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 #2 in DOS , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 20.9% mindshare in the category. HPE Synergy is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 19.8% 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

2,251 Views
225 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,344 Views
2,408 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, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and others in Density Optimized Servers.

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

Buyer's Guide

Density Optimized Servers

June 2025

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Helped 864,053 peers since 2012

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 (6th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

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 20.9%, down 29.9% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 19.8% mindshare, down 21.3% since last year.

Density Optimized Servers

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Gayan Senadheera

Director at Tyax Pvt Ltd

Offers higher capacities compared to other solutions, making it suitable for handling large storage needs

In terms of improvement, we could benefit from some training. If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo. Currently, we haven't received any specific training related to HPE Apollo throughout my career. If HPE Apollo provides training, we can share the knowledge with our partners, which could lead to more opportunities for HPE Apollo in the market. Deal protection and other support measures would also be beneficial, as they could help us achieve better results in this market.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"It enables us to implement software defined solutions very easily, because Apollo servers are certified for use with Linux systems"

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

"With HPE Apollo, we can propose configurations with many hard drives, making it suitable for large storage needs."

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

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

"HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products."

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

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"The flexibility to link them together and configure them gives us the ability to scale out easily, to add more compute resources as needed... The way that they're scalable and flexible means we can add additional servers in quickly... We're not spending a lot of time doing procurement and building of physical servers."

"The most valuable features are the converged network adapters."

"The benefit is that it's going to be maintained, contrary to what we had last year, when the maintenance went off for the last generation of the servers that we had there."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the ease of management and the integration with OneView."

"It is a simple software to integrate with others."

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

"We have been able to give the deployment team what they request more quickly. We are able to quickly deploy what is being asked of us. If the development team needs a platform of 20 servers to run a particular platform, we can give that to them within a day or two."

"The solution's greatest strengths lie in its ability to maintain a high availability and combine networking with hyper channel connectivity into a single component."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"We could, perhaps, use more GPUs in the future, go from eight to 16 GPUs per instance. That could run head-to-head against the DGX-1, the DGX-2 that NVIDIA has developed in their own chassis. That would be interesting to see."

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

"Lustre seems to be just a little bit unstable overall."

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

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."

"We would like to see improved cooling because that is quite an issue. If you put that much compute power into a single rack, cooling really becomes an issue. And there is room for improvement there."

"If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

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

"Sometimes there are firmware or software difficulties when connecting between networks or with storage."

"You can always improve some things."

"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 only good thing is that they have some powerful machines that you can use, such as the latest generations of HPE Compute that you can use."

"It has affected the productivity of our development team in a bad way. When we first stood the hardware up 18 months ago, the image streaming capacity and capability were not very good at all. We had hoped that it would allow us to be more composable and be able to switch over from one version of an operating system to another version of an operating system. However, it wasn't ready for prime time yet. Therefore, we had to go back to a deployment of bare metal install. We are still waiting and trying to figure out how we can do the composable 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."

"It would be nice if the updates were not accompanied by downtime."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"We pay for licensing on the fibre channel uplinks, on the Virtual Connect, which is an add-on."

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

"The price point is a little high. We were able to get a good deal on a promotion, to go with it. It would be nice to see the prices come down a little bit."

"For me, the scalability is how much money that I need to spend on switches for how many frames, which ultimately means servers. To get the best bandwidth before the most recent product announcement, I have buy new switches every three frames. The competition is shipping a product right now where I only need switches every ten frames."

"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."

"When we made the purchase of the hardware, we added Professional Services to it."

"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."

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

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HPE Apollo?

HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products.

See all answers

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...

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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...

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What do you like most about HPE Synergy?

It is a good product for hypervisors.

See all answers

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

Pricing in the blade server market is very competitive, with HPE offering a competitive price. Competitor products include Dell's MX series and Cisco's UCS X series.

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 38% of the time

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 22% of the time

Dell PowerEdge FX vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 31% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 25% of the time

Dell PowerEdge M vs HPE Synergy

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

HPE Superdome X vs HPE Synergy

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

July 2025

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

July 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

June 2025

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