HPE BladeSystem Reviews

HP is very aware of and adaptable to our market. They've been able to provide the best technology to fit our market.

HP is a good partner, as they really try to understand and build trust with our market.

We are very happy with flexible NIC configuration features which are possible if you combine the BladeServers with HPE flex switches in the enclosures. You can mix and match the speed of your servers' NIC ports. Its also very easy and fast to deploy new servers.

It hasn't really made a big impact on our organization. We are not that big, only three people in the server operations group. The use of blade servers has had no impact on organization.

Non-disruptive firmware upgrades in all areas of blade technology.

No issues. They have been running very stable through all these years. Of course we have seen memory module, disk, and power supply failures, but not more than we would expect.

No issues.

Tech support is very effective and fast but it depends on the level of your support agreement. We had the P24 level and HPE are very responsive.

We did not have a previous solution.

It was quite straightforward. You have to decide the right power supply option for your enclosure. The best solution is to have PDU in the racks and let the enclosures get power from them. We made the wrong decision with our first enclosures, which were delivered with 3Ph power supplies built in, which made the initial preparation and later relocation more expensive for each enclosure. Today, you can’t buy the 3Ph power supplies.

None.

• It’s advisable to maintain and operate an updated HPE management solution along with the BladeSystem, which will assist in failure alerting, operations, automation, etc. 
• Remember that blades are most cost effective if you can fill all the bays in the enclosures. 
• It's advisable to use HPE networking switches, if your networking department can accept this.

We can better maintain physical servers and takes up only half the cabinet space. We have from 8-16 physical servers in one chassis, so it's better for maintenance in case of hardware failure on one of these BladeSystems. We get higher density and better hardware maintenance.

More physical resources can be added to our pool with better maintenance.

I would like to see a better UI for configuring the VDX switches.

We are very satisfied with the stability.

For scalability, it is better to work withHPE Apollo servers, which is not what we are using. I think HPE provides all the products that work better and quicker.

Technical support is very good.

We were using older generation HP BladeSystems. We switched to the new version, because we needed more capacity. We were satisfied already with the existing BladeSystem, so we wanted to continue using it and went with the latest generation available.

Initial setup is straightforward for the physical servers, but took a bit more time to configure the virtual connect switches inside the chassis.

The price is affordable for what we want in new physical resources.

We looked at Dell and Quanta. HPE has very good technical support and that makes a difference; at least compared with Quanta for instance.

List what you need regarding new capacities of:

• RAM memory
• CPU power
• Your budget
• High availability limitation
• Support

We want a vendor to provide support for any hardware failure. They need to be able to respond quickly and so we can recover from a hardware failure and put it back into production.

My use cases are for enterprise software such as banking, core banking, reporting software, and databases.

For me, the most valuable features are integration and simple defining.

BladeSystem is an old-fashioned server and not very well developed for new features and new areas of data centers, which is not very good for enterprise companies. In the next release, I would like to see an improvement in the UI.

This is a stable solution.

BladeSystem is scalable, but I think it needs to have a little more scalability of input in the future.

The initial setup was intermediate - not very easy but not too hard.

The technical support is good - I've had no problems with them.

I would give this solution a rating of seven out of ten.

We use the solution for media and backup servers.

The solution has good performance. 

All around, it would be nice if the solution were cheaper. 

I have been using HPE BladeSystem for around 15 years, which is the entire length of my career. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

I do not have experience with technical support. 

The decision to switch from other products to the current solution was not within my purview. 

I do not have experience with putting the solution together, as it comes pre-configured. The installation is easy. 

Items which are more cost-effective have a greater tendency to be refurbished. This is why I don't really consider the pricing to be problematic. 

This said, it would make everyone happy if the solution were less expensive. 

I would recommend the solution to others. 

I rate HPE BladeSystem as an eight out of ten. 

Customer installations for 10 years.

• Virtual Connect
• FlexFabric

Simple and easy installation.

Networking.

We have been installing it for customers for 10 years.

No issues.

Some bugs, which were solved by a firmware update.

No issues.

Good.

No.

It is straightforward. We followed the procedures.

We are the vendor team.

Excellent.

I can remotely manage and monitor it easily.

The mail exchange server runs smoothly on the Blade Server.

With the management software, sometimes we can't run a new Java version or Active X. We have to use an old OS such as Windows XP to get through this. Some features of the Blade still requires you to use a CLI to configure.

I've been using it for two years.

There were no issues with the deployment. I can use a laptop and configure the Blade from my office room so I don’t have to go to the server room.

We've experienced no issues with performance.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It's good.

It was straightforward.

It was implemented through a vendor.

It's expensive and the price should be reduced.

We also use Cisco UCS and IBM Flex servers.

You should get it through a vendor.

As it's modular (a small server) and has redundant hardware such as power, a SAN switch, and an interconnector, we do not need to worry when there is a failure.

Alongside HP 3PAR and VMware hypervisor, it is easy to manage the server.

It needs to have backward compatibile firmware. Also, the enclosure for Generation 9 canot be paired with Generation 1 or 6 so it takes more effort to perform the migration.

We have used this product since Generation 1 in 2009. Currently, we have Generation 1, Generation 6, and Generation 7. We are currently using a Generation 9 for a refresh and to replace our Generation 1 and 6 (still in progress).

There were no issues with the deployment.

We have had no issues with the stability.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

It's fast and they respond well.

We chose it because we are already familiar with HP products.

The setup went smoothly.

A team from HPE assisted me.