I bought a refurbished HP Proliant DL380 G7 off of eBay. I run CentOS, and I'd like to know when a drive fails. A friend tells me that the lights on the front probably won't light up since I don't have HP software installed on the server – I have to find out drive status through some utility.
I've seen HP's utilities online, but they seem very large and bulky, and even intrusive. I just want to know my drive status. I don't want to sign up for an HP account. I don't want to receive emails from HP every week. I don't want to install gigabytes worth of software just to see if my drives are running.
Is this possible, or am I at the mercy of HP?
Best Answer
The drives 100% definitely WILL light up if they fail - regardless of what OS or additional software you've installed. That said I personally wouldn't say that their driver set is too 'bloaty' at all - in fact operating without them would be considered by many professionals as...well...unprofessional.