ML350 G6 UPS issues?

[Ron Golesh]

We are an HP dealer, Eaton, APC and other UPSes. We are hearing this complaint, about HP servers from numerous customers. We urge HP to respond with a fix, rather then fostering this on it being a software or UPS issue. This is NOT an issue with virtually any UPS on IBM, Cisco or Dell servers. HP needs to step up to the plate on this one and address the issue.

[paul lowe_2]

Good on you Ron, HP have been useless in addressing this issue. I had to throw one very good UPS out because of HP's new PSU's.

[Tom Szabo]

I would love to be able to charge HP for the amount of time I wasted troubleshooting and chasing down this problem.

[Ron Golesh]

HP should understand the power of problems. We are having customers come back to us, tellng us that it is OUR problem, and therefore they want either new servers, or new UPSes, because of HPs design issues.

Well, if that be the case, we will recommend Dell, Cisco, IBM as the servers unless this is fixed. This thread, and the other threads on HP and other blogs, go back 4 months, and the HP service people are saying the same platitudes they were then, trying to deflect it as a simple UPS issue. Not the case. The energy effecient PS in Dell do not have an issue with clipped square wave power supplies.

One customer, has Cisco, Dell and HP, next to each other, on the same Model UPSes, and ONLY the HP servers go down.

HP, step up.

[paul lowe_2]

Tom, Same here, I travelled 250 miles over two days to sort this out and paid £350.00 for a new UPS. With my time, ex's etc I think I am out by about £1200.00 or $1800 dependant on who is looking. Will I get any of this back, no chance.

[Wayne Henegar]

I would love to get some re-imbursement, also. I sent a plea to my HP Partner representative, not for money, but for someone to run this up the chain for a fix. NO RESPONSE.

At least for new sales now, I am not embarrased because I have a fix, but the fix is more expensive UPS on original sale.

[Ron Golesh]

FYI, we are a relatively large partner, and are getting NO response on this either. Customer call to complain to us, as the only responsive party involved.

Again, if HP does not step up, Dell, IBM and Cisco will. We would love to stay just with HP products for our server sales, but there is not any profit in the sales to begin with. To have us to the abuse for this sort of problem speak volumes on the commitment level of HP.

[Jonas Eriksson]

Hi all,

I got excactly the same issue as everyone else.
However, I only found the problem by accident and I may have good news for you all.

I ordered a brand new ML350 G6 with an extra PSU together with a Powerware 5125 UPS.

As soon as i tested out the UPS on battery power i started getting insight warnings from ONE of the PSU:s. When i tested having the ups on only that PSU the server infallibly stopped just like for you all.
I reported the "faulty" PSU and got a new one today, same problem...
But the other PSU was still working fine, hmm...

Turns out that the working PSU is a different model than the broken ones.

So, for all of you please verify the following:

BROKEN PSU
RMN: HSTNS-PL18
GPN: 506821-001
PN: 506822-201
Spare: 511778-001

WORKING PSU
RMN: HSTNS-PD18
GPN: 506821-001
PN: 506822-101
Spare: 511778-001

(FYI I live in Europe and these are 230V 750W PSU:s)

[sliferdesigns1]

Hi, I'm another annoyed HP customer dealing with this problem. Anyway, HP replaced the power supply on my ML350 G6 last week. Does anyone know if they are giving out power supplies that aren't so "picky" about the wave shape?

[Tom Szabo]

The first ML350 G6 that I was troubleshooting did have the power supply replaced and the problem was still present. This was over two months ago though so perhaps things have changed.

We are now making sure that all new G6 servers have an APC Smart-UPS 1500SUA or better.

[Ron Golesh]

Just another update. 5 customers, all with the same problem. All report it to HP, HP sends the same crap PS models back to them.

HP, this is costing you business. We are now telling our sales reps to sell anything but HP servers. Cisco and Dell are now the proper choice.

[sliferdesigns1]

I have a Smart UPS SC 1500, apparently not good enough. I switched from Dell servers, some running flawlessly now for over 8 years, to HP because management wanted something more "reliable." What a joke.

[Carlos Magallon]

Hello HP we don't see your professional answer and support, our company
bought an expensive UPS to "Fix" this issue, and the problem still here.
Our server have an [APC TrippLite Model: SU3000XL] with a nice and clean
power supply.

Now, we are in Acapulco in a congress and our powerful server is power off
down every hour and stopping the registration process.

Thank you Wyne for bring to us this detailed and useful information.

We will try to fix this issue at the end of this event. With P410 ROM flash and ILO update.

Carlos Magallon

[Ron Golesh]

If anyone has a ticket with HP open, or a response from HP that has contact information for HP, can you please post it?

