HPE BladeSystem Reviews

The system has versatile applications, as it can serve as a host for various environments, including virtual and DDI environments. Even the Horizon View environment can run exclusively on this system.

This is a sophisticated solution that covers the entire process, from the components such as network and storage, up to the smart components. It also includes power management and is fully managed.

The most valuable feature of this solution is its high availability.

The latest version of this system is called Synergy from HPE, and it comes with more advanced features. 

This is currently the most advanced solution available in the market. One of its key features is its energy efficiency, which optimizes energy usage.

I have been working with HPE BladeSystem for five years.

HPE BladeSystem is also commonly known as ProLiant BL. ProLiant is a brand of server products manufactured by HPE, and the BL designation specifically refers to the blade form factor used in the BladeSystem line. The ProLiant BL servers are the blade servers that are designed to be used with the BladeSystem enclosures.

We are using version Gen Nine.

HPE BladeSystem is a stable solution.

It is a scalable solution.

I would rate the scalability of HPE BladeSystem, an eight out of ten.

I have worked with Synergy within the last 12 months.

The installation is not difficult

To install the system hardware, we engaged the services of HPE professionals to ensure proper installation.

I don't have access to your financial information or the specific details of this solution's pricing.

There are no additional fees. It is the hardware and the support.

It all depends on how you configure the network components with the plate. That should be done properly, you know. If you configure it correctly, the network component and this connectivity will be available. There will be no issues throughout the update, repairing the hardware, upgrading the firmware, and so on.

I would rate  HPE BladeSystem a nine out of ten.

We use the solution for virtualizing databases and servers.

The solution uses less cabling and less space in the data center.

The price of the solution has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

I give the stability a ten out of ten.

I give the scalability a nine out of ten.

We have around ten administrators using the solution in our organization.

We previously used the base system of HPE BladeSystem 1C7.

The initial setup is easy and can be completed within two days.

The implementation was completed in-house with the help of an HPE partner.

The licensing is on an annual basis.

I give the solution an eight out of ten. There are better solutions available in the market.

Most of our things are low intensity on the compute side. It is just redundancy and backup. We have some legacy apps that are web applications on .NET. They're all Windows servers.

We also have some file servers. When it comes to the file servers, we are getting away from that and moving everything to the cloud. It is mainly going to be used to maintain our legacy infrastructure, and it is mostly going to be for .NET and low-intensity things.

Uptime and service are valuable for us. When we have an issue, uptime and being able to get an emergency replacement or actual service is the most important thing for us.

With iLO and other features, our experience has been really good especially when a lot of people are working remote or offsite. The iLO feature gives us the ability to get onto our server when we're remote. In the case of any issues, we can access it and reboot it if we need to.

I am not sure if iLO is included or if there is a separate license. If it is not included, it should be included in the license. It is such a valuable feature especially because people are working remotely. 

Our company has had HP rack servers for 20 years.

I've only been here for seven years, and it has been really good all these years. For servers, in general, the goal is to be stable. Most of them are redundancy-based, and I don't remember having any issues. We probably had a switch fail once, but we had dual. We just got a replacement and swapped it out. There was just hard drive failure, but that's just the nature of the beast kind of thing.

We haven't done a ton of scalability. So, I don't have any thoughts on that.

In terms of its usage, we're a regulator. We are representing five industries right now. We probably have a couple of thousand people using it on their external site accessing it, but internally, we're a small organization. We only have about 300 employees. Our infrastructure team has three people right now, and we are hiring two more infrastructure people. We're not huge. In theory, one person does pretty much all the maintenance.

I personally haven't interacted with them, but my team's experience has been pretty good. They haven't had any complaints. We've always had one of the top-tier, low-downtime support packages. When things fail, usually, we get a response right away, and if it is a part-related issue, it is handled right away. I have never heard them say anything that would imply that they're not happy with the support. 

We just did a merger, and the organization we merged with has two Lenovo blades that we use. Our boss's boss is a big Lenovo fan, but we don't have a ton of experience. It has been six months of usage.

It is very straightforward. The application configuration is somewhat complex, but we'll be migrating. So, it'll be very straightforward.

We're in the early stages of replacing some of our legacy hardware. Currently, we're primarily HPE, and we do have some Lenovo racks, and they're pretty old. Some of them are approaching six years.

I haven't directly dealt with HPE, but I've heard that HPE has been really good. People didn't have any complaints, but my boss's boss likes Lenovo for some reason. We're doing a general cost analysis and shopping around to see what it is like out there and what other people have experienced. We are looking at solid state because we are currently on mechanical hard drives. 

Ideally, we'd like to keep everything in the same family just to limit complexity and have the same manufacturer. Having two or three manufacturers means extra things to have to look after. We are moving to the cloud as well. We're just trying to make our server room less complex.

We like it for the most part. Support is always key for us personally. Don't lose sight of it, but ideally, it is a set-up-and-forget solution.

I would rate it a nine out of ten because it is always good to have something to strive for.

We use the solution as a web application server. Multiple users visit our university website. The students watch live video lectures and download them.

Remote management features are valuable. We can manage it over the network from anywhere. We can get consolidated reports. We need not visit data centers. The performance of the tool is great.

The tool must provide integration with the cloud.

I have been using the solution for four years.

The tool is stable. I rate the tool’s stability an eight out of ten. Sometimes, we face hardware failure.

We have 1200 users.

We receive support from the partners. The support team is customer-friendly and provides fast responses.

The setup is okay. We have a technical team that takes care of deployment and maintenance.

The product is worth the money.

The pricing is competitive.

