How to install web management for HP P212 RAID controller

If you have bought a HP server with P212 RAID controller and installing CentOS, you will need to install HP System Management Homepage (SMH) to monitor your health status of your array from the OS. Else, you will only be able to know the RAID status by rebooting the server and look the boot up message.

Here are the steps to install HP SMH on CentOS 5.6:-

1. Login as root and perform all below actions as a superuser (either su/sudo or root login). To start, we create a directory called HP to store all our downloads:

mkdir hp
cd hp

2. Download the PSP now. We will also download the latest binary version of HP-ACU-cli and SMH. The PSP includes only the source RPM for an out dated version:

wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-linux/p414707558/v63381/hpacucli-8.70-8.0.noarch.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/supportpack-linux/p323971208/v66272/psp-8.63.rhel5.x86_64.en.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-linux/p1507410135/v64330/hpsmh-6.3.0-22.x86_64.rpm

3. We now extract the PSP archive. Delete the outdated HP-ACU-cli and SMH RPMs.

tar zxvf psp-8.63.rhel5.x86_64.en.tar.gz
rm -rf hpacucli-8.60-8.0.noarch.rpm
rm -rf hpsmh-6.2.2-2.x86_64.rpm

4. Now we install the RPMs. Please note to keep the same order of installation, otherwise it might fail due to dependencies.

yum install net-snmp
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hp-health-* hpacucli-* hponcfg-*
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hpsmh-*
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck hp-snmp-agents-* hp-smh-templates-* cpqacuxe-* hpdiags-*

5. Configure SNMP to be accessible by HP System Management Homepage. It is necessary that you enter the passphrase for the Read/Write and Read-Only
access via localhost, otherwise SMH will not function properly. Also
set the snmptrap passphrase.

/sbin/hpsnmpconfig

6. Enable the ACU to connect and be accessible via the SMH. This is the RAID controller’s information.

cpqacuxe --enable-remote

7. Start all services:

service hp-asrd restart
service hp-health restart
service snmpd restart
service hp-snmp-agents restart

8. Secure your System Management Homepage installation to be accessible only by your IP address (replace 127.0.0.1 with yours):
/opt/hp/hpsmh/sbin/smhconfig --autostart=true --iconview=true --ip-restricted-logins=true --ip-restricted-include=127.0.0.1

9. Start the HP System Management Homepage service.
service hpsmhd restart
Visit http://Your-Server-IP:2301/. This should automatically start the HP SMH server and redirect you https://Your-Server-IP:2381/. Use your root user and password to gain access to SMH.

SSD vs SATA

This is my review after swapping the Hitachi 500GB SATA on my notebook with the Intel 160GB SSD X-25M. A picture paint a thousand words, so let's look at the images below:-

From the comparison, we can see that the SSD has an average read speed of 172.1MB/sec while the SATA can only write at 59MB/sec which is about a third of the speed of the SSD.

Battery life on my notebook has increased by about 20% to make it to 6 hours usage time from 5. On the weight, the SSD is lighter by a few grams.

Boot up time to the login screen on Windows 7 64bit was 44 seconds on SATA and it has been slashed to more than half at 20 sec on SSD.

I paid about RM700 for this X25M as it is an OEM unit which come with one month warranty only. You can get it from our most popular tech website at http://lowyat.net .The retail pack would set you back to around RM1400 which is double the price.

I don't see any reason not to upgrade to SSD if you can afford it. Cut down on the budget for your new notebook and use the balance to get the SSD. As SSD does not have any mechanical parts, I do not have to worry about dropping my notebook or knocking it on a hard surface when it is still operational.