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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

"With HPE Apollo, we can propose configurations with many hard drives, making it suitable for large storage needs."
"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."
"HPE Apollo's most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"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."
"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."
"we can use the same platform for several use cases: Hadoop, Ceph, and we are considering the server for another use case right now. It's a single solution, we only have to integrate it once and we can use it for several technologies."
"It's going to meet our needs moving forward, it is scalable."
"The most valuable features of HPE Synergy are the two composers."
"The scalability is very good. The ability to link chassis or frames together makes it simplistic, especially with the use of OneView."
"The most valuable features are the converged network adapters."
"This is above and beyond anything else any of the competitors have on the market. If you're researching this, you're going down the right path."
"With OneView, we can take care of all our servers in one dashboard."
"The manageability is its most valuable feature. It is a fully managed platform, which is very simple to manage."
"Changing the form factor in Synergy allows us to have more RAM, which is significantly helpful for us."
"There is no problem with the scalability."
 

Cons

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."
"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 would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"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."
"We are quite happy with it, but its price and storage density can be better."
"What's coming out in Gen 10 is very strong in terms of additional security."
"The solution's deployment, security, and scalability need improvement."
"There is certainly a feature or two missing."
"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."
"The only good thing is that they have some powerful machines that you can use, such as the latest generations of HPE Compute that you can use."
"It has affected the productivity of our development team in a bad way. When we first stood the hardware up 18 months ago, the image streaming capacity and capability were not very good at all. We had hoped that it would allow us to be more composable and be able to switch over from one version of an operating system to another version of an operating system. However, it wasn't ready for prime time yet. Therefore, we had to go back to a deployment of bare metal install. We are still waiting and trying to figure out how we can do the composable infrastructure."
"The power consumption is very high, and there should be a more efficient way of reducing the power requirements while maintaining high performance."
"Changes to the solution are quite complex."
"ICMs could be better in this model. When you look at its competitors, the most critical point is the throughput. HPE is the best with the ICM module, which is an interconnect module that connects the servers of the frames to the LAN and SAN. HPE Synergy should also support the latest processors provided by Intel."
"I would like to see more nodes in a single chassis so we wouldn't have to purchase additional chassis."
 

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."
"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."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."
"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."
"The licensing is more around the software for RGS, because we are deploying bare metal installs. It is mainly the operating system and any lights-out management. So, licensing is minimum. We are licensing it annually."
"It costs us around $60,000 a year."
"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."
"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."
"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 cost is high and that is a drawback for some customers."
"The solution can be expensive because it requires both hardware and software purchases."
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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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