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HPE Apollo Systems vs HPE Synergy comparison

Why PeerSpot?
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 #5 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 8.5% 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 25 HPE Apollo Systems reviews
  • 3,575 Views
  • 644 Comparison Views
96% willing to recommend
HPE Synergy
Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews
  • 6,159 Views
  • 4,311 Comparison Views
91% willing to recommend
 

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.

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To learn more, read our detailed Density Optimized Servers Report (Updated: October 2026).
Buyer's Guide
Density Optimized Servers
October 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
5.0
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
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.
Read full review
MS
Msheroz S
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…
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 had a PoC, as I said, and we were happy with it and decided to implement it, as it satisfies all our needs and is the perfect solution."
"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 most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."
"Absolutely being able to mount into Omni-Path architecture, HFIs on those nodes, because we were the very first site in the world"
"It's very hard for a professor to amass the supercomputing resources, so I've been very fortunate to have that level of supercomputing at our disposal and that has really enabled us to do the world's leading superhuman AI research."
"It is a stable product; very reliable."
"With HPE Apollo, we can propose configurations with many hard drives, making it suitable for large storage needs."
"Stability has been extremely good."
More HPE Apollo Systems pros
"It gives us a lot more flexibility for spinning up new hypervisors, compared to the c7000."
"The i3S module can be configured to provision storage to all blade servers and boot to any operating system without needing local hard drives."
"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."
"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."
"Where it used to take one week to re-image or upgrade our hosts, it can now take one day."
"As a result of the solution, our IT infrastructure is about 60 percent more efficient than it used to be."
"All components in the HPE Synergy solution are redundant; if we experience any downtime in a component, a redundant one is available in our Synergy frame, therefore the downtime and stability for HPE Synergy solution are very good and highly appreciated."
"We have more control over the firmware and how we are managing our physical servers."
More HPE Synergy pros
 

Cons

"What's coming out in Gen 10 is very strong in terms of additional security."
"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."
"We are struggling a little bit with some of the configuration we need to do, particularly with write capability to drives."
"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 the workload is not purely sequential, then performance in the IO is less than optimal because it's optimized for streaming processing."
"If there's anything that hasn't been that stable, then it is the Lustre file system."
"Our first batch of Apollo servers that we got were so new that it was just hard to know kind of what to expect from HPE and what they wanted to deliver to us."
"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
More HPE Apollo Systems cons
"I would be more comfortable if Ansible actually rolled back the data used for automating platforms. If it could be communicated to the upstream Ansible, I wouldn't need to go back and forth and validate the libraries as we upgrade the Ansible version."
"We had some challenges during the implementation and a few issues afterward, but they were all sort of related to how Synergy interacts with Nexus. Our Nexus on the network side is managed by another group, and they had just gotten Nexus, so they weren't really familiar with how Nexus even worked. Getting these two to interact well was the majority of our issues. It really didn't have anything to do with Synergy. It points to know the environment that you are putting it in and making sure you are dotting all your i's and crossing all your t's when you are figuring out what their requirements are to communicate."
"In the past, I have had issues with configurations."
"We'd like to see faster networking in the back-end."
"I would like more storage with this solution, because we still need 3PAR or other storage outside the box for the amount of data that we have."
"The profiles aren't so easy to work with."
"I find the product documentation to be disorganized; it's not intuitive and the info required for checking a specific step-by-step configuration is buried under too much literature."
"I would like it to connect to the HPE Cloud Connect compute platform for simplicity of our infrastructure."
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."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"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."
"We do CAPEX."
"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."
"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs by 50 percent."
"There is a perpetual license given when you purchase HPE Synergy."
"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."
"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."
"VMware is part of the cost. We bought the chassis, we bought the solution. The blades are roughly running us $60,000 a pop right now."
"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."
More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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.
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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 ...
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

