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HPE Apollo Systems vs HPE Synergy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (6th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)
HPE Synergy
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
90
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 22.6%, down 30.4% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 21.8% mindshare, up 21.8% since last year.
Density Optimized Servers
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Gayan Senadheera - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's pretty flexible. You can choose how much storage you put on the server. You can have one to three nodes, depending on whether you want more CPU or storage."
"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."
"HPE Apollo's most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."
"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."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."
"Absolutely being able to mount into Omni-Path architecture, HFIs on those nodes, because we were the very first site in the world"
"HPE Apollo's support is the most valuable feature."
"The solution helps us to implement new business requirements quickly with some app deployments."
"The scalability is very good. The ability to link chassis or frames together makes it simplistic, especially with the use of OneView."
"Everything is combined in one chassis, you have storage, compute, networking. So you save a lot of space in the datacenter."
"I love the satellite architecture for the Virtual Connect. I think this is great. I love the storage drawer, which you can present volumes to any compute node within the same frame."
"Everything is in one place. We have one place to with OneView. It provides one console with one place to get to everything. The one interface makes it easier. We have one guy who does almost everything in it."
"The single pane of glass management is huge, because in all our previous systems, depending on what we were managing, we would go to a different management point. Being able to go to one spot to get everything is helpful. I find that server profile creation is a lot easier in OneView than it was previously. We are able to stay compliant with firmware and updates, because we are assigning server profiles and reapplying them when there are changes. This makes everything a lot simpler."
"It is a simple software to integrate with others."
"In the data center, you see customers with a lot of blade enclosures and a lot of servers, and this solution works fine."
 

Cons

"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."
"Lustre seems to be just a little bit unstable overall."
"The support from HPE Apollo could be better, they are making knowledgeable."
"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."
"If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."
"Technical support for this solution has a very good initial response; however, escalation takes time, and most of the time the first level of support cannot solve your case."
"I would like the ability to have my storage components accessed from any other frame across the backplane. If we have a storage module and we run out of space in that frame, it'd be nice to be able to share it across the frames. You can do it with hyperconverged. Why can't you do it with Synergy?"
"It has been in the external integrations to other platforms that we have, which aren't HPE, where some of our challenges have been. I would like to see some integrations with non-HPE platforms."
"They have not improved their product since it was purchased."
"Synergy could probably do some code enhancements to simplify the deployment a bit more."
"I think we were promised a little more than we were given. It's true, they are working very hard to try to help remedy that."
"I would like it to connect to the HPE Cloud Connect compute platform for simplicity of our infrastructure."
"I'd get the firmware to be a little more secure and a little more streamlined."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"There was at least about a 20 percent savings in cost over our purchase based on the purchase price of the compute modules themselves versus what we've had to pay before. It was significantly less."
"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."
"We do a biannual renewal. I know how much that renewal is, but I don't know how much it breaks down to be just Synergy, since we have our VMware, all of our physical equipment, etc. all rolled up into one renewal, which is a little over $300,000 every two years. However, only a subset of that is the Synergy product."
"We pay about £500 for the solution."
"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."
"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."
"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 do CAPEX."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

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.
What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?
HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved. The solution should provide fast delivery when it comes to replacing a particular product that is under warranty.
What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?
We use HPE Apollo for specific requirements of Linux servers.
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...
What do you like most about HPE Synergy?
It is a good product for hypervisors.
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.
 

Also Known As

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Weta Digital
HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United
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