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GEN have run HP and then HPE servers in our own UK data centres since 1993, and we are an HPE partner. The platform carrying our own production virtualisation today is HPE, the engineers who keep it running are the engineers who take your call, and when the fault needs hands on the hardware we come to your site with the right part.
We hold HPE spares back to Gen6, driven by what our customers actually run, and we keep equipment in service long after HPE's own support has ended. Nobody here will tell you a working server needs replacing because a date has passed.
Our own clusters, AVALON, NEBULA and EQUINOX, run on Generation 10 HPE servers joined by a wide area SAN, and they carry very large scale virtualisation for us and for our customers. We chose HPE for that job for reasons that only show up after years in a rack: servers that stack densely and still slide out for service without a fight, management through iLO that works when the operating system does not, and hardware that keeps running long after its original owner has written it down.
That matters when something breaks on your site. The engineer who picks up the case upgrades firmware, replaces controllers and diagnoses failed memory on our own estate as a matter of routine. They are not reading about your server for the first time, and there is a fair chance they have already met the fault on one of ours.
Our stock is not a warehouse of whatever happened to be cheap. It follows our maintenance estate: when a customer's servers come onto a maintenance plan, the spares for that generation and configuration come onto our shelf. That is why we can hold parts for Gen6 and Gen7 servers that the rest of the market stopped stocking years ago, and why the part for your server is usually already here when it fails.
Where we do not hold it, our HPE partnership gives us priority access to HPE's own supply chain, and critical parts can often be sourced on the same day. For some customers we go further and keep complete cold spare configurations, prepared and matched to their own servers, that can be fitted on the same day or brought online remotely.
All of it is available with or without a maintenance plan. A plan fixes the annual cost of the engineering; the parts themselves are always quoted, so you only ever pay for what actually failed.
HPE is a broad estate, and a server rarely fails on its own terms. We support the hardware, the management layer, the storage behind it and the platform running on top of it as one system, because that is how the fault behaves.
Rack and tower ProLiant servers from Gen6 through to Gen11: hardware diagnosis, component replacement, RAID and controller recovery, and upgrades of memory, processors and storage.
iLO configuration, licensing and recovery, Integrated Management Log analysis, and firmware planned and staged through the Service Pack for ProLiant rather than applied and hoped for.
Smart Array and other ProLiant storage controllers, failed and degraded logical drives, and HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Alletra arrays, including the SAN between them and the hosts.
HPE Aruba and Juniper switching and routing, configured, patched and maintained alongside the servers they connect.
Proxmox VE, VMware, Hyper-V and HPE VM Essentials, sized, built and supported on HPE hardware, including migrations between them.
PA-RISC and Itanium systems still doing their jobs, with spares held for HP9000. See legacy system support for the rest of the older estate.
Most HPE faults can be diagnosed without anybody travelling. iLO gives our engineers the console, the logs and the power button, and the Integrated Management Log usually says which component has failed before the operating system has noticed anything. So the first hour of a case is spent establishing exactly what is wrong, and the engineer who does come to site arrives with the right part and a plan.
We support HPE equipment on customer sites across the UK, in comms rooms, branch offices and third party data centres, at service levels from a next business day response through to thirty minutes, 24 hours a day. Different servers in the same estate can sit at different levels, so the cluster carrying production can have the fastest cover while a test host sits on something lighter.
HPE hardware has never been the cheapest to buy, and it has always been among the cheapest to own. Well built servers kept on supported firmware, with parts to hand, run for a very long time. We have customers on maintenance plans still running Gen7 servers deployed around 2010, and one running an HP9000 from 2002 that remains a productive part of their operation more than twenty years later.
We are not in the business of selling you replacements you do not need. Where a server should be retired, because of power, performance, security or the realistic supply of spares, we will say so, explain why, and plan the move with you. Until then, we keep it running.
Yes. GEN are an HPE partner, and have run HP and then HPE servers in their own UK data centres since 1993. Partner status matters for hardware in a way it does not for software: it brings priority access to HPE's parts supply chain, firmware and escalation routes, and customers benefit from all three directly.
Yes. A large part of GEN's HPE work is equipment past its HPE support date, including Gen7 ProLiant servers still in production under GEN maintenance plans and an HP9000 system from 2002. HPE's end of support date is the point at which a spares and knowledge problem begins, and GEN hold both.
GEN hold HPE parts back as far as Gen6. Stock follows GEN's maintenance estate: when a customer's servers come onto a maintenance plan, the spares for that generation and configuration come onto GEN's shelf. Parts that are not held can usually be sourced through HPE's priority partner supply chain, often on the same day.
Yes. GEN support HPE servers and storage on customer sites across the UK, remotely through iLO and the operating system wherever possible, and with an engineer on site when the fault needs hands on the hardware. Site attendance can be added to a maintenance plan or bought as it is needed.
Yes. For mission critical systems GEN keep complete cold spare configurations, prepared and matched to the customer's own servers, which can be fitted on the same day or brought online remotely if required.
HPE Nimble Storage and HPE Alletra arrays, Smart Array and other ProLiant storage controllers, and HPE Aruba and Juniper networking, alongside the ProLiant servers themselves and their iLO management processors and firmware.
Yes. GEN support HP-UX on HP9000 and Integrity hardware, and hold HP9000 spares. See GEN's legacy systems support for Solaris, AIX, Windows XP and the other platforms most providers no longer take on.
No. There is no support contract, no minimum term and no notice period. Customers buy hours at published rates and use them as they need them, or take a fixed price annual maintenance plan per device if they prefer a predictable cost.
Our engineers are UK based and in-house, with no offshore outsourcing: the specialist who takes your case is the specialist who works it, and they hold the production experience to match the equipment in front of them. Risk is assessed before anything is changed, the SAPR method is applied to every fault, and five shifts a day mean an overnight handover is a conversation between two engineers rather than a note left in a ticket. Our AI runs on our own hardware in our own data centres, and it never writes a word you read.
There is no support contract, no minimum term and no notice period. You buy hours at our published rates, use them when you need them, and what you do not use carries over. How GEN support works sets all of it out in full.
