Well I called HP and I'm actually still on the phone with them right now. It's been about 2 hours and the problem is still not resolved.
The tech I spoke with conferred with Level-2-Support several times during the course of the call, but said that he could not authorize a different backplane or controller card. If I wanted either one, I'd need to get authorization from my point of sale. I'm not sure how he expects my reseller to do that, but I digress.
Eventually the tech decided to send out a replacement backplane and SAS Contoller card. The exact same models as I already have (P420 w/2GB and 25 SFF). I doubt that this will do anything, but the tech said that if it doesn't work, they'll escalate it to Level-3-support.
While I appreciate that the tech is doing what he can, I'm not really impressed with HP overall. We've had no problems with their servers until this machine. I've been told by the HP techs (previous to this call) that this noise level is normal when it's clearly not. The problem is that HP gets to decide what is 'normal'.
I'll keep troubleshooting with HP, but I need to get some work done as well. If the issue isn't resolved in the next 10 days or so, I'm just going to bite the bullet and get a new backplane for better airflow.
If it comes to that, I'll be trying my luck with Dell or Lenovo servers in the future.
