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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
4.7
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (8th), Density Optimized Servers (3rd)
HPE Synergy
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
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 19.3%, down 28.5% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 19.5% mindshare, down 21.0% since last year.
Density Optimized Servers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Apollo Systems19.3%
Dell PowerEdge C24.7%
Huawei FusionServer X Series16.9%
Other39.1%
Density Optimized Servers
Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Synergy19.5%
HPE BladeSystem14.0%
HPE Superdome X9.8%
Other56.7%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Aruna Udawatte - PeerSpot reviewer
An affordable and easy-to-implement solution, but its after-sales support and technical support should be improved
We use HPE Apollo for specific requirements of Linux servers HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products. HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved. The solution should provide fast delivery when it comes to replacing a…
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

"HPE Apollo's support is the most valuable feature."
"HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products."
"With HPE Apollo, we can propose configurations with many hard drives, making it suitable for large storage needs."
"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."
"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."
"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."
"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."
"The wireless mounting system is excellent. We can use the monitor over the Internet and perform troubleshooting remotely with the connection to SQL. It includes a comprehensive monitoring tool. It offers many features, allowing us to update, manage, maintain, and troubleshoot the system efficiently."
"We have been able to give the deployment team what they request more quickly. We are able to quickly deploy what is being asked of us. If the development team needs a platform of 20 servers to run a particular platform, we can give that to them within a day or two."
"Improved storage, scalability, and ease-of-use."
"Support is very helpful."
"It is helping us sort of bridge a gap that we are having moving off of old legacy systems, like HP-UX systems and trying to move over to x86. So, it is helping fill a hardware gap that a lot of our platforms have needed in the past."
"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."
"The Online firmware update for the virtual connects has minimized our downtime windows."
"We've found the scalability to be reasonable if you are ready to invest in it."
 

Cons

"Lustre seems to be just a little bit unstable overall."
"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."
"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."
"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."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
"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."
"One of the issues that we that we have been having is with the firmware baselining. So, we need to just making sure that we get that working. However, we are in the early stages. It may well be that we just tweak a few things."
"After delivering the contract, they became a little less active. So, it needs some pushing from my side sometimes."
"I'd get the firmware to be a little more secure and a little more streamlined."
"It would be nice if the updates were not accompanied by downtime."
"Its management needs some work. It is not the best in terms of management. It has decent management. Its user interface can also be better."
"​Because we're using 2012, we're having issues making templates."
"One of the features I want to see, which I will see with OneView 5.0, is to have all the OneView consoles in a single pane of glass. That will make it easy to see everything in one place and not have to log in to multiple consoles."
"A big thing for me is moving InfoSight for ProLiant into OneView, or at least connecting it. Today we have to use the iLO Amplifier Pack and that would require us to reconfigure iLO on every single one of the servers, independently, to get that data into InfoSight. We're really looking for a single control and management plane."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."
"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."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."
"There is a perpetual license given when you purchase HPE Synergy."
"We are satisfied with its price."
"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."
"There was at least about a 20 percent savings in cost over our purchase based on the purchase price of the compute modules themselves versus what we've had to pay before. It was significantly less."
"We outright purchased Synergy."
"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?
Additional features would be beneficial in the next release of HPE Apollo Systems.
What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?
We were working with HPE Apollo Systems for one of our projects for the company named VVDN. We were using HPE Apollo Systems, GPU systems and CPU systems. For GPU systems, the model was 6500, in wh...
What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?
Our company is a platinum partner with HPE, and we continue to deal with HPE. We sell many of their hardware products. Depending on the requirement or deal, we may sell HPE Converged System, hardwa...
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 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...
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...
 

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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