HPE Ethernet Switches Reviews

They're reliable -- very reliable, in fact -- and a have a good management interface. They're simple to use and quite easy to understand, and I like that they're not CLI. It's the proper GUI interface that makes them much easier to use rather than just having the CLI which makes some of them very difficult. Cisco, for example, is only CLI, but HP gives you a GUI. 

They're also very configurable and they're very good.

The main benefit is reliability. The switches don't go down and they tend to last for a long time. They just don't go down.

They also only rarely need rebooting. I can probably count on one hand the number of times we've had to reboot an HP switch.

They are very noisy, though, and the fans tend to get more and more noisy as they go along. The noise is actually a pain because sometimes where we've got multiple floors, we might put a switch on each floor rather than just put them in the comms room, and there the noise is an absolute pain. They are just very noisy.

That's why we like them, because they're stable. They're very reliable and they just last. The PO switches are also very good.

You can scale by adding fiber connections to the switches which makes it simpler to join switches together, but we haven't found the need for it because the switch is so configurable.

Yes, we have used competitors. We have used Dell, which is absolutely lousy. D-Link has some high-end switches, but they just don't come close.

They're not Cisco, and big companies want to see a name like Cisco. True, HP isn't Cisco, but that's a bit unfair. Having that said, we've got one very big company now with about 200 users who are getting rid of their Cisco switches and putting in HP's.

They're doing so because of HP's reliability and because they got fed up with paying Cisco prices to get their switches and to configure them when any network administrator can configure an HP switch. With Cisco, you need specialist knowledge and you don't really have to have specialist knowledge just for a switch.

The most valuable feature for us is just their reliability. We've never had any problems with them at all. They are quality products that are better than the competition. They were also very easy to configure.

It needs better monitoring and alerting for issues. We use HP Intel Management Center, which is good, but there are a few extra things they can improve.

We have been using them probably for about five years now.

We've had no issues with deployment.

It's been stable and we haven't had any downtime.

It's scaled for our needs.

We have not had to use any technical support. Our support comes from the company from which we bought the switches. They set them up for us and they provide very good technical support. We've used them for over ten years.

We previously used Cisco and were a 3COM user when HP bought them and converted them to switches. We switched because of performance issues, and now we have very, very good performance. We have no speed issues with the licensing network.

The initial setup was not overly complex. We've got two sites and we use them on both sites. So we've had no problems, but we only have 250 users.

The company we bought the switches from implemented them for us.

The price point is good when performance is taken into account compared to their competition.

We looked at HP first and didn't really consider anyone else.

Throughput is the most valuable feature for me, and penetration in the central data center. We use different modules and you can just configure on top of it. We have a fiber channel because my building is tethered with five, six floors. I need to get all this fiber to be connected to the switches. One switch solved the issue with high availability. The second connected all our server devices. We sliced it to our switch based on our requirement.

They need to improve the GUI interface for the switches, the access layer switch in particular, with complete details so we can track each and every port. This will make it easier to find the gaps in performance.

Also, on two or three occasions, heat distribution caused a problem because we penetrate this to a different floor and a fan got damaged, stopped, and emitted a lot of heat.

We've been using it for four years.

I've had no issues deploying it.

I haven't had any issues with instability.

The upgrades are all pretty easy. We do the frequent upgrades based on the release notes of HP and it's going well for us.

Technical support is very good from HP especially because they give a lifetime warranty for the hardware. It depends on the support of what you've taken, for example, if you've been highly response level of followers. Now in Saudi Arabia, you can say the after-sales support has improved a lot. It's not only HP switching part, to be frank, it's HP with servers and anytime we open a case we can order pretty quickly as consultants.

The initial setup was simple because initially I used to have a Cisco switches, which was four years ago, and an old model. Configuration and backups are easy. Backups we configure on the solar vents and they're very much pretty integrated with the solar vents.

We evaluated Cisco, but they were very expensive in terms of total cost of ownership.

