HPE BladeSystem Reviews

The solution is quite stable.

It's very scalable. 

The solution is easy to manage and update. 

As long as they keep getting the new Compute generations, it would be ideal. Generation 10 was the last that they wanted to support on Blade Enclosure. That's unfortunate though. It may be coming to its end of life. Other than that, I don't have anything else to improve upon.

It's a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It cannot crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution can scale well. 

We've used the BladeSystem and Synergy. The Blade is simpler. The Blade Enclosure C7000 does the same job. It has the same robust fault tolerance and redundancy. Yet at the same time, it's simpler to deal with, to work with.

They have to either simplify Synergy Frame as they will not likely keep going with the Blade Enclosure for a long time. They were still working on it two years ago when I spoke to them. They said, "for at least 10 more years, Blade Enclosure will keep going." That's what they told us. However, for some reason, we wanted to go to the Synergy Frame. It was the wrong decision.

For the very long term, they either have to modify the Synergy to make it more like a C7000 or they might have to rethink keeping and further developing C7000. That's my simple experience. 

With HPE Synergy, I had a very painful experience with updating by just really shutting down and rebooting the environment. We had a power outage, and a few things didn't come up properly. Also, when we did the firmware upgrade, there were a lot of problems. It's not as easy as the Blade Enclosure. Usually, I need to open a support ticket with HPE to get around the problems when it comes to Synergy. However, with the Blade Enclosure, it is easier to deal with things.

It's very easy to maintain and to keep updating.

I can't speak to the licensing. I don't get involved in the cost.

I'd rate the product nine out of ten. I've been quite pleased with it.

We primarily use the solution for our SQL Server VMware virtualization. We put this on our on SQL Servers and VMware virtualization systems on this product. 

The solution uses a smaller space in our data centers. It uses less feeder and network cable, which reduces costs. Troubleshooting is also easier than other options.

The solution saves us space and resources (like cables).

It's very easy to troubleshoot if we have issues.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

The response time in terms of getting technical support assistance could be improved.

It's a bit expensive. They should work on bringing down the pricing if they can.

We have one older model, we've used for maybe six or seven years. We also have a new one, which is Synergy, we've used for two years.

The solution is stable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It's free of quirks and it doesn't crash or freeze.

The scalability is good. If a company needs to expand it out, they should be able to do so.

Our company has over 5,000 users on this solution.

We will continue to use the solution into the future.

The technical support is okay, I'd rate it seven out of ten overall. Their response times could be faster.

We didn't switch from a different solution. We had older models which we updated. We've always used HPE.

The initial implementation is not complex. It's a pretty straightforward process.

We deployed the solution over 100 servers, and it didn't take too long to deploy.

We have about ten to 20 people managing the solution.

We had a vendor assist us with the implementation.

I don't know the exact cost of licensing, however, it's my understanding that the solution is relatively expensive.

We're simply a customer. We don't have a business relationship with HPE.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using or if it's the latest.

I'd recommend the solution to other companies.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate it at an eight. If the pricing was better and they offered better support, I would rate the solution higher.

I'm very happy with the product in general.  

I'm an engineer in different environments, I have seen HPE frequently; HPE support packs, et cetera. In terms of the hardware versions update, it's giving me very good support compared to other products. 

It is a stable product.

The scalability has been good.

Technical support is helpful.

I'd like to see an all-in-one packet in the future. Some solutions don't come with storage.

During deployment, they're providing different places for the .EXE files and whatever it is downloading. It would sometimes mess up. This could be adjusted so that it's easier to deploy without issue.

I've used the solution for the past 15 years. It's been well over a decade now. I've used it for quite a while. 

We are satisfied with the stability. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution can scale. It is a bit limited, however.

The support has been very good and we are extremely satisfied with them. 

Aside from some issues around .EXE files not downloading properly, the initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

In terms of deployment times, each blade hardly takes one or two hours to set up. It might take one or two days in total based on the already gathered requirements and whatever the company made already.

You only need about two people to deploy and maintain the solution. Once it's deployed completely, likely you only need one person to maintain everything. 

Vendors will come and they configure mostly hardware side. The remaining part, networking, et cetera, we configure, and everything is fine. Our clients mostly deployed it in-house. We come in to configure the WLANs and remaining stuff.

The licensing is paid on a yearly basis. 

I have recommended my clients to HPE. Rather than other companies, HPE would give good support, and I'm very happy with that. It is a good, high-end product.

I'm not completely an end-user. I'm like an administrator, in the server administration department.

The solution is more suited to the cloud in terms of deployment options. 

