HPE Procurve gear still worth it for a home lab?

I have a home lab and work lab and use HP Procurves (2810 and 2530 mainly).

Since HP's policies of paid firmware updates, splitting HPE and HP and their apparent decline in support service what vendor are most of you here using for your home labs?

 

Since the enforcement of support contracts for feature upgrades on HPE servers there has been a lot of misinformation.
Before you freak out, just go look and see if the product you want is behind the paywall, and remember that any hotfixes or security bug patches are free. It is a good habit in general to make sure you can update the firmware of any device before you buy. I linked the download pages for the two switches you were considering. Neither require contracts of any sort.

HPE 2810

Aruba 2530


Support packs are released several times a year as a synced firmware recipe... They are splitting the support packs into legacy and current soon with g6 being dropped from the next mainline pack. (they are growing too big to have firmware for every server made, bios, controllers, ilo, nics drives, every device supported)

To gain access to those packs you have to have "entitlement" or a current server under warranty or a support subscription. Otherwise you go to the page of the server you own and download the hotfixes for it and drivers etc. You just won't have feature upgrades if you are out of warranty. You will still have full drivers access and many non bios firmwares.

If you just have to have SPP I am sure you can find one, or you can upgrade your freenas box to a ML10v2 gen8 for $170 when they go on sale and have access.

Yes it is annoying, cisco started this horrible trend, and technically dell requires the same, they just don't enforce it yet. That said, there is definitely no lack of support. HP inc simply handles laptops, workstations and printers. HPE handles the rest.

 

Thanks @Patriot for clarifying. I really like HP's switches which are rock solid and easy to configure via CLI.

That said looking at value add stuff like monitoring; like Unifi Controller which is free vs HP IMC (which best I can tell costs a lot) I think HP are missing a trick on where things are headed.

Are Ubiquiti switches for example a good choice for the homelab, are HP still a favorite?

 

@leonroy, many of us arnd here use an array of enterprise grade switch devices ranging from Cisco, HP Procurve, Juniper, Arista, Quanta, etc. (go down the line). I think what is important to focus on is feature set/capabilities you need/require/highly desire (drawing the line between needs/wants) and ease of mgmt/configuration.

HP Procurve does a nice job for sure on the mgmt/config IMHO, never used a product that was as easy as them, case in point and I've said this a time or two arnd here, on Cisco/Juniper/etc. seems like to config things like a vlan and tag a port each may be 2-3 cmds, on Procurve it's drop dead simple single cmd. So that is nice. Also depends on your chops and experience as well w/ networking and config constructs/hierarchy be it ios, junos, procurve, nexus cli etc.

2cents.

 

Unifi makes good gear, I have a mixture of unifi and procurve at home.

 

I am now officially on pfsense (dell optiplex 990), hp 1810g-24 port switch, and a ubiquiti ap (802.11n) and The switch is dead easy and no fan means quiet. Getting Pfsense started is easy, getting it sorted is a bear. ubiquiti doesn't have WPS for the home devices but otherwise is excellent and the broadcast/reception are miles above the cable modem all-in-one I was using. Haven't gone down the 802.11ac and/or mu-mimo path yet but I don't have a lot of need.

I have a couple of 10gb nics on order for between the nas/workstation and will probably add a 10gbe switch at some point but not soon.

 

For homelab switches, I'd just find whatever is cheap that meets your technical requirements (vlans, poe(or poe+), lacp/portchanneling, 10gb, ect). The only exception being if your homelab is more of a net lab...then generally get whatever you use for work, support-walls are generally a non-issue then as well.

I've found the "paywall" to be more prevalent on the A-series (comware-based) switches and then on servers. FWIW's all procurve switches can be managed by hand. Personally if your looking at IMC, look at Airwave instead...but both are overkill for pretty much any homelab unless your looking at prep for some HPE certs.