How to add a physical serial port as COM1 to a HP ProLiant ML10 v2 server?

[ML110]

HP ProLiant ML10 v2 Server SN: CN65250CR1

Hello everybody,

I bought a bunch of HP ProLiant ML10 v2 servers to work as Ceph RBD cluster, to replace my HP ProLiant ML110 G7 cluster as they where making to much noise above 24 degrees Celcius and I could not fix it by replacing the termal paste or disabling iLO.

The older ML110 G7 came with a phisical serial port and a deditcated port for iLO (three NICs) and I was supprised to not find the serial port on the ML10 v2 and I looked at the motherboard and could not find a connector. I have used the HP Serial Port Adapter (PA716A) in the past to add a COM1 to HP system as we need this for our Debian 8 or Redhat 7 OS managment.

How do I add a serial port to the motherboard of the HP ML10 v2 server?

As a workaround I configured the iLO virutal serial port as COM1, but iLO is not reachable when the iLO shared NIC is in IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation mode, I posted about this here:: http://community.hpe.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/How-to-get-HP-ProLiant-ML10-v2-ILOv4-shared-NIC-working-with/td-p/6861241

Kind regards,

Jelle de Jong
GNU/Linux Consultant.

[ML110]

Could an HP engineer please take a look at this.

[Jimmy Vance]

For some time now most ProLiant servers (as well as most of the industry) do not ship with physical serial ports. For some models like the DL380 it is an option to add one.  This option is not available for the ML10 v2.

I use USB to serial adapters when I need this functionality.  I prefer to use devices that use the FTDI serial chipset.

[ML110]

Thank you for your reply. An usb serial port will not work as I want to use the COM1 for serial port redirection to manage the server, I don't know why HP choose to safe a few bucks on an COM1 port.

[Jimmy Vance]

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@ML110 wrote:

Thank you for your reply. An usb serial port will not work as I want to use the COM1 for serial port redirection to manage the server, I don't know why HP choose to safe a few bucks on an COM1 port.

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Unless I'm misunderstanding your end goal, you can setup a USB serial port as a terminal. Another option would be to add an additional NIC for the bond and leave the shared iLO NIC standalone so you can use the iLO VSP