You need to analyze and observe the performance.

From the low-end ProVisions up to the high-end Comware-based switches, their most valuable feature is that they actually work. Not all switches can do that, especially at a reasonable price. HP's switches offer price performance you can't find anywhere else.

These switches provide us with simplicity when we need. The ProVisions have fewer features and fewer functionality, but they're simpler. If we need, we can go with the Comware-based switches which have high-end features. So with these switches we can have both sides.

We had no issues with deployment.

They have been stable.

We've been able to scale with these switches.

Technical support is mostly good, but it's just like every other vendor. When you're at level 1 and you yourself are very knowledgable already, you just want to pass level 1. Level 2 is, normally, quite good, and level 1 is just a filter to take away all the stupid questions. If you're at level 3, you're probably in trouble because you have something that requires you to talk directly to the lab. So with the tiered structure for technical support, there are some inefficiencies. It would be an improvement to make technical support more efficient.

We evaluated Cisco and Juniper. They are considered high-end providers, but HP can more or less do it all. For small, medium, and enterprise businesses, HP has a very good product range.

Get some proper training.

We're quite basic users of the product, so we like how simple it is to setup. We're standardized across the board on HP products, and we like that fact that they do have products that fit our needs. Plus, they're easy to install when we get them. They're easy to use once they're in and they're robust with a lifetime warranty.

We're able to standardize on just a small number of HP products, switches included. Supportability is very important to us, so the fact that we can standardize on reasonably priced switches has made us more efficient.

We're quite basic users, but what I'd really like to see improvement on is the management. We've made an investment in the product and I'd like to better leverage it through improved management to work better for our company.

It's deployed just fine for us.

It's very stable and we have very few issues with it. The fact that they come with lifetime warranties makes it even better for us.

The scalability is very good and we're using it in all 85 of our locations.

I've not used technical support, and that's a good thing.

We do pricing reviews to make sure that we're still getting good value for the money, and we are. We haven't really got any issues with the products, so there's not really any reason to change to those.

The Software-Defined Networking (SDN) features I find most valuable are:

• Directly programmable and configurable
• Centrally manageable
• Control traffic system-wide

I think that the HP Openflow switches should be improved in terms of the open-flow byte-count statistics.

I used SDN because my master thesis is about the visualization of traffic in the network per application with SDN, so I have worked with HP switches almost along all this year. In my thesis the byte count was very important for the conclusions, but I noticed that this feature had some problems and errors.

My little experience tells me that everything starts because the hardware table (table 100) doesn't have the byte count. So I had to install the flow rules in the software table (table 200) which has a limit-rate, that may be the reason for the relative errors that I found.

I used a host as an iPerf server and another one as an iPerf client and then I compared the open-flow byte count against the byte count provided by the iPerf console.

I have used this solution for six months.

The switch manual say that the device supports up to four mirrorings. But when I configured two port mirrorings, the SDN controller interface was blocked and the mirrorings didn't work. 

The Openflow hardware table doesn't provide a byte-count statistic, and the software table provides a byte-count statistic but with errors. 

I found that the possible reason for this is that the software-limit rate of the switch, which is 10,000 pps maximum, with an advice in the switch manual that if we increase the limit-rate above 1,000 pps, it is possible that this increases CPU and impacts system performance.

The most valuable feature is that you do not require a spanning tree. With some of the other vendors, some of the other competitors, you require a spanning tree which cause a lot of looping issues in your data center or in your network. The other thing is, the HP 5400 switches comes with a lifetime warranty, so you don't have to invest anything onto a contract side, which is very good thing about it. The 5400 switches, you can use as a whole or access layer in your network and work out great.

The benefits are it's been running robust, the hardware is running robust, no issues at all. It's lifetime warranty again. From the hardware standpoint, configure standpoint, it's all working fine.

