HPE Apollo Systems vs Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers comparison

HPE Apollo Systems vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers

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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

Ranking in Rack Servers

6th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

4.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Ser...

Ranking in Rack Servers

3rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of HPE Apollo Systems is 3.8%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers is 15.7%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Rack 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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Adalberto Giaretta

Technology director at Infodive Representações e Serviços ltda

Reliable with an easy setup and good support

These are rack servers. We use them for applications. It stores everything including VM servers, application servers, Windows, et cetera The reliability is great. The solution is like any other commodity like Dell or HPE. These are all very similar. Setting up the solution is easy. It is stable.…

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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

"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."

"we can use the same platform for several use cases: Hadoop, Ceph, and we are considering the server for another use case right now. It's a single solution, we only have to integrate it once and we can use it for several technologies."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"HPE Apollo's most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"The IMM tool is great because we can upgrade different views and device versions very quickly. We can upgrade everything from a single point through a single dashboard, which is great for us because we also have Lenovo storage. Lenovo ThinkSystem also has Xclarity built into the system."

"It is a scalable product."

"The product scales well."

"The hardware is good."

"The most valuable aspect of Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers is the brand name and the service relationship we have with Lenovo."

"The hardware performance is very valuable."

"The initial setup of Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers is straightforward. The process of implementation took me approximately two to three days. We only had to install the hardware for the installation."

"The solution is very simple to install."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers pros

Cons

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

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

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

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

"I would want to see the flexibility of being able to run various network protocols including InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, as well as iSCSI, with iSCSI going up to 100 gigabytes per second -that would be outstanding."

"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."

"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."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"Performance and scalability-wise, there are certain areas where the product lacks and needs improvement as it does not provide a lot of fancy features presently."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers could improve the availability of their solution. The supply chain is severely broken, we've had to wait many months for component parts to a system time after time. The availability of discs and raid controllers has been difficult lately."

"Upgrading firmware is easier in Dell than in Lenovo."

"There are other solutions that are less expensive."

"Improvements could be made in the network cards, particularly by offering options for higher-speed cards beyond the current 10 GB."

"Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers availability could improve. We have been waiting two months for one server."

"The power consumption needs to be optimized in Lenovo."

"The solution's initial setup was complicated."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers cons

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."

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

"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."

"As the costs got high, we had to use the virtualization feature to consolidate the server farm."

"It is expensive compared to other vendors."

"The price of Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers is competitive."

"It is the cheapest solution we have seen on the market."

"The price of the solution is very expensive when compared to other solution like HP or Dell."

"It is too expensive. Because we are a university and we have to look for our money, many times we buy some refurbished machines or equipment at reasonable prices from IBM or Lenovo. We are a little bit limited in terms of money, and we buy as much as we can. If they were cheaper, we would buy more."

"I don't know the exact amount of money, but when I compared it to Dell or HPE, Lenovo was the best when it comes to price and equipment."

"The licensing cost is the same as HP. It doesn't have any additional cost. However, the price, for example, for the memory option, does not match other vendors such as HP or Dell. They should work on the pricing of Lenovo. It is a great competitor, and it should compete with the price."

More Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers 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

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

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?

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

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...

How do Lenovo ThinkSystem rack servers compare with HPE ProLiant DL servers?

Lenovo ThinkSystem rack servers offer flexibility and efficiency in order to meet mission-critical demands. I like that Lenovo blends outstanding performance, reliability, and manageability. The bi...

When shopping for a rack server, would you go with Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem rack servers were the better fit for us. We ultimately decided to go with Dell EMC Poweredge....

What do you like most about Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers?

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is the easiest product to set up and maintain.

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Comparisons

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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

HPE Synergy vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

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Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers

Compared 53% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers

Compared 36% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

Dell PowerEdge FX vs Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers

Compared 2% of the time

More Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers Competitors

Product Reports

HPE Apollo Systems

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers

Download Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers product report

Also Known As

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo

SR Series, Lenovo SR Series, ThinkSystem Rack Servers, IBM Rack Servers, ThinkSystem SR Series, Lenovo Rack Servers,

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

From growing small businesses to enterprise workloads, Lenovo rack servers offer the unmatched value, flexibility and industry-leading efficiency to meet mission-critical demands with legendary quality and reliability.

Lenovo

Sample Customers

Weta Digital

immixGroup, Komsomolskaya Pravda, SRG Global, Seekr, Infiniti Red Bull Racing, jKool, Tennis Australia, VEKA, Netpoints, Gamma Powersports

HPE Apollo Systems vs. Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers