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 8.5, and holds a 20.9% mindshare in the category. HPE Synergy is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 20.6% 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 23 HPE Apollo Systems reviews

2,251 Views
225 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 90 HPE Synergy reviews

3,344 Views
2,408 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

HPE Apollo Systems

HPE Synergy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Density Optimized Servers

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 861,524 peers since 2012

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

4.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (6th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Blade Servers (1st), 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 30.3% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 20.6% mindshare, down 21.8% since last year.

Density Optimized Servers

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Gayan Senadheera

Director at Tyax Pvt Ltd

Offers higher capacities compared to other solutions, making it suitable for handling large storage needs

In terms of improvement, we could benefit from some training. If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo. Currently, we haven't received any specific training related to HPE Apollo throughout my career. If HPE Apollo provides training, we can share the knowledge with our partners, which could lead to more opportunities for HPE Apollo in the market. Deal protection and other support measures would also be beneficial, as they could help us achieve better results in this market.

Read full review

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

"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."

"With HPE Apollo, we can propose configurations with many hard drives, making it suitable for large storage needs."

"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 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."

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

"It enables us to implement software defined solutions very easily, because Apollo servers are certified for use with Linux systems"

"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"The benefit is that it's going to be maintained, contrary to what we had last year, when the maintenance went off for the last generation of the servers that we had there."

"Its versatility, performance, and size are most valuable. It is very decent for its size. It has very good performance and very good specifications."

"OneView, as a single point, a single management tool, it makes me delirious. It's really nice."

"Give us the ability to seamlessly migrate from one operating environment to another within minutes, which is invaluable."

"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."

"We have been able to give the deployment team what they request more quickly. We are able to quickly deploy what is being asked of us. If the development team needs a platform of 20 servers to run a particular platform, we can give that to them within a day or two."

"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."

"We like that the solution can be arranged for an all-in-one single pane of glass, something our customers find important."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"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."

"If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo."

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

"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."

"There is a shared battery for all cache controllers in the node. When you have to replace that element, you have to take down all three nodes and not just one."

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

"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"The solution should support Cisco or other vendor interconnect models."

"I would like the ability to take the storage tray that is in a chassis and share it out to multiple chassis, not just the servers within the same chassis. This would be more efficient with resources."

"Technical support was time consuming and unsatisfactory. The initial product setup was complex, lasing around three weeks to a month."

"Sometimes there are firmware or software difficulties when connecting between networks or with storage."

"The performance could be better. The converged network cards initially didn't work. However, later on in the newer version, they came up with 50 GB network cards to replace the 20 GB ones, and it's perfectly fine now. At times, it could also be more stable."

"The deployment time of a system through OneView is pretty slow, but apparently that's being addressed in an upcoming update."

"The Synergy platform is HPE-specific and more for on-premises. You're kind of locked in with VMware and the HPE with the VMs. The Nutanix offering is a bit more flexible."

"It has been in the external integrations to other platforms that we have, which aren't HPE, where some of our challenges have been. I would like to see some integrations with non-HPE platforms."

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."

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."

"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."

"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 platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."

"In our whole environment, the cost is in the millions. On this particular chassis, the annual cost is 12 blades times approximately $40,000."

"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."

"It costs us around $60,000 a year."

"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 pay about £500 for the solution."

"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."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Density Optimized Servers solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HPE Apollo?

HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products.

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?

HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved. The solution should provide fast delivery when it comes to replacing a particular product that is under warranty.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?

We use HPE Apollo for specific requirements of Linux servers.

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 do you like most about HPE Synergy?

It is a good product for hypervisors.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?

Pricing in the blade server market is very competitive, with HPE offering a competitive price. Competitor products include Dell's MX series and Cisco's UCS X series.

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 35% of the time

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 21% of the time

Dell PowerEdge FX vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 6% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 30% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 23% of the time

Dell PowerEdge M vs HPE Synergy

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

Supermicro SuperBlade vs HPE Synergy

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

July 2025

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

July 2025

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

June 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco and others in Density Optimized Servers. Updated: June 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.

We monitor all Density Optimized Servers reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.