Hi Kelly,

Well I'm back to about 75%, and I wanted to let you guys know about a
couple of things on the new box.

I managed to complete an install of Linux on the box.  It was more
difficult than I imagined, but good lessons learned along the way about
how to make this new hardware work.  One key lesson learned is that,
depending on the configuration of the kernel and the userspace, it
can appear that during boot it gets stuck and fails to finish booting.
But really it has booted, it's just that the kernel can't seem to figure
out how to initialize video.  Something to do with a new feature I call
BSP "Direct Video" that has to be neutralized by setting the right config
item in the BIOS.

The iLo feature has a twist that is a new one for me.  It quits working
after POST, putting up a pay wall saying to keep using it after POST we
have to purchase a license key.  It's very frustrating because not only
does it dump you out of KVM, but it disconnects your virtual media, so the
entire install dies right there.  So we need to get that license, but what
I'm wondering is shouldn't there be a universal key for internal HP users?
I wouldn't know how to track down such a thing, so I went ahead and
looked up how to purchase one.  If I had known about this, I would have
specified to get the license at the time we purchased the box.  It can
be purchased here for ~$200, or, possibly just ordered from Hummingbird.

https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/software/server-management-software/server-ilo-management/ilo-licenses/hpe-ilo-advanced/hpe-ilo-advanced-electronic-license-with-1yr-support-on-ilo-licensed-features/p/E6U59ABE

The box has 7 or 8 hot swap 2.5" drive bays.  Normally I would specify
buying a box without that for several reasons not the least of which is
cost, but this is probably what Hummingbird could ship us the quickest.
Anyway, to use the drive bays requires disk caddies, which I assume
can also be purchased from Hummingbird.  We only need two of them.
I see them online for about $10/ea.

Next up for me is to start trying to build the hosttools on the new box
and this modern version of Linux and see what gotchas are lurking there.

Cheers,