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Hi all,

Does anyone else out there find the HPE website and support poor. This has been going on for a few years since they moved their online portal to a new system.

Over the past couple of years we are now no longer purchasing HPE hardware and have moved over to Dell where the support although not 100% is still far greater than HPE.

We have existing support contracts with HPE for servers and it is a minefield at times trying to get things sorted. The portal website at times seems poorly designed and slow as well.

We are looking for the latest SPP for a Proliant ML30 Gen 9. Trying to download it, says we need a linked contract in order to download. A renewed warranty was purchased and we have proof. Yet, the portal shows the contract is not Active. We have raised this with HPE support and just going around in circles. Warranty has always been renewed for this server.

Thanks all

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Over the past two years, Dell have hardly shown in terms of service.

I have a server and I was trying to get extended warranty. It took a dozen phone calls (several of which were just hung up their end), and even then they just said no and will not even enter into a discussion as to why. So I am not sure that just going to Dell will solve all your problems.

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For what its worth. When I worked with a dell shop I thought support was decent. I am now at an hp/lenovo shop. I am happy with the lenovo support thus far.

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When you purchase a renewal, you or your vendor, then need to register that warranty so it show for your equipment. I do this all the time and my vendor never does it, so I do it myself.

If you bought it and it wasn’t registered, then they can not help you. Look into that first.

And yes, HP/HPE support site has been a mess since the HP/Compaq merger.

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You just need to register the S/N of any HPE device, to the HPE account you’re using, to access any and all downloadable resources.

I know it was controversial when HPE decided to enforce that, and honestly, I really don’t see any reason to do it (it doesn’t improve the security of any HPE systems). In fact, I’d argue that it creates a 3rd party source (legit or not) for people wanting to download firmware updates. It definitely doesn’t help the young System Administrators playing with old/repurposed HPE equipment, for educational purposes.

Restrictions aside, In My Experience, HPE support is responsive, and they are knowledgeable, which is a welcome break. We also run an HP/Lenovo shop, and I have no complaints about Lenovo support either; always responsive and knowledgeable.

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Thanks for the replies.

Yes the serial number is already registered to the HPE account, it has been for 4 years now and the client has always renewed their warranty. The client details, server etc show on the HPE account, but when trying to download the SPP as an example it keeps saying “An active warranty or support agreement must be linked…” The crazy thing is, it has always been linked and the actual client account details show expiration as April 2024 but inactive, which it is not.

Another HPE department has confirmed the support agreement number !!!

Yet throwing emails back and forth with HPE is getting nowhere.

Further to one of the other replies. I agree Dell can be very bad in others areas in which I have been in touch, but I have found their support very quick when a warranty is still valid.

It seems all these big players are like any other big organisations now, the left-hand doesn’t know what the right-hand is doing and too many untrained staff or staff that don’t care.

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Let me see if I can summon up some assistance for you:

@mark-hpe ​

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I hate HPE’s firmware locked behind current warranty contracts. It’s not like suddenly the 7 year old device and 4 year old firmware got a whole lot of new R&D since then. HPE already sold the hardware, they already did the R&D and spit out the firmware… It just drives people to go looking for the firmware on less than respectable locations.

I’ll say the truth, it’s this bullshit and makes me want to find another vendor. If it wasn’t for a whole package deal last time around with SAN, compute, and 4 ROBO devices rolled into one deal, I would have been chatting up Supermicro.

Their support website is such a pain with email loop 2FA and password changes every time you need to hit the site which is rare enough EVERY time you sign in you have to change password despite having an email loop 2FA. Can we upgrade that to a time based 2FA cuz email is a bit slow and everybody knows how abusable email accounts are!

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