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

"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."

"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."

"HPE Apollo's most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."

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

"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."

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

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

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

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

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

"Great data storage and very good for software defined solutions."

"The solution has decreased the deployment time for a new blade, saving us three hours."

"Shorter delivery times. Where we now have a delivery time of about six weeks, we hope to go back to days."

"It makes life easier for us when we are deploying new technology, as we have the building blocks already in place."

"The solution is built very well. It's very robust and durable."

"Ability to easily re-utilize parts of the hardware for different purposes."

"The initial setup is fine."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

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

"The solution's deployment, security, and scalability need improvement."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"The speed in OneView and how it updates the entire configuration needs improvement. If they can do that, and it could be a little more clear on what impact different actions will have for certain things, that would be good."

"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."

"When templates are created, there are some steps where you need to reboot the machines. Being in production, this is not a good idea. For example, if you reconfigure the network, you should not have to reboot the machine. You should just apply the new template and that's it."

"The initial setup was complex. It was slow and just didn't work. Even HPE couldn't make it work for 45 days."

"I'd like to see the firmware updates, as well as the built-in OneView and imager in Composer, become a little more powerful and faster."

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

"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."

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

More HPE Synergy cons

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."

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

"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."

"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."

"The biggest cost is the VMware licensing."

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

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

"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."

"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 have already paid once. It is just the price for the permit and its use. It seems you don't have to keep paying for it, but I am not sure."

"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

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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