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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

"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."
"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."
"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."
"It's very reliable. I haven't had a single failure at all in the year and a half; not the slightest problem with it."
"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."
"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."
"It enables us to implement software defined solutions very easily, because Apollo servers are certified for use with Linux systems"
"The scalability is great."
"The composable feature is amazing as it helps avoid downtimes."
"It is really easy to use, because it's GUI-based. It is not command line based, like mainframes."
"It makes it simpler for me to manage my environment. It is one pane of glass, compared to multiple."
"It gives us ease of use. It's nice because we don't have to mess with networking once it's set up. Once it's done, we just put another blade in and go from there. We don't have to go back in, run more cables, deal with more data center stuff. We stick a blade in, use the server profile template, build out a server profile from that, and it just goes."
"The scalability is very good. The ability to link chassis or frames together makes it simplistic, especially with the use of OneView."
"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."
"As we purchase and install more Synergy chassis, then we will be able to manage them together as one entity, as opposed to multiple separate cabinets."
 

Cons

"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."
"Lustre seems to be just a little bit unstable overall."
"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
"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."
"The support from HPE Apollo could be better, they are making knowledgeable."
"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."
"The pricing can be improved as it is a costly solution due to sanctions in Iran."
"We had an issue during the initial setup with the 40 Gigabyte cards. They weren’t working, so we had to work really closely with HPE support to get them to work."
"If it would be possible to connect clusters of five with other clusters, so that they could all share resources, that would change the game for us. It would make it a viable solution for us."
"There is certainly a feature or two missing."
"The stability is not good right now. We have had a couple of outages where we have receive very good support from HPE. However, we have not been able to come up with cut and dried reasons for why the outages have occurred. They have not been able to be reproduced, so it has been difficult getting our trust back."
"They must improve the OneView tools."
"The main challenge we faced was that when it was installed it just did not work. There were faulty components and it took weeks of troubleshooting to find the faulty components, get them replaced. Getting help from HPE was difficult. Nobody knew about the product. It was a brand-new product and people had not been trained on it. That part was not a great experience."
"Sometimes there are firmware or software difficulties when connecting between networks or with storage."
 

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."
"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."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."
"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."
"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."
"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."
"Synergy has lowered our total cost of ownership significantly. I would say ballpark around 25 percent, maybe more."
"For temporal use, when you throw on the fact that you're essentially doubling your capacity, right there you could claim a 50 percent TCO reduction."
"We outright purchased Synergy."
"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
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
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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