HPE Synergy Reviews

Moving virtual machines over to Synergy.

In a hybrid cloud environment, the solution enables us to do SQL. We are able to move it up and take it down.

Storage-wise, I don't have to order more storage. It is so modular that I can pick and add what I need.

The solution helps to manage our IT landscape by allocating more servers.

The solution helps us to implement new business requirements quickly. We are installing weight scales across the state. We can bring up machine per weigh station quickly.

When our development team requests servers or services, we are able to bring it up. The return time of bringing up a virtual machine hardware is now quicker.

It has a modular design. We are able to add more to it when needed.

It is really easy to use, because it's GUI-based. It is not command line based, like mainframes.

There are some functions which are not clear cut.

Instead of having Synergy vertical, make it horizontal. It is easier to stick in when it is vertical.

So far, it has been really stable for three years.

The scalability is good. We were trying to order another system to be able to install at the state data center, and it was very scalable. 

I haven't had to talk to technical support yet.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We deployed in-house.

We have not seen ROI.

The solution has reduced our cost of operations. It has also reduced our IT infrastructure costs. 

I would go with Synergy. It is better than the Nutanix solution. Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy.

Go with what is comfortable for the employees. We were using HPE for some time, then we switched off of it for some time. After switching back, our employees adapted to it quickly, because it was easy to use.

I wasn't here when they began installing it, so I can't tell what the deployment time was before. Over time as the teams get used to it, the return time is now two to three hours.

Our primary use case for this solution is virtualization.

It is a continuation of converged infrastructure. That is why we are interested in it.

The solution has reduced our infrastructure costs compared to the c7000 platform.

The most valuable feature of this solution is convergence.

OneView is head and shoulders above the competition in this space, though I would like to see some improvements to it.

I would like a longer amount of data for bandwidth utilization on Ethernet ports inside, as well as uplinks. The amount of data stored on them is way too small.

The stability is very good. We haven't had any outages.

For me, the scalability is how much money that I need to spend on switches for how many frames, which ultimately means servers. To get the best bandwidth before the most recent product announcement, I have buy new switches every three frames. The competition is shipping a product right now where I only need switches every ten frames.

it depends on what technical support you pay for, but the lowest echelon of HPE technical support is sadly uninformed, unknowledgeable, and dependent on wrote scripts. They won't answer a question without going through their script. It's not like you're actually talking to somebody who has any depth or time using any of the equipment.

They introduced Synergy, and we waited for a while. However, the reason for investing in Synergy isn't for normal business functions or functionality reasons. The main reason was that we knew that we wanted to buy servers that we wanted to keep for five years, and there isn't a big future in the c7000 platform.

Synergy is the same product in a different package.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We were direct through HPE.

Make sure you understand your own decision-making criteria and what is important to your company. Investigate all vendor options. Question your assumptions.

Get it into your lab and test it out before you make a sizeable financial commitment.

The things that I think are important HPE doesn't, and competitors do think they are important.

We are going to use it for the SQL server and hypervisors, thus for virtualization. From our point of view, it is the compute power that we are really looking to use. So, expanding on what we have been doing with the C7000 series, and moving it into Synergy.

We are just in the process of building it out. We have not had a chance to review what it will do for us in terms of what we currently have.

We are hoping rather than having to do manual tasks. We can redeploy resources to do other tasks. Automation saves us time and effort when doing these mundane tasks.

The composable infrastructure, so being able to build our own server profiles, then build up the infrastructure that we need from compute modules. Just automating all the management tasks that we have for our server hardware.

It is hard to say because we have not fully implemented it yet.

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, then it does everything for us.

It seems to be really stable. We did blow one hardware model, but I think that was just a build issue. Other than that, it has been very stable.

On the scalability, it looks like it is right there for us, which is really good.

I have not used technical support yet.

We previously used the C7000 blade infrastructure, but that was kind of one enclosure with servers, and they were able to scale using multiple frames, multiple frame groups, etc. 

So, we were starting to outgrow our C7000 series. We started to grow our SAN network, therefore we had gone from 8G to 32G. Thus, our virtualization stage was growing, so we needed capacity. With the Synergy environment, we can just scale out. That is what we could not really do with the C7000 series.

Our reseller installed it; a third-party.

No. We are an HPE outfit, so everything is HPE.

Understand your needs, understand where you are going, and what your future and the future of the industry are. Make sure you invest and research into all the products that are available.

Synergy is first in class for composable infrastructure. It has the scalability that meets our future needs and the automation that builds into something that we are really looking forward to using.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor: Support, reliability, stability and the feature technologies which are included in the product.

Internally, we use it for VSAN as well as Docker, with the flexibility to flop between the two solutions at will. We also demonstrate the solution for multiple customers.

Performance is fantastic.

The big benefit that we are seeing is the fact that we are so highly flexible. It makes things more agile. We're able to provision different applications, different demonstrations, add cloud-like speeds on-prem, which is unheard of in the industry.

