Home > HP > Trouble downloading HP Service Pack for Proliant (SPP)? Save yourself the hassle, call HP for a fix

Trouble downloading HP Service Pack for Proliant (SPP)? Save yourself the hassle, call HP for a fix

July 11th, 2014

tl;dr rant avoiding summary: HP SPP downloads may be broken for you, call them for a direct link

HP has recently started charging for firmware.

Part of the new procedure for downloading the Service Pack for Proliant is checking whether you have a valid support contract or HP Care Pack associated with your account.

HP has one of the world’s worst websites so you can imagine the convoluted process you need to follow to achieve anything. I managed to add a valid Care Pack to my account and thought I was ready to go. Nope, I somehow descended into the 7 circles of hell going round and round logging on numerous times, selecting one of various ways to get to the SPP download, clicking on “Obtain Software” to head straight back to a notice saying I needed a valid entitlement with either a support contract or Care Pack and try again and again.

I then tried to run a chat session with someone from HP, had to enter all my details again as it must be too hard to read these from my account and click the Submit button which went nowhere.

I didn’t want to log a support ticket as it being a low priority I would probably get a reply when Gen700 servers are available.

I called phone support, spoke to a very friendly guy who took my server serial number, confirmed I should have access to download the SPP and then said he could see the entitlement was not linked correctly to the support side for downloading the SPP.

He said many HP customers are having the same issue and they are apparently working on sorting out all this linking and with the large number of accounts they have this is taking some time.

He then emailed me with a download link and username and password to get the SPP.

If you are having any issues downloading the SPP with your login, call HP and ask for the download link, don’t try to fight it yourself.

HP, please sort your house out. We want to believe you’ve turned a corner and are heading in the right direction but don’t force your customers to pay for downloading firmware and then not have the back end processes worked out so they can actually do this.

The other infrastructure vendors are laughing at you when they have simple, often free software downloads and can update software and firmware with a single click and no downtime.

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  1. February 12th, 2015 at 17:53 | #1

    Dell did not do that.

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