HPE Ethernet Switches Reviews

These are units that are a two or three layer solution. Since it's from HP, we have a lifetime warranty for these switches, unless the product is already phased out. But in most cases it takes a long time before they're out of a cycle. Most of these are quite durable. We are customers of HPE Ethernet Switches and I'm head of technical support. 

I think this solution could be improved if the installation could be made more secure. From our point of view, HP could have SNMP product softwares that would allow us to track all the assets, and then to connect, to identify our equipment. There are options which would allow us to secure the equipment. I think with the enterprise solution, if it's HP, then there is a need to integrate it with an HP product for it to work. The only way to simplify this is with VLANs and then routing, and then let the systems take over when it comes to firewalls and other things. Implementation of those things would allow us to have tighter security.

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

It's an enterprise solution so it's stable. 

It's mostly quite scalable and quite straightforward. 

If we have problems, we tend to resolve it ourselves. Sometimes there are bugs but it gets sorted out after a while. 

We previously used IBM but they gave up on those products and sold the PC and printer business. We started using HP before that happened. 

The initial setup is quite straightforward. Once we have the manuals, and can enable the VLAN and routing functions, we can set the redundancy, our STP, so that from switch one to switch two, you can set four lines to be redundant. In the event that one line is cut, the others will take over. We can also do a link aggregate where you combine the different lines together to increase the bandwidth. These are mostly the straightforward functions that we use as far as the switches are concerned.

In terms of deployment time, we usually define the IP addresses for the switches so we can access it remotely. Then it's a straightforward thing. There's a plan for us to do some more straightforward definition in the coming months. We do the deployments ourselves. We currently have between 200 - 300 users. I use five or six people and then we can deploy in a week or two.  

There's the familiarity factor for us. It's something that we hold on to. If you know the product is stable, and it's not outdated then you'll continue to use it. I think it's on par with other vendors like Dell. I'm very satisfied with everything. I've been using HP for a long time already and I think it's quite reliable, even my printer is HP.

I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

On-premises

We are a solution provider and the HPE Ethernet Switches are one of the network infrastructure products that we implement for our customers.

They are used from edge to core and I usually implement them for storage traffic and IP over ethernet, like NFC, iSCSI, or SAS. 

Our customers' needs are simple and not very sophisticated, and these switches allow us to set up the solution and forget about it. As much as possible, we isolate subnets or infrastructure to ensure that the frontend network is separate from the backend network storage. This helps to reduce problems.

HPE is very good for cases where you use storage for server networking

The product's stacking technology is stable and works well.

Authentication and other security features are not easily satisfied using the lower-end switches. For better security, you need to implement enterprise-level hardware and software.

I have been working with the HPE Ethernet Switches for six years.

Our clients for this product range in size from small businesses to university campuses. In a small business, they might have 200 to 300 users with perhaps between 500 and 1,000 endpoints. The scale for a campus would be in the area of 3,000 to 5,000 endpoints.

When we or our partners sell this product, it usually sells only with a hardware warranty. It does not come with software support. When there is an issue, we normally just update the switch or try to find out what version or what configuration is suitable for the product.

Ideally, once we install and configure it, we can forget about it. This is our motto.

The Comware version from H3C was very useful for our customer base, but the product line is changing and the customers are changing. Some of our customers use Cisco, HPE, or other products, and I have to configure them. I recommend products to customers, although it often depends on what they already have in their environment.

In cases such as Comware, where the line no longer exists, I recommend new products.

With Cisco Switches, you cannot buy them without the support and a license.

This is an expensive product. Some features can be added after purchase, which comes at an additional cost.

Overall, the product works very well, we don't have any problems, and I can recommend it. 

Although people can have a lot of trouble with these switches, they are human management issues. This is why we are careful to choose the correct products and to do the implementation and integration correctly.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Manageability and interfacing with other various networking management platforms have been most valuable for us. We use SolarWinds and are looking at Omnivew.

The warranty is great and so is lifetime on most hardware. Both config and replicate configs are pretty easy on HP switches.

I would like to see a POE ability added to the devices. We’ve used a lot of POE switches recently, HP and non-HP, and we want to standardize on HP. Our requirements are often that we need a very small 8-port switch and would like a version like this.

