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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
5.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (8th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)
HPE Synergy
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Blade Servers (4th), 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%, down 22.6% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 9.7% mindshare, down 21.9% since last year.
Density Optimized Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE Apollo Systems20.9%
Dell PowerEdge C- Series20.9%
HPE Moonshot16.2%
Other42.0%
Density Optimized Servers
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE Synergy9.7%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series9.6%
HPE BladeSystem8.6%
Other72.1%
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.
MR
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
Redundant components and single console management improve efficiency while high costs warrant attention
Regarding HPE Synergy, the most valuable feature is that the whole solution and the whole system operate in passive mode, and there are very few chances of downtime as all the components in HPE Synergy are redundant, including VC Flex modules and interconnect modules, as well as power supply and fan modules. Other networking and storage connectivity modules are also redundant, and we can mount the entire Synergy frame in a single rack. If we fully populate a Synergy frame with 12 servers, 12 physical machines could be mounted in one Synergy frame, mostly with redundant power supplies and networking ports along with SAN connectivity on a single console.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."
"It's pretty flexible."
"HPE Apollo's most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."
"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not, more HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."
"We like that the solution can be arranged for an all-in-one single pane of glass, something our customers find important."
"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."
"It has had a positive effect on the efficiency of our IT infrastructure team. The manageability of it is so easy, we're able to install it quickly, and replacement parts are easy to get in and out quickly."
"Everything is combined in one chassis, you have storage, compute, networking. So you save a lot of space in the datacenter."
"What I find most valuable about this product are the number of interface combinations made possible with a single computer node."
"OneView, as a single point, a single management tool, it makes me delirious. It's really nice."
"Synergy is much easier to use, which is saving us time; we are able to set the profiles for firmware upgrades, making the process for the care and feeding of the IT environment much simpler, quicker, and cleaner."
"Shorter delivery times. Where we now have a delivery time of about six weeks, we hope to go back to days."
 

Cons

"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."
"HPE Apollo Systems is a bit expensive, and there are some issues with scalability."
"If there's anything that hasn't been that stable, then it is the Lustre file system."
"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."
"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."
"Big stability issues with the CPU on the first generation which made them virtually unusable."
"The support from HPE Apollo could be better, they are making knowledgeable."
"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."
"They have not improved their product since it was purchased."
"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. It was slow and just didn't work. Even HPE couldn't make it work for 45 days."
"The initial setup was quite complex and it is being done by the HPE support department."
"The stability is not good right now. We have had a couple of outages where we have received 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."
"We haven't seen any ROI, and it hasn't reduced our cost of operations."
"When templates are created, there are some steps where you need to reboot the machines. Being in production, this is not a good idea."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"We pay for licensing on the fibre channel uplinks, on the Virtual Connect, which is an add-on."
"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."
"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."
"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."
"The cost is high and that is a drawback for some customers."
"We pay about £500 for the solution."
"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."
"It costs us around $60,000 a year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and others in Density Optimized Servers. Updated: April 2026.
894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.