HP partsurfer equivalent for servers?

[Mars]

I have a stack of HP blade servers that I need to determine their spec. I have their serial numbers but I can't find an HP site that I can interrogate to determine CPU / memory. Any ideas? I hoped partsurfer would do this but it doesn't recognise any of these serial numbers, so I assume it only knows about domestic equipment.

Thanks,

[Harpoon]

Have you got the HPE SKU / part number as well?

Quickspecs might help for pre-configured models but will probably fall down on CTO

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/resource-library.html/re...

[BlueMR2]

I take it you cant turn them on at all?

Ilo should let you login and see the specs of them.

[Mars]

Harpoon said:

Have you got the HPE SKU / part number as well?

Quickspecs might help for pre-configured models but will probably fall down on CTO

https://www.hpe.com/us/en/resource-library.html/re...

Thanks but no - I only have the serial numbers. They're out of production now but I just need to squeeze another year or two out of them.

Not too much of a problem - I think our original supplier may have the details. I was just hoping I might dig the details out more quickly myself.

Thanks anyway.

[Mars]

BlueMR2 said:

I take it you cant turn them on at all?

Ilo should let you login and see the specs of them.

Unfortunately not yet, no. I have a pile of around 50 blade servers in one location and two C7000 enclosures in two other locations. I was just trying to ensure I group two lots of 16 of them together with the same specs - they don't cluster as successfully if they're not exactly the same spec.

As above - no bother. I think our supplier will have the deets. Thanks anyway.

[BlueMR2]

Mars said:

BlueMR2 said:

I take it you cant turn them on at all?

Ilo should let you login and see the specs of them.

Unfortunately not yet, no. I have a pile of around 50 blade servers in one location and two C7000 enclosures in two other locations. I was just trying to ensure I group two lots of 16 of them together with the same specs - they don't cluster as successfully if they're not exactly the same spec.

As above - no bother. I think our supplier will have the deets. Thanks anyway.

Yeah, fair enough.

There is so much configuration available the standard base configuration can be wildly different to how they end up.

As you say the supplier may have a list of the spec for each serial number. Checking the original email or sales invoice may be the quickest way.

[Mars]

BlueMR2 said:

Mars said:

BlueMR2 said:

I take it you cant turn them on at all?

Ilo should let you login and see the specs of them.

Unfortunately not yet, no. I have a pile of around 50 blade servers in one location and two C7000 enclosures in two other locations. I was just trying to ensure I group two lots of 16 of them together with the same specs - they don't cluster as successfully if they're not exactly the same spec.

As above - no bother. I think our supplier will have the deets. Thanks anyway.

Yeah, fair enough.

There is so much configuration available the standard base configuration can be wildly different to how they end up.

As you say the supplier may have a list of the spec for each serial number. Checking the original email or sales invoice may be the quickest way.

Got there in the end - thanks again.

Interesting to look back at invoices. These were over £20K each originally (we have quite high spec ones) but you can pick them up on eBay for about £1K now - same spec. So the "pile" I have at my disposal was originally over £600K whereas they're worth maybe £30K now. Depreciation is heavy on this sort of thing.

Mind you, I have a load of extremely high capacity Huawei networking gear to dispose of too. With the three data centre core switches, 60+ APs, the AP controller, numerous top-of-rack switches, on-site core switches, and at least 60 "edge" switches we have accumulated, it was collectively worth close to £2M only 7 years ago and is utterly worthless now... just because of the name printed on it. It's bloody good kit but since Trump decided he wouldn't partner with countries who worked with any Chinese company (regardless of whether there were "back doors" or not), Huawei pulled out of the UK market altogether and so you can't buy it new, and if you have any of it already, support for it is tricky (you have to go through European partners).

[BlueMR2]

Prices on enterprise gear new is pretty crazy.

Couple of high spec processors, few grand each, pack it with ram, 128gb lrdimms add some very expensive large ssd’s and some graphics for AI. £100k is pretty easy it would seem.

I purchased a Gen 10 DL380, just missed a £200 gen 10 ML350.