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are using HPE for the virtualization. All machines are virtualized, and we are using them in the clusters. They are highly available and set up on the default ones as well. For the DMZ, we use regular rack servers. Those are separate clusters.

The solution is very easy to use.

We find the product to be very stable.

The scalability is great.

Technical support is okay.

These particular blades are no longer being produced. If they produced more or offered support for them I would be interested in getting more.

It would be ideal if they had been offered at a lower price point. If they bring them back, I'd buy them at a lower price point. 

The support you get is dependant on the region. Some regions are better than others.

I have been here, in this company, for more than four years. We have been using the product since I have been here, so it's likely been more than five years that the company itself has used the product.

The stability of the product is very reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution can scale well. It's not a problem if a company wants to expand it.

We have thousands of people that use it.

I've been in touch with technical support in the past. The level of service you receive depends on the region. We have two data centers, one in Frankfurt and one in Paris. When we were assigned to the Frankfurt team, they are okay, however, the local French team left us a bit unsatisfied.

Mainly we are using blade servers from different vendors. We have Cisco UCS, HPE blade servers, and Lenovo blade servers on the global team.

In previous companies, I used HPE and the Cisco blade servers as well - the Cisco UCS servers. In one other company, I used Dell servers as well.

It's my understanding that the initial setup is very straightforward and simple. However, I was not directly involved with the initial setup. It was two or three years ago.

I'm not sure exactly how long the deployment process takes.

We have five or six people on staff that can handle deployment and maintenance tasks. They are all engineers and one is a team leader.

The price of the product was a bit on the high side. 

You do have to pay for the hardware and a yearly licensing fee.

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been very happy with its capabilities.

I would recommend it to others.

We have a mix of generation eight and ten Blades in our HPE BladeSystem and we mostly use the system for virtualization.

One of the most valuable features I have found to be the enclosure. It is really easy to manage and everything is integrated. You are able to upgrade the software quite easily.

We sometimes have compatibility issues depending on the browser that you are using. For example, sometimes you have to switch between Edge, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, or Chrome to have things operating correctly.

We have a few Blades from previous generations that cannot have the updated firmware upload to them unless you have a maintenance contract with HP. This is a frustrating problem we have experienced with the support.

I have been using this solution for approximately eight years.

The solution has had a few bugs and glitches.

The solution is scalable, we have approximately 3,000 people that use this solution.

When we received technical support from HPE and it has been very good.

I would rate the technical support for HPE BladeSystem a ten out of ten.

The installation was very easy.

We have been satisfied with the price. However, there are additional costs for support.

We are currently evaluating and researching other options because we are looking for simplicity. We plan to replace our HPE BladeSystem with converged or hyper-converged infrastructure.

I would advise others this is a good system overall with great hardware.

I rate HPE BladeSystem an eight out of ten.

We use it for direct authentication of the network storage of our files. We also use it for running some application systems, such as the student information management system and the accounting system.

We have DL360 and DL380. For storage, we have HP 2000.

They are very fast and very reliable. They are working under very tough conditions.

We had a few hard drives that crashed, and we couldn't find them locally. We've tried internationally, but we are still struggling to get its spare parts. This is the main challenge that we have faced with this solution. Fortunately, the other drives are still working. There should be easy availability of spare parts. I should be able to request a quotation online from HPE for things that I am not able to get locally. Currently, I can order online, but when I type the serial number, most of the time, it is rejected. I don't know why it is happening. It could be because the company that sold us the system didn't buy it through the normal HPE channel. HPE should assist us as users to get the spare parts.

Its security needs to be beefed up. I would like some security features. It was also challenging for us to set it up because we didn't get enough training from them.

I have been using this solution since 2013.

It is a very reliable solution. I've worked with other servers, and I find HPE BladeSystem very reliable.

We haven't tried to expand the solution. We have around 3,000 students and 255 staff members who use this solution.

Normally, we just look for some technicians around Botswana, and they come and assist us.

The setup was a little bit challenging because we didn't get enough training from HPE for setting up the cluster servers.

Its pricing was good. We selected this solution because it was within our budget. We paid just once when we bought it. We never bought any license. 

I would recommend this solution based on the robustness of the machines. It is the best system in terms of the value for your money.

I would rate HPE BladeSystem an eight out of ten.

Years ago, before BladeSystem, we had an EDM platform. We were working with IBM. We had IBM platforms. They consume much more energy. They are so big, so they take up a lot of space in the data center. At the time, when we migrated to BladeSystem, we reduced the amount of energy, amount of space, and we got more capacity. It's been very useful to us in that sense.

The solution has good scalability.

We can consolidate our learning infrastructure into just one chassis. You can have infrastructure scalability and capacity with memory. It is a great way to pull up together everything inside multiple platforms and in just one chassis.

