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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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"

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"The solution has decreased our deployment time by 10 to 20 percent."

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

"The manageability is its most valuable feature. It is a fully managed platform, which is very simple to manage."

"The scalability is great."

"The Synergy environment provides us with one view. We're able to manage the entire stack, top to bottom, from that single view."

"The composable infrastructure allows us to build our own server profiles, then build up the infrastructure that we need from compute modules."

"Orchestrating automations is great because you can connect to other tools with the REST API and automate components."

"It's a bit easier to manage than the C7000s."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"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."

"The technical support for HPE Apollo Systems could be improved."

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"Synergy could probably do some code enhancements to simplify the deployment a bit more."

"There is always room for improvement. Based on our use cases, I don't believe there are any additional features required."

"The technical support was about the only negative experience that I had. It was a mixed bag when we were first standing it up. We had some requirements from our information security department, and technical support wasn't able to give me immediate answers. They had to engage engineering, which they did, then they got me the answers. However, it took a week of back and forth conversations and phone calls to get it all worked out."

"Over the two years of using HPE Synergy, we have found some hardware failures that are frequent in the SOP models, CNA cards, and converged network adapters. These failures are frequently happening for a lot of the customers."

"We had some challenges during the implementation and a few issues afterward, but they were all sort of related to how Synergy interacts with Nexus. Our Nexus on the network side is managed by another group, and they had just gotten Nexus, so they weren't really familiar with how Nexus even worked. Getting these two to interact well was the majority of our issues. It really didn't have anything to do with Synergy. It points to know the environment that you are putting it in and making sure you are dotting all your i's and crossing all your t's when you are figuring out what their requirements are to communicate."

"We haven't seen any ROI, and it hasn't reduced our cost of operations."

"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."

"We have flaky things, like a lot of bad fans."

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."

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

"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."

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

"There is a perpetual license given when you purchase HPE Synergy."

"The platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."

"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."

"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."

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

"The Nutanix platform came in a little more expensive than the Synergy."

"We are satisfied with its price."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

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 ...

See all answers

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 15% 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 3% 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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