HPE iLO 6 Essentials vs iLO 6 Advanced – Security
When we looked at the Security menu, and then navigated to the Certificate Mappings tab, we again found a banner with the virtues of upgrading our iLO license.
Here with the iLO Essentials license, you can delete the certificates, but to Authorize a New Certificate requires the iLO Advanced license.
There was another license banner in the CAC/Smartcard tab.
Once we upgraded the license we saw the controls to setup CAC Smartcard Authentication.
Next to that was the SSL Certificate tab where the Automatic Certificate Enrollment feature was not present due to the iLO Essentials license level.
Upgrading the license showed us the Automatic Certificate Enrollment feature.
Next to that, there is the Directory tab.
Here the settings were available in iLO Essentials, but the directory services were not enabled until we upgraded to the iLO Advanced level.
On the Encryption tab we saw that we needed an upgraded license to enable the CNSA security state.
Here we entered the license.
Next, let us get to the Management menu.
HPE iLO 6 Essentials vs iLO 6 Advanced – Management
In the Management menu, we saw another licensing feature with the Remote Syslog.
Once we upgraded to iLO Advanced, the Remote Syslog Settings appeared and we could configure the remote server, port, and feature.
Next, was is the Lifecycle Management menu.
HPE iLO 6 Essentials vs iLO 6 Advanced – Lifecycle Management
As part of the Lifecycle Management features, there is a feature to do a one-button secure erase feature.
With iLO Advanced, this feature was enabled.
This may not seem like a big deal, but if you are a MSP, for example, and wanted to re-use a system, you can one button click and securely erase the system per NIST requirements. Also, if you are any organization and simply want the ability to remotely and securely erase a system, this is a nice feature to have.
Final Words
These features may change over time, but at least they give some sense for those who are on the fence of whether they should upgrade from iLO Essentials to iLO Advanced by documenting what we saw. HPE maintains iLO licensing documentation that will be more up-to-date and complete, but this should serve as a guide. We found some interesting items like how our MicroServer Gen11 said that we would get the Power Cap feature in the iLO Essentials banner but then we did not get the feature when we upgraded to iLO Advanced because it was not supported. That means there are differences based on HPE systems between what you will get at different license levels.
Where to Buy
We purchased the iLO Advanced key on eBay (Affiliate Link.)
We sell HPE. You don’t have any idea how useful this is. TYVM STH.
Thank you to the STH team for this level of detail on iLO.
I’m not sure whether I need any features beyond improved remote video and media capabilities, but I’ve just purchased an upgrade for our fleet of 74 MicroServer Gen11 servers.
That group firmware update and versioning was what sold me.
You buy, and pay for an enterprise solution. I’m continually amazed on how they nickel and dime you for everything. I bought the Mercedes, don’t make me pay for power windows for God’s sake. I moved away from HPE after the shenanigans with needed a current support contract to get current security updates for firmware. I know this isn’t new, but the enshittification of ILO and other remote access solutions has been decades in the making. I wonder now that we have sub $100 hardware solutions that could be scaled to racks of equipment if the calculus changes for the “big Iron” providers. Probably not, but it should.
Having only really dealt with Dell, Supermicro and a tad bit of Lenovo, and these pages skip over it, but does the essentials license give you a remote console? With the Dell iDRAC you need the higher license for this (except for blade servers as those don’t have any other way to connect a console).
In response to the “nickel and dime” comment, I think one of the reasons Supermicro has been gaining market share is exactly because they don’t extract an additional toll to enable functionality that is already built in.