HPE BladeSystem Reviews

This solution is for medium to enterprise-size organizations. I'm the IT manager of our company and we are customers and users of HPE BladeSystem.

Modularity is key to this solution. It's the main feature and it provides energy savings because you have one enclosure, and one system for the energy and power supply. In terms of connectivity, Blade is more versatile than other solutions because of its three-tier architecture. I know the new trend is HCI technology, but that requires changing the whole node which increases the cost. On the SAN storage, I don't have to change anything on Blade. If I need to change the memory, I can do it blade by blade, and don't have to upgrade the whole node of the plate.

The connectivity speed could be improved. It's the major thing everyone looks for. When you upgrade your system, you want connectivity at the highest speed possible. 

I've been using this solution for 10 years. 

Stability is great and it's a reliable solution. We haven't had a single serious incident and only a couple of minor issues. It's one of the reasons it's an expensive solution. Competitors would not be able to compete. 

I believe BladeSystem is more scalable than HCI. If I want to add more storage or more memory on HCI, I have to add additional notes. With Blade, if I need extra storage, it's just a matter of additional discs. 

HP are the best on tech support. I really appreciate that they never leave you in the dark. They always track your case and can be very proactive, sometimes telling me if I have a storage problem. If there's a power shortage or power fluctuation, they let me know. 

Positive

I previously worked with Dell and with IBM. Both are now good companies, especially when they merge their technology with EMC. I don't have recent experience with either of them. I think they've improved a lot over recent years and are probably at the same level as HPE.

When we initially deployed BladeSystem, it was a little complicated but once you're set up you don't need to think about it. The main difference between the HCI and Blade is that HCI is easier when it comes to setup.

HPE is not the cheapest solution but if you want to buy a Rolls Royce, it costs. They are the most expensive product on the market. It's been 10 years since we implemented it, so I don't remember the licensing cost. 

My advice is to grow slowly, but plan for your growth. Don't get an enclosure that won't have expandability and don't go to a cheaper all-in-one model because you might get stuck with it for four or five years. You have to make sure that your system is expandable and that you can grow with it.

Overall, I rate this solution nine out of 10.

Probably the biggest thing I like about it is how easy they are, how easy it is for me to use them as building blocks for whatever system I'm working on. Whether it's another node of VMware cluster or another Microsoft cluster, it's really easy for me to be able to do. I can move them real easy around my data center. They're heavy compute but really easy and functional to use.

For me the benefit is the expandability. I can basically fit 16-blade Chassis inside of a 10U location as opposed to 16 rack mounts would be 32U in my cabinet. It's a lot more power, so I can really shrink my data center down a lot and still provide the same level of complement.

There's a cost saving, as there's a smaller real estate. It's not necessarily less hardware, but it reduces the power and the cooling requirements within the data center and the space is what I need.

They're physically big, about 240 lbs, but it's a minimal issue. I just started to get a BladeSystem that works, and I'd like to to work a little bit more with the ConvergedSystem.

They're not cheap, and for me to buy one is about $75,000 before I put any sort of server inside of it. I'd like the costing to come down a little bit.

We did look at a few others in the past, we haven't in a long time. Obviously we are an HPE shop. We did look at the Dell blades, the IBM blades, even Cisco's UCS system as well for a while, so we did actually do the proper comparisons across everything.

We chose HPE as everyone already knew the systems, knew how they worked. Ultimately, going through the other systems, HPE was the easiest one to go in and just start setting up and configuring right away out of the gate.

Part of it is really going to depend on what your use case for it is. If it's just running general server pools, then you get in there really fast, get it set up, run it using OneView obviously, which makes life a lot easier, because then you've got a single pane of glass to manage all your environments. That's the big reason I would use it.

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.

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.

The interface and dashboard are excellent and user-friendly. Configuration is also straightforward and similar to installing Windows.

There are limitations in writing exploiter features because of the sanctions.

Because we use this solution in Iran, I am unsure about the rules in Iran. Because Iran is a sanctioned country, we don't access any features and must use a program for our routine. We don't have access to add to anything in the HPE.

We would like to see OneView software features as an additional feature. It would be great for IT technicians, IT specialists and IT assistants.

We have been using HPE BladeSystem for two years. Is it a software system, we have many servers, and we use them daily for our banking, infrastructure, and government customers. It is deployed on cloud. Last month we switched our cloud, and we route the solution to connect Synergy Server and cloud services.

It is a stable solution.

The solution is scalable.

There are limitations to the technical support due to the sanctions in Iran. The HPE services have very good documentation, but we can't use it. We can't use this documentation without a VPN or proxy. In government organizations, we don't have any VPN or proxy, and support is very important.

The setup and installation were easy.

I rate this solution a ten out of ten.

Years ago, before BladeSystem, we had an EDM platform. We were working with IBM. We had IBM platforms. They consume much more energy. They are so big, so they take up a lot of space in the data center. At the time, when we migrated to BladeSystem, we reduced the amount of energy, amount of space, and we got more capacity. It's been very useful to us in that sense.

The solution has good scalability.

We can consolidate our learning infrastructure into just one chassis. You can have infrastructure scalability and capacity with memory. It is a great way to pull up together everything inside multiple platforms and in just one chassis.

Overall, its a very good product.

They are not selling BladeSystem anymore. The end of the sale of this platform was this year, 2020. Right now, if you try to buy a BladeSystem, you have to buy Synergy. I did try to buy some BladeSystem Generation 10 solutions in the USA. HP told me that they can sell this for the regular channel of HP still.

Right now, the Synergy platform has a management console that has a lot of options or features that help the administration of the platform. IN addition to that, this console cooling could integrate with the monitoring platform, so we could monitor integrity.

That said, this solution is discontinued, so any new features would only be useful on Synergy.

I've been using the solution over the last year.

The solution is very, very stable. We haven't had any issues with it. It's quite reliable.

The scalability is excellent, and it even takes up less space than, for example, IBM, and uses less energy.

I'm not sure, overall, how many users actually use the product in our organization.

The technical support is pretty good. I would rate it eight out of ten.

I'm using the technical support from Synergy. At the end of the day, it's the same tech support. They're great. That said, sometimes it takes so long, as they often need to recheck many things. Still, they solve the problem if there is one.

We used to use IBM. It was pretty bulky and took up a lot of space. It's hard to compare IBM to HP as IBM doesn't really show any good options.

The initial setup is not complex. It is straightforward.

I set up the solution myself. I didn't need the assistance of a consultant or integrator.

We're just a customer.

We use the solution on Citrix platforms.

The BladeSystem compared with older solutions about energy and processor, offers more capacity and you can gain or minimize the amount of energy that you consume, which is super-helpful.

Overall, I would rate it nine out of ten.

One of the big problems that BladeSystem could look at is that systems like Microsoft Windows 2019, Linux, or Red Hat 8 demand a lot of RAM memory. There's no adaptable support. The more gigabytes or more processors that the actual operating system has, the better. With Synergy, and the power of Dell, hopefully, there will be support and adaption to the new necessities.

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.

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.