HPE BladeSystem Reviews

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 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.

* High Performance

* High Reliability

* "Insight Management" of the hardware

* Compatibility with all of the major Network Operating systems

It has provided us with a platform on which we have been able to create innovative solutions for our customers at very reasonable prices.

It would be nice if they were a little lighter in weight.

I have used Proliant series servers since they were first introduced.

On rare occasions, I have experienced hardware failures out of the box, but HP, and Compaq before that, were quick to resolve the problem and get the hardware up and running the next business day.

On very rare occasions, instability was experienced due to driver incompatibilities or firmware maladies. HP provided updates or workarounds to get the system stable fairly quickly.

I've never experienced an issue with hardware scalability.

Customer service is outstanding.

Over the years, technical support has gone from outstanding to "needs improvement", and back to "reasonably good". Typically, I've had to push the front line support team to escalate the issue to the back line, and the issue from there was quickly resolved. For hardware failures, it's been necessary from time to time to convince the front line that all of the diagnostic steps needed to isolate and identify the failed component have already been performed, and that what is needed is to get the replacement part. That process has also improved.

The initial setup has been straightforward in that HP has provided "Smart Start" kits to assist in getting their systems up and running very quickly. These kits typically prepare the systems for NOS installation and provide the necessary drivers to successfully discover all of the hardware components installed.

I am a Value Added Reseller, working with the end-user to acquire and build the solutions.

I have evaluated Dell and IBM products as part of an overall review of possible solutions for the customer.

If you need assistance in deploying Proliant servers, please feel free to contact me.

The density of the BladeSystem, that we can keep adding blades as we need more VMs. The longevity of the system that it creates as well. Right now, we only have our job site, but we'll eventually grow into our large building, and the scalability of the BladeSystem is pretty endless. Now with the new technology like Synergy, it's kind of an offshoot of that almost, and I'm looking forward to utilizing even the Synergy in that whole environment as well. Especially now that the management software can manage all of those platforms.

I like the BladeSystem. I've been a fan of the BladeSystems for a while, since when they came out way back in the day. My first BladeSystems I used were IBM and then HP. I liked the density. A lot of servers in one rack. There's the backplane. We get a lot of throughput in speed and the ease of attaching it to our networks is very good about the BladeSystems. It's less of everything. It's less cabling coming out of the BladeCenter, so it's easier to manage, it's just a cleaner system.

I was looking at the HPE Synergy. What I see there is it's the next evolution of that whole BladeSystem. It pretty much puts compute, it puts storage, and it puts memory all in one pool. It's being managed by the one management module and so it's basically the whole pool data center resource. It also gives the flexibility of utilizing it in a fully virtualized environment or, if you need a physical server, you can utilize a physical server as well. Then extend out to some of the older devices like the c7000 or something, can enter into that whole resource domain. That's compelling as well.

It's very stable.

In my past at a couple director positions I've held, I've utilized Cisco's UCS product quite a bit. I've had experiences with that from when that product first came out. They're both very good systems. I think Cisco makes a solid product there. It might be coming to its life's end now. As things like Hyper Converged is starting to really take off and I like the slant that HPE has with the Synergy platform. That's almost like taking a BladeSystem or UCS kind of technology and moving it to the next level. That's what I see HPE doing with Synergy.

It was very easy.

I had HPE do it.

Really look at it closely, but really look at the Synergy product as well. That seems to me like that's the next evolution of the BladeSystem.

We use HPE BladeSystem as an internal cloud.

HPE BladeSystem makes it much easier since it's been there. We can set up the hardware once and just provision what we need from that.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of management with the hardware.

We are very pleased with using this solution.

We are very happy with what we have, but HPE is not going to continue with BladeSystem. It will be discontinued so we will have to change to another product shortly.

I have been using HPE BladeSystem for approximately seven years.

We use the BL460 series and the version is C7000. We have a mix of Gen9 and Gen10 servers.

Stability-wise, it's been very good for us. 

We have had very few issues with it, hardware-wise, and even very few software issues with it. 

Overall, the HPE BladeSystem has been very stable for us.

For our purposes, it has worked exactly the way we expected it to. 

It has been very scalable for us. We have been able to add additional servers, add additional C7000 chassis, and it just continues to work. It has been very scalable and worked very well.