I don't know about specifics, but so far all the switches that we deployed, it meets all of our needs. For what we require, it has all of features. It also varies on the switch by switch version, and it depends on what kind of switches you have. For me, right now it's meeting all my needs, so I don't have any complaints about it.

We deployed HP for almost five years and it's been rock solid. All the switches, no single-out days with the switches. The switches hardware have a long life, and it has been working great for us.

Stability is pretty good, as I say that we deployed HP, it's been about four years and we haven't had a single out day in my data center. I can't ask anything more than that.

All the hardware that we have, our portfolio at HP, it's pretty scalable to the latest and greatest technology. You can have a 40 GIG QSFP Uplink for the top of Rex switches, or even one for your core switches, that's over 40 GIG, 100 GIG Uplink. That is what everybody is going towards now, with all the data centers. It's up to the mark.

To me, the technical support is not that good. Trust me, we don't use the technical support anymore from HP because we tried to use them and we didn't get much of a response from them. I know everybody's experience is different, but we try to do it by ourselves. We try to figure out by ourselves if any kind of software issue or any kind of hardware issue. The support, we didn't get much response from HP about the software support, configuration support, we just tried by ourselves, but hardware, it's pretty good.

With the old technology we were paying more money with the context. Obviously, we were having a lot of issues with the Data Center, where Data Center used to go down with the old legacy technology. We decided to move forward with RFP. We evaluated a few vendors in the market and after evaluation we decided to go with HP and it's been working out great for us.

When we started deploying, it was H3C and they have a different division, Comware, and HP are 5400 Series, they have a different set up command lines. Now, they are making everything together on the Comware division. When we deployed, it depends on the switches. If you buy Comware switches, they have a different command set compared to HP or H3C switches. It was kind of hard for us to learn the command line initially, but now we are all comfortable with it and it's working fine. Since they are all HP now, all the switches, they only have a one command line in the Comware 7, if you have that, it's pretty easy to deploy initially.

We tried Cisco, we tried Dell. Again, it's more robust and the most important factor was a price. I just look at the technology and see if it meets your needs for your data center and not in HP, looks like they did, they did meet our needs, what we needed for our data center, for our campus, branch offices and it's been working out great.

Hardware can last for a while. You have all of options to upgrade the switches, a lot of options to support the connectivities, like 1 GB, 10 GB, 40 GBs, different varieties of the switches. You can choose from.

I just want to say that best thing about HP is they don't have a technology called a Spanning Tree Protocol, which can cause a lot of issues on your network, and HP kind of get rid of that. When you do a HP IRF, you kind of don't need that Spanning Tree, which is the most important part about HP.

Other than that, again it's a hardware stability. Hardware stability, they have IRF for the switches to virtualize your switches. The easy set of command line, with the new Comware 7.

I liked the scalability of the 5400 and 4200. It's ability to have different modules installed for different media types allowed for easy configuration.

Ease of configuration.

I found that the OS on these switches was a little difficult to manage at times. Configuration menus were not always user friendly even for someone with previous Nortel and Cisco experience. One Saving grace was the Procurve manager software. That made things a little easier to manage but I am still a command line person and would have preferred a more user intuitive command line.

I used the switches, HP Procurve 5400ZL and 4200VL as well as the 3500yl, for a little over a year.

I did not deploy these switches. They were in place when I started working with them.

No.

No. That is one thing I liked about them.

Never had to call HP - NA

Never had to call HP - NA

I had previously used Nortel and CIsco in a previous position. I switched due to a job change.

The initial set up of the switches was relatively easy. It has a list of questions that you answered similar to Cisco. The problem with this type of setup is it does not cover everything that should be set up on a switch when doing initial configuration.

All implementation and configuration was accomplished with in-house network engineers and administrators.

Unknown.

Unknown.

Make sure you are familiar with other vendors first. That will help give you the base knowledge on how to navigate and configure this equipment. When all else fails, use the Procurve manager software to manage the equipment.