How hard can it be (made) to find the serial on a boot controller ???????

[BarryB-exHP]

HELP!!!!!! Please.

3 months ago I provided a customer with 2 new HPE NS204i-p Gen10+ Boot Ctrlr cards as part of a reseller sale. 

Delivery note says they were serial numbers  **confidential info erased** and **confidential info erased**

4 weeks ago one of them went bad - it still functions but the NVMe drives should have 480GB capacity each.  It is only displaying 1.06GB on the Slot2 Bay1 drive.

And then begins a journey to try to log an RMA case via the Concierge - ARGHHHH!   

I've had the customer pull the faulty card out and give me the s/n, as per the instructions on the web for locating the s/n.    The photo comes back with  s/n **confidential info erased**.

Now I can see both **confidential info erased** and **confidential info erased** in the Concierge case logging tool, but when I put in  **confidential info erased**it tells me that isn't recognised.    

Question 1: How can I get a ticket raised  if the s/n on the card doesn't match HPE's system records? 

Question 2: Can anyone tell me which s/n that RDC# relates to please as I need to RMA the right component. 

I know HPE got rid of a lot of staff (I was one of them back in 2015 after 19yrs service) but there is no mechanism to query as this isn't on a maitenance contract, just warranty cover.  That's why I'm reaching out to the user forum for an assist here please. 

All help appreciated.

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

RDCxxxxx may not be the serial number.

 **confidential info erased** comes up as HPE NS204I-P X2 LANES NVME PCIE3 X8 OS BOOT DEVICE

Here is an example of serial number in the image.

Thank You!
I work with HPE but opinions expressed here are mine.

[BarryB-exHP]

Hi Suman,

Thanks for the info. 

The customer threw away the cartons with the serial numbers on them.   The problem is that there were 2 controllers and neither controller card has the same serial tag on it as that on the carton.  I'd love to know how it is possible to get that actual serial number if it isn't on the card itself as well.

In the end I've had to take a 50/50 guess and log a ticket against the first card on the order. 

Next surprise is that the support folk only deal with replacement part codes. They couldn't tell me from the original part number which components were on that serial number.  I had to do that legwork for myself.   It turns out that a P12965-B21  is made up of 3 parts - 1 x P42737-001 controller card and 2 x P24886-001       NVMe SSD 480GB slugs.         

I should not have to do that work myself.  That tells me that either the support folk do not have access to all the info to do their job, or that HPE has messed up its config management record system.

I now have a customer who is going to have to assemble the kit of parts themselves rather than just install a single item as originally provided.  That's a bad customer UX and doesn't do the resellers any favours as it is costing us heaps of time and money to do HPEs job.

But I'll be saving all this for the ticket feedback form as it is the information system content or availability of content that is broken, not the folk trying to deliver support.  Having the serial number on the card would be nice but wouldn't fix that systemic config management data issue.

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

If the boot controller is still in the server, can your customer get the information from these sources?

iLO - System Information.
UEFI during POST, then System Information
Intelligent Provisioning - Perform Maintenance - Intelligent storage configuration

Thank You!
I work with HPE but opinions expressed here are mine.

[BarryB-exHP]

I did ask the end-customer for the system level info for the card but they said they couldn't locate it that way.   It's a college run on a shoestring budget and they don't have a direct support contract with us (or HPE) otherwise we'd be in there ourselves to eyeball it. 

The parts are on the way now so hopefully they can swap it out and nothing else happens to it, or its twin during the remaining warranty period.