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 21.0% mindshare in the category. HPE Synergy is ranked #4 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 9.0% 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

2,993 Views
539 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

5,192 Views
3,531 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: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Density Optimized Servers

June 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

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (9th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

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 21.0%, up 20.9% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 9.0% mindshare, down 20.6% since last year.

Density Optimized Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
HPE Apollo Systems	21.0%
Dell PowerEdge C- Series	20.3%
HPE Moonshot	17.1%
Other	41.6%

Density Optimized Servers

Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
HPE Synergy	9.0%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series	8.9%
HPE BladeSystem	8.2%
Other	73.9%

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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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

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

"The cost benefit of this solution is most valuable."

"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."

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

"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, and it's been a pretty good product so far."

"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 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 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."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

"The price is reasonable, and the stability and scalability are okay. We bought the solution because it suits our needs."

"In terms of managing our IT landscape, it helps by reducing complexity... We've taken one of our virtualization guys and turned him into a Synergy guy, and he's been able to understand the networking, he's been able to understand the OneView, he's been able to understand the Synergy. He manages all of those rather than our having to have multiple teams associated with it."

"The centralized management of HPE Synergy is beneficial because it is easy to manage and administer."

"We use the Synergy Frame to host the main infrastructure for a big project, and the uptime and the performance meet our expectations, plus the integration with 3PAR is very good."

"As a result of the solution, our IT infrastructure is about 60 percent more efficient than it used to be."

"Synergy is a flexible product, so it helps us to manage our IT landscape in a more simplified, structured way."

"Technical support is excellent. They are very helpful."

"The Synergy environment provides us with one view. We're able to manage the entire stack, top to bottom, from that single view."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"If the workload is not purely sequential, then performance in the IO is less than optimal because it's optimized for streaming processing."

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

"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."

"We are struggling a little bit with some of the configuration we need to do, particularly with write capability to drives."

"Connectivity to the outside of the server needs to be improved at the same time the network is improving."

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

"The support from HPE Apollo could be better, they are making knowledgeable."

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

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

"The price point is a little high."

"The technical support was about the only negative experience that I had. It was a mixed bag when we were first standing it up. We had some requirements from our information security department, and technical support wasn't able to give me immediate answers. They had to engage engineering, which they did, then they got me the answers. However, it took a week of back and forth conversations and phone calls to get it all worked out."

"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."

"After delivering the contract, they became a little less active. So, it needs some pushing from my side sometimes."

"We'd like to see faster networking in the back-end."

"Over the two years of using HPE Synergy, we have found some hardware failures that are frequent in the SOP models, CNA cards, and converged network adapters. These failures are frequently happening for a lot of the customers."

"I would really like a way to validate the firmware in my specific environment before trying to deploy it."

"The performance could be better. At times, it could also be more stable."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."

"The biggest cost is the VMware licensing."

"We pay for licensing on the fibre channel uplinks, on the Virtual Connect, which is an add-on."

"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from 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."

"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."

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

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Outsourcing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	15

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

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 ...

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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 13% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XR-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 12% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 11% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

Supermicro SuperBlade vs HPE Synergy

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

July 2026

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

July 2026

Download 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

June 2026

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