There are 5 or 6 forums, with this same topic, and it seems HP is just ignoring answering or supporting ANY of them.

We need to all inundate HP with questions and the needs for a response.

[Carlos Magallon]

Hello Johny your are right, follow this link: http://twitter.com/hp_ml350_g6 You can say anything you want.

[Ron Golesh]

Per our distributors support section for HP. We all need to open a ticket with HP as soon as possible or they will do nothing.

Open a ticket, and everybody should put the same symptoms in.

1. The server shuts down at the slightest change in voltage.
2. We have changed the UPS to a pure Sine wave UPS and it has not made a difference.
3. Our Dell servers with green power supplies are working fine.

Please spread this to other forums as well and lets overwhelm HP with the issues

[David Chet]

Not once anywhere in this thread do I see an issue with an HP UPS... If you're going to get a qualitys erver I do not undeerstand why you would even think about getting a lower quality UPS to protect it. Non-sine wave UPSs put your equipment in danger and THAT is what the power supply is protecting. Other PSUs do not have the level of protection HPs do.

And to the person taht stated they put a true sine wave UPS on the server and still ahd a problem: It either was not a true sine wave UPS or it still put out enough noise from teh inverter taht teh PSU saw it as bad power. Either way it was not a quality UPS.

[Tom Szabo]

David,

While I do agree with you, let's face facts here an ML350 is a lower end server...you're going to find them deployed in situations that aren't necessarily 'ideal'.

With that said I don't necessarily have an issue with the requirements. My problem is that no where does HP mention these requirements and their 'support' people haven't a clue. In my particular case they just kept sending parts until I finally said this is ridiculous and sat down and figured out what was going on. That is a problem.

[Ron Golesh]

David,

We will disagree with you. APC and Eaton both are quality UPS's. Both are advertised as pure Sine wave, and putting a scope on the Eaton the customer was using, confirmed that.

THe results from the PS on in the HP servers was the same. Down they would go.

On the other hand, putting them on a low end, Advertised as sine wave, Cyberpower fixed the problem.

Being forced to purchase a "quality" HP UPS is silly. And so is HP's lack of response to this thread.

[Niels Sanderse]

To all
Most of the psu problems are related to the external power source. To solve the problem HP needs to change the layout of the PSU or we all need a 100 sinewave ups

The 8ms switching time from some ups systems is to long for the new PSU. The SC series and de Back-UPS series from APC having a modified sinus wave when running on battery.

From the APC support:
A computerâ s power supply may also be subjected to a period of inrush, while the UPS is changing state (switching from utility power to battery power and back). Back-UPS and Smart-UPS SCs may experience up to an 8ms transfer time during this period. This is just long enough to remove power from the PFC power supply, resulting in a momentary inrush of the PFC. Once the UPS changes states from "Online" (passing utility power) to "Onbattery" (passing power from the UPS's internal battery), the momentary inrush from the attched equipment subjects the UPS to the PFC power supplyâ s maximum power draw, resulting in a potential Overload condition or dropped load.


Niels

[Jonas Eriksson]

I can understand the 8ms switching time causing problems, but this has been a historic problem with all servers running underspecced PSUs.

But the PSU choking on ragged sine waves that has been working fine for generations of servers is just plain stupid engineering.

[MGower]

I have a DL385 G6 that was experiencing power loss for no good reason. Power loss would be intermittent - sometimes occurring a couple times a day, sometimes going for a week. Nothing in any of the logs and I was beginning to be afraid that it was going to require a system board replacement.

After exhaustive troubleshooting of the server and OS (which happened to be running VMware), the issue was finally escalated to 2nd level.

What I found out was that any APC with less than 2000 VA will have power problems like this if itâ s a attached to a proliant g6 server. It just so happened that I had an APC 1500 UPS. The UPS itself never showed any specific signs of load issue.

So - if you have any G6 (and I'm assuming newer servers as well) be very careful about the UPS type).

[GavinLeigh]

I'd just like to add that we have also recently sold three ML350 / ML370 G6 Servers and they all power down on APC SC1000 UPS units. We have also tried an SUA1500 on one of them and that also failed to keep the unit powered on. I guess it looks like the only solution is to purchase Online UPS units (or specifically those T1000 and T1500 HP UPS Units)? This has really upset our end users and left us out of pocket on this equipment. I guess I'll chalk this down as a large minus point when selecting servers in the future.

[Anoop Abraham]

HP has relased an article that you need to use a UPS with output above 2000VA. The issue is only G6 server, other G5 servers connected to same UPS wont have any issues

[GRD_1]

Anoop,

Do you have a link to the HP article?