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it_user567759 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Executive with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
In terms of application portability, we were able to migrate from a legacy Superdome infrastructure.

What is most valuable?

We migrated our entire legacy landscape from old HP Superdome infrastructure to the new x86 infrastructure on blades. In terms of application portability, it was a seamless project from my side.

How has it helped my organization?

The main benefit has been in terms of the newer platform having much more computer power. You can see your workloads completing much quicker. Users with feedback in terms of workload performance have reported that a job that typically took 3 or 4 hours to run took a few minutes.

What needs improvement?

We're busy with phase 2 of the project. We classify the legacy landscape into simple, medium and complex applications. We've done the simple and medium. We're now going to tackle the complex and will make use of HPE professional services to see how we can either modernize the application code, for which we don't have the skill set anymore, or some subset of the applications.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

In terms of platform stability, the legacy infrastructure was out of warranty and out of support. The new platform was much more stable and reliable.

Buyer's Guide
HPE BladeSystem
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE BladeSystem. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.

How are customer service and support?

We have not used technical support often. HPE worked closely with us on the project. It was a joint initiative. We never had any issues and customers didn't even know they were migrated.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We're a telecom company. We've standardized around HPE, IBM, Oracle Solaris Sun boxes and now we've got VCE Vblocks. In terms of percentage, HPE's still about 60% of our landscape.

We moved to an x86 infrastructure and we could probably move other workloads from IBM-related infrastructure across to an HPE infrastructure. We could standardize further, but from an x86 perspective, it becomes more or less agnostic regarding which vendor infrastructure is the underlying infrastructure; as long as the operating system and virtualization can take place on top.

How was the initial setup?

It did take us quite some time to make the business case and to get the funding, but once we got all of that, the project went smoothly. We never had any issues.

For the technical part of the setup, we brought in professional services from HPE and they did the initial configuration and the racking and stacking of the systems.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We were looking at VCE Vblock, HPE, Oracle and IBM. We went with HPE because the HPE platform is about 60%, IBM is about 10%, and Oracle is about 30%.

What other advice do I have?

We're based in South Africa and we're pretty much dependent on the OEM to help us and advise us. HPE is able to advise us, especially on the architectural designs they can actually vet the architectural designs and give input that has proven to be valuable to us.

We always try to check supportability of the platform post-project implementation. Trust me, before the project implementation, before they kick up, all the vendors will lobby. Obviously, when you’ve gone live and you start having problems after the fact, the vendors stay far away. So you need to make sure that in-country support is there and the skills are there. For example, we had an experience with Oracle where they didn't even have the skill sets at the right support levels.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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it_user567927 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Real Time Architect at Thomson Reuters
Real User
Scalability and flexibility are valuable, as are the networking solutions within the chassis.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable features are scalability, flexibility and deployment, as well as the ease of networking solutions within the chassis.

How has it helped my organization?

The low cost of deployment is the greatest benefit to our company. It saves us money.

What needs improvement?

The only thing we think is on the down side is that you can't push them anywhere near as hard as the pizza-box servers; the rack mounts. We knew this at the very start, but it is something that makes us not totally go down that route. We do have a parallel deployment using those for our more aggressive situations.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The BladeSystem is very stable. Being an architect, I think the down times have been all within the expected goal, so we have not had any issues with that.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It's able to scale very well. That's one of the benefits of it.

How are customer service and technical support?

I do remember that we had some technical questions on Virtual Connect and technical support was a bit slow in the early days, but that has improved.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

There was a company-wide decision, but we chose BladeSystem on the grounds that we had to do a rapid deployment. We didn't have an awful lot of time to get in to the detail, so we wanted something that knew was going to work. It's something we trusted would work. The scalability offered the fact that we could easily add to our installations in the various data centres that we have fairly quickly and horizontally scale out our applications.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was fine. It was more that we needed to know some of the technical error ins and outs regarding that, because we were using multicast mechanisms across the WAN and wanted to know how good the traffic flows worked; the ingress on the chassis and to the BladeSystems.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We went with HPE because of the performance. We set it against Dell, and evaluated its performance, because we also buy their hardware products. But, to be honest, we found Dell's far slower. We just said, there's no way we're going to go for that.

In general, when selecting a vendor to work with, cost and performance are the most important criteria.

What other advice do I have?

Regarding the connectivity setups, we've done it all now. We could smooth that path. Now it's very simple for us. If there are any difficulties, it's probably of our own making.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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Buyer's Guide
HPE BladeSystem
March 2025
Learn what your peers think about HPE BladeSystem. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2025.
842,651 professionals have used our research since 2012.
it_user481857 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Center Systems Engineer at Insight
Consultant
Architecturally, there's no problem adding more as the environment needs to scale.

Valuable Features:

I think the thing about BladeSystems is the quality of the engineering that goes into them. They have a long history of being valuable and viable products that are out there. Customers trust them.