We have two C7000s, and a total of 17 blade servers. Most of the servers have the attached storage blade for increased storage, besides what's in the blade itself. 

Our initial implementation included a couple of NAS units, but they were very slow, which is why we went with the storage blade units. That gave us better performance.

We have upgraded to some newer NAS units from HPE, and they've worked very well for us, which is why we are starting to slowly shift in that direction. That may change now since we're going to have to go with a new platform the next time we do an upgrade.

I have contacted technical support once or twice, and it was very good. 

We were very pleased with the support that we received.

We went from individual servers, or individual racking at servers, to the blade system.

The initial setup was different than anything we had done before. It was a little bit complex to get initially set up. But, once it was set up, the ongoing management has been fairly easy.

If I had to do it again, it would be very easy to do, now that we're familiar with it.

We rolled it out over time. We modified our implementation a little bit as we went along, as we discovered different features and different capabilities.

I maintain the solution. It only requires one person.

I am not familiar with the pricing.

We will be evaluating other solutions since we discovered that they are not going to be making the BladeSystem anymore.

We have had good luck with them, and good success with them. 

We haven't had any issues that are major issues. We have been very pleased with it.

I would rate HPE BladeSystem a nine out of ten.

The primary use case of the solution is specifically for application virtualization.

Before this, we were using rack mount servers. We utilized almost 30% of capacity on those servers. But, with HPE BladeSystem, because of it's small capacity, in comparison to rack mounted servers, it gave us the flexibility to utilize all the hardware that we have.

The virtual connect and network management port is a valuable feature. When assigning the bandwidth to servers and segregation between data storage and data connections, it is valuable. An additional benefit is the virtualization environment.

HPE has a new solution it's called Synergy. I believe it's the new generation of solutions. It has capability of sharing the storage. It has open blade servers within the same enclosure.

It is really reliable and stable. 

It is scalable and suitable for our organization. We have not reached the maximum that HPE Bladesystem can reach.

The tech support is very good, but we usually use our own staff, and revert back to HPE if we are in need of extra support.

We are constantly evaluating HPE BladeSystem vs Cisco UCS and  HPE Synergy vs HPE BladeSystem .

HPE BladeSystems is an old technology that cannot fit all of the dynamic organizational needs of our company.

The reliability of the BladeSystem, as we've used them for a long time, and the chassis/blades are backwards compatible. I know they're moving to a new BladeCenter, but over time I've seen the reliability with it versus other vendors, so for me that's what it comes down to.

It's the density of the compute power that you get. We've taken the ones that we can, some of the ProLiant systems, and condensed them down into blades. This has helped to reduce are footprint - reducing power consumption and cooling consumption Also, just being able to manage everything from one BladeCenter makes administration costs go down.

I haven't seen it lately, but I know with OneView, there are still some limitations. It was because the product roll-out last year was still kind of catching on and still kind of debugging, but I think once that gets some maturity and growth, I think that's going to be continued on the right track.

We integrate multiple power supplies. We have redundancy on the back plane with different mezzanines and things like that. It's been very stable. I would have to say on the ProLiant side, where we do have something running that's critical, it's a DNS function on there, there's always a backup. What we can't do maybe through hardware because it's a one chassis, we'll do through software as well to bring clustering and things like that.

We have technical account managers, and we call them to handle any kind of maintenance agreement or things like that, and have had very good support from them. If there's something that they can't answer, they're always willing to reach back and get the right point of contact. We've had very good dealings with our technical account manager and technical support.

It was never really a big risk for us, because we've been on HPE for a while, so getting to the new system was pretty low risk, and when it came time to do the migration or the upgrades to stuff, it's always been kind of non-eventful. We've never tried to minimize what we're doing, but we take precautions like calling HPE ahead of time, making sure that there's support there, that they're aware of when we're doing a migration so if anything goes wrong, they're there to support us. We haven't had any issues with that.

If we could get the cost down that would be good.

I did a trade study on this, I think HP has a big offering in terms of the number of blades that they offer and the amount of blades they can fit in a chassis, so I think they're actually ahead of the game compared to IBM and Sun/Oracle, and some of the other ones I've seen with Dell. I would say HPE is probably at the top of that game.