Installation of Windows Server 2019 on an HP Proliant DL380 g6 (or DL180)

[TedMittelstaedt]

Has anyone tried installing Windows Server 2019 on an HP Proliant DL380 Gen 6?  Is it supported or possible?  I can't find drivers.

Oh wait.  I HAVE!!  (seriously I just threw the first line in as bait for all the ijuts who are going to tell me to buy new hardware)

Follows are the instructions I used to accomplish this.  Note that Windows Server 2019 is the last Server OS from Microsoft that will run on this hardware - Microsoft recompiled Server 2022 with CPU-specific opcodes and it won't run on older hardware.  (or so they say)

Ingredients:   HP DL 380 g6, 800GB worth of 15k rpm drives on a SmartArray, 32GB ram, a 32GB PNY usb stick, the Server 2019 ISO downloaded from Microsoft Volume License Service Center, some knowledge and experience and trial and error.  You should have a scratch OS on the system. I recommend Server 2012R2  You will also need a copy of Rufus and a windows 10 system and you may need a Server 2008R2 ISO installer as well. (available from volume license)

This should also work for the DL180 g6 as well with one exception - the 180's do not come with ILO circuitry.  However the stub interface still exists on the motherboard and will produce an "unknown device IPMI" in Device Manager.  HP has a Null Driver inf file for Server 2008 that will make this go away if it bothers you, search for it.

The ILO card in the DL380 g6 is an ILO 2 card

Download the following from the HPE site:

BIOS update to 5/2018 version (last version for DL380 gen6) USB key version

P410i firmware to 6.64(B) (1 Oct 2015) filename cp027485

A Microsoft product key for Server 2019

The Server 2019 ISO file SW_DVD9_Win_Server_STD_CORE_2019_1809.1_64Bit_English_DC_STD_MLF_X22-02970.iso

HP ProLiant Integrated Lights-Out Management Interface Driver for Windows Server 2012 from HP filename cp029664.

HP ProLiant iLO 2 Management Controller Driver for Windows Server 2008 x64 Editions from hp filename cp029666

Online ROM Flash Component for Windows x64 - HP Integrated Lights-Out ver 2.33 (30 Mar 2018) filename cp035237

HP ProLiant Array Configuration Utility for Windows 64-bit filename cp020336

Any hard disk firmware updates

Create the BIOS update USB stick on the win10 system.  You must use diskpart to "clean" the USB stick then use diskpart to apply an MBR loader on it.  Then use Rufus to format the USB stick NTFS.  Then run the BIOS update and let it extract then run the HP USB key generation program as administrator.  It probably will error out saying the USB stick is write protected - if you get the error, click OK on it then the SECOND the dialog box disappears immediately rerun the USB key generation program - the second time it will work and generate the USB key if you restart it fast enough

Boot the server with the USB key and update BIOS then reboot the server into the scratch OS (server 2008R2 or earlier)

copy the P410i firmware update to the server and update the RAID card.  Also update the hard disk firmwares (apparently the disk firmware updater will not run on Server 2019)  Allow the server to reboot and tap the spacebar when the Show Options message comes up on the screen.  When the screen is in character mode printing out the boot notifications press F8 to get into the array utility.  Delete all logical drives and recreate the array how you like.  You MUST set the array as bootable otherwise it will not appear.

Using Rufus on the win10 system again, create the bootable Windows Server 2019 USB stick.  You MUST select "MBR" format in Rufus and you MUST also click the Advanced section of Rufus and select the option to "make the stick bootable on old BIOSes"

Boot the server with the Windows Server 2019 USB stick and install a fresh server.  Let it reboot a few times and at the desktop put in the local admin password and then go to the desktop as administrator.

create an empty directory named "driver" and one named "controller" in the Downloads directory

Run the cp029664 file and select Extract and extract into Driver

run the cp029666 file and select Extract and extract into the Controller directory

In Device Manager select the Base Driver errored device, right click and select update then select to search the local computer and search the driver directory in downloads.  It will install the ILO 2 regular driver

In Device Manager select the IMPI errored device, right click and select update then select to search the local computer and select the controller directory in downloads.  It will install the ILO 2 controller driver

Run the ILO flash update and update ILO

Run the HP Array Configuration utility and install that so you can manage the array

install ups monitoring, a usb dock for backups or a backup agent, and setup screen locking and power management,

install the product key and turn on remote access, name the server then run updates then join it to the domain.

Enjoy your server and save your money to buy a newer bigger server next year when the supply chain issues are over and prices are back to normal!!!  Then retire it to running Linux!

[waaronb]

By the way, I was mentioning in another thread that I've installed Server 2022 on a DL360 G6, and just did the same with a DL360 G7.

It worked out well... on the G6 I even did a fresh install of Server 2022 (in addition to an update from 2012 R2 I tried earlier) and both worked.

I did the same as you, using the older drivers when possible. The only issue is that the ILO driver simply doesn't work in 2022, which breaks the ability of the system management homepage to query hardware, so you're basically blind to any hardware issues that come up. You'd have to use the ILO webpage itself to look at those details.

Maybe there' s some trick to getting that ILO driver working... gives an error code 10 in device manager, and if I was really concerned about it, I'd dig deeper, but it's one of those things I can find a way to do without SMH since apparently I have to.

One of these days I'll pick up a used Gen9 or Gen10 and be happy with that, but for now, this little G7 is still ticking along.

[waaronb]

Follow up... I decided to look closer at the DL360 G7 I updated to Server 2022 yesterday. Turns out I just had to uninstall the "HP Baseboard Management Controller IPMI Device" driver that was failing to start. Didn't need it.

For SMH, initially it wasn't showing me any data and couldn't contact the management controller (ILO). I ended up uninstalling SMH and the HP WBEM driver, and then reinstalling (WBEM first, then SMH). There's a trick to it though...

I left my "C:\HP\hpsmh" folder intact after uninstalling SMH. Then I installed HP WBEM, but if you just run the cpxxxx.exe installer, it fails because it does a check and will only work on Server 2016 or older. The key is to just use 7z or something to extract the contents of that and you'll see an MSI file in there. Just install that MSI and you're good to go.

Another tip... The DL360 G7 driver download page does have the WBEM installer, but if you cruise over to the DL360 Gen9 page instead, they have a newer version of it. Version 11.1.0.0 (instead of 10.75.0.0 I think).  Version 10.75 might actually still let you install on Server 2019/2022, since the version 11 release notes say something about fixing an issue that let you install on unsupported products.

After reinstalling WBEM then, I reinstalled SMH and everything is looking good. I think one of my problems was that I had been using SNMP instead of WBEM previously (wbem was missing data for some components... can't remember what now).

End result is now that SMH is using WBEM and shows most things. Array and drives, cpu, memory, ILO., NICs It shows a question mark for the "temperature" data.

Now that it's working, I may back up that hpsmh folder and try switching it back to SNMP to see what happens... but the good news is, it basically works, and I once again have an easy way to check on system health... more or less.