How to make my HP server boot faster?

Solution 1:

There's no option here. Since the advent of the Nehalem and newer CPU's, the POST time on HP systems has grown tremendously.

I see that you're using this as a workstation. Is there any option to leave the system running and take advantage of some of the BIOS power management options?

Solution 2:

Nothing. HP's proliant servers simply are very slow at booting. G7 is even worse and G8 (just testing them now) hasn't improved things either. It looks shinier, but is slower still to boot.

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Solution 3:

Use kexec to reboot your server. This skips the pre-boot procedures entirely, and reboots into a Linux kernel at the end of the Linux shutdown process, rather than resetting the hardware and going to POST.

Unfortunately kexec is a bit cumbersome to use, so I wrote a script to make it easier to work with: kexec-reboot will allow you to choose a kernel from your grub boot list, or simply kexec the latest available kernel.

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Solution 4:

My preferred solution to the horribly slow G8 bios boot time is to install the the free VMware vSphere Hypervisor instead of running the OS directly on the server.

http://www.vmware.com/go/get-free-esxi