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HPE Apollo Systems vs HPE Synergy comparison

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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
5.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (9th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)
HPE Synergy
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Blade Servers (5th), 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 20.9%, up 19.2% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 8.5% mindshare, down 18.9% since last year.
Density Optimized Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE Apollo Systems20.9%
Dell PowerEdge C- Series19.4%
HPE Moonshot17.3%
Other42.400000000000006%
Density Optimized Servers
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE Synergy8.5%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series8.2%
HPE BladeSystem8.0%
Other75.3%
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

"For us, the most valuable features are the price and density."
"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."
"It's allowed us to compete with cloud storage providers like AWS to put together a scalable on-premises solution of more than 20PB at a similar pricepoint."
"I find HPE Apollo Systems to be scalable and efficient for AI initiatives, and the environmental efficiency has a significant impact on operational costs."
"My advice for someone considering HPE Apollo Systems is that if they are looking for consolidation and their workload involves high availability requirements, or if they want to utilize GPUs, then this is a machine that should be considered instead of deploying multiple machines and multiple systems."
"It's pretty flexible."
"We are running Apollo with SL-series servers and the best thing about them is the density of the storage area available."
"Absolutely being able to mount into Omni-Path architecture, HFIs on those nodes, because we were the very first site in the world"
"The Synergy environment provides us with one view. We're able to manage the entire stack, top to bottom, from that single view."
"Synergy has lowered our total cost of ownership significantly, I would say ballpark around 25 percent, maybe more."
"In addition to that, Synergy has better performance; it's newer with a better processor, more capacity for memory, more capacity for CPU, and all of that."
"The most valuable features about Synergy is the composability of it."
"The solution has decreased the deployment time for a new blade, saving us three hours."
"The density and the flexibility that it provides are the most valuable features."
"If you can get it set up right and get a little bit of expertise in it, it's a wonderful platform."
"It is helping us sort of bridge a gap that we are having moving off of old legacy systems, like HP-UX systems and trying to move over to x86. So, it is helping fill a hardware gap that a lot of our platforms have needed in the past."
 

Cons

"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."
"The licensing could be greatly improved, I think."
"OpenView is a new product which does not support older versions of the hardware."
"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."
"If there's anything that hasn't been that stable, then it is the Lustre file system."
"Big stability issues with the CPU on the first generation which made them virtually unusable."
"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."
"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."
"I think the main issue with Synergy is a topology that HPE defines to connecting and creating a cluster."
"In the past, I have had issues with configurations."
"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."
"Instead of having Synergy vertical, make it horizontal. It is easier to stick in when it is vertical."
"I think we were promised a little more than we were given. It's true, they are working very hard to try to help remedy that."
"I would definitely like to see them fix the firmware updates on all the blades."
"One of the issues that we that we have been having is with the firmware baselining. So, we need to just making sure that we get that working. However, we are in the early stages. It may well be that we just tweak a few things."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"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."
"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."
"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."
"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."
"We are satisfied with its price."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."
"The solution can be expensive because it requires both hardware and software purchases."
"The platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?
It is too early to say what improvements HPE Apollo Systems could implement because the report still needs to come out and the customer needs to properly evaluate the solution.
What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?
My main use case for HPE Apollo Systems is replacing many of the servers and storage boxes at one of the customer's sites to achieve workload optimization and optimized solutions. Additionally, whe...
What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?
My advice for someone considering HPE Apollo Systems is that if they are looking for consolidation and their workload involves high availability requirements, or if they want to utilize GPUs, then ...
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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