Overall, its a very good product.

They are not selling BladeSystem anymore. The end of the sale of this platform was this year, 2020. Right now, if you try to buy a BladeSystem, you have to buy Synergy. I did try to buy some BladeSystem Generation 10 solutions in the USA. HP told me that they can sell this for the regular channel of HP still.

Right now, the Synergy platform has a management console that has a lot of options or features that help the administration of the platform. IN addition to that, this console cooling could integrate with the monitoring platform, so we could monitor integrity.

That said, this solution is discontinued, so any new features would only be useful on Synergy.

I've been using the solution over the last year.

The solution is very, very stable. We haven't had any issues with it. It's quite reliable.

The scalability is excellent, and it even takes up less space than, for example, IBM, and uses less energy.

I'm not sure, overall, how many users actually use the product in our organization.

The technical support is pretty good. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I'm using the technical support from Synergy. At the end of the day, it's the same tech support. They're great. That said, sometimes it takes so long, as they often need to recheck many things. Still, they solve the problem if there is one.

We used to use IBM. It was pretty bulky and took up a lot of space. It's hard to compare IBM to HP as IBM doesn't really show any good options.

The initial setup is not complex. It is straightforward.

I set up the solution myself. I didn't need the assistance of a consultant or integrator.

We're just a customer.

We use the solution on Citrix platforms.

The BladeSystem compared with older solutions about energy and processor, offers more capacity and you can gain or minimize the amount of energy that you consume, which is super-helpful.

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

One of the big problems that BladeSystem could look at is that systems like Microsoft Windows 2019, Linux, or Red Hat 8 demand a lot of RAM memory. There's no adaptable support. The more gigabytes or more processors that the actual operating system has, the better. With Synergy, and the power of Dell, hopefully, there will be support and adaption to the new necessities.

We use HPE BladeSystem for our server needs. Additionally, we use other software solutions and professional models to meet the requirements of our clients.

The integration and price of HPE BladeSystem could be improved.

I have been using HPE BladeSystem for seven years.

HPE BladeSystem is stable.

The solution is scalable, offering flexibility and expansion options to meet changing business needs.

We used Microsoft SQL Server.

There are enhancements to the HPE BladeSystem. These enhancements are crucial for the installation and ownership of the product. They are similar and alleviate concerns regarding technical aspects and approaches. Additionally, they will contribute to improvements in broadband performance. 

The solution is expensive.

I recommend the solution.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are using HPE BladeSystem as a server in the education sector.

The most valuable feature of HPE BladeSystem is the ease of management. It is easy to communicate from the server to the storage.

HPE BladeSystem could improve the communication between the server and the storage.

It's very difficult to have a representative give training. It would be helpful to provide some training.

In the next release of the solution, it would be a benefit to have hypervisor capabilities on the system.

If we could have a backup and a hypervisor built-in with all the capabilities for HPE BladeSystem it would be helpful.

I have been using HPE BladeSystem for approximately four years.

The support from HPE BladeSystem is good, they are responsive. I had some issues and they assisted me with my problem.

After I had training in the HPE BladeSystem the initial setup was not difficult. I was able to do the configuration of the equipment with ease.

The price of HPE BladeSystem is less expensive than some other solutions, such as Dell. The cost of replacement equipment is expensive.

I rate HPE BladeSystem a ten out of ten.

Our IMS system, or internal information system, is run on the server. If we have some sort of issue with our student management system, then we run it on that server as well. 

The solution is very fast and the power consumption is great. 

Sometimes there will be a delay and it will take some time to restart the server.

The servers are a little bit huge, so it would be great if they could renew the size. Still, the Dell servers are comparatively large, but handling these servers, even just moving them or mounting them in the rack, is a huge challenge for us. If it is possible to reduce the size, that would be great.

We have been working with this solution for two or three years. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. We have employees using this solution remotely and locally, so I believe there are more than 200 users. 

We have rarely had to work with the technical support team, but they are okay. We are satisfied with them. I would rate them an eight out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup was not hard because our expert technicians handled it. It might be a little bit confusing to do the BIOS setup if you don't have much experience, but if you have expertise you can handle it. 

We handled deployment in-house with our own experts. We also have an internal team that deals with the maintenance of the solution, and it is very easy to maintain.

We have an annual license. 

We currently use both HPE BladeSystem and EMC from Dell. Personally, I prefer HPE because I have more experience with it. 

As a tech guy, I recommend HPE for heavy usage. If you need to use it for applications and multitasking purposes, I recommended HPE because you can simultaneously run different applications without any delays or issues.

I would rate this solution as an eight out of ten.