Might get my Gen 9’s for sale and look to get a ML350 gen 10 when a cheap one comes up.

Updated ilo on the Gen 10 and thankfully the fans dropped from 46-50% to 11%, lol, cant hear it now.

Time to put in the 10gb lom, more ram sticks and the gold processors. Around double the multicore performance of the silvers and under £20 the pair. That could have been a rounding error on the original price i’d imagine.

Quite a bit of the pricing new is from the aftercare though i guess. You can get to a 4hour turnaround on some i believe( probably if you are in london or a major datacentre) but that wont be cheap, although the amount of income you could lose if the server is in a low performance state/off could make that pale into insignificance.

[Mars]

Cost wise, it all seems to pale into nothing compared with NetApp...

Oh yes, the eventual replacements for our array of BL460c blades... I can't remember what they're called... pump out so little heat compared to ours. The cabinet doors behind our C7000s are almost too hot to touch - and with the door open is no different to standing in front of an open fan oven. Yet you can stand behind the new-gen stuff without struggling for breath. Quite a difference.

[BlueMR2]

Best not to mention how much power these things can use, enough to make your local substation twitch, lol.

I think things like network cards and raid cards etc have become more power efficient and cooler as well as heat per x of cpu power has gone down with smaller nm processes.

Intel seemed to stall for quite a while not reducing the nm processes of cpu’s.

Then you look at the advantages it has in something like Apples M processors, fast, low power and cool.

Edited by BlueMR2 on Thursday 17th July 20:14

[Mars]

We turned off the eco mode because it was making our Citrix desktops perform poorly so running on full power all the time, the full enclosures are pulling 8KW on start-up and they settle at around 6.5KW. It's no wonder they are like open-ovens around the back.

[robbo145]

Mars said:

I have a stack of HP blade servers that I need to determine their spec. I have their serial numbers but I can't find an HP site that I can interrogate to determine CPU / memory. Any ideas? I hoped partsurfer would do this but it doesn't recognise any of these serial numbers, so I assume it only knows about domestic equipment.

Thanks,

Make sure to use HPE version of PartSurfer rather than HP for servers etc. They are split into two separate companies.
HPE for Enterprise and HP for consumer
https://partsurfer.hpe.com/search.aspx
Cheers

[Funk]

Mars - if you want to squeeze a couple more years out of your existing kit (and it's no longer under CarePack support or an HPE SAID) I work for a VAR (HPE partner) and can provide post-warranty hardware break/fix for pretty much any kit you'd put in a datacentre; I've got a number of customers who are running legacy kit that HPE can't or won't support now. I can also probably help when you come to upgrade to see if the kit has any residual value to any of the partner companies I work with - or ultimately recycling/disposal if required.

Feel free to drop me a message via my profile if you'd like to have a chat about anything.

[Mars]

robbo145 said:

Make sure to use HPE version of PartSurfer rather than HP for servers etc. They are split into two separate companies.
HPE for Enterprise and HP for consumer
https://partsurfer.hpe.com/search.aspx
Cheers

YES - that's the one I was looking for. Thank you. I knew there was an enterprise one out there but Google just wouldn't throw it up. Thank you.

Weirdly, the spec it's showing me says the ZERO for the second CPU and I know it's present. I wonder if it was added after the fact, or ordered separately.

It's also not in a typically difficult-to-read format. HPE and Dell (and every other IT manf) are great at obfuscating what you really want to know.

Never mind, I did get the info in the end off the vendor but I'm grateful for this. Thanks.

[Mars]

Funk said:

Mars - if you want to squeeze a couple more years out of your existing kit (and it's no longer under CarePack support or an HPE SAID) I work for a VAR (HPE partner) and can provide post-warranty hardware break/fix for pretty much any kit you'd put in a datacentre; I've got a number of customers who are running legacy kit that HPE can't or won't support now. I can also probably help when you come to upgrade to see if the kit has any residual value to any of the partner companies I work with - or ultimately recycling/disposal if required.

Feel free to drop me a message via my profile if you'd like to have a chat about anything.

Thanks for the offer but they are already covered.