I’m looking at new servers, and I see many of these Gen8 HPE servers have this error for sale. I’ve read somewhere it’s a common problem, many of them are affected.

My question is: For a home server, do I need iLO at all?

I don’t care if I can’t remotely restart the server, or remotely check its health. Apart from remote management, is iLO needed at all?

What will I miss if the server has this error? Is it going to be problematic to have this server in any way, or is it fine?

  • N00b1nat0r@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    You can try and clear it by updating the firmware, failing that you can try one more thing which is a repair of the iLO install, however once it’s got to this state its highly likely that the NAND is now fubar. It doesn’t stop iLO working as I have a 2nd hand Microserver with the same issue and tried the fixes, but they didn’t work, and as such, it’s showing the error constantly. The only way to fully fix in the unfixable state is a board swap.

  • Teem214@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    If you search you should see the error only effects a few features and not all of iLO.

    And iLO is needed the same way a homelab is needed. sure is nice to have though

  • Sporadicj@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Ilo isn’t really needed especially if you don’t license it. But being able to have a truly headless server is really handy if you are able to get one.

  • DWolfUK40@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    Depends on the error as to how it will affect you.

    The 2 most serious ones I’ve seen are:

    Self test error or communication error

    Both will cause long post times. Once up and running if you don’t use Ilo you won’t see any difference.

    There’s a less serious nand issue that won’t slow down post. All of Ilo will function pretty much but you lose intelligent provisioning functions and some other small things. You get a warning in Ilo. This can sometimes be fixed with Ilo update and nand reset but doesn’t usually work.

    From my personal point of view, ilo is one of the big reasons to use these servers. If you don’t need / use out of band management then there’s likely better options. I would avoid any with Ilo issues.

    With that said, if you get a good deal on a server then the system boards are becoming more common in a lot of cases so swapping that out might not be problem.