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems Logo
Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems
Compared 12% of the time
HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems Logo
HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems
Compared 11% of the time
HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems Logo
HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems
Compared 8% of the time
IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems Logo
IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems
Compared 7% of the time
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems Logo
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems
Compared 4% of the time
More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy Logo
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy
Compared 10% of the time
HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy Logo
HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy
Compared 10% of the time
HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy Logo
HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy
Compared 9% of the time
Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Synergy Logo
Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Synergy
Compared 8% of the time
More HPE Synergy Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
HPE Apollo Systems
October 2026
HPE Apollo Systems reportDownload HPE Apollo Systems product report
Buyer's Guide
HPE Synergy
October 2026
HPE Synergy reportDownload HPE Synergy product report
 

Also Known As

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo
No data available
 

Overview

HPE Apollo Systems deliver high compute and storage density, scalability, and environmental efficiency with exceptional performance for AI initiatives and data capturing across diverse applications.

HPE Apollo Systems are characterized by their dense compute and storage capabilities, offering flexibility in configurations to meet the demands of AI, deep learning, and high-performance computing. Their management software simplifies deployment, ensuring effective performance across tasks that require significant storage. While Apollo Systems are designed for efficiency and scalability, improvements can be made in security, tech support, and integration with hypervisors and backup solutions. Enhancing cooling and licensing processes, connectivity, and faster drive writing capabilities are also areas for growth.

What are the key features of HPE Apollo Systems?
  • High Compute Density: Supports intense processing needs efficiently.
  • Scalability: Easily adaptable to growing data demands.
  • Environmental Efficiency: Minimizes energy consumption, enhancing sustainability.
  • Flexible Configurations: Caters to a range of applications from AI to data storage.
  • Reliable Performance: Consistently delivers under various workloads.
What benefits or ROI should users look for?
  • Cost Effectiveness: Reduces expenditure with its efficient design.
  • Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly fits into diverse IT environments.
  • Performance Enhancement: Boosts operational efficiency and output.
  • Easy Deployment: Streamlines the setup process for quick operation.

HPE Apollo Systems find extensive use in sectors such as telecom, supporting high-performance computing and AI workloads. They optimize Linux servers, replace legacy systems, and serve as storage solutions across industries. Their applications span from big data management in Splunk clusters to backup solutions in medical faculties, enhancing compute power and storage within compact racks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HPE Synergy offers a composable infrastructure enabling hardware reuse and automation, appreciated for manageability through OneView, which simplifies configuration and deployment.

HPE Synergy's strengths include flexibility, scalability, and a modular design that integrates with existing IT infrastructure for improved performance and manageability. It excels in high-density virtualization tasks and is especially suited to VMware and Hyper-V environments, SQL and Oracle databases, and large-scale data centers. Though users note challenges such as complex management interfaces and integration issues with non-HPE systems, its ability to replace aging systems like C7000 and facilitate hybrid cloud transformation is significant. Requirements for streamlined firmware updates, better storage integration, faster deployment, enhanced support, and documentation are acknowledged.

What are the most important features of HPE Synergy?
  • Composable Infrastructure: Enables hardware re-utilization and automation.
  • OneView: Simplifies configuration and reduces deployment time.
  • Image Streamer: Enhances flexibility and ease of use in configuration management.
  • Converged Network Management: Streamlines network operations.
  • Modular Design: Ensures compatibility and scalability.
What benefits and ROI should be evaluated?
  • Ease of Administration: Centralized management reduces complexity.
  • Diverse Workload Handling: Efficiently manages virtualization, databases, and cloud environments.
  • Performance Enhancement: Integrates effectively with existing infrastructure.
  • Reduced Power Consumption: Users seek more efficiency in energy use.
  • Comprehensive Integration: Desirable improvements in OneView integration benefit operations.

HPE Synergy is widely implemented across industries focusing on virtualization and cloud transformation, providing enhanced compute power and flexibility to companies transitioning from older systems. It supports hybrid cloud infrastructure management and handles the demands of large-scale data centers efficiently.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise
 

Sample Customers

Weta Digital
HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United
Buyer's Guide
Density Optimized Servers
October 2026
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