HPE Ethernet Switches Reviews

They've had a commitment over the last five years to be amongst the most open out there. They are very easy to deploy and manage, and offer a lifetime warranty. Most other vendors who have tried this, have shied away from it. I think recently they have focused on building a highly programmable and open OS so you can create a very large ecosystem around it.

Building a bigger ecosystem around them, not just wired/wireless, but there's being able to bring other HP areas such as server and storage groups. At the moment, they operate as separate business areas, and they could clean that up a bit. Also, the technical support needs improvement,

They've been doing it for 15 years and have a very reliable product. The fact that they offer a lifetime warranty in some ways is a testament to the stability because if they were constantly failing and churning them out, it would be reflected in their financials.

Since the acquisition of 3COM they have data center equipment that can scale to the largest data centres out there. I think they were the first to offer 40GB and 100GB. This is some big iron stuff.

They've had their ups and downs. I think this is one area they can improve in. For a while, you used to get thrown into the queue with printers and all sorts of other stuff. So they've fixed that, and it's better, but still needs to be improved.

It's easy to get going. You can unbox it, plug it in and have it running quickly, but if you go into the advanced settings it can take longer.

They've got a good product, but there's still room for improvement. I would be insistent that they help you integrate it with the non-HP services you have through their professional services.

The most valuable feature for us is that it naturally works well with other HP products. Our headquarters uses HP products, and it only makes sense that we also do so in our office. Not only do we use HP switches, but we also use their APs and our entire wireless solution relies on HP products so that our infrastructure works together and has consistency.

I think that Cisco's switches are more stable, so HP's switches could really be improved more with stability. HP switches are also more expensive than 3COM switches, as we've spent close to two $2 million. It would be great if it were less expensive.

We purchased them in 2008, but haven't upgraded since.

It deploys with no issues.

We don't really have any issues with stability. If and when something goes wrong, we just restart them. Most of the problems we have are on the server side, which seems to be more sensitive for us.

We used 3COM and then moved to Cisco, which was more stable. And then we moved to HP.

We looked at Cisco again, but they're expensive yet have a good reputation.

HP switches are probably the best quality product for the price. That's the most important thing someone should look for when deciding which solution to use.

The Software-Defined Networking (SDN) features I find most valuable are:

• Directly programmable and configurable
• Centrally manageable
• Control traffic system-wide

I think that the HP Openflow switches should be improved in terms of the open-flow byte-count statistics.

I used SDN because my master thesis is about the visualization of traffic in the network per application with SDN, so I have worked with HP switches almost along all this year. In my thesis the byte count was very important for the conclusions, but I noticed that this feature had some problems and errors.

My little experience tells me that everything starts because the hardware table (table 100) doesn't have the byte count. So I had to install the flow rules in the software table (table 200) which has a limit-rate, that may be the reason for the relative errors that I found.

I used a host as an iPerf server and another one as an iPerf client and then I compared the open-flow byte count against the byte count provided by the iPerf console.

I have used this solution for six months.

The switch manual say that the device supports up to four mirrorings. But when I configured two port mirrorings, the SDN controller interface was blocked and the mirrorings didn't work. 

The Openflow hardware table doesn't provide a byte-count statistic, and the software table provides a byte-count statistic but with errors. 

I found that the possible reason for this is that the software-limit rate of the switch, which is 10,000 pps maximum, with an advice in the switch manual that if we increase the limit-rate above 1,000 pps, it is possible that this increases CPU and impacts system performance.

We're using the Converge series of switches, and we're quite happy with the easy-to-use common line. They're easy to administer and manage, and never have any major problems. They're stable and reliable.

We're able to offer every user very high-speed internet for both transferring data and downloading from the network. This is a solution that actually works best in a very high-speed environment.

All its features fit our needs right now. It's not too pricey and it's not a series that will end any time soon. We stick with what we know.

It's actually quite stable. We haven't had problems with performance, upgrades, updates, different versions, etc. We're quite happy with the stability.

Scalability is also quite nice because we're used to stacking the switches up to five or six units. It would be nice to be able to stack more than that, but we don't have the need for it right now, just in the future maybe.

The level of technical support depends on the topic. We've had some not-so-good experiences where our tickets were left open because they couldn't solve our problem.

The initial setup is quite complex.

I would not suggest implementing MSM controller solutions, but you can't make a mistake with HP Converge series switches.

The most valuable feature for us is just their reliability. We've never had any problems with them at all. They are quality products that are better than the competition. They were also very easy to configure.

It needs better monitoring and alerting for issues. We use HP Intel Management Center, which is good, but there are a few extra things they can improve.

We have been using them probably for about five years now.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's been stable and we haven't had any downtime.

It's scaled for our needs.

We have not had to use any technical support. Our support comes from the company from which we bought the switches. They set them up for us and they provide very good technical support. We've used them for over ten years.

We previously used Cisco and were a 3COM user when HP bought them and converted them to switches. We switched because of performance issues, and now we have very, very good performance. We have no speed issues with the licensing network.

The initial setup was not overly complex. We've got two sites and we use them on both sites. So we've had no problems, but we only have 250 users.

The company we bought the switches from implemented them for us.

The price point is good when performance is taken into account compared to their competition.

We looked at HP first and didn't really consider anyone else.

From the low-end ProVisions up to the high-end Comware-based switches, their most valuable feature is that they actually work. Not all switches can do that, especially at a reasonable price. HP's switches offer price performance you can't find anywhere else.

These switches provide us with simplicity when we need. The ProVisions have fewer features and fewer functionality, but they're simpler. If we need, we can go with the Comware-based switches which have high-end features. So with these switches we can have both sides.

We had no issues with deployment.

They have been stable.

We've been able to scale with these switches.

Technical support is mostly good, but it's just like every other vendor. When you're at level 1 and you yourself are very knowledgable already, you just want to pass level 1. Level 2 is, normally, quite good, and level 1 is just a filter to take away all the stupid questions. If you're at level 3, you're probably in trouble because you have something that requires you to talk directly to the lab. So with the tiered structure for technical support, there are some inefficiencies. It would be an improvement to make technical support more efficient.

We evaluated Cisco and Juniper. They are considered high-end providers, but HP can more or less do it all. For small, medium, and enterprise businesses, HP has a very good product range.

Get some proper training.