HPE Proliant DL160 Gen 9 Issues - My description on the Computer Weekly site:
Hello ComputerWeekly,
My company and i, who have sold HP Server products for over 20 years now, with my father starting on punch cards, and moving with DEC through to current and myself, always being surrounded by HP servers and working on them and selling them for over 12 years personally (as in for my company, not for myself, just personally as doing this for another company) for my employer, and always happy with the support we had received, well, have now been totally disgusted and hurt, both the end user, my company and myself, by loss due to HPE's supposed support contract, which we had even purchased an extended warranty contract on top of, which now after over 3 months for a HPE Proliant DL160 Gen 9 server, purchased on (maybe the bad luck is from the date, HPE will probably blame that next!) Friday 13th May 2016, and giving SCSI BUS FAULTS since i reinstalled due to funny corrupt file errors, which now very probably are due to the server, a SATA server getting SCSI bus faults, changed from Server 2008 R2 to Server 2012 R2, and which i have been blamed for and lied to numerous times, all recorded via email or recorded calls, and this server is now even with HPE for more than a week, after i had to purchase (my company not me personally) a server to allow my client, HPE's CLIENT as well, the end user, some way of continuing after HPE kept saying they have no loan servers. We had almost no feedback in the last week, and before i had to call HPE support to get feedback, after every technician had been, and had left before the server was fixed (5 technicians visited changing the board twice, 3 HDD's (even though we only purchased the server with 2 x HDD's) and even the backplane of this SATA server.) so they never checked it was fixed even, before they had left, which HP technicians, having worked with them for years, would always make sure of first as this is in the HP/HPE server warranty.
Now they want to replace this server, and i did a simple google search, finding that this part number was sold in UK on a 2 for 1 cash back promotion, and these servers on this promotion, were also very high in come back / issues. Add to this the fact, HPE made a huge loss when the HPE resellers / suppliers, themselves, got these promo returns, before offering it to clients, who as per the deal, would get a cheque made out to their company after they claim back, and well i now have this feeling that, since HPE servers in RSA come from a UK supplier, and since i purchased from our supplier, a HPE wholesaler so not a reseller in RSA, i am now worried, the same has happened to us here in RSA with someone buying these servers on a 2 for 1 which they claim for the return from HPE, and dont offer the end users who were supposed to get this return in the end.
I say this due to the time now taken, without a simple out of box failure replacement, and with HPE not even capable of giving answers to what is wrong, as well as also, with proof, lying to me and my client (who is the end user who also supported HP for around 20 years now having a VAX/Alpha, and HP servers, which the HPE Technician would have noticed in the server room / safe where the DL160 - POS (piece of s&%t) was kept) and, yes, after almost 3 months, the only way to get any real response, which actually worked, was to resort to swearing at HPE email support, since the end user was going down up to 3 times a day and losing more and more money.
Justin (wont say surname here as it is a public forum), from HPE RSA, supposedly the HPE Server RSA manager, then got involved and since then, and even a day or two ago, keeps asking to meet up with him, to either me or the end user, as well as cuts either myself or else, the end user, out of emails / communication. I have asked this Justin now on more than 5 emails to elevate this issue, and that we dont want to deal with someone more interested in wasting time, than doing what is legally supposed to have been done months ago, as per the 2 x HPE contracts on this server, and he has ignored all emails with us requesting this, which is very strange, i mean why not elevate it to next in charge, unless your hiding something???
I have attempted to then contact, HPE UK, who would have supplied the servers to HPE RSA, who then would supply them to the wholesalers, etc. and have so far been told twice, to contact HPE RSA support, so Justin. So this is a vicious circle, with the end user, who is legally protected by the 2 HPE contracts, still not protected and still losing money. My main concern, which HPE (international) should be happy to fix to save their name, is first, has someone now claimed the 2 for 1 return on this server, which then HPE can take further actions against, since the deal was aimed at end users, as per that agreement, and then, all we wanted was a working server, to replace a failing HP server, at the client, and we still have nothing, so why should we even sell HPE Servers, if this is what BS we get now.
All in all, HPE has killed the HP name for my company, the end user, people who have helped with this request (including the call center agent in India) and mostly myself. So now i will give my warning, all that i can prove, so not to cause legal issues for myself, which HPE RSA does know since i have informed Justin i would make this public if not elevated, which was ignored. Please people. Be careful, these servers, especially in Africa, run entire enterprises, and not being able to rely on them, would mean it is stupid to even buy them, which since HPE failed and lied to us about, means yes, we were stupid to invest our futures in HPE, and had we known that we would never have done so. So if you looking for a future server to run your company, and life, avoid HPE.
In the end, who would buy a server to look after their enterprise, from a startup????
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Comment Update on EnterpriseTimes:
As per my previous comment, which was still new then, this issue proceeded to get worse, with HPE taking this server to test, but not offering the client a replacement or even a loan server, and only after i had complained and then purchased a refurbished server for the client to loan until the new server was working (since obviously we are the reseller, and look bad usually are even seen as worse than the manufacturer since these items are sold on our recommendations).
