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 17.4% mindshare in the category. HPE Synergy is ranked #2 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 14.6% 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 24 HPE Apollo Systems reviews

1,858 Views
204 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,312 Views
2,186 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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Density Optimized Servers

December 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

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (6th), Density Optimized Servers (3rd)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Blade Servers (2nd), 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 17.4%, down 24.7% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 14.6% mindshare, down 21.8% since last year.

Density Optimized Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Apollo Systems	17.4%
Dell PowerEdge C- Series	25.3%
Huawei FusionServer X Series	17.0%
Other	40.3%

Density Optimized Servers

Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Synergy	14.6%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series	13.0%
HPE BladeSystem	10.5%
Other	61.9%

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Gökhan DURMAZ

Account Manager at TD SYNNEX

High-quality integration and strong support have optimized our rack server operations

HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity. When I speak about integrity, I speak about GPU integration or other integrations such as GPU integration, backup software integration, and hypervisor integration. Regarding the integration of high-speed interconnectors in HPE Apollo Systems, they impact computational tasks because the high-speed interconnect affects performance. I don't remember the specifics. Regarding the cooling technologies, they help to reduce operational costs. The positive impact I see from HPE Apollo Systems is that support is good and quality is good. In general, HPE Apollo Systems appears to be for rack servers with some optimization capabilities.

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Msheroz S

Works at Saudi Telecom Company

Manage servers efficiently with an integrated view while reducing downtime

My use case is to serve the complete IT environment of the telecom, including all cloud applications. I use HPE Synergy servers for my private cloud and for network management systems. 70% of my workload is running on HPE servers The integrated view, such as managing complete servers and…

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

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

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

"I find HPE Apollo Systems to be scalable and efficient for AI initiatives, and the environmental efficiency has a significant impact on operational costs."

"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 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."

"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."

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

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

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"I like that it's suitable for virtualization. It's also stable and scalable. The newer version has a lot of memory, and you don't have to worry about updates."

"The composable feature is amazing as it helps avoid downtimes."

"The temporal value of it. If I only need a particular amount of compute for a specific period of time during business hours, then at night, I'm running a bunch of batch jobs, or doing something else, that ability to swap a profile, swap templates, and have compute assigned to something else, saves significant amount of money. As long as you are tying it into the automation and orchestration layers, it becomes much easier to do."

"Composability... We show our partners the value of composability and how it can meet their needs."

"The processing time has been about 50 times faster and allows us to do AI models."

"We build out a whole stack at one time, so we don't have to worry about it until that stack is full, then that gives us time to get the next one ready."

"On the previous HPE platform, we struggled because everything was independent. We had to manage firmware on each server, storage and network configuration on each server. Synergy is template-driven so we can ensure consistency of all of those settings. It allows us to standardize configuration and ensure consistency across the board."

"Ability to easily re-utilize parts of the hardware for different purposes."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"The support from HPE Apollo could be better, they are making knowledgeable."

"What's coming out in Gen 10 is very strong in terms of additional security."

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

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

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

"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."

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

"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

"The user interface could be more user-friendly. It's for admins, and you should have the knowledge to use it."

"I would definitely like to see them fix the firmware updates on all the blades. No matter what operating system it is running on, make sure I can do the firmware as well as the software for those firmware components at the same time. I don't want to have to rely on an external product. Let's bring that product inside the menu so that I have a better experience with updates."

"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."

"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."

"Technical support was time consuming and unsatisfactory. The initial product setup was complex, lasing around three weeks to a month."

"Because we're using 2012, we're having issues making templates."

"Changes to the solution are quite complex."

"The performance could be better. The converged network cards initially didn't work. However, later on in the newer version, they came up with 50 GB network cards to replace the 20 GB ones, and it's perfectly fine now. At times, it could also be more stable."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"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 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."

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

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

"Synergy has lowered our total cost of ownership significantly. I would say ballpark around 25 percent, maybe more."

"We pay about £500 for the solution."

"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."

"The licensing is more around the software for RGS, because we are deploying bare metal installs. It is mainly the operating system and any lights-out management. So, licensing is minimum. We are licensing it annually."

"It costs us around $60,000 a year."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?

Some features could be added to HPE Apollo Systems in the future, and I feel that some capability is needed. HPE Apollo Systems is a bit expensive, and there are some issues with scalability. Two f...

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What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?

I have been distributing this product for three years. I don't have specific use cases, and everything about the major use case for HPE Apollo Systems is good. I don't know the purpose clients are ...

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What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?

I am not using these products today, and I do not work with some specific firewalls. My company is TD Synnex, a distributor company, and I work for this company. My email is , and my first name is ...

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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...

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 26% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 16% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 6% of the time

Lenovo High-Density Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 22% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 20% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

Lenovo Flex System vs HPE Synergy

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

January 2026

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

January 2026

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

December 2025

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