Hey everyone! I've got some older HPE Gen8 servers like the DL360, DL320, and DL380p. These machines were in production until recently, and the previous admin ran them on CentOS 7. We've switched most of our systems to Debian or Ubuntu, but I run into issues installing Ubuntu 20.04+ on these servers, with frequent crashes during the installation or unexpected freezes. I've only had success with RHEL8 (specifically AlmaLinux 8.10) on a DL380p Gen8. It seems like newer kernels than 4.x are problematic for these servers. I'm curious to know if the Smart Array P420i or BIOS bugs are causing this and if there's a way to run newer kernels, like Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04, on these machines. Any advice would be appreciated!
3 Answers
Honestly, I think those Gen8 servers are a bit past their prime for production use. If you're thinking of keeping them, maybe consider using Proxmox to run virtual machines instead. That way, you can run any OS as a VM and prolong their use a little longer.
Have you checked if you have the latest firmware from the legacy SPP installed? Keeping firmware up to date can really make a difference with older hardware.
I’m actually running Proxmox on a DL380P Gen8 in my lab. It's not the fastest, but it does the job! I would caution against using it for anything critical, but as a testing environment, it works fine aside from some issues with disk pass-through for ZFS.
Yes, I made sure all the firmware is up to date.