Well - continuing down the fan spin up, spin down saga - Today HP had me send them logs from iLo. Those logs showed that I am using a NIC firmware that they have since pulled (but it was in the service pack DVD ISO - so WTF?). They want me to downgrade the NIC firmware.

Of course, the single install file for NIC firmware is gui based, and even though you can extract the dozen or so files from the installer and run them direct, they don't have instructions for doing so.

So now I'm stuck downloading and old Service Pack DVD ISO so I can boot from that and downgrade my firmware. oh boy!