HPE Synergy Reviews

It is flexible and composable hardware. You can really buy the stuff you need. If you want more storage, you can put in more storage. If you want more server capacity, then you can add more CPUs of memory.

It is kind of a new solution. We are using it now during our testing and development environment, so we can make it ready for production later. The idea is to buy them when we purchase new servers for the production environment in Q2 or Q3.

• The newer and faster Intel line of CPUs that are coming in GEN 10
• The software

OneView software is quite new and that will cause some improvements. Once we have it completely set up with the automation part, it will certainly help us in getting towards our vision.

At this moment, stability is still good. HPE support helped us with the implementations, because we were the first customer in Europe who bought one of these. They were really helpful in getting us running.

Scalability is one of the main advantages. You can scale the different areas, like storage, compute, and memory, to your needs.

Technical support is very good. For HPE, this is also a new product. Not every field engineer has been certified, so sometimes they came with three people to look at it on our site.

I already knew for a couple of years that we needed to invest in this solution. We've been using the blade systems, the C7000s, for 10 years already. We knew at certain point that this model was going to be replaced eventually.

The initial setup was quite complex and it is being done by the HPE support department. It is not yet ready for customers to do themselves. In the end, it will be more straightforward. You will be able, at a later time, to automate and script it, so that eventually when you connect a new device, you will be able to have it automatically installed.

We evaluated Huawei, the Chinese company. When we select a vendor, we want one who can support and also deliver in all countries in the world where we do business. We don't want to have a vendor that can only deliver in Germany, for example. HPE can deliver in the USA, in Europe, and in Asia. That's important to us. We define standards in our headquarters. These are standard building blocks. We want to buy those in all of our data centers, all over the world: in Asia, in India, in China, and in the USA. That's important for us.

I would advise getting in touch with a HPE account manager. I think doing direct business with a vendor is the best way of getting the right information. From what we've seen, it is better than working via re-sellers or partners, who are often smaller and only work in one country. It's better to deal directly with the vendor, which is usually the case with large companies. If you are a small company, you may have to go via a re-seller or partner. It depends on the size of your company.

The density and the flexibility that it provides are the most valuable features. In the C7000, there was a memory density issue per-blade that was solved in Synergy's platform. On top of that, I value the composability of it. In other words, being able to create hyper-converged systems within the frame, rather than having to resort to rack mounts.

A great benefit is being able to create different solutions that aren't available in the traditional C7000 platform.

It's a lot more about some of the speeds and feeds, such as the 25, 50, 100 GB virtual connections. In addition, I would like to see improvement in the 32 GB fiber channel connection at the end of it.

We have no issues with stability.

I have not used technical support.

It's just one of those products that as a partner, we have always tried to stay on top of. Previously, we had the C7000, plus other competing products, in our lab.

When selecting a vendor, I look at how well things integrate together, as well as the ease of management.

I was not involved in the initial setup.

We didn’t look at any competitor’s solutions.

Look at the flexibility of the platform, as far as being able to have that storage drive to be able to do hyper-converge. It should not block your architecture. As you scale it out, you don’t have choke points on the network side, like you do in other platforms.

It provides VMs quickly and gives me the facility to create backups.

The rapid provisioning of VMs is the best improvement.

I would like to see better integration with other products.

It is stable. It protects against crashes.

We did not try to scale the solution.

Technical support is good.

We did not use a product previous to this one. When selecting a vendor, I look for innovation and support.

I was involved in the setup and it was easy.

We evaluated Dell and Lenovo. We chose HPE because Synergy is innovate in the way that it delivers its services and I think that is very interesting.

Check all the best practices about the configuration and the connection to the network. I would give that special attention.

Improved storage, scalability, and ease-of-use. It is a lot packed into a small chassis/frame.

• It has reduced a lot of our infrastructure down to a few systems. This is opposed to larger, two and four use systems. It's knocked us down to a few frames and made it a lot easier to use.
• A single unified infrastructure that can be optimized for all workloads via software makes our life easier. It reduced man hours, because we only have four people running the shop. The less time I have to spend on it, the more time I can spend in other areas.
• The programmatic interface of the synergy API was clean, simple, and intuitive. This automation will make IT more efficient, as I will spend less time in front of the wheel.
• The software defined infrastructure simplifies our operations, in that I can get more things done and pushed out to customers faster.
• The automated life cycle management affirms where our drivers make their IT operations simpler. It's all in one place. You've got the firmware and the software that all comes down in one spot. You just apply it from there.
• The architecture eco-system system was part of our decision to invest in it for the future. It took some doing. It took a buy-in from everyone through management. Given its price point, it took a lot more than that. It was an infrastructure change for us. We value a modular infrastructure with shared power and Googling with an integrated search engine. We end up with one single system to do everything. It's just easier to manage, as opposed to 20 servers where you've got to change out supplies, memory, and everything else. You've got to maintain all that. Now, it is just one unit.

Firmware. I'd get the firmware to be a little more secure and a little more streamlined.

So far, the stability is good and it's running fine. I can't complain.

