FW Updates for HP P400

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politby

Member
Dec 31, 2013
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I just acquired an HP Proliant DL385 g2 that I am using as an ESXi lab machine. It has a P400 storage controller that still has the old 5.20 firmware.

Now that HP is no longer providing firmware updates to out of warranty systems, is there any LEGAL way to get the P400 firmware, such as a version distributed before the policy change?
 

politby

Member
Dec 31, 2013
32
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Well, I went and borrowed a DVD from work (I work at VMW), this one from June 2014, created a USB key which boots fine but the process hangs after the progress bar on the HP splash screen has reached 100%. I left it for half an hour and nothing changed.
Maybe this DVD is too new for my old system. And we don't have any older ones.
Because I'm running ESXi from a USB stick I can't boot into Windows native and run the updates from there.
 

politby

Member
Dec 31, 2013
32
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This was not easy. In the end I managed to perform the update by installing a physical Server 2012 machine and running the update from there. The HP "guided" update did not list the P400 as eligible for an update so I had to find the actual SPxxx.exe file and run it.
This updated my P400 to 7.24. :)
 

Stanza

Active Member
Jan 11, 2014
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word of warning on firmware updates for these..... be careful which update you choose, as plenty of these and also the later models get turned into bricks with a dicky firmware release from HP

Especially the P410
 

politby

Member
Dec 31, 2013
32
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I read about that too, but I thought it was only related to Broadcom NICs.
So only customers with active support contracts had their machines bricked, eh? ;)
 

mervincm

Active Member
Jun 18, 2014
159
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I can't recall the details but I had an issue with my P400 that once I passed X version, it would no longer be seen as a boot source in some motherboards. my fix required that I install it in an HP branded server, and downlevel the firmware to pre-X. lucky I had access to an HP branded server .....

I believe I had to stay at 5.26.
 

Patriot

Moderator
Apr 18, 2011
1,450
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word of warning on firmware updates for these..... be careful which update you choose, as plenty of these and also the later models get turned into bricks with a dicky firmware release from HP

Especially the P410
You do have to read the release notes. Some require a previouis minimum version before update. All of the cards are only warrantied for working with HP servers and as such are not tested on other boards for compatibility.
After certain firmware updates they can have issues working on non-HP servers... I noticed that on my p410.

I have had good luck with the current P420 gen working on Asus boards as have others. They are also one of the fastest cards you can get asides from the p430.
p420 can do 450k iops, p430 can do 1m iops.

I have all of the firmware versions stored... if you need a particular one ask.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
1,244
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The hp proliant tiny cube server can rock a P400/p410 for firmware updates! They are cheap and convenient for this purpose. Or an older workstation class motherboard or Z series workstation!