The number of bugs I’ve encountered on HPE server hardware that cause full system lockups is insane. They’ve sent out engineering and collected logs and released new firmwares based on bugs I’ve found and been able to reliably replicate. Unfortunately, it took years of tickets, and wasted weekends to finally get them to admit it was their issue. Their iLO firmware is pretty buggy and I’ve had many problems with it over the years. To be fair Dell’s iDRAC has bugs too, and their lifecycle controllers leave much to be desired, but thankfully none have been showstoppers like I’ve experienced with HPE gear.

HPE’s storage systems have been quite problematic for me as well. I ran some of their EVA P6000 arrays back in the day and had too many scary moments keeping those online. I switched to Compellent arrays after that and they were awesome. Unfortunately, Dell retired that line in 2021, so now I’m giving their Powerstore arrays a try and so far the experience has been good.