HPE OneView Reviews

In the latest version, I like the way that everything's been consolidated and brought together. One single pane of glass for management.

It's easier for the customer to manage in terms of reporting and getting their information out. They don't have to switch to different screens like they do with solutions from other vendors. They don't have to overlay extra, additional software on top to get the information they need.

I'd like to see more integration across Hypervisor and 3PAR storage and other storage products.

It's very stable. It's fine. Never had an issue.

Scalability is fine. No problems. We've got a customer that runs it across three data centers, five 3PARs. So, it's all good.

Technical support is above average. Sometimes they're a little bit slow on the 3PAR stuff to get back to us as a partner when we're trying to decode updates and things like that. There are a lot of code updates going on around the world at the same time. That's why I'm not saying average. It's high above average.

We always sell OneView to our customers, but they use other management tools.
For us, choosing a vendor is about the scale of the solution, how stable it is and how easy it is for a customer to move from one solution to the other.

Setup is straightforward. We are Service One certified partners, so we can install.

We have tested HDS, CMC, and Nimble.

Use HPE to your advantage. Get the trial licenses, see how it works and then you'll be happy with it once you roll it out.

Valuable for us are ease of use, central management, and I think auto support.

Auto support, because we don't want to have to worry about managing failures like hard drives and power supplies. With this feature now it automatically updates HP and notifies our value-added reseller which is Pricon.

As a matter of fact, they know about the failure before I know about the failure, which is convenient.

I like the ability with OneView where I'm able to set up templates for profiles and to be able to apply that same profile configuration to multiple blades.

We run VMware so it's always nice to have all the BIOS settings the exact same and everything else the exact same. So with the template, it makes it easier to deploy that.

I can't think of any additional features now to be honest with you. Maybe granular permissions. Because, right now, I have off-shore support in India.

I want to give them the ability to be able to login to OneView and only do certain things. I want to give them the ability to get access to the console of the physical server right through to iLO.

In OneView, the permissions need to be done better because right now I can only select a server administrator, a storage administrator, and a network administrator as far as my options are concerned. When I pick a server administrator, the user in India has iLO access but he also has the ability to do damage to the servers.

He's able to get in and delete things and mess up things. I don't want that ability. If I make him a read-only user, then he doesn't have the access to do anything except just read what's in OneView. He can't access the iLO.

I would like the ability to not only do server administration but beneath that, say, I get them console access or iLO access, as those features are available in the iLO themselves already today but not in OneView.

Regarding stability, there have been no problems, there have been no crashes with it whatsoever.

Scalability works very well with the proxy we have. There are a couple of proxies we have that it doesn't work with, which we are trying to hopefully get resolved.

There are some HP products that are not sold very well by HP such as the SL210T's which are not supported by OneView. But all our Proliants and our blades are all supported so we're happy with that.

Technical support has been good. They've been responsive and they've been able to solve my issues in a timely manner. They're very helpful.

Most of our support goes right through Pricon for a lot of things but I contact HP support for a few things as well.

Actually our value-added reseller, Pricon, is the one who told us about OneView. Previously we were just using the C7 management console.

I guess the setup was a little bit complex. I had to go through a lot of Google documentation and Google Talking because there really wasn't too much out there regarding the steps to go through to do it. I noticed here a nice little wizard which walks you through steps 1 through 15, which is kind of nice.

HP came in with Pricon and showed us the OneView demonstration and we thought that was a really cool product. What really sold me on it was auto support. That was what I wanted, auto support.

We needed a technology partner that could help us move forward with our company. Help us with product decisions. I think HP and Pricon have been doing good on that.

It does make your life much easier. The single-plated glass, the templates and the auto support really takes a lot of that remedial stuff away from the administrators who need to be focusing on more important things and it allows it to automate a lot of features.

The most valuable feature is the single pane of glass. Also, it is easy to use.

It makes us more agile. It makes integration and things of that nature much easier.

Off the top of my head, I don't have any comment.

