HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9

HPE · 2U rack server, eight 2.5-inch bays · HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9

what it is

A rack server: 445.5 × 87.3 × 679.4 mm, two rack units high, eight 2.5-inch drive bays, two hot-swap power supply bays and two expansion card risers.

The same model comes in five chassis versions — 8 × 2.5″ drives, 24 × 2.5″ drives, 12 × 3.5″ drives, 4 × 3.5″ drives and a version for NVMe drives. All have an identical outline. They differ only in the number and arrangement of bays. This description covers the eight-drive version; the version is identified by the chassis code, not by appearance.

The server has a built-in iLO 4 — a separate management computer that works even when the server is powered off. It is the only source of information about the machine when the system does not boot.

what we read from it

From the iLO 4 controller via the Redfish interface (firmware 2.73):

• 44 temperature sensors and 6 fans, each with its status.
• Both power supplies with their status, and power draw of the whole server.
• Processors, memory broken down by module, network adapters and PCI slots.
• Status of the array controller cache backup battery.
• Firmware inventory — 14 entries, including the active and backup BIOS, iLO and option ROMs of the cards.
• Logs: the server's hardware event log (IML) and the iLO's own event log (IEL), including logins.

From the operating system installed on the server — if it is monitored — come CPU load, memory and disk usage, uptime and the full set of network link data.

port layout

Front panel: two blanked optional bays, a cage of eight drive bays at a 16.5 mm pitch and a control strip at the right edge — power button, status LEDs, a USB port and a pull-out service tab with the serial number and management controller details. The drives stand vertically, on edge.

Rear panel. The management controller has its own dedicated network port, standing separately, 31 mm to the left of the block of four data ports. This differs from the smaller DL20 Gen9, where management shares a port with system traffic: here cutting the data cable does not cut management and the machine remains reachable out of band.

Also on the rear panel: two expansion card risers, a network adapter bay, two USB ports, a video port, an optional serial port and two hot-swap power supply bays of 72.5 mm each.

what to watch out for

• iLO can show zero array controllers and zero drives even though they are in the machine. Measured with the server both powered off and on: the storage section reports zero, while inside a Smart Array P440ar with eight drives is running. The drives are, however, visible in the BIOS boot source list, each with its capacity and bay number.
• The array battery gives advance warning. The IML first records warnings about an impending battery failure, and only later a hard error at startup — in the unit we read, they were a year apart. A dead battery disables write caching in hardware RAID mode; in pass-through mode, when the system sees the drives directly, nothing depends on it.
• SNMP on iLO can be enabled and return nothing. Without a configured community and trap receivers the agent stays silent; Redfish returns the full data.
• Every Redfish reading leaves a "login / logout" pair in the IEL. The log is circular, so frequent polling pushes out the device's older history.
• Logs are paged at 30 entries, and the link to the next page has no address. A tool that follows links will stop at the first thirty and will not report anything missing.
• iLO has a setting for automatic power-on after power is restored. A server shut down from the operating system may come back up on its own after a power outage and restoration.

what we cannot read

• Weight from the manufacturer's datasheet. The manual gives a maximum of 14.7 kg and a minimum of 23.6 kg — a maximum smaller than the minimum. Either the labels are swapped or the numbers are wrong; their average means nothing.
• Drive status from iLO — see above. Drive health is reported by the server's operating system.

full parameter list

A full parameter list for this model is not here yet — the ones described above are those we have read and verified. A missing list does not mean the device exposes nothing more.