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 #2 in DOS , with an average rating of 8.0, and holds a 18.6% mindshare in the category. HPE Synergy is ranked #3 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 11.9% 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

2,059 Views
268 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,744 Views
2,434 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, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and others in Density Optimized Servers.

To learn more, read our detailed Density Optimized Servers Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Density Optimized Servers

March 2026

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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 (8th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Blade Servers (3rd), 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 18.6%, down 23.3% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 11.9% mindshare, down 21.9% since last year.

Density Optimized Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
HPE Apollo Systems	18.6%
Dell PowerEdge C- Series	23.7%
Huawei FusionServer X Series	16.6%
Other	41.1%

Density Optimized Servers

Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
HPE Synergy	11.9%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series	11.3%
HPE BladeSystem	9.8%
Other	67.0%

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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CarlosArdila

Project Manager, Information Technology at Telelago

Helps grow horizontally or vertically within one box or chassis

The initial setup is very easy. We deployed this in two days, including installation, system setup, firmware upgrades, configuration, and network connection. By the next day, we were already deploying virtual machines. We initially began with the Blade system. As the migration to SAP HANA approached, it seemed prudent to upgrade our hardware. Consequently, we facilitated their transition from the Blade system to Synergy. Subsequently, we collaborated closely with the SAP consultancy company to oversee the migration process, ensuring seamless integration of all workloads and sub-environments. We have four people working on the deployment, including a project manager, two specialists, and one tech support.

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

"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."

"HPE Apollo's support is the most valuable feature."

"HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity."

"I find HPE Apollo Systems to be scalable and efficient for AI initiatives, and the environmental efficiency has a significant impact on operational costs."

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

"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."

"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."

"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"We've found the scalability to be reasonable if you are ready to invest in it."

"It is really easy to use, because it's GUI-based. It is not command line based, like mainframes."

"It is a good product for hypervisors."

"Changing the form factor in Synergy allows us to have more RAM, which is significantly helpful for us."

"Everything is combined in one chassis, you have storage, compute, networking. So you save a lot of space in the datacenter."

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

"The i3S module can be configured to provision storage to all blade servers and boot to any operating system without needing local hard drives."

"Technical support is excellent. They are very helpful."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

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

"Lustre seems to be just a little bit unstable overall."

"HPE Apollo Systems is a bit expensive, and there are some issues with scalability."

"We are quite happy with it, but its price and storage density can be better."

"What's coming out in Gen 10 is very strong in terms of additional security."

"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."

"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."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"Gen 11 is being released. That's going to have a lot of advantages over Gen 10 and previous generations in terms of the cooling modules in the servers to keep them cooler and run with more efficiency and better performance. There are more management features with iLO 6 and the latest OneView management."

"Product documentation is disorganized."

"Technical support for this solution has a very good initial response; however, escalation takes time, and most of the time the first level of support cannot solve your case."

"The user interface could be more user-friendly. It's for admins, and you should have the knowledge to use it."

"The initial setup was complex. We had a couple of bright engineers working on it, and they figured out a lot of things that they don't know... The problem was that they couldn't find documentation easily, to walk them through setup when they just didn't know the platform."

"The update is problematic. When you want to update the firmware, or when you want to update software on Composer, it takes a lot of time. A lot."

"This solution could be improved by increasing the speed on the conversion adapters. It should be 100 gigs."

"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."

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."

"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."

"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."

"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 bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."

"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."

"The solution can be expensive because it requires both hardware and software purchases."

"Synergy has lowered our total cost of ownership significantly. I would say ballpark around 25 percent, maybe more."

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

"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."

"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."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

University

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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 20% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 13% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 8% of the time

Lenovo High-Density Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 19% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 17% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 9% of the time

Lenovo Flex System vs HPE Synergy

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

February 2026

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

February 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

March 2026

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