I take care of accounts. I will recommend the solution to others. If an organization has storage needs, they can use the solution. Overall, I rate the product a nine and a half or ten out of ten.

The solution is quite stable.

It's very scalable. 

The solution is easy to manage and update. 

As long as they keep getting the new Compute generations, it would be ideal. Generation 10 was the last that they wanted to support on Blade Enclosure. That's unfortunate though. It may be coming to its end of life. Other than that, I don't have anything else to improve upon.

It's a stable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It cannot crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

The solution can scale well. 

We've used the BladeSystem and Synergy. The Blade is simpler. The Blade Enclosure C7000 does the same job. It has the same robust fault tolerance and redundancy. Yet at the same time, it's simpler to deal with, to work with.

They have to either simplify Synergy Frame as they will not likely keep going with the Blade Enclosure for a long time. They were still working on it two years ago when I spoke to them. They said, "for at least 10 more years, Blade Enclosure will keep going." That's what they told us. However, for some reason, we wanted to go to the Synergy Frame. It was the wrong decision.

For the very long term, they either have to modify the Synergy to make it more like a C7000 or they might have to rethink keeping and further developing C7000. That's my simple experience. 

With HPE Synergy, I had a very painful experience with updating by just really shutting down and rebooting the environment. We had a power outage, and a few things didn't come up properly. Also, when we did the firmware upgrade, there were a lot of problems. It's not as easy as the Blade Enclosure. Usually, I need to open a support ticket with HPE to get around the problems when it comes to Synergy. However, with the Blade Enclosure, it is easier to deal with things.

It's very easy to maintain and to keep updating.

I can't speak to the licensing. I don't get involved in the cost.

I'd rate the product nine out of ten. I've been quite pleased with it.

I Use this solution for my main production server, we use this for VM-hosts, and connected to HP MSA Storage as VM Data-stores via iSCSI targeting.

This product saved the data center space (only use 10 U Spaces for max 16 servers) and has better performance for the VMware, vCenter, and vMotion.

I really appreciate the integrated Onboard Administrator, the iLO (Integrated Lights-Out) modular network, and the SAN Switches.

This product needs a wider range of firmware compatibility matrix from the oldest to the newest blade server. Because the blade chassis (C7000) has a 16 blade servers bay (slot), it will be better if we can mix the first generation (G1 Blade server) with the latest Gen (G9 Blade server). E.g.: G1 only can be mixed in same chassis with G8 (max), if we have a new G9 blade server, we need to eliminate the old blade server, or if you don’t want to get rid of the old server you should buy another chassis. The new chassis is so expensive.

So, it will be easier for scalability purposes, and a greater value for
a company with a limited budget, if HPE Blade System has a wider compatibility matrix range.

There were no stability issues.

There were scalability issues. If we want to upgrade, the oldest version of the blade server cannot be mixed with the newest one. This is a problem of the firmware compatibility matrix of the on-board administrator.

Customer Service:

The Customer service is great!!! As long you're covered by the warranty or maintenance aggreement. the response time is under 1 hour after you raise a ticket.

Technical Support:

It have great technical support with quick response, if you have maintenance contract with HPE (HP Enterprise)

We used Rackmount, but we switched to this solution because it is integrated and saves space.

The initial setup was straightforward. Just follow the steps in the manual and you’re ready to go.

It's quite expensive for the initial purchase. The chassis itself, with no blade server inside, so expensive. The C7000 model costs around $100,000.

If your company scale is small to mid-enterprise, you could consider the QNAP TDS Series. This can act both as a physical host and hypervisor. There is no need to buy additional VM licenses if you want to create a VM environment.

Or, 

If your company scale need below 16 servers, you should consider the siblings, the c3000 model, it has 8 bays rather than 16 bays, so it won't overkill your budget.

Prepare the budget and be ready to persuade the board of directors as to why you should buy this solution. Don't forget to prepare the data of TCO.

We use HPE BladeSystem to develop some applications in Apigee, PHP, .NET, etc. We also use it for PDM i.e. project data management for applications like SolidWorks. Along with that, we use it for file sharing, and like a SaaS application for Webex, SAP, etc.

The product has a lot of options for checking servers and IoT ports using artificial intelligence. They can provide a report on network activities.

The learning material available to understand the functionality of GreenLake is limited. They should provide open learning materials and seminars for detailed knowledge of the product.

We have been using HPE BladeSystem for more than six years.

I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten. It is suitable for small and medium businesses.

I rate the product’s scalability a ten out of ten. It is suitable for small and medium businesses.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

The initial setup process is a ten out of ten. It takes an hour to complete.

The product’s price is high compared to Dell.

They should provide enough information on the functionality to the users. I rate HPE BladeSystem a ten out of ten.

We are using HPE BladeSystem for commercial usage.

The most valuable feature of HPE BladeSystem is its upgradability and centralized configuration.

I have been using HPE BladeSystem for several years.

The solution is stable.

I rate the stability of HPE BladeSystem a nine out of ten.

I rate the scalability of HPE BladeSystem a nine out of ten.

I have previously used Dell and Cisco UCS.

The initial setup of HPE BladeSystem is not complex. The deployment is typically dome done within one day, a maximum of two days if it includes the OS or virtualization.

I rate the initial setup of HPE BladeSystem a nine out of ten.

We have a team that does the implementation of the solution.

The price of HPE BladeSystem could improve. They need to reduce the price to be able to compete better with other vendors, such as Dell.

Cisco UCS is the worst for pricing, then Dell, and HPE.

I rate the price of HPE BladeSystem a seven out of ten.

The maintenance of the solution can be done by one person.

I rate HPE BladeSystem a nine out of ten.