HPE Apollo Systems vs HPE Synergy comparison

The compared HPE Apollo Systems and HPE Synergy solutions aren't in the same category. HPE Apollo Systems is ranked #3 in DOS , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 19.3% mindshare in the category. HPE Synergy is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 19.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of HPE Apollo Systems users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of HPE Synergy users who would recommend it.

HPE Apollo Systems

Read 23 HPE Apollo Systems reviews

2,070 Views
207 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,239 Views
2,235 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

HPE Apollo Systems

HPE Synergy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between HPE Apollo Systems and HPE Synergy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Cisco, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and others in Density Optimized Servers.

To learn more, read our detailed Density Optimized Servers Report (Updated: September 2025).

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Density Optimized Servers

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

HPE Apollo Systems

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

4.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (8th), Density Optimized Servers (3rd)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Blade Servers (1st), Composable Infrastructure (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are IT Hardware and Infrastructure solutions, they serve different purposes. HPE Apollo Systems is designed for Density Optimized Servers and holds a mindshare of 19.3%, down 28.5% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 19.5% mindshare, down 21.0% since last year.

Density Optimized Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Apollo Systems	19.3%
Dell PowerEdge C	24.7%
Huawei FusionServer X Series	16.9%
Other	39.1%

Density Optimized Servers

Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Synergy	19.5%
HPE BladeSystem	14.0%
HPE Superdome X	9.8%
Other	56.7%

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Aruna Udawatte

Director -Digital Transformation at Convergence

An affordable and easy-to-implement solution, but its after-sales support and technical support should be improved

We use HPE Apollo for specific requirements of Linux servers HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products. HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved. The solution should provide fast delivery when it comes to replacing a…

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CarlosArdila

Project Manager, Information Technology at Telelago

Helps grow horizontally or vertically within one box or chassis

The initial setup is very easy. We deployed this in two days, including installation, system setup, firmware upgrades, configuration, and network connection. By the next day, we were already deploying virtual machines. We initially began with the Blade system. As the migration to SAP HANA approached, it seemed prudent to upgrade our hardware. Consequently, we facilitated their transition from the Blade system to Synergy. Subsequently, we collaborated closely with the SAP consultancy company to oversee the migration process, ensuring seamless integration of all workloads and sub-environments. We have four people working on the deployment, including a project manager, two specialists, and one tech support.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"We usually use three blades for two-rack units, and with enough storage, it's really a small system with a powerful CPU, powerful hard drives, powerful disks."

"Absolutely being able to mount into Omni-Path architecture, HFIs on those nodes, because we were the very first site in the world"

"The cost benefit of this solution is most valuable. It is quite effective for the work for which we are using it. We are mainly running video servers on these, and we are quite happy with the resilience, density storage, and streaming capacity of the system."

"We're going to buy another Apollo 6500. We may configure it with half the number of GPUs because that may be all we need. In a sense, we can see the Apollo 6500 being so powerful that we only need half the GPU capability that we have now."

"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."

"It's very reliable. I haven't had a single failure at all in the year and a half; not the slightest problem with it."

"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."

"It's going to meet our needs moving forward, it is scalable."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"It is a good product for hypervisors."

"The initial setup is fine."

"I believe, compared to the C7000, it delivers a significant amount of innovation and flexibility,"

"The solution is built very well. It's very robust and durable."

"Synergy is much easier to use, which is saving us time. We are able to set the profiles for firmware upgrades. This makes the process for the care and feeding of the IT environment much simpler, quicker, and cleaner."

"They're easy to swap and move around the datacenter, for sure. They don't occupy too much space for what they offer."

"The i3S module can be configured to provision storage to all blade servers and boot to any operating system without needing local hard drives."

"We have more control over the firmware and how we are managing our physical servers."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"We are quite happy with it, but its price and storage density can be better."

"One drawback which I had: When I needed to expand storage on the Apollo, I had significant problems getting disks for it. It was a very long wait-time. So, if I were to give any advice in regards to improving this product, I would say make more of the 8TB disks available quicker."

"The technical support for HPE Apollo Systems could be improved."

"We have tried to used standardization using Ubuntu Linux and it's been hard. They had some difficulties getting the RAID configuration up and running because there are no drivers for it. It's not supported by HPE."

"The solution's deployment, security, and scalability need improvement."

