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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
6.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (6th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)
HPE Synergy
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
89
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 23.3%, down 29.2% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 21.9% mindshare, up 21.8% since last year.
Density Optimized Servers
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Gayan Senadheera - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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 going to meet our needs moving forward, it is scalable."
"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."
"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."
"With HPE Apollo, we can propose configurations with many hard drives, making it suitable for large storage 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 solution has decreased the deployment time for a new blade, saving us three hours."
"In the data center, you see customers with a lot of blade enclosures and a lot of servers, and this solution works fine."
"Support is very helpful."
"Where it used to take one week to re-image or upgrade our hosts, it can now take one day."
"The temporal value of it. If I only need a particular amount of compute for a specific period of time during business hours, then at night, I'm running a bunch of batch jobs, or doing something else, that ability to swap a profile, swap templates, and have compute assigned to something else, saves significant amount of money. As long as you are tying it into the automation and orchestration layers, it becomes much easier to do."
"We like that the solution can be arranged for an all-in-one single pane of glass, something our customers find important."
"The manageability is its most valuable feature. It is a fully managed platform, which is very simple to manage."
 

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."
"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."
"Lustre seems to be just a little bit unstable overall."
"What's coming out in Gen 10 is very strong in terms of additional security."
"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."
"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."
"I would like it to connect to the HPE Cloud Connect compute platform for simplicity of our infrastructure."
"In the Generation 10 modules, we have observed that very often the server has hardware issues."
"There is certainly a feature or two missing."
"The profiles aren't so easy to work with."
"Sometimes there are firmware or software difficulties when connecting between networks or with storage."
"The initial setup was complex. We had a couple of bright engineers working on it, and they figured out a lot of things that they don't know... The problem was that they couldn't find documentation easily, to walk them through setup when they just didn't know the platform."
"There is always room for improvement. Based on our use cases, I don't believe there are any additional features required."
"I'd get the firmware to be a little more secure and a little more streamlined."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."
"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."
"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."
"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."
"It costs us around $60,000 a year."
"The cost is high and that is a drawback for some customers."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."
"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."
"The platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
8%
 

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.
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.
What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?
We use HPE Apollo for specific requirements of Linux servers.
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 do you like most about HPE Synergy?
It is a good product for hypervisors.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?
The pricing is relatively high compared to Cisco servers. However, due to the volume of my purchases, I get good discounts.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Weta Digital
HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United
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