Why does HPE have huge marketshare but nobody on here uses them? Or maybe only a few do?

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AI4me

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Dec 7, 2016
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What's up with that? I've been a longtime lurker but HPE is #1/ #2 in market share for dollars and units but there aren't many people here who use them. What gives? We've got rows of HPE gear at work.
 

PigLover

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Jan 26, 2011
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Remember that a large part of the user community focus on recycling near-current used equipment.

There was quite a lot of HP use/discussion here in the past, but many/most of the people who frequent this site abandoned HPE when they put their firmware updates behind a paywall - you can only access them with an active support agreement. Without access to firmware updates used equipment is largely useless. Same reason people avoid Cisco/UCS and why they lean towards using Supermicro and Dell.

Even if the firmware updates aren't technically required to use the equipment - HPEs decision to put up the paywall just generally offended the community. And putting a license key on their iLO KVM capability makes using it a PITA.
 
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AI4me

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Dec 7, 2016
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Remember that a large part of the user community focus on recycling near-current used equipment.

There was quite a lot of HP use/discussion here in the past, but many/most of the people who frequent this site abandoned HPE when they put their firmware updates behind a paywall - you can only access them with an active support agreement. Without access to firmware updates used equipment is largely useless. Same reason people avoid Cisco/UCS and why they lean towards using Supermicro and Dell.
Thank you. That explanation makes sense.
 

RyC

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Oct 17, 2013
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HPE servers generally aren't as flexible either. It may be improved now, but with their "sea of sensors" approach, you have to get HP specific PCIe cards. Otherwise, the fans would spin to maximum speed (which isn't good for a home environment).
 

Patriot

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Apr 18, 2011
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Any firmware that adds a feature is behind the paywall, which requires the server to be under warranty or have a support package.
This mainly hurts the little guys as support packages are negotiated for large orders.

If you go back to say a DL380G7 you will see the main rom behind a paywall but storage isn't. If there are any security patches or other bugfixes in a patch that firmware will not be behind the paywall.

I enjoy working with their hardware over white boxes but they are simply too shiny for homelabs generally. My DL160 gen9 I snatched for $360 on black friday would be the pricing exception.
 
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manxam

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Jul 25, 2015
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@RyC, exactly.. I've got this little P4500 (DL380 G7 with different ilo) that is the perfect size (14 3.5" bays in a 2U) that turns into a raging hurricane with an Intel X540 card or PERC H310 in it... I decommed it because of this. The dell R510 is nearly silent next to it.
 

mstone

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Mar 11, 2015
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You buy something like hpe for the support. If you don't need or intend to pay for the support it's kinda silly.
 

John Titor

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Jul 20, 2016
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@Patriot after seeing your experience with ES processors and pictures of your Apollo node(s) on the "pron" thread, I wanted to ask. Do you work for HPE currently? That equipment and the carpet floor looks oddly familiar ;)

Also, I agree that the "paywall" the HPE put up has been a massive blow to their popularity outside of large enterprise environments. A lot of their strategy from the past 4-5 years has really diminished their credibility and increased red-tape when it comes to working with them. I personally think their hardware itself is a joy to work with and looks beautiful, but I've been debating recently if I should jump ship for all of the reasons y'all stated on the thread. No clue what direction to go if I do that though :(

Also, if anyone needs some Gen8 / Gen9 firmware or iLO, I may have a spare lying around.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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From my POV it's been a massive PITA even inside a large enterprise environment as well. Want to download the latest firmware bundle? Log in please. Oh whoops, you don't have any valid hardware tied to your account. Well no you did have some, but one of your cow-orkers used the same agreement ID when they were setting up their account, so it was removed from yours. What do you mean the agreement sharing thing doesn't work properly? No, before you can download this you need to speak to the guys that handle your service agreement. No, account manager's too busy. Well of course we can't just send you this critical fix that's impacting your production environment, how are we supposed to know if you're eligible?! Can't have just any Tom, Dick or Harry waltzing off into the sunset with a non-crashing server now, can we, donchaknow?!

Their hardware is OK, but far from the supremeness they seem to associate with it I think. We were initially heavily invested in them by dint of Flex10 being a good way of saving on the cost of 10Gb ports in a shared enclosure but that ceased to be a cost limitations for us years ago; their QA - especially on their new products - (looking at you OneView!) is shonky as hell and their support has gone massively downhill in the last decade - we used to be supported by a really quite good bunch of guys in Bulgaria, but these have been replaced by "John" from $SOMEWHERE_ON_THE_INDIAN_SUBCONTINENT whose support script is apparently an infinite loop of "are you running the latest firmware|can you send us the logs".

There's a big contingent of us at work looking to dump HP and switch to whiteboxes where possible (and for our storage and virtualisation needs where hardware resiliency and redundancy is an increasingly secondary concern, HP kit is over-engineered anyway). The people not on the coal face are against it for now... but only because of inertia.

In a nutshell... personally I think HPE is increasingly a bad idea for businesses and an utter catastrafsck for home (even if you could put up with the noise). I'm avoiding HP switches and (sadly) the Elitebooks for the time being by way of association until they can pull their head our of their arse. I don't hold out a great deal of hope.
 

John Titor

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Jul 20, 2016
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@EffrafaxOfWug I have to say, that was quite the read. Hats off to you. You've actually described what I heard from customers/partners (and internal people) for the past 4 years or so.