Also, I’d like to see the functionality of higher-end switches and some features of the 2900 series on the lower-end ones as well.

I’ve put in a few solutions, including HP and others in the past. I had problems with Extreme and Cisco, but only minimal ones with HP.

It actually has great scalability. We have high-end switches and are putting in a core switch in the next few months. We also use managed switches. Every need has a solution.

It’s been great. I’ve reached out directly to the account rep who is very willing to help. With issues, they are able to help directly when our channel partners who can’t help. Support is timely, too, and it's easy to get to a live person.

We used a mixed bag of various vendors, but wanted to standardize on one platform that we knew was stable, reputable, and easily serviced by multiple channel partners if needed. We looked at others, but HP dominated.

We’ve engaged with many channel partners, and it has been very straightforward. We tweaked things here and there. We forgot a parameter, etc., but nothing big.

• Extreme
• Cisco
• Lower end switches – Linksys

Cost, reliability, serviceability, warranty, and not needing to purchase a support pack each year are important in helping choose the right vendor.

Depending on what you need to accomplish the different models of the switches, start at the bottom and work up. A lot of functionality in the lower end switches may not be a need for the higher ones. Also, look at the stacking on the lower end switches.

Support is great when needed, pricing is great, warranty can’t be beat, and lots of partners out there.

It's easy to use for switch management. There are about 15 people using this solution in my company.

The performance is great.

The solution could be more stable.

I have been using this solution for more than five years.

It's stable, but it could be better.

It's scalable.

My company is an authorized support center of Aruba and HP, so we provide the customer and technical support.

It's easy to install. It took one day to deploy on site.

I would rate this solution nine out of ten.

I would recommend this solution for those who are interested in using it.

Most of our switches are located within the local office.

The best feature of this solution is the lifetime warranty.

This solution is easy to use and to configure.

This solution needs to support software-defined networking.

The management needs to be more open so that they can be easily managed using external software.

I would like to see support for integration with hyper-converged solutions. For example, I would like to be able to manage these switches from VMware or from a Nutanix platform.

They need a new way to manage the access control system. They do have a solution for this, but it is very complicated and not suitable for the SMBs. It may be fine for large enterprises, but not for small companies.

We have been using this solution for about ten years.

This solution is very stable. We have rarely, perhaps one or two times, seen bugs, and they were not very serious. It's very stable compared to other routers.

In terms of scalability, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We have not dealt with technical support for this solution.

We have reached out to our local partner, but it was just for clarification. Whenever we want to buy a new switch, we want to confirm the features like the stacking protocol. In terms of support, we have never had an issue that required we contact HPE.

The initial setup of this solution is easy. It is similar to Cisco and Huawei. There is not a big difference. They are all easy in terms of use and configuration.

The deployment takes between half a day and a day. There are advanced tools, and there is a template for configuration. You just have to change some parameters and that's it.

In some implementations that are large, people may need the right support from HPE or from local partners to do the configuration. It takes certain skills to do it properly.

We handled the deployment ourselves.

Whenever we purchase a new switch, we give everybody a chance. We have evaluated Cisco and Huawei hardware.

When it comes to HPE switches, as a recommendation, in the end it depends on the requirements. They have to know exactly what they need because HPE has all types and all levels of switches. They keep changing models, and sometimes we have challenges because we find out that two years later, the model is discontinued. Because of this, I say that it is important to purchase the latest model, and not one that is two or three years old because in another year it will be discontinued.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Its features are, in principle, quite standard and basic, so I cannot give you any extra information about these features. They integrate nicely with IMC, the management platform.

The benefit is to connect everybody in the office. You cannot imagine working nowadays without being connected to the network for computing, coding, and streaming. This is mandatory.

The main one would be to have more basic parameters available on the web interface. There are too many basic parameters that you have to change in the command line. This means you need to train your people regarding the command line, even when it means having to change quite basic parameters. For example, changing the parameter to give priority to voice over data traffic.

The stability is an issue. We have features that lose their configurations, like a port that was configured for VLAN 5 suddenly becomes configured for VLAN 2. It's really very annoying. People lose the connectivity, and nobody knows why, including HPE support specialists.

