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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
5.5
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (6th), Density Optimized Servers (3rd)
HPE Synergy
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
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
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Apollo Systems17.4%
Dell PowerEdge C- Series25.3%
Huawei FusionServer X Series17.0%
Other40.3%
Density Optimized Servers
Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Synergy14.6%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series13.0%
HPE BladeSystem10.5%
Other61.9%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Gökhan  DURMAZ - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MS
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…

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"
"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."
"HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products."
"It's going to meet our needs moving forward, it is scalable."
"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."
"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."
"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."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"It is a simple software to integrate with others."
"The i3S module can be configured to provision storage to all blade servers and boot to any operating system without needing local hard drives."
"It's a fully integrated solution with OneView."
"They're easy to swap and move around the datacenter, for sure. They don't occupy too much space for what they offer."
"It's a bit easier to manage than the C7000s."
"The most valuable feature is its composable infrastructure. Everything I need is in the box. Manageability is through OneView, so I can get all the information about the box itself at any time I want."
"The solution help us to implement new business requirements quickly, since it is easy and quick to upgrade our capacity."
"We have more control over the firmware and how we are managing our physical servers."
 

Cons

"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 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 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."
"We are quite happy with it, but its price and storage density can be better."
"The support from HPE Apollo could be better, they are making knowledgeable."
"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."
"HPE Apollo Systems is a bit expensive, and there are some issues with scalability."
"The speed in OneView and how it updates the entire configuration needs improvement. If they can do that, and it could be a little more clear on what impact different actions will have for certain things, that would be good."
"HPE Synergy could improve its remote support."
"ICMs could be better in this model. When you look at its competitors, the most critical point is the throughput. HPE is the best with the ICM module, which is an interconnect module that connects the servers of the frames to the LAN and SAN. HPE Synergy should also support the latest processors provided by Intel."
"The user interface could be more user-friendly. It's for admins, and you should have the knowledge to use it."
"Continue the path of integrating OneView into a single product. A lot of different people have different OneView experiences based on which product they have used it for."
"The initial setup was complex. It was slow and just didn't work. Even HPE couldn't make it work for 45 days."
"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 possibility of using storage directly in the frame in order to have bigger storage directly there, and not having an attached storage like SAN or NAS. That would be helpful."
 

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."
"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."
"The biggest cost is the VMware licensing."
"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."
"The solution can be expensive because it requires both hardware and software purchases."
"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."
"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 platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

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...
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 ...
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 ...
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 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...
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...
 

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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