Stability is excellent.

One of the great parts about it is the scalability.

I have not used technical support.

It's a particular tool to help us in managing our environment. So, it was something that we needed to have. Just something you know when you manage your environment that you have to have a tool like that. It's very good.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

To be honest, the price point is pretty spot on.

I would definitely advise them to work with HPE. Their products speak for themselves. They do what they say they're going to do. And HPE, changing the way they have over the last couple years, it's been amazing. I've enjoyed it immensely.

Its ease of use, i.e., just being able to easily deploy a server is the most valuable feature. That's terrific.

It saves a loads of time. We had a number of enclosures that we brought in and it was like "bam" we're done.

Seeing how I know there isn't gonna be a next release, the gooey is kind of unstable a little bit. That's probably my biggest freight I really can't think of anything cause it's pretty straight forward.
Just a little bit more of ease of use in the setup. Now that I've done it twice, it's much easier but we had a consultant who was helping us. He was like, “Zoom we're going through this' Iand was like 'Wait a minute what happened here?” So, it was very, very quick.

On a scale of 1 to 10, it's about an eight. There are some stability problems. Every once in a while, we'll just have to restart because it's freaking out. For the majority part, really there are no problems.

The product scales quite a bit.

Our first experience with the technical support was with one of the other products that is associated with OneView, which is ICSP, and the support was pretty poor. The second one, after we got the right person, it was terrific; it was really wonderful.

We have a significant number of enclosures that we had to add, so we just knew that we needed to move up to a different class of data center, so as to be able to mange things in one location.

Somebody who is stable, someone who has the personnel to answer the questions and someone who has great technical support are the factors that we look for while selecting a vendor; HPE needs that to some extent. Like I have mentioned earlier, I'm not 100% satisfied with it, but overall, it's pretty good.

The setup was complex because we made it complex. We tried to install it when everything wasn't ready, i.e., our storage wasn't ready so we couldn't really set the storage piece. We tried to kind of fiddle with it and ended up destroying everything; thus we had to recreate it all.

Use it, absolutely use it, i.e., if you're using the HPE infrastructure as it makes your life so much easier.

Its ease of use and that it is a single-pane-of-glass are the most valuable features.

It enables faster deployment and it is easy to see the issues. Reporting is just much easier, it is just a better functionality.

There is need to make it a bit easier to federate across all of our OneVew implementations that we have, so just make it easier.

The lack of dashboard and reporting functionalities is not clear. They should carry more solutions to try and get the reporting that I need out of all of my different storage devices, i.e., VBAs and Blue Cars; they've got to do a better job and unify it for us. Currently, it's not there and it is very difficult to report.

Stability is a hit and miss.

We're not fully there yet, i.e., in the sense to fully leverage the scalability. However, we do know that it's available to us. Let's just say, it is an early adoption for us.

Responsiveness is the most important factor while selecting a vendor.

The setup was actually straightforward.

We evaluated HPE, just because they're prevalent in our environment. From the hardware perspective, we looked at SHI, on the networking side we evaluated Cisco and on the virtualization side, we evaluated Veeam, Microsoft, and Red Hat.

The reason why we decided to choose HPE is because, from a server-hardware vendor, their R&D budget is the largest and they invest the most than any other vendor, that's out there right now. So, that was the primary reason. They appear to be more cutting-edge than anybody else in terms of both the hardware and the software right now.

To make it easier, HPE is a good solution. If you have the time to engineer and customize a solution, then you will be fine with it or with any other vendor or even with a white box, for that matter. Typically in terms of flexibility and speed, HPE is a good solution.

One-pane-of-glass, i.e., being able to manage all our facets of hardware through one-pane-of-glass, is the most valuable feature.

It has improved the working of our organization by providing more consistency within our firmware, drivers, firmware baseline and server profiling; thus it provides more consistency.

There should be an easier management of the driver and firmware baseline.

