HP ProLiant SATA: buy cheap and sell dear

[Infrastructure man]

We bought a new ML350 with SATA RAID option. After receiving the server it was astonishing to see that HP assemble Maxtor Diamondmax 10 disks. Far better is the warranty: only one year for SATA disks. Unfortunately we missed this information before buying the server.

To say it clear:
Maxtor provides the Maxline series (SATA) for servers - with 5 years warranty.
Maxtor itself provides 3 years warranty for Diamondmax customers. HP cuts it to one year.

Does anyone have an idea why HP builds servers with disks intended for desktop usage? Is it in punishment of buying SATA technology instead of SCSI disks? Or is about 10 Euro price difference per disk a reason to sell such a bad combination?

[Jeffrey Wilkinson]

I want to add my support for this question. I did not see your thread, and started a similar one a few hours after yours at

http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1044167

I am shocked HP only gives a 1 Year warranty when all of the drive manufacturers give 3 or 5 years. Thank you for letting us know HP is using Maxtor, and worse yet, the cheap non-server model. Our experience with Maxtor has been terrible in recent years, and because of it, we only use Seagate disks now. Seagates come with a 5 year warranty and seem to live much longer than Maxtor in production.

[MMurfster]

Wow, just reading this as well. So, I says to my HP Sr. Tech Rep: waddup? Seems pretty lame. Answer: Don't use SATA drives on your critical servers..."WTF!!!", I interrupted. ... then he came back with this: "All drives are protected by a Pre-Failure Warranty when used with a HP array controller (SMART or SMART-2) and Systems Insight Manager, allowing hard drives to be replaced before failure free of charge. In addition, all drives are covered by a one to three-year limited on-site warranty, or the remaining warranty of the HP CPU in which it is installed (up to three years)."

We don't use SATA, but it's the principle of the matter.

[Jeffrey Wilkinson]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "In addition, all drives are covered by a one to three-year limited on-site warranty, or the remaining warranty of the HP CPU in which it is installed (up to three years)."

The ProLiant DL320's we just bought have a 3 year warranty. The HP drives for sale on HP's website are listed as having a 1 year warranty.

So which is it, 1 year or 3 years for the drives? Or does it depend on whether (a) you buy the drive WITH the server, or (b) by the drive separately from HP after the server is purchased?

And to the guy who told you not to use SATA in production, he needs to pull his head out of his butt. We've had excellent long-term success with SATA with hundreds of disks in production servers.

Large capacity SCSI costs a small fortune. Just one 300GB SCSI disk COSTS AS MUCH AS A COMPLETE DL320 SERVER. The same 300 GB in SATA form from Seagate is a mere $105, and has the same 5 year warranty as the SCSI disks.

On ordinary web servers, SATA is perfect, and if you do a load balanced cluster where a disk failure is no big deal, inexpensive commodity hardware ROCKS.

[MMurfster]

Of course I'm in complete agreement with you on this. I think that HP needs to step up and warranty the disks as they warranty the server. They (HP) has enough clout with the HDD manufacturers to force them to provide better warranty and HP should pass that on to their corporate customers.

...this little note ya'll started has me on a fire-roll ... we are going to the new C-Class blades ...they have Fujitsu SAS drives (only option). Reading this on the SATA drives leads me to believe that the SAS drives might be in the same boat. Hopefully not, since I can't get the U320's on the C-Class.

[sgunelius]

I could be wrong, but don't most customers depend on the server warranty and/or CarePack to cover break/fix for components installed in that server?

I've never thought to determine the individual warranty life of a controller, network adapter or disk. I've been able to have the component repaired or replaced provided the warranty or CarePack hadn't expired on the chassis.

Scott

[Jeffrey Wilkinson]

Perhaps, but if you follow the link to ProLiant accessories, then to Hard Drives, here is one of the options for SATA.

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/serial/sata/index.html

Under the "What's New" bullet point you will see "All SATA drives ship standard with a one year warranty"

Maybe, just maybe, if you buy the disk with the server, it gets included under the umbrella of the server's 3 year warranty. But I do know that if you goto the HP website and buy the disk, they say you only get 1 year, which is pathetic.

[sgunelius]

I would be worried if I did make an in-warranty service call on a failed SATA drive with let's say the DL360 G4p and they pulled that out of the hat. I think I'd probably throw a fit worthy of publishing to the net...provided I didn't blow a blood vessel and kick it right there on the phone.

[MMurfster]

Agreed. We do our own warranty work on HP devices, so individual components are important. I'm sure that there are other companies out there doing the same thing. I'm sure that there are companies out there that are not looking at the individual components, but rather the server as whole. I'm nailing our HP guys on this ... hopefully the HP techs reading this thread might call BS on it as well.

LOL, this is so confusing on the HP PB: "NOTE: All drives are protected by a Pre-Failure Warranty when used with a HP array controller (SMART or SMART-2) and Insight Manager, allowing hard drives to be replaced before failure free of charge. In addition, all drives are covered by a one to three-year limited on-site warranty, or the remaining warranty of the HP CPU in which it is installed (up to three years)."

"covered by a one to three year limited"???

"or the remaining warranty of the CPU"???

...at who's discretion? The OK-Compaq-India tech?

[Infrastructure man]

Dear all,

not enough HP assembles desktop disks in servers, they didn't trust them longer than 12 months. Please check "HP ProLiant and X86 Servers and Options - Global Limited Warranty and Technical Support", doc #392512-027. On page 8 you can see all SATA and ATA drives are inferior stuff.
And "regardless of the warranty period for the system in which they are installed". Great, we payed an extra fee for four years warranty.
The risk of using this disks starting in month 13 has the customer alone!
Risk in usage of my servers? Not funny at all.

Does anyone knows what's up with the server design department at HP? Are they outsourced to India?