The OS features lose their configurations from time to time and we have periodic network freezes. Nobody understands why this happens. That's the problem, actually. There are nice features, but they are not very stable.

Scalability is nice. You can stack several of them, so no problem with scalability.

We use technical support a lot. When we bought these features in early 2015, they were quite new in the HPE offerings, and many re-sellers, consultants, and even HPE support staff didn't know very much about how they work and how to fine-tune and configure them.

We had major HPE-certified consultants on site. We even had HPE specialists connecting, and they couldn't manage to really improve the solution very quickly. Usually we are quite satisfied with HPE support. This is why we continue to buy servers from them and we just bought storage. However, the support was not as good for these specific features that were purchased by HPE, an external company.

We were using Nortel until two years ago. We moved to a new building, so we had to switch as there were no active network components available. We had been using Cisco before and we still use Cisco for the wireless infrastructure.

When selecting a vendor of ethernet switches, there are not so many alternatives on the market. We wanted to work with companies we are used to. We had to choose between Cisco and HPE. Because we've always been very happy with HPE and there was a brand new series of advanced features that integrated nicely with IMC, we selected the HPE product.

This solution is a brand new switch series with new firmware. I hope it will be more stable over time. It's a very good solution, but I would advise others to check that aspect carefully.

The valuable features are:

• Reliability and consistency of service
• Standard core functions you would expect from a network switch
• Demonstration of price against performance.

I don't know all the products and all the background, but the issue is the single pane of management. Things like a single window to manage all the devices and better integration make a product or a company competitive. I guess having a competitive edge on that would be good. There is a little bit of routing from the HPE ProCurve switches. All the integration is there and moving it forward to a kind of stable, developed product is still progressing. There are lots of bits to the HPE network picture, so I think that needs to come together more clearly.

I have only been there six months of the three years that we’ve had the solution. The feedback I received is that it has become more stable and it has developed as time has gone on.

It scales for the method we have implemented at the moment. We have a large campus, over 500 buildings, so it supports that. We are in the middle of a review, so we are deciding on how we take the network forward as a strategy and then we will go to procurement. It may or may not be HPE in the future.

My previous experience has always been good. I have had no direct experience recently, but my team gets the support they need. They are happy with that.

I wasn’t involved in the installation. It was already in place. We are just using it as a rolling refresh for existing hardware. In terms of upgrades, I would say it is relativity straightforward. Probably not as slick as some solutions but it's not as convoluted as others. There is room for improvement.

When choosing a vendor, reliability, performance, obsessively competitive price comes into it, but it is also about supply chains and availability of stock. I had buyers in the past where you can't get equipment when you need it. It is important to have a good support chain. The vendors that we use need to be knowledgeable in the products and work closely with HPE, so that is probably a very important part of that puzzle. HPE has always been strong, I would say, and have had a good reseller and third party support market. I think it is a strong solution.

It has standard layer 2 functions with basic layer 3 features if needed. It offers standard security such as 802.1x, RADIUS/TACACS authentication, port-security, DHCP snooping and much more.

Interface types, such as offering more of a mixture of 1Gb and 10Gb fiber/cooper interfaces. Faster backbone speeds when stacked.

HP 2920 The companies I have installed it for have kept it for roughly for 2-3 years.

No issues. However, the CLI is a bit different from Cisco but once you have the HP terminology down it’s easy so long as you plan the deployment properly.

I haven’t heard any complaints from customers that I worked with.

No. These switches can be outfitted with two 10Gb modules on the back for up links to other switches or to hosts. It can also be stacked with another 2920 for better port density.

Clients who choose the HP 2920 switch 9 times out of 10 had older Cisco switches. They felt moving to HP would be more cost effective.

It was straightforward especially if you're a custom to using Cisco switches. The CLI and terminology are a bit different and might confuse several engineers. Fortunately, HP has released a document that states the equivalent HP commands.

I have helped clients weigh out the pro’s and con’s and in the end it always came down to cost and 9 times out of 10 HP won the cost battle.

Weigh out the Pro’s and Con’s between Cisco and HP and consider price as a last resort. Also, from my experiences it’s best to go with one solution then to mix and match different vendors.