Note that ~5 years ago, HP started providing firmware updates and such "only to customers with a valid warranty, Care Pack Service or support agreement". They a

Note that ~5 years ago, HP started providing firmware updates and such "only to customers with a valid warranty, Care Pack Service or support agreement". They are no longer freely downloadable. In a post ironically entitled "Customers for life", HP wrote [0]: > ... we are in no way trying to force customers into purchasing extended coverage. That is, and always will be, a customer’s choice. Now, this might not be an issue if all of your servers belong to $work and $work maintains active support agreements for them even after the warranty period has passed. Many of us buy servers for small businesses or even for personal use at home, however, and it would be really nice if we could keep them up-to-date with the latest firmware, security patches, and such. At the complete opposite end of the spectrum, I can find and download any drivers, firmware, etc., for my Dell servers quickly and easily, without logging in to anything or providing any information whatsoever. If I wanted to, I could even download and install their "Repository Manager" and run my own local mirror! WRT other vendors (unless things have changed), Cisco requires registration but not paid support (for server downloads) and IBM requires "entitlement validation". I can't speak for any other servers vendors. EDIT: I just now checked for any updates for a Dell PowerEdge R720 (which is EoL/EoS, by the way) I have here at home, found a BIOS update from about a month ago [1], downloaded it with wget, and am now live migrating ("vMotion") the VMs running on it over to another host so that I can take the host down and install the update -- it contains microcode updates addressing several of the CVEs for Intel CPUs. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20140209062309/http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Technical-Support-Services-Blog/Customers-for-life/ba-p/154423 https://web.archive.org/web/20140209062309/http://h30507.www... [1]: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=6vf30 https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/drivers/driversde...