Scalability is good. I can take it and move it between two data centers, have one in each data center, and move things back and forth. That's mostly a function of the OS, but the hardware, being as robust as it is, works well.

When I get to a human being, technical support is great. Up until then, it's a big challenge. They want to try to do a little bit by email, which drives me out of my mind, honestly.

We didn’t use a previous solution. We are an HPE shop. We knew that we needed to invest in this solution because it was cool. The scalability is what did it for us. The next level progression was to go from the C7000 chassis. It just linked itself to the infrastructure that we're going to.

When selecting a vendor, we look at support and cost point.

The installation was very straightforward.

Take the time to go through it. Put your hands on it, at somebody else's lab if you can. See if you can get a demo unit. Plug it in and try it.

It's a fully integrated solution with OneView. With the new servers and technology, we can have more resources, RAM, and CPU. We are using it primarily for VMware.

Now that we have the new generation, the G10, we have the security. That was one part that was missing. That is going to be important, because we will be running on Generation 9.

The stability so far is good. We did the PoC in February and we are going to get into production in June. We have been running tests and it has been stable. We had some issues in the initial setup, but basically it's what we expect from HPE. 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. It took about two weeks to fix the issue.

Scalability is one of the benefits of using Synergy. We are able to add and grow without any problems.

Technical support went really well. They were excellent in helping us find the solution to the issue. They were eager to get this done and they fixed it correctly. That was good.

The lifespan for the C-class are going to be over in a few years. We are moving all of our production systems for a cycle. We have about 3-4 year cycles of use, and then we are going to the new platform, which is the correct option. We will not to go to the C-class, which is the old option.

The setup was a little bit complex, because it was the first one. It is a new product, so nobody knows it too well. We are kind of learning on the way, but it is OK. It's a new technology, so I think it's normal. It still needs a little bit of ironing out to be completely integrated with OneView. There are still some issues.

It's a new solution, but you are in good hands with HPE support. Use HPE support. They will give you a hand to go through the user experience, setup, and implementation.

Ease of use, manageability, the time given back to the operations staff for managing and applying Synergy are the most valuable features.

It gives more time back to our operations team. It helps us track and report automatically to HPE for any issues.

The composable Synergy infrastructure makes our life easier by having a single-pane-of-glass to go to. There is one place to get alerts, monitor the performance and troubleshoot.

The Synergy API is new for us, but it is something that was common to us. We were familiar with the APIs and working with them, in the past. It is easy for us to use.

IT automation gives back time to the operations staff, making it easier for implementation and deployment.

HPE Synergy software-defined infrastructure simplifies our operations by quickening deployment, quickening roll-out and services to our clinicians and physicians.

Although it is modular, the shared infrastructure is highly available. We know that there are power availability, redundancy network and availability in the redundancy throughout the stack. We're very comfortable with it.

In the future for Synergy, we would like to see SaaS connectivity and sharing of storage between frames.

Stability is great. The system functions in a high-availability mode, so we've done updates and stayed online. It's great for us.

Scalability is good, we've got full frames so we've scaled all of our frames all the way up.

The technical support has been awesome. They have worked with us, we were the first installation in America. They've been great with their support.

Although the platform was new, we made the decision to invest in it because we believe in our partner HPE; they have come through in the past for us, and we have a long, standing relationship with them. We thought that this was just something else, even though it was bleeding edge for us, we decided to do the implementation and partner up with them.

The initial setup was somewhat new, not just to us, i.e., the customer, but also to the implementation team.

Get hands-on experience with HPE OneView. You need to understand Synergy and what your host will need from the connectivity and I/O perspective.

Go for it.

The most valuable features about Synergy is the composability of it. Instead of always having to buying new resources and new pieces of infrastructure to support say, new applications or new projects, you can use Synergy's composability to create the workload that you need to support it. Then, you don't have to keep it forever. Once that project is over, you can reuse those resources, so I think that's probably the biggest, and I think, the most important feature of Synergy is its composability.

The whole point of Synergy is, you're going to have this central management. You're going to have the composer where you can build stuff, and a lot of it's built on OneView. I think they're using the same code, but they've done something different to it to make it easier to use. That means you're managing and you're monitoring your networking, your compute, your storage from it, but not everything works. If you have got Virtual Connect, that can be managed and monitored. You put in a Brocade switch; you can't as there's a limitation. 

Also, the storage, the JBODs. Unless you're using VSA, I think it's tied to the frame that you're in.

Try it and buy it.

We use the solution for data centers. It supports hybrid cloud management tasks.

The pricing could be improved.

I have been using HPE Synergy for over 20 years. We have the gold status partner of the solution.

Synergy is more stable than HP. I rate the solution’s stability a six or seven out of ten.

The solution is scalable. It can fit small businesses.

Whenever we call, we've got an answer.

Neutral

We have opted for Cisco.

The initial setup is straightforward and takes a week to complete. When you work with technology, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Synergy is more expensive than Cisco.

We don't find it valuable, and we don't use it; we're not profiting.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.