Truth is... please don't hold this against me, though I understand if you do... I worked there the past 5 years of my life (I actually stopped working there as of a few months ago).

I can't tell you how ridiculous it was being one of only 3 people in "quality assurance" for iLO, Licenses, and "support packs". Especially when you're the only one who cares about reporting issues. I can't tell you how irritating it was being a head hardware tester for validating every DL, SL, ML, and BL series in Gen7 through Gen9, when everytime it should work fine... you get errors because the "official" or "released" firmware turns out to be outdated by a day and suddenly isn't working properly. And of course, the worst of my roles, when I was in marketing. I had to fly around the globe convincing partners/customers and even internal-folk how good OneView was. Or how good every other damn random software app was, all the while I know how, dare I say, "terrible" they can be to work with because I spent 3 weeks prior to the flight just trying to find an ad-hoc fix last minute so I have something to show the aforementioned people about at a show or convention. Oh, did I mention how I had to train all of the people in different countries (mostly one that starts with the letter "I") that several of my previous jobs were outsourced to? I guess I could have trained them better... or they (HP) could've been payed them more... or y'know, the company could've treated either (or both) of us with more respect.

That being said, I do have a few systems and programs that I REALLY LIKE from HP (in particular the DL380 and DL360 | iLO4 and Intelligent Management Center (IMC)).

I know this has been a big comment mostly venting my own frustration (which is why I was so attracted to this thread), but I really do sympathize with the customers. No one will say it, but the fact of the matter is that EVEN PEOPLE ON THE INSIDE have the exact same ridiculous issues that you do. Isn't that crazy?

EDIT --> Oh yeah, IMC will no longer be owned by HPE due to a "spin-merge" since they sold their software division.
 

cheezehead

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Sep 23, 2012
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At work, we are an HP shop through and through. Proliant DL380's, 3Par storage, Procurve (including some comware) networking, hp laptops, and hp desktops.

Prior to split and even a little after HP/HPE had an issue over the last 5-10 years of shiny new toy syndrome. Didn't like EVA...that's ok, we bought 3Par. Couldn't get Procurve to scale....that's ok, we bought H3C. Don't like PCM...that's ok we have IMC now. IMC's over complicated....that's, ok we bought Aruba and have Airwave. Don't like the Comware-based code and licensing....just wait, we bought Aruba and have their gear, they'll be great. (there are other's as well TippingPoint, Aruba AP's,ect)

The problem with the buyouts isn't that in and of itself, they were buying winners for the most part. The problem was after it. 3Par was great when it was 3Par....after the buyout code releases seem more buggy, hardware/platform refresh speeds have increased, and more features/newer code is only for the latest gen vs the last 3 gens before. H3C buyout really gained Asia market share but the products were really Cisco knockoffs, the support and warranty around the A-based switches makes me want to rip them out. Aruba is too early to tell, we are hoping they don't screw it up.

I can remember dealing 18-months on a distributed trunking issue with the Provision gear (CAM table corruption) that never could get fixed. The solution was to RMA the gear and get Comware gear...or just fix the code. Years later I find out it was an Asic bug with the Gen4 Asics as basically isn't an issue with the Gen5 or Gen6 Asics.

The latest issue we've been seeing is one on the purchasing side....send a quote request to the local VAR, they send it on to HPE, weeks later...we still don't have a quote.


As for at home, I use Asus/Lenovo for laptops, desktops are whitebox, and all the homelab gear is Supermicro....this is "ServeTheHome" afterall ;). Switching is Provision-based Procurves.
 

Terry Kennedy

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Jun 25, 2015
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From my POV it's been a massive PITA even inside a large enterprise environment as well. Want to download the latest firmware bundle? Log in please. Oh whoops, you don't have any valid hardware tied to your account. Well no you did have some, but one of your cow-orkers used the same agreement ID when they were setting up their account, so it was removed from yours. What do you mean the agreement sharing thing doesn't work properly? No, before you can download this you need to speak to the guys that handle your service agreement. No, account manager's too busy. Well of course we can't just send you this critical fix that's impacting your production environment, how are we supposed to know if you're eligible?! Can't have just any Tom, Dick or Harry waltzing off into the sunset with a non-crashing server now, can we, donchaknow?!
This is pretty much universally true with the big non-whitebox vendors now. Dell seems to be the last holdout (and we'll have to see what happens with the EMC merger). They did change things to make finding downloads harder - you used to be able to FTP to their site and browse sensibly-named directories. Now everything is in apparently randomly-generated names, so the only way to find anything is via the product support page. And if you're doing anything unusual like using a newer SSD in an older system, it's a bit of a scavenger hunt to find some place to download the SSD firmware from.

Not HP, not Dell, but maybe you can guess the company: They switched to "entitlement" back during the tech downturn, long before they were ready and knew "who had what". So I normally get a "sorry, you're not allowed to download that" error. When I complained to my 3rd-party reseller, they "fixed" it by giving me contract admin access (not file download access, contract admin access) to all of their customers, including a major elevator company, oil company, etc. I complained again, and the newest "fix" is even more bizarre - the vendor discontinued their online error analysis tool and made it a downloadable app. Don't have Windows or a Mac - tough luck - no support for you! When I clicked on the vendor-provided link, I got a confirmation message - "Do you want to delete <file> from support.xxxxx.com?" I think the only way to get any attention paid to this is to do something nasty, but that's not really my style.