:

In 2018, I did a full write-up of this server on this page: link

Flashing a HPE MSA 1040 via FTP

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In this article, we are going to flash an HPE MSA 1040 via FTP. At work, I faced a problem with a couple of HPE MSA 1040 storage arrays. Three out of ten were not displaying their web interface after about 200 days of uptime. This is not really a known problem for the HPE MSA 1040 :(. So it was time figure out a way to work around it. 

After some time, I noticed there is a built-in FTP flash option. About two hours later I finally got the latest firmware installed.

I have made a write-up to do it yourself. It is not really a difficult procedure but you need a couple of items ready and the correct command to get it all working.

Flashing the HPE MSA 1040

Note: I have tested this procedure on a Windows 10 client. The FTP tool for uploading the firmware is the built-in from Windows.

Prerequisites:

  • Download the firmware from the HPE website.
  • Store the firmware files in the following folder (C:\Temp).
  • Extract the bin file from the downloaded bundle.
  • Make sure no workloads are running on the HPE MSA.

Procedure:

  1. Start an SSH session with an available controller (no preferred choice between controller A & B)
  2. Enable the FTP service on the controller with the command: “set protocols ftp enabled”.
  3. Open a CMD shell (with administrator rights) on your workstation or management server.
  4. Run the following commands:
# Navigate to C:\Temp

# Start FTP session
ftp %IP-Address%

# Login
Username: ftp
Password: !ftp

# Navigate to directory
cd /

# Upload firmware and start flash
put TS252P001.bin flash

# Close FTP session
ftp close

# Go back to the SSH Session and disable the FTP service on the MSA
set protocols ftp disabled

Article update:

  • 2018-03-26 – Added feature image to page.
  • 2018-11-17 – Updated article to support the new standards of the website.