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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

"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."
"HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity."
"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."
"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."
"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 pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products."
"In terms of managing our IT landscape, it helps by reducing complexity... We've taken one of our virtualization guys and turned him into a Synergy guy, and he's been able to understand the networking, he's been able to understand the OneView, he's been able to understand the Synergy. He manages all of those rather than our having to have multiple teams associated with it."
"The Synergy environment provides us with one view. We're able to manage the entire stack, top to bottom, from that single view."
"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."
"The initial setup is straightforward. The infrastructures as code enables you to fill out the configuration before you even deploy it, then it is just a one-touch deployment."
"This is above and beyond anything else any of the competitors have on the market. If you're researching this, you're going down the right path."
"HPE Synergy has been dependable for the past 15 years."
"The solution helps us to implement new business requirements quickly with some app deployments."
"We've found the scalability to be reasonable if you are ready to invest in it."
 

Cons

"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should 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."
"Lustre seems to be just a little bit unstable overall."
"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 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."
"The technical support for HPE Apollo Systems could be improved."
"The support from HPE Apollo could be better, they are making knowledgeable."
"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
"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."
"The installation and initial setup process is complex and needs to be improved."
"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."
"There is certainly a feature or two missing."
"Sometimes there are firmware or software difficulties when connecting between networks or with storage."
"The lowest echelon of HPE technical support is sadly uninformed, unknowledgeable, and dependent on wrote scripts. They won't answer a question without going through their script. It's not like you're actually talking to somebody who has any depth or time using any of the equipment."
"The solution must concentrate on improving the product quality."
"In the Generation 10 modules, we have observed that very often the server has hardware issues."
 

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."
"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."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"The platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."
"The price point is a little high. We were able to get a good deal on a promotion, to go with it. It would be nice to see the prices come down a little bit."
"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."
"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."
"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."
"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."
"In our whole environment, the cost is in the millions. On this particular chassis, the annual cost is 12 blades times approximately $40,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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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