This is a public service announcement for all potentially effected HPE customers, service providers and business partners.

HPE sent an Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) critical update notification in early September that we have been notified is causing degraded iLOs in certain customer environments.

Rising global economic activity, the exponential growth in data, coupled with increasing server density, has created an industry wide shortage in memory and SSDs.  For months, memory manufacturers have lagged behind on market demand, resulting in increasing lead times and price hikes across all OEMs. Throughout 2017, many leading manufacturers including Cisco, Dell, HPE, and Lenovo have announced price increases multiple times.  Across the board, manufacturer’s suggested retail prices (MSRP) for memory have nearly doubled. Moving into 2018, industry analysts expect further memory price increases as projections for demand doesn’t show any signs of slowing down.

Vista IT Group is now offering VMware vSAN at no charge on select Dell PowerEdge, HPE ProLiant, Lenovo ThinkServer, and Lenovo System x systems. In addition to free vSAN licenses with SnS, customers will also receive 30% off MSRP on qualified PowerEdge R730, R630, ProLiant DL360, DL380, ThinkServer R450, R350, and System x 3550 M5, x3650 M5 server configurations.

Vista IT Group is now offering VMware vSphere at no charge on select Dell PowerEdge, HPE ProLiant, Lenovo ThinkServer, and Lenovo System X systems. In addition to free vSphere licenses and SnS support, customers will also receive 30% off MSRP on qualified PowerEdge R730, R630, ProLiant DL380 G9, DL360 G9, BL460 G9, ThinkServer R450, R350, and System x 3550 M5, x3650 M5 server configurations.

Grand Rapids, MI (July 25, 2017) - Vista IT Group, a thirty-year-old national systems integrator, announced it will begin offering free vSphere and vSAN licenses when purchased with select Dell PowerEdge, HPE ProLiant, and Lenovo ThinkServer and System x models.

Piggy backing off the momentum from VMware's own 50% off promotion on upgrades from Enterprise to Enterprise Plus, Vista worked with its strategic partners to put this exclusive promotion together. In addition to no-charge vSphere or vSAN licenses and support, customers will also receive 30% off MSRP on qualified PowerEdge R730, R630, ProLiant DL380 G9, DL360 G9, BL460 G9, ThinkServer R450, R350, and System x3550 M5, x3650 M5 server configurations.

As a result of VMware's recent licensing changes, the Enterprise edition of vSphere has reached end of life as of June 30th, 2017. Piggy backing off VMware’s promotion, Vista IT Group is offering a 50% discount when you upgrade from vSphere Enterprise to vSphere Enterprise Plus (with or without Operations Management).  This offer is also available when upgrading from vSphere with Operations Management Standard to vSphere with Operations Management Enterprise Plus.

In a global survey of data center reliability conducted by Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC), results showed that Lenovo, Cisco and IBM came out at the top of the pack in reliably and server downtime. This survey concluded that Lenovo tech support and the x86 ratings are among the best in the industry followed by Cisco and IBM. Whereas, HPE ProLiant servers and Oracles SPARC and x86 hardware and Solaris reliability continued to decline for the fifth year in a row.

On April 16th, 2017 Cisco announced an end-of-life milestone for the Catalyst 4500-E series. The last date to renew support for existing SMARTnet contracts on the 4507R-E and 4510R-E chassis is July 15th, 2017.  These chassis will fully go obsolete on April 30, 2018.