• The composable infrastructure with the Image Streamer.
• Being able to seamlessly migrate from one operating environment to another within minutes, is invaluable.

I'm very curious to see what comes with 4.0.

The big thing will be streamlining the Image Streamer process for deployment. The actual frame itself - Composer, OneView, all that - works fantastic. The more granular permissions that I know are coming are great. That answered a lot of our big questions and big customer demand. 

Now it's about the flexibility and the simplicity of using the product day to day and getting new features stood up as customer demands come forward. I'm not sure exactly what I want next but I'm looking forward to seeing what's next.

Stability is fantastic at this point. I think it's come a long way. I think with the latest versions, especially the new version coming out in December, it's been fantastic and we're looking forward to it.

The scalability is fantastic. It goes from a relatively small size to as large as you want it to go. I've yet to find a customer that couldn't use Synergy to scale to their needs.

I've used tech support extensively. They've been fantastic with the solution so far. I've been engaged on several support calls as we stood up our frame and got things going. We ran into some issues that were very unique, to say the least. We were engaged with support within minutes, case was resolved quickly, we were escalated when we needed to be escalated, and everything was seamless. I mean it was, overall, a great experience.

It has gotten better. The initial setup we did was on 3.0 and that was overly complex. With 3.10, everything's been changed, revolutionized, the guided setup made things a breeze. I've been able to walk colleagues of mine through it. I'm able to demonstrate to customers how easy it is to set the frame up and get things going right out of the box. That's been an incredible change.

We've gotten enough training that we're able to set the product up for our customers and walk customers through it without the need for having HPE expertise on site. Worse case scenario, they're a phone call away, but it's been so simple to use, it's been fantastic.

For us, when selecting a vendor,

• Simplicity is a big factor. We've got a very broad range of customers, including ourselves.
• We're looking at what is fast, what is simple, does performance and value meet those expectations? 
• We're looking for stuff where there's not a whole lot of, I don't want to say hands-on, but where there's not a lot of need to be nitty-gritty to get things going quickly.
• The ability to customize things for our customers' environments is great.

Those are all the features we're looking for when we're looking for our partner. We evaluate, obviously, agnostic across the board, as a partner. So we're constantly evaluating HPE versus Dell versus Cisco, and time and time again HPE wins that battle because of the simplicity; because of the feature-rich environment. They're just leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else.

I would give it an eight out of 10 overall. It is a great solution. Obviously, we had a few stumbles. We still get a lot of questions of "Why Synergy versus the current generation products?" Some of those things aren't always apparent. I do know that with things coming down the road, with Photonics and the like, it's going to alleviate a lot of other things. It's a solution that's most of the way there. I'm looking forward to seeing it get across the finish line to be the all encompassing datacenter solution for our customers.

There's no other solution that's similar. 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. The best thing to do is actually get hands-on and get a demo. Contact HPE and start taking a look at the advance features and start looking at how your applications and demands are going to be met and how you want to customize your experience going forward.

I believe, compared to the C7000, which is the mainstream in Brazil, it delivers a significant amount of innovation and flexibility, and I think people there will love it. The way Brazilians see things is that, "Okay, I need something that works. I need something easy to manage, because it's expensive, manpower is expensive. And I need a reliable platform, which is easily managed, so everybody can understand and use it with ease, with no problems, and that delivers value to their business.

I love the satellite architecture for the Virtual Connect. I think this is great. I love the storage drawer, which you can present volumes to any compute node within the same frame. I understand why you cannot present storage to compute nodes on other frames, but that is a question that sometimes I get from customers. Why not? I say, "Okay, you have to have a cable running over and have another SAN switch on the second frame. It will not be easy. I don't know if HPE is satisfied with this approach. They're saying, "Okay, let's stick with the drawer presenting volumes within the same frame." But the satellite architecture it's incredible. It was very well thought out. 

And the management ring, I think it's also great. 

These advancements - regardless of the advancements on chips, on more memory, addressing, computing, etc., customers expect that - but with this architecture of the management rings, this is really nice. This is a very nice idea. 

The Image Streamer, I see the value of it. Hopefully, customers will see the value of it, but I don't expect many Brazilians deploying Image Streamers, because they don't have this culture.

OneView, as a single point, a single management tool, it makes me delirious. It's really nice. People developing using the API for OneView, I don't see it too much. Brazilians are still at the beginning of this idea of consuming IT as a service. Their approach is, "Okay, I have all the APIs exposed and I can program my own Chef recipe and simple recipe and use and orchestrate Synergy the way I want." They are still in the early stages of this, but maybe it will gain traction in the future.