"There is a shared battery for all cache controllers in the node. When you have to replace that element, you have to take down all three nodes and not just one."

"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."

"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"I would like it to connect to the HPE Cloud Connect compute platform for simplicity of our infrastructure."

"The Synergy platform is HPE-specific and more for on-premises. You're kind of locked in with VMware and the HPE with the VMs. The Nutanix offering is a bit more flexible."

"When templates are created, there are some steps where you need to reboot the machines. Being in production, this is not a good idea. For example, if you reconfigure the network, you should not have to reboot the machine. You should just apply the new template and that's it."

"The initial setup was complex. From what I was told, there were issues initially with getting the SFPs on the floor for our data center and something with the image, but I think that was on our service provider' side. They couldn't get the image to deploy with the right drivers and stuff."

"After delivering the contract, they became a little less active. So, it needs some pushing from my side sometimes."

"I would like to see more nodes in a single chassis so we wouldn't have to purchase additional chassis."

"I would like more storage with this solution, because we still need 3PAR or other storage outside the box for the amount of data that we have."

"I would be more comfortable if Ansible actually rolled back the data used for automating platforms. If it could be communicated to the upstream Ansible, I wouldn't need to go back and forth and validate the libraries as we upgrade the Ansible version."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."

"The price of the solution is more expensive than Dell which is their main competitor. However, there are times we have managed to receive a comparable price."

"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."

"It is an expensive solution but it is worth the money. The standard licensing cost is for the GPU and the features that someone is using. There are additional charges but they depend on the solution."

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."

"In our whole environment, the cost is in the millions. On this particular chassis, the annual cost is 12 blades times approximately $40,000."

"We have already paid once. It is just the price for the permit and its use. It seems you don't have to keep paying for it, but I am not sure."

"The solution can be expensive because it requires both hardware and software purchases."

"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."

"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs by 50 percent."

"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."

"The platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."

"For temporal use, when you throw on the fact that you're essentially doubling your capacity, right there you could claim a 50 percent TCO reduction."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	12

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?

Additional features would be beneficial in the next release of HPE Apollo Systems.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?

We were working with HPE Apollo Systems for one of our projects for the company named VVDN. We were using HPE Apollo Systems, GPU systems and CPU systems. For GPU systems, the model was 6500, in wh...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?

Our company is a platinum partner with HPE, and we continue to deal with HPE. We sell many of their hardware products. Depending on the requirement or deal, we may sell HPE Converged System, hardwa...

See all answers

How would you choose between HPE's Bladesystem and Synergy?

For me, choosing between HPE’s Bladesystem and Synergy came down to which solution was more powerful, reliable, and stable. It turns out Bladesystem was the winner. Bladesystem is excellent because...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?

As far as the prices are concerned, rack mount solutions are less expensive than HPE Synergy prices; however, HPE Synergy prices are higher but justify themselves as the solution accommodates all t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Synergy?

In my opinion, for future improvements in HPE Synergy, there should be better management of power consumption complexity as well as an increase in the number of servers that can fit in a single Syn...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 39% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 24% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 28% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 25% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

September 2025

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

September 2025

Download HPE Synergy product report

Also Known As

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo

No data available

Overview

The HPE Apollo high-density server family is built for the highest levels of performance and efficiency. They are rack-scale compute, storage, networking, power and cooling – massively scale-up and scale-out – solutions for your big data analytics, object storage and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads. From water-cooling that’s 1,000X more efficient than air, to “right-sized scaling” with 2X the compute density for workgroup and private cloud workloads, the HPE Apollo line is a dense, high-performance, tiered approach for organisations of all sizes.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HPE Synergy, the first platform built from the ground up for Composable Infrastructure, offers an experience that empowers IT to create and deliver new value instantly and continuously. It is a single infrastructure that reduces operational complexity for traditional workloads and increases operational velocity for the new breed of applications and services. Through a single interface, HPE Synergy composes physical and virtual compute, storage, and fabric pools into any configuration for any application. As an extensible platform, it easily enables a broad range of applications and operational models such as virtualization, hybrid cloud, and DevOps. With HPE Synergy, IT can become not just the internal service provider but the business partner to rapidly launch new applications that become the business.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Weta Digital

HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United

Buyer's Guide

Density Optimized Servers

September 2025

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