HP To Charge For Service Packs and Firmware For Out-of-Warranty Customers -Slashdot

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ktkintner

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Jan 7, 2014
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Unfortunately a lot of home users buy off lease servers which are out of warranty, myself I just picked up a DL180 G6 to use as a storage server. Fortunately I have downloaded the most up to date firmwares but this doesn't make me want to buy any additional HP machines.
 
Jeggs101

Jeggs101

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Dec 29, 2010
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Wow! I'm freaking happy I didn't just buy 94U of HP gear last week and went with Dell instead.
 
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PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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For the most part the lower-end Procurve switches in use by STH readers come with transferable lifetime warranty - so even if it applies it should have no practical impact.
 
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abstractalgebra

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Dec 3, 2013
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Wow, so this is bad news for eBay purchases of HP Servers like the great deals on DL180 DL380 servers. It reports the change in Feb 2014, so it sounds like the HP website already locked down. Hopefully Drivers are unaffected.

Is it common to see really out of date firmware on HP Server EBay purchases?
 
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Lost-Benji

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Jan 21, 2013
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The arse end of the planet
I don't see a huge issue. Most of the time when it falls out of warranty, chances are that there won't be SFA more updates anyway.

If the system was playing up by end of warranty, then it should be fixed, if it has been working fine prior to end or warranty, then chances are, it will last rest of life without the need for people to constantly chasing BIOS or firmwares to fix issues that done exist or fix issues with hardware never designed for in first place.


P.S Get to know a service tech and your worries will end.
 
andrewbedia

andrewbedia

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Jan 11, 2013
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This is the same stupid stuff (excuse my French) that Oracle did with Sun Firmwares which really PISSED ME OFF because the Sun Fire X4100 M2 that I bought needed a firmware upgrade to support quad core opterons. Need a ****ing support contract for BIOS updates? Have you lost your mind?

To think my roommate just bought a small stack of HP ProLiant servers. HP very much on my #$4!7list right now. Not cool.

Excuse me for my french. Delete my post if you want or feel free to censor out the swearing, but this REALLY MAKES MY BLOOD BOIL.

Edit: If any of you people have Oracle support contracts and want to help me out with getting a firmware update...
 
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mrkrad

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Oct 13, 2012
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It's likely you can own any HP server that is recent and pull the firmware. So in fact, as long as you own something reasonably new, you should be good to go.

Not like you are expecting awesome sauce Firmware for that DL180 g6 right? It's end of life.
 
TangoWhiskey9

TangoWhiskey9

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Jun 28, 2013
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Lost-Benji said:
If the system was playing up by end of warranty, then it should be fixed, if it has been working fine prior to end or warranty, then chances are, it will last rest of life without the need for people to constantly chasing BIOS or firmwares to fix issues that done exist or fix issues with hardware never designed for in first place.
Click to expand...
One example - remote disk loading does not work with ILO due to a firmware bug. 1st buyer doesn't fix because they use external KVM. Fix becomes available for entire warranty period but never gets applied to servers. They go to 2nd buyer and stuck without working ILO.
 
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caveat lector

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Jan 4, 2014
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It is surprising that HP is doing so well in this economy that they decide to reduce demand by making their servers less desirable to both new and used equipment buyers.
 
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PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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I don't think it reduces demand for hp at all. If you are buying new this change has absolutely no impact. Nothing about it changes their demand from 'new' buyers because almost all of them already use $0 for salvage value on servers. Resale value is not in their value models.

Reducing used demand is of no impact to hp as they are not part of that transaction at all (except through HP Renew, but in that case you get support so they aren't changing anything for Renew).
 
MiniKnight

MiniKnight

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Mar 30, 2012
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PigLover said:
I don't think it reduces demand for hp at all. If you are buying new this change has absolutely no impact. Nothing about it changes their demand from 'new' buyers because almost all of them already use $0 for salvage value on servers. Resale value is not in their value models.

Reducing used demand is of no impact to hp as they are not part of that transaction at all (except through HP Renew, but in that case you get support so they aren't changing anything for Renew).
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A company I work with leases. They do have a residual value.

For companies that have a $0 salvage value and depreciate to $0, they then recognize a taxable gain if the servers are sold for over $0.
 
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PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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The residual has almost no real impact on the lease analysis. In a real lease offer I have in front of me today...you buy a ~$10,000 server and lease it against a $200 residual on 24 months. Changing the residual to $0 makes almost no impact...

I don't think HP sees resale value as important to their business at all.
 
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PersonalJ

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May 17, 2013
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Considering many of my recent server purchases were custom units which could not be upgraded anyways I'm not very bothered by this. If it results in cheaper off lease servers all the better.
 
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mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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All Gen8 servers that are decent have the SPP flashed into the rom, so it can go fetch its updates as long as it wants :).

G5/G6/G7 - these are so old there will be no more updates.

I think the HP SMARTMEMORY and HP SMARTCarrier was the pre-cursor that led to this move. HP has to make more money and they are testing the waters, like DELL did for a while. They will realize their mistake and work something out I'm sure!
 
BThunderW

BThunderW

Active Member
Jul 8, 2013
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Canada, eh?
www.copyerror.com
Buying used HPs is going to be a crapshoot since they might come with outdated BIOS that won't be upgradable without paying. On the plus side, this will most likely drop the resale value of HP servers which will be good news for us as buyers.
 
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