Name: HPE Ethernet Switches
Brand: Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Rating: 4.1 (104 reviews)

it_user143979

Network QA Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

Aug 14, 2014

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The solution has made troubleshooting much easier for complex issues, like port disabled.

What is most valuable?

The features which have been most valuable are the ease of using the management console and the UI.

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has made troubleshooting much easier for complex issues, like port disabled.

What needs improvement?

Multi port types in signal switch, which is easy to use and configurable.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for 3 yrs.

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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues with deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Sometimes flickery n/w issues which were stupidly insane though.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues with scalability but had to use multiple switches of 24 port in cascade which was a risk for reliability in terms of speed.

How are customer service and support?

We never encountered the customer service, had to solve our issues ourselves in the HP lab.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We previously used 48 port or other vendor switches.

How was the initial setup?

Initial setup was no problem.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented in-house.

What was our ROI?

Good ROI, value for money.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

No.

What other advice do I have?

Good User Interface and ease of installing.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user89217

Senior Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Jul 27, 2014

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HP works well in small scale. HP needs to clean up the config files.

What is most valuable?

It used to be cheap for access switching - I'm not sure if that's still the case today.

What needs improvement?

Security and routing handling - also they need to clean up the config files.

For how long have I used the solution?

Since 2003.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

As far as switching goes no, I haven't had any issues with deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

MSM controllers can lose parts of its config in updates.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

HP works well in small scale - large scale is not good with HP.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: 3/5Technical Support: 3/5

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Brocade, Aruba, Cisco, Juniper, D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, 3Com, Dell, Force10, Nortel, IBM and Intel based networking products.

How was the initial setup?

Basic setup is simple

What about the implementation team?

In-house

What other advice do I have?

Consider whether you only need basic switching.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user4401Developer at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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Nov 10, 2014

What do you mean, more exactly, by cleaning up the config files? For me, the config files are easy to use.

Buyer's Guide

HPE Ethernet Switches

December 2025

Free Report: HPE Ethernet Switches Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about HPE Ethernet Switches. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.

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879,425 professionals have used our research since 2012.

it_user137460

Head of Technical Services with 51-200 employees

Jul 23, 2014

Takes away a lot of the manual labor by allowing us to identify and block threats and enable secure BYOD

Our K-12 school has an extensive campus which hosts 250 faculty and 1500 students, with over 240 students living in boarding houses. Our senior students and faculty members each have a school-provided laptop, while also allowing BYOD access to the network in boarding houses, and throughout the campus for select users.

Our IT team faced numerous security challenges associated with allowing unmanaged devices onto the network. We needed a solution that could accurately and reliably prevent and report threats to the network, no matter who the user or what the device is. Despite implementing measures such as installing local antivirus software on the school-owned machines and intrusion prevention on the firewall, our team was still bogged down with hours of manually identifying and eliminating network threats such as botnets, spyware, and malware—issues that were also impacting student and faculty productivity.

When we approached HP with our challenges, HP delivered the Network Protector SDN Application to identify and block network threats and enable secure BYOD. HP Network Protector Security, running on the HP Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller, enables automated network posture assessment and real-time security across OpenFlow-enabled network devices such as switches.

One of the concerns with implementing an SDN solution is knowing where to start. We were able to implement an SDN solution quickly because of our investment in OpenFlow-enabled hardware. We were able to take advantage of the Network Protector SDN solution by downloading a free software upgrade for our existing switches to enable OpenFlow, eliminating the need for a costly rip-and-replace of our network infrastructure.

Network Protector leverages the Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller and OpenFlow to program the network infrastructure with security intelligence from the TippingPoint RepDV Labs database. This effectively turns the entire network infrastructure into security-enforcement devices, providing unprecedented threat protection and visibility.

We installed the solution during a school break, and saw instant results when students and faculty returned. Immediately, thousands of threats were automatically identified and blocked by HP Network Protector, and our IT team was able to proactively address network vulnerabilities.

HP Network Protector takes away a lot of the manual labor that we used to do; we now know exactly where the infections are and how many there are—we can detect threats and respond in a proactive manner. That saves us hours of work every week.

We use Network Protector to help us with challenges around sites like Facebook, which are a distraction during class. With the DNS Blacklist feature, we restrict access to websites like that, which encourages the staff and students to engage more with one another during class. It’s hard for us to measure the return on investment that we’ve had with HP Network Protector, but there’s no doubt that it gives us the power to help staff and students be more productive in the classroom; and at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all about.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user105492

Network Analyst at a healthcare company with 51-200 employees

Jul 6, 2014

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We evaluated Cisco but HP configurations were more friendly...HP has great support and customer service.

What is most valuable?

Online monitoring

How has it helped my organization?

The solution has saved me time configuring the network.

What needs improvement?

Products always have room for improvement but nothing specific.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for 2 years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service: 5/5Technical Support: 5/5

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

The configurations were more friendly, but most of all price point.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented in house.

What was our ROI?

Our ROI is unknown at this time.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Our day-to-day cost is pennies a day.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated Cisco.

What other advice do I have?

HP has great support; customer service means a lot in our business.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user137457

Networking Operations Supervisor with 501-1,000 employees

Jul 1, 2014

HP Networking has the bells and whistles you need to scale while avoiding the complexity that other vendors have.

At DreamWorks Animation, we produce billions of pixels and thousands of assets for each of the ten movies in our production pipeline. Our studio is on a 24/7 production cycle and if performance suffers, it could have serious consequences for our business.

Our previous network was pushed past its limits, making it unpredictable. We were using Spanning Tree for network redundancy and were having issues that we couldn’t fix. This forced us to reboot the core of our network at least once a quarter. Some of our more complex scenes take multiple days to render. If we had an outage 71 hours into a 72-hour render, we didn’t just lose the time the network wasn’t available, we had to start from scratch.

After reviewing our options, we found that an HP Networking solution fulfilled our stability requirements while simplifying and speeding up our network. We are using HP 12518 Network Switches and HP 5800 and 5820 Switch Series from core to edge. The equipment was installed over several months one building floor at a time, and our IT staff successfully deployed the solution to our data center over one weekend. We also utilize HP Intelligent Resilient Framework (IRF) technology which offers us the capability to create and manage a virtual chassis across multiple active switches. And we turned Spanning Tree off and now use Link Aggregation Control Protocol for redundancy.

What surprised us the most, after installing the equipment, was that we didn’t receive any calls from our creative teams. They didn’t seem to notice that anything had happened. Everything worked at every layer which is the best scenario we could have hoped for. Since we put in our HP network, we’ve shaved off a millisecond of latency between our Glendale and Redwood City offices. That’s a very meaningful boost in speed for us when we’re submitting half a million jobs every night for rendering.

It’s been a couple of years since the install and we still haven’t had a significant outage. The HP gear has been the most stable we’ve ever seen in terms of software and patches.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

it_user98889

Engineer with 51-200 employees

Mar 21, 2014

Pricing beats the comparable Cisco switch by a small margin for some products and a huge margin for others

For some of the product families the pricing beats the comparable Cisco switch by a small margin. In other product families they beat the comparable Cisco switch by a huge margin.

There are some missing features on the HP Procurve gear that I loved using on the Cisco gear (e.g., the NO SWITCHPORT command) but I pretty much have all the features I would generally need in a closet switch and >90% of the features I would need in a distribution-layer switch. I might find the missing 10% as I dig deeper into the platform.

Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.