The stability of the solution is unfavorable. We have had some struggles with OneView. We have seen a lot of errors and a lot of open cases. We are progressively seeing text that says “Upgrade! Upgrade! Upgrade!”. That is not what I want to hear when I have a production issue. I can't just take down a production server to upgrade. They need to fix the problem rather than constantly chasing our tails to upgrade.

We're growing into multiple data centers, so having multiple OneView instances, is something that we're just deploying now. I'm not completely familiar with it yet, so we'll see.

The support has been a struggle at times. On the server side, it has been a little bit better than on the storage side; the storage side has been a real struggle. Some of the biggest issues that we ran into were that we have a pretty strong regional team. But, when our regional team coordinates with the global support team, on the HPE 3PAR side, there's a big disconnect and then as the customer, we get hit on it.

Previously, we were using a different hardware vendor. The inconsistency of the drivers and firmware was one of the strongest reasons as to why we switched to HPE.

The setup was fairly straightforward. The UI was easy to use, which was good.

We looked at other solutions namely IBM, Dell, and Cisco. It was a business relationship for choosing HPE, as well as their price-point, was strong. At the time, the Gartner reports indicated HPE was the leading vendor from a server/hardware perspective, so that is why we selected this solution.

Leverage your technical account managers (TAMs) and your technical advisors when deploying the hardware.

The most valuable feature is having a one-pane-of-glass so that we can see the HPE environment, i.e., the blades and DL380s.

Instead of having to go directly to the aisle of cards and to look at the blades to see what's going on, we're able to just go to OneView, have that one-pane-of-glass and get an idea of what's going on with the server.

There is a need for more integration. For example, I haven't really looked into integration with the Microsoft System Center, or things along those lines, so that we could move to even a more single-pane-of-glass.

Stability has been really great, we don't have any issues with stability at all.

Since we're a small shop, I've never had any scalability issues; we don't have that many issues. We don't have that much hardware, so I can't really say, one way or the other.

I forgot the other product's name, we were using the previous version of one of the HPE tools. Once they were switching over to OneView, we decided to switch over to OneView, so that we'd get that one-pane-of-glass.

Reliability and support are the main two things that we look at while selecting a vendor.

Go ahead and do it. It gives you that one-pane-of-glass and makes life a lot easier than trying to go into each server and seeing what's going on.

The ability to administer multiple servers simultaneously, upgrade firmware, and add the client support pack.

The main benefits are a single pane of glass, usability between the servers, storage, and network.

I would love the ability to either import a range of IPs for the ILO, or be able to do a scan. If they could improve the IP range, that would be great.

Stability seems fine. I haven't had any down time.

Scalability seems to be pretty good. It's a little small for what we have right now for a number of servers, but I think it will grow.

I haven't needed technical support.

We did not use a different solution. I try to stick with a vendor with the hardware. When looking for a vendor, specifically for this product, it has to do with our activity and our hardware so we are able integrate our APIs with the system.

I was involved in the initial setup and it was very straightforward.

I would recommend doing a beta test.

Profile templates: The ability to generate the profiles and lay them down so the servers are built consistently. I would say that's probably the biggest piece of it.

To be able to rapidly roll-out a lot of servers consistently and quickly, without having to go in and tweak each thing individually. After we get the template built, we can just apply it and push it down

It's a nice product. It's a little slow sometimes. Overall, I think it does what it's supposed to do. I think that as they evolve it, it'll get quicker.

Stability's been fairly good on OneView, the appliance. In terms of Synergy Composer, which is a OneView central derivative, it is a little slow being on that bare, metal hardware. It would be nice to have one product, OneView, that could manage both Synergy and legacy devices without having two separate products. I understand that's what the dashboard is all about, but it still would be nice to have less components.

We bought Synergy because we were doing a Greenfield and we knew that the writing was on the wall as far as what the future was going to be in terms of Synergy versus C-1000. The choice was to not invest in the older technology, but rather to invest in the newer technology to future-proof ourselves. 

