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I bought a refurbished HP Proliant DL380 G7 off of eBay. I run CentOS, and I'd like to know when a drive fails. A friend tells me that the lights on the front probably won't light up since I don't have HP software installed on the server - I have to find out drive status through some utility.

I've seen HP's utilities online, but they seem very large and bulky, and even intrusive. I just want to know my drive status. I don't want to sign up for an HP account. I don't want to receive emails from HP every week. I don't want to install gigabytes worth of software just to see if my drives are running.

Is this possible, or am I at the mercy of HP?

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    Fortunately, HP server monitoring software is not as intrusive as - say - their printer drivers. Aug 28, 2016 at 14:02

3 Answers 3

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The drives 100% definitely WILL light up if they fail - regardless of what OS or additional software you've installed. That said I personally wouldn't say that their driver set is too 'bloaty' at all - in fact operating without them would be considered by many professionals as...well...unprofessional.

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  • thanks for letting me know the front panel will light up anyway. Luckily I don't have to worry about being professional since it's my hobby hardware :) Aug 28, 2016 at 15:06
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    Oh dude, you know we make it really clear when you sign up here that this isn't a site for home-user stuff...please consider that in the future if you would.
    – Chopper3
    Aug 28, 2016 at 17:50
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    @Chopper3 does it really matter if this same question could be applied to a server in a business environment? Aug 29, 2016 at 1:45
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    @Chopper3: That sounds really snobby; The question was good enough for you to answer, but after you heard where it's located, it's suddenly entirely off-topic? If you could -1 comments, I'd do it in a heartbeat. As for the on-topicness, if you look over to the "on topic" section of the help for this site, you'll see that it says questions about "managing the hardware or software of servers" are on-topic. Aug 29, 2016 at 1:47
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    @AleksiTorhamo it's not snobby at all and what it actually says is "Server Fault is for questions about managing information technology systems in a business environment". I was simply pointing out to the user to bear this rule in mind as many many questions get moved or closed for exactly that reason. In this particular case you're right that it doesn't matter but the user clearly missed that rule so I was letting them know it for the future.
    – Chopper3
    Aug 29, 2016 at 8:26
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There's no need to whine about it.

HP provide this level of insight because it is a premium brand. You'll be glad your system has ILO, IML logging and 40+ temperature sensors when you actually need to troubleshoot a problem.

As for simplified monitoring, download the Redhat specific tools by adding HP's Linux repo or seeking out the following individual tools:

  • hpssacli - The CLI RAID control management tool.
  • hponcfg - The CLI ILO management utility.
  • hp-snmp-agents - Needed for email and SNMP support.
  • hp-health - Monitors system health.
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Rather than downloading from HP the fairly large .tgz and .iso files (which can contain numerous additional useful drivers, tools, firmware upgrades etc you don't immediately need) you can configure a repository in yum (also offered for apt btw) on https://downloads.linux.hpe.com/ that allows you to selective install the HP specific management and monitoring tools using your package manager.

More explained here in this Q&A for instance.

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