Improvements to My Organization:

It's interesting because I think, as infrastructure becomes more and more invisible and application becomes more and more important to the business, just not having to worry about that infrastructure is the value on a business level.

Room for Improvement:

Customers are always looking for more performance, just trying to get more out of them. I don't know whether they have a blade or whether, but it's a rackmount server, and they're just trying to get more horsepower out of them. Continue to make them more scalable inside the box in terms of CPU, memory and I/O etc. It's just, customers are always looking for more density.

Stability Issues:

From the folks that I know that are using them, typically you're not seeing stuff at the infrastructure level. You may have some brittle pieces of the application and the integration, but the platform themselves are solid.

Scalability Issues:

Architecturally, there's no problem adding more of those as the environment needs to scale.

Initial Setup:

I'm not that hands-on too much on the setup piece.

Other Advice:

I think it's the advice that I'd give to anybody that would ask for it. Start with your application, find out what the requirements are, think about what it's going to need in the future, then begin architecting your solution there.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partners
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it_user313830 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Systems Engineer at a individual & family service with 10,001+ employees
Vendor
It has scaled and performed well in the six-plus years I've used it for a particular project.

What is most valuable?

  • Scalability
  • Performance
  • Out-of-band management
  • Support

What needs improvement?

Java version dependence for its out-of-band management. This is also an issue for other vendors, as well.

For how long have I used the solution?

HP Proliant Servers have been used on this project for over six years. I’ve managed them since I came on the project, so for almost five years. We used the BladeSystem alongside the DL servers.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

There won't be any issues as long as you have followed the guidelines to ensure that the firmware was up to date prior to deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There was an issue before I came on the project, where a firmware update was not applied and had caused a few systems to become unstable under certain conditions, but HP support was able to identify the cause and provide a solution.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The systems scale well for our environment.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Mostly very positive. The only issue I’ve encountered has been with pre-sales support (i.e. getting accurate quotes to purchase systems).

Technical Support:

It's excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Before coming on this project I had used Dell servers. The performance of the HP server has an edge over the Dell systems I had used.

What other advice do I have?

HP Proliant servers are rock solid and when you need technical support HP’s team is there to support you with answers, no matter how long it takes to properly identify the root cause and then propose a solution.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user469629 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Engineering Manager at a hospitality company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
I like the support that comes with it and the ease of getting it in production.

What is most valuable?

Reliability. I like the support that comes with it and the ease of getting it in production.

How has it helped my organization?

The reliability that is behind it, those efficiencies, that reliability makes sure that my customers have the services they need to support the business at all times.

What needs improvement?

Alerting the management could be better. I think OneView is new, I actually used HP SIM a lot in my day as an administrator. Now I'm in management watching my engineers use OneView. It still seems like there is still some room for improvement on that.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

There have been issues but HP has always done a really good job at getting that corrected.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We run a virtual environment, a private cloud. As I need more computer power, we're able to add C7000 chassis Blade servers in, and just add those to the firm. It was relatively easy. It's getting it into production and then adding them into the cluster.

How are customer service and technical support?

It was fine. It was pretty smooth.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using Cisco UCS and we recently made the change to HP BladeSystem. We changed because of the ease of use. The Cisco UCS platform was more complex to run, and I felt that with my experience with just HP stuff it was really easy to set up and manage and maintain.

How was the initial setup?

It wasn't complex because I had prior experience using Blade servers at another company.

What other advice do I have?

I would warn you to be prepared to be ready to talk about how you're going to be connecting your BladeSystems to the network. Especially if you don't have a total HP stack from top to bottom. For example, if you're setting those things up or connecting them with Cisco gear, being prepared in working with your partners with your vendors on ensuring that you're connecting that all in best practice.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user252630 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at AIMCo
Real User
Central management of my blades is fairly important for me. It’s important for me to be able to manage them all centrally and quickly.

What is most valuable?

Institutional memory-- we used it previously and stuck with it.

What needs improvement?

I want to see a standardized interface for managing blade chassis when they’re not virtual connect. Also, I'd like to see a return to the program in which you can purchase different skews for your chassis needs. That was a great program, which they should bring back. I'm disappointed that the current purchase program isn't quicker.

For how long have I used the solution?

I use everything from G5 to G9 and ProLiant blades.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

I’ve had some recent issues when doing hardware and simple memory upgrades. When I pull out and put back a blade, they system has a tendency to shut down random blades in the chassis. When working on our production system, this issue messes up our clustering and systems.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The scalability is great.

How are customer service and technical support?

It’s been decent. When we’ve had our issues, they tell us how to resolve them. They always tell us to update the firmware, but in our production environment, it takes me many months to get that done.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were previously affiliated with the government, and they were using HP.

How was the initial setup?