Longer addition made short, so HPE collected the DL160 Gen9, and on their reformat and all, there were still issues, they then offered an identical HPE DL180 Gen9 server, not on the BOGOF list of servers, and also which at the start, we had wanted a DL180 Gen9 server, but were told there was no stock available, the new catch, only 1 HDD not 2 as per our previous model, as well as a wait for the new server. Since we had purchased the loan refurbished server, which was working perfectly from the day installed to the day they moved to their new server, even with old HDD's (server came with 3 x 72GB 150000RPM SAS and 3 x 300GB 10000RPM SAS drives, all being old and having high hours, i setup 2 x RAID 1 with hot spare, the faster 72GB drives for OS and the 300GB for user data) which had some errors on, one even showing some SCSI Bus Faults but not increasing numbers, and is EXPECTED for a SAS so SCSI HDD, the server was fast and worked more than expected for what was needed, in fact the client offered to purchase it back from us, but since HPE had taken the NEW Server + wait time for the NEW REPLACEMENT server, we had already offered it to another client who was having hardware issues as well.
So, what do you all think happened with the new replacement HPE DL180 Gen9 Server, with a different model HPE Smart Array Controller, being a HPE H240 Smart Array Controller (12GB SAS, but 6GB SATA so the SATA for both is the same controller), and not the HPE B140i Dynamic Array Controller (6GB SATA Only and all cache is on the SYSTEM RAM not CONTROLLER RAM as none is included), well the HPE technician, reinstalled our copy of Windows Server 2012 R2, and straight after this new fresh install on fresh brand new HPE HW, with his own install media not the same as my media, he started encountering SCSI BUS FAULTS as well, also only with SATA HDD's installed, yet this was then not a SATA only server, as the controller now supported SAS.
Due to the EXACT same HARDWARE ERRORS, on a server which did not have that HARDWARE as well as could not even SUPPORT it, then replicating themselves, on a brand new server, with not even the same range of Array Controller, since the B140i is Dynamic, and the H240 is Smart, HPE then had to install a P440 (i an not even sure if it was a P440 or a P440ar model, which may also be intersting since the one would be an on-board replacement controller, so if a P440, extra PCIe card controller was installed, instead of a P440ar On-board controller, would the P440ar, ALSO HAVE ERRORS????)
When they finally returned the new replacement HPE DL180 Gen9, we also noticed they had doubled up on everything, so 4 HDD's instead of the original 2 HDD's but all SATA, then they added a new identical CPU, which included RAM of the same amount as the original CPU so 16GB, which means this was not doubled, but the client will in future need to buy 2 x RAM DIMMs for an upgrade, to keep RAM per CPU identical, which is a small issue that we cant really complain about. They had originally also, not restarted the extended + original warranty, but since i complained more, since original was still branded HP, as well as the loss of the 6 MONTHS that the whole case had taken although a NBD + Extended NBD agreement was purchased, HPE has now said they have changed this, although i still see the original NBD + original DL160 Gen9 on the support login page, as if i am not added to the new agreements.
And to add new insult to injury, this not for HPE itself, but for the HP brand, with a new HP Laserjet Pro M426fdn being sold and supplied to another client, which was sold in November, and due to holidays and the holiday season, although on paper it was 2 months since day is was invoiced at my supplier to the day i called HP support, the actual usage time was just over 1 month, and this would mean they should look at a RMA for out of box failure, as the scanner not only could not take more than 3 pages, without the second page getting stuck and crumpling into itself almost so bad the original scanned invoices we were attempting to scan, almost were not worth keeping, and then it would start on the 3rd page, and only fail as it started crumpling up. I had tried a FW update in December as well, which added much worse scanning quality where we could almost not read the invoice details as well as most colour was almost all removed compared to the scans before the FW update.
The HP techician who was sent to see this problem (since this printer too, had a 1 year NBD warranty attached to it, included in the purchase) which had slightly improved after the FW update (crumpling issue not quality as it was worse after new FW), i can agree to that, but still was there maybe on 5th or 6th page now, well he informed me that you cant revert the FW, and then downloaded the identical FW update and installed it before he replaced the ADF. After replacing the ADF, i became aware of the issue, that was also there before, but i had missed, where all boarders not around our paper, (invoices are printed on 2-part US STD Fanfold paper, so with the holes for the dot matrix paper tractor is wider than A4 but shorter) so where the white backing should be covering, AND ONLY ON NON-ADF scan's, which we had never tested as we needed batch scan's while still setting up, but which would have been needed for faxing as well as scan to email, well, all the TOP and RIGHT borders before ADF replacement had a black line, as if the backing let light escape, and then after ADF replacement, the TOP only had a now larger black line, which seems to fall on deaf ears with the technician and HP support, yet i am sure we all know, if we scan say a book, with the top cover still open even a fraction, there will be black printed / scanned wherever the light escapes from the scan. Its almost GENERAL KNOWLEDGE even.
For this new issue, HP then sent a REPLACEMENT PRINTER, which when received, in a different box not a HP branded product box, and after being unpacked, i instantly noticed a side cover not even installed correctly as well as it being DIRTY, then i noticed a sticker stating REFURBISHED and a sticker by the power stating TESTED. We cant accept possibly a 2 years + printer, for something brand new, i dont care how tested it is, if it was on a rebuy offer, 2 years use is a long time, why replace junk with junk.
On that, i will now see tomorrow, what happens, as i am meeting a technician there again, i have stated to HP that if there is no NEW printer, working there tomorrow, we want a full refund with damages, so who knows what is going to happen. Will update when i know.
Not buy HPE Servers?
