HPE Ethernet Switches Reviews

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.

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.

These are core switches, so they handle the bulk of our network traffic from servers to the endpoints as well as SAN traffic.

They switch. They are capable of much more sophistication than we are able to support.  The addition of Aruba looks promising.

Simplicity and warranty. We are a small shop, and being simple is best. These are basic managed switches and the lifetime warranty is great.

It would be nice to have a common OS across models so that they could be managed together. But that is more in line with higher production equipment.

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.

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.

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.

The ProVisions are actually very simple to use and are a very good, solid switch. It doesn't have all the advanced features, but they're coming. Now, they also have a DHT server running on them.

It needs more routing and more VPN ports. These are included with the Comware-based switches, but not yet in the ProVisions.

We're using ProVision in the K15 v16, v17, and v18 software range.

We've deployed them with no issues.

They have been very stable for us.

We can scale them just fine.

Just do it.

The most valuable features are full command line support, VLANs, protocols for trunking, and the lifetime warranty. These switches are really good hardware with good stability.

It's given us a stable solution for our network.

Stacking of switches

We've deployed is without problems.

It's been stable.

We have about a hundred users.

I've used technical support only once. We needed support for a transceiver that was not supported, so technical support didn't help me. We chose another transceiver and everything worked as we expected.

Console port speed autodetect feature not work as we expected and create some problems with connecting to switch. I think that better option is set up one port speed and write it to manuals.