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HPE warranty service experiences turn up periodically in the community. I thought I’d share my recent one.

Tuesday night at 6pm, we get an alert about a server fail. It’s a DL380 Gen8 hosting production for our dispatch center. After restoring service using the companion server, we check out the machine.

The fans are screaming at 100% - a panic inducing sound at any time of the day. No contact with the host or any of the VMs. We use iLO to shut it down and look at the log. There’s only one event: RAID controller error. No real specifics. We restart it and it runs normally. We leave it running, but don’t put any VMs back on it.

The server is still under the 3-year Care Pack we bought with it. Wednesday morning, I open a case on HPE’s website. I’d already registered the server, so it was simple matter to enter the S/N and locate it. I click “Submit.” Almost immediately, I get an email confirmation followed by another email requesting the controller diagnostic report. I put that together and send it off. HPE confirms receipt and a few minutes later tells me they’re going to replace the system board.

Later that day, I get phone call scheduling a tech to come and replace the system board tomorrow (Thursday). He arrives (from his base 3 hours away) at 1pm. He replaces the board with the server in the rack and we’re back in service at 3:30pm on Thursday - about 32 hours from first website click to back in production.

I’m not sure what else I could expect from an OEM warranty beyond that. Thanks, HPE!

@priscilla-hp

43 Spice ups
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They have pretty good warranty services. At previous employers, we had various levels of warranty services (4-hour call to respond, 6-hour call to repair, next business day), all depending on how critical the device was. The only time there seemed to be a problem was when they didn’t have a part in stock locally. Then that might add a few more hours. Most of the time that wasn’t much of a problem. When the techs would come out, we’d have already given them the symptoms and what might be necessary so they could bring options.

All in all, I have had great experiences with them.

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That’s good to hear, I usually have 4 hours or NBD with Dell so I have not had much experience with HPE besides with a handful of servers and they have been stable enough.

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Generally speaking, I’ve had great luck with server warranties. Thankfully I haven’t used them all that much!

Knowing your failover structure from other posts, I’m sure not only is working with the vendor easier for you, but also them. You are calm when you report the issue and when they get there to fix it.

Everybody wins!

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They were great to us a week or so ago. Came into work, power surge fried UPS and damaged a vmware host server. The server was dead, no power. I called support, related what I tried and tried what they recommended.

No response from the server. They recommended a replacement of the psu backplane and possibly a system board. Tech was sent, friendly and knowledgable fellow. We replaced those parts but no go, we had to request 2 replacement psu’s. The tech ordered them and they were expressed couried to us from multiple warehouses. Slapped them in and we were good.

All around awesome service.

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As with any vendor, there are going to be horror stories and hero stories. The challenge is that in general, people are more likely to make their voice heard when something is bad and less likely to take the time when things are good. I have taken that to heart myself and while I have been vocal in the past when things are good, I have recommitted to putting as much effort into positive feedback to companies as I do negative. Funny I posted about this in the WaterCooler last night regarding a recent positive experience with a tool vendor.

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Always good to hear stories like that.

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Good on you for sharing a positive experience. My experiences with HPE support (and when it was still HP) have all been pretty much just like this. The most recent was a MSA2040 SAN controller that experienced a hard fault. It came back up within a few minutes, it only happened once and the other controller carried the load without interruption. The issue happened at 7:30am. I logged a ticket online with logs just after 8am, they called me within 45 minutes decided to replace it to be safe and couriered a controller to the tech, who was based 6 hours away. He arrived at 6pm, that evening. Being that we’re a good distance from any major city, I was fully expecting it to take 2-3 days, not 11 hours. It’s not the first time HPE has surprised me in a good way like that and it’s the driving reason why ProLiants (w\ a Carepack) have been my top choice for servers for a long time.

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I think this underlines the need for support on servers with exotic RAID controllers. If the controller goes down, your disks are paperweights unless you can get a replacement.

Nevertheless, reassuring to see a fast turnout and fix. Well done HP.

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Our experience with HPE support has been very good. We had a situation very similar to Robert’s with the RAID controller on a Gen8 ML350 server. Web support was very fast to respond, and had an on-site tech scheduled out next-day with a new RAID controller and backplane for replacement. At the time navigating their web portal was a bit nerve-racking, but they’ve since updated that.

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Hi Robert…

Would you consider upgrading to 7 years onsite 4 hour response support ?

In the long run, it would lower your TCO especially for an aging server (we know that most parts, if or when they might, start to fail after 3 years)

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HPE support for things under warranty is very good - I’ve had only positive experiences there.

It’s the HPE website that is terrible and makes you regret becoming a customer. A download should be a download, regardless of when you bought the thing from HP.

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Have had good response from a number of vendors server-wise. Normal ‘warranty’ support is good, but getting a ‘Care-Paq’ or equivalent, or a blanket service contract like I have, is necessary if you want to guarantee ‘first-in-line’, ASAP support…

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Can’t find a single reason why I would have to rant about HP(E) products and their support over here. Regularly ( every 6 months) I get a nudge to show up at their place for a new product event. Then we get to play with their latest gear even when only 2 of them exist in the world. Trying to buy one of the 2 now that brings a chuckle when you hear the rep’s reaction.

So HP Santa when can I play with the Zbook X2?

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I get a 3 year, 4-hour 24x7 hardware support with the new server. A longer warranty doesn’t work out economically. After 3 years, the cost of a “spare” server is less than the cost of two additional warranties. Having the spare on site costs less and gives me better RTO.

I’ve found that most server failures are infant mortality, rather than age-related. After 3 years, they’re pretty stable until the hit 8 years or so. I don’t count consumables like hard drives or power supplies. Those I replace routinely when they fail.

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Very happy to read this, Robert! And thank you to everyone for the extra HPE love. Going to tag our HPE server guru in as I’m sure this is a lovely post for him to read on a Monday morning =]

For any additional questions inquiries, or overall feedback strictly for HPE servers, feel free to tag or message myself or Ryan. Thank you, Robert and community!

@ryan-hpe

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Hello,

I love seeing HPE servers warranty experiences. I know there are good and bad experiences, but HPE is working hard to turn bad experiences into positive experiences. If anyone ever has any issues, please let me know. Thanks

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We’ve had a few issues with fans and what not, HPE support for the proliants has always been great for us.

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Now I’m curious. I don’t “do pricing” so generally have no idea but I thought I had read that if you buy the 5 year contract up front that it was economical. I’m surprised to read that it costs more than a spare server. What is a spare server? Are you saying to buy a new one 3 years in?

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Roughly speaking, when a server is 3 years old, a used server (2 CPUs, no drives, minimal RAM) costs about the same as two one-year warranties. So, for about half the price as extending the warranty on my four DL380 Gen8 servers, I can have a spare server in the rack. If a server breaks down, I can move over RAM and drives and be back in production in about 30 minutes. I cannibalize the broken server for parts (PS, DVD, CPUs) and then buy another used chassis to keep as a spare. The new one is even cheaper because it doesn’t need PS or CPUs. At that point, I become self-insuring with a 30-minute RTO.

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