Question regarding Proliant Servers - retired or end of life

[Jared Cheney]

Hello,
I'm working with an account right now which utilizes several DL380 and DL580 servers. We're undergoing a capacity assessment right now and I've been trying to determine some information regarding support to help us in our recommendations for upgrade/replacement strategies.

The servers are doing okay from a capacity standpoint, but I've noticed that they're listed as 'retired' on the Quickspecs pages. My questions are:
1) Is there a point at which HP Hardware contracts will stop supporting a hardware configuration - and instead say you need to upgrade to retain your 24x7 Gold support? If so, is there a strict rule for how this is determined?
2) Does anyone have information that they can point me to to become better informed as to how aging hardware is supported by HP support contracts?

Thanks,
Jared

[Rob Leadbeater · Accepted solution]

Hi Jared,

Yes there is a point at which HP will stop supporting certain hardware. For example the last time that we renewed our maintenance contract, certain servers had the line:

"Please note HP can no longer support this item from: 31.01.2008"

That was the date for a DL380 G1.

However I've done a bit of searching around on HP's site and couldn't find a definitive guide. The best I got was this link showing the retirement dates:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/Division/90013.html

I suspect that the actual dates will be specific to each country, each server and the availability of parts.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Rob

[Terry Hutchings]

Retirement doesn't mean the same as end of life. Retired means that the particular server is no longer being sold. End of life or end of service life means hardware is no longer being manufacturered or maintained as spares. This doesn't even necessarily mean HP won't support it under a contract.

As a general rule, End Of Service Life will take place approximately 7 years from the date of retirement.

[Jared Cheney]

Thank you both for your responses - very helpful

[Nicholas Newberry]

I am also interested in this question.

We're currently moving from DL360 G4 to G5, and we are wondering how long it will be now until we need to do it again.

We need to be running hardware that is available for purchase, not just supported, so we're very interested in how long it will be before the G5 is retired.

If anyone has more information, please post it here!