I’d say that setup complexity depends on the type of system you get. We went for the blade chassis, and they were great. We recently dropped virtual connect and initially went with more traditional blades from Cisco, and they seemed to be fine. They were very clunky to set up, however, and I was disappointed. But setup for HP blades were fairly simplistic.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Dell, Cisco, ans briefly Hitachi. HP came out on top primarily for its knowledge in our organization. On the server front, everything is similar, and there was no real need to jump ship.

What other advice do I have?

We looked at our what our guys already knew.

Single point of management is important. If you were to step back five years ago, HP was very strong in that, when Dell and Cisco weren’t quite as good. Now, they’re all pretty good, so central management of my blades is fairly important for me. I’m running hundreds of these servers, and it’s important for me to be able to manage them all centrally and quickly.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Consultant at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Consultant
Ahead of other vendors. Minor improvements are needed for registration of licenses and access to updated drivers.

What is most valuable?

iLO (Remote Management) is probably the best in the market, their RAID Cards (SmartArray) are also very good.

How has it helped my organization?

  1. iLO even in its basic form can get you out of hot water as you can just do a remote power-cycle. iLO Advance can get you to remotely troubleshoot the OS even if its in a defunct state
  2. RAID I have found useful as its quite easy to remotely expand the array
  3. Upgrading of firmware is very easy as well, even in a VMWare vSphere (ESXi hypervisor)

What needs improvement?

I believe they are ahead of the other vendors (IBM, Dell and Cisco). Probably what they can improve on are minor things -

  1. Registration of licenses, this includes iLO advanced and upgraded support. This requires you to log on with HP and activate the key that has been given to the server. Its just a convoluted process that I rather as a technical engineer not have to do.
  2. Access to updated drivers and firmware. They now require you to logon and have the device serial number to get to drivers. Even new devices requires this. If the device is 3 years old OK, but new devices just frustrates the customer and slows down deployments.

For how long have I used the solution?

Full time the last five years but I have been around them for eight years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Generally no. We did have issues where a RAID card would not work with array build until we updated the firmware. Even after getting HP to replace the RAID card, the replacement card came with the same faulty firmware. This was for a bottom end server though. All the mid and high range servers have had no problems with deployments.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

If there is ever a problem with stability, generally firmware has fixed this, We've had a range of issues, probably the most common issue has been SAS cards and tape drives staying up (both in Windows and ESXi environments). We did have an issue where during a power outage, the BIOS lost the boot sequence on a sever that was using an SD Card as its boot device, a firmware update fixed that. Teamed NICS having dropouts also required updates.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No, these servers when specified can host incredible amounts of VM's. The CPU options and RAM expansions are very good.

How are customer service and technical support?

Excellent, they are happy to trust you in raising the issue and supply you with replacement hardware with minimal fuss. They are also helpful if you require technical assistance for configuration.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used to use IBM. I wasn't part of the decision for the change but to be honest I'm glad we moved away from IBM. They had moved to LSI for RAID and their UEFI Bios meant every reboot took 10 minutes. Also their technical support was rapidly going downhill.

How was the initial setup?

Straightforward, 90% of all installation you can just refer to the server cover for RAM sequence, CPU installations or RAID expansion.

What about the implementation team?

We are a reseller.

What was our ROI?

Its hard to say but if you count the improvement of remote access (iLO) and ease of upgrading firmware means we don't have to organise serious downtimes when we had previously dealt with other vendors.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We previously used IBM Servers and we may revisit this if Lenovo fixes the issues with the IBM servers. We also haved used Cisco UCS servers where the deal suited. I still believe HP is still ahead of both Cisco and IBM.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: We are a HP partner
PeerSpot user
System Engineer at CNCCI
Real User
Easy to manage, good support, and reasonably priced
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature of HPE BladeSystem is the ease of management. It is easy to communicate from the server to the storage."
  • "HPE BladeSystem could improve the communication between the server and the storage."

What is our primary use case?

We are using HPE BladeSystem as a server in the education sector.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature of HPE BladeSystem is the ease of management. It is easy to communicate from the server to the storage.

What needs improvement?

HPE BladeSystem could improve the communication between the server and the storage.

It's very difficult to have a representative give training. It would be helpful to provide some training.

In the next release of the solution, it would be a benefit to have hypervisor capabilities on the system.

If we could have a backup and a hypervisor built-in with all the capabilities for HPE BladeSystem it would be helpful.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using HPE BladeSystem for approximately four years.

How are customer service and support?

The support from HPE BladeSystem is good, they are responsive. I had some issues and they assisted me with my problem.

How was the initial setup?

After I had training in the HPE BladeSystem the initial setup was not difficult. I was able to do the configuration of the equipment with ease.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The price of HPE BladeSystem is less expensive than some other solutions, such as Dell. The cost of replacement equipment is expensive.

What other advice do I have?

I rate HPE BladeSystem a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user