That dictated that we needed a solution. As to why did we chose one or the other, that was basically future proofing. 

It is a little scary to be the "data customer". We're one of the first 50 customers right now to purchase it. Composer is one unit in Synergy, but it's a physical appliance. We also have to other appliances to manage all the old legacy stuff: C-7000, 580s, 380s, anything else you'd want. So we have both of those. It wasn't a choice of one or the other. You have to have this for this and you have to have that for that. 

That single band of class that is kind of the manager of the managers. It really saves a lot of time. One of the main reasons we didn't use OneView sooner with our older environment was one of the initial caveats. Once you brought a box, or you brought a C-7000 chassis into the OneView management purview, it basically took over and did a whole bunch of stuff. You have to plan it out because it took over and you would have to reconfigure things.

Instead of just taking it in, and leaving things in a view-only mode, so I still can see it. Maybe at least I could view it in a single pane glass so I could see where things are at. That was kind of why that supposedly had been fixed. You can now bring things in without outages, but I don't trust it. I will delay the evacuation of a chassis to the time when we bring that in.

The counterpart who I work with did the majority of the actual hands-on setup. He worked with HPE to get them committed. 

On the Synergy side, for Composer, (OneView composer), he also did the deployment for the virtual appliance that we rolled out, our C-7000. For some of the view, we only brought some of our rack mount servers into view-only mode. I use it, but I didn't implement it.

I think the implementation was pretty straightforward from what I could gather. It didn't look too complicated, at least on the appliance side. I've been told that you can create profiles for hardware that you don't have. 

My biggest gripe is that a profile is tethered to a particular hardware type. I would like to be able to take a profile, of more generic nature, and apply it to different types of blades without having to build another profile for that blade type. I would like some inter-operability there, without having to have multiple templates. Other than that, it's been fairly stable. 

I think there are some configuration things you can do in Virtual Connect that can harm you from an availability standpoint. OneView still allows you to do that, which I don't think it should. Those are just my thoughts, as far as a criss-cross between virtual connects, where you can actually create an outage for yourself for updates. But other than that, it has met our needs. I think the biggest things for me are the profiles that I can flip between different hardware types.

As the guy that does the work and not the guy that handles the money, I am interested in whatever makes my job easier. Simple is always better. If it's a simple, straightforward solution, that is always the best solution for me as an engineer. 

For the people that handle the purse strings, I guess money is a greater concern. As far as the technology goes, anything that makes my life easier and I don't get calls in the middle of the night, that's what matters to me. That should matter to the business as well. Obviously, if I'm not getting calls, then things are up. If it's simple, it's better for everybody, in terms of the roll-out times, troubleshooting, and fewer pieces to break.

I would say the only competitor is probably Cisco solution. Their competitive or comparable product, in the OneView space, is kind of the manager of managers, is UCS Central. It has been out for some time. I feel, in some ways, OneView's doing a little catch-up to them. That's just my opinion, as I've used that in the past. 

My company is a very HPE heavy company. They have been way before I came to work here. I think in many respects, you kind of go with what you know and what you are comfortable with. That's what they've always been used to, so they have a good relationship and they've continued on that path.

I think it's good to know that if they already use HPE products, it may not be time to start analyzing whether or not to use competitive products. I think competitively, there are probably some advantages to one of the other possibilities. However, I don't think it is necessarily a good idea to throw out what you have now in order to switch.

It provides easy administration.

It minimizes our administration for the market.

I would like to see, probably a little bit tighter Type B integration.

The product is really stable.

It is very scalable.

The technical support team is very responsive.

Actually, it was just that, at that time, we decided to invest in this solution. We were still using the HPE ConvergedSystem.

The setup was very complex, but it wasn't always complex. We had some issues at the micro-level, but they resolved all of that.

We were still using the HPE equipment before the ConvergedSystem.

The stability and support are important factors while selecting a vendor.

I would actually look at the support model for HPE in the newer versions.