I rate Synergy a nine out of 10 because there's no perfection. But I think that in terms of the proposition of the product, what the product wants to achieve, they really achieved it. I was at the booth (at the Discover conference in Madrid) on the next generation of Synergy and I talked to an engineer. I asked what has changed? He said we changed some specs, etc. We delivered the Image Streamer composing Windows machines, we put the VC with an extra gig, etc. It was expected. It is a minor advance, in my opinion. This is not bad, this is good. This means they met their criteria, the whole criteria, in the initial launch of the product, so there is nothing to evolve into, all of a sudden.

So, to really evolve the product from where it is right now, it will take time. That means the product was very well conceived, they mostly meet their goals for the product. The next generation, let's say the ServerSpec for Windows, it's just minor stuff, but we expected it, so this is a very good sign. It's a very mature product from the start.

What I would like to see is a little bit more of architecture-oriented advertising campaigns or events for customers; not on the product itself, but more on the way they advertise products. They are too focused on the features. This is okay, but sometimes what I see that people lack is, "Okay, I understood the features, but how can I use this in practical terms? How can I put my Oracle in there? How can I use it for a VDI? Can I architect a huge SQL cluster with it, and what would be the best way to do that?"

I think that the documentation says that, but I don't see any events. I don't see any advertising in those terms.

In the end, it's more like they are giving the components, but they are not showing what you can do with the components. You can see you have all this, but what can I do from this? Can I make a cake out of it, or I can do an omelet? I can, but how? That's the missing link. They need to give me some ideas on how I can use this in such a way that I achieve my goals. This is the only thing that I really think the product lacks, a little bit more consumer-focused mindset. 

When you are talking about the product, talking only about features is good for me, for the partner, because I understand how to use the features to make the cake, but they don't.

It varies from area to area. From the storage guys, I get very strong support. They are very sympathetic guys, good knowledge. They are very smart people and they are really willing to help. 

From the networking guys, so-so. I don't know exactly why, but they leave you a little bit, let's say, on your own. But, in that area, the HPE documentation is very good. So you don't have to fall back to support often. 

Servers, I don't really need support, because you can find your way around. 

But with other stuff, software stuff especially, say Data Protector - now it's Micro Focus - it was a total nightmare. 

So, it varies from area to area and I can see within HPE they have different approaches in different areas. The storage guys are more like a family. They work together, they are committed together. The networking guys, they are more "I'm a self-made man, so it's me, it's him," it's not us. I feel that more or less. And servers, it's okay: "What do you need, give me a yell. I'll help you with that." Simplivity, I haven't had any experience with Simplivity as of yet. So, I can't tell you anything about it. 

But for Synergy, the Synergy guys, they are very good, really supportive.

In Brazil, they have a culture of reusing things, they don't like to dispose of a server every three years or so. I know in Europe and United States, a refresh cycle of three years is absolutely normal and they are ready to scrap their G7, scrap their G8, and get the G9. But in Brazil you can find G5 easily, G5 and G6. They have this culture of extending the lifetime of the product as much as they can or until it breaks.

With Simplivity, I think that we can address that very nicely, because as you can expand, it's the latest technology and you can put so many things in it. You can put storage, it can present every compute node, you can support satellites and expand the chassis. I believe that this will address this behavior that the Brazilians have and they'll say, "Okay, so I can invest in this platform now and believe that seven years from now, it will be the same. I will still be able to put hardware on it, I can still use it." And that will create fidelity from them for HPE.

The only driver, I cannot state this strongly enough, the only driver that I face when with I'm a customer, and I meet Dell or I meet Lenovo there, is money. They like them because they're cheaper.

I have never heard a customer saying HPE has a better product. I have never heard anybody say a Dell server is better than an HPE server; a Lenovo server is better than an HPE server. I always hear them say it's cheaper. This is what compels them to buy Dell, on whichever level, whether it's networking, storage, servers.

I just took my certification in Synergy. I was one of the first technicians in Brazil who qualified for Synergy. The main driver for me to take the certification for this platform is because I deem Synergy like an evolutionary platform rather than revolutionary. I think the machine will be the revolution, but Synergy is an evolutionary platform.

HPE is really the leading platform. I heard once that HPE is a company that is run by engineers. And engineers are passionate about it. Dell doesn't create things. Dell just manufactures things. That's why I love HPE technology so much, because I understand that HPE is really about engineering stuff and creating stuff and doing it better. Dell, they are just getting parts somewhere. They are assembling it, and they are selling it cheaper. 

That's why I really love HPE and I'm a strong partner. There's a strong partnership with HPE and I don't see leaving it anytime in the future. I come to the HPE Discover conference very often, attended the last Discover in Las Vegas. I'm attending this one in Madrid, and every time, the same: My commitment with HPE gets stronger and stronger and I really love the technology.

It is flexible and composable hardware. You can really buy the stuff you need. If you want more storage, you can put in more storage. If you want more server capacity, then you can add more CPUs of memory.

It is kind of a new solution. We are using it now during our testing and development environment, so we can make it ready for production later. The idea is to buy them when we purchase new servers for the production environment in Q2 or Q3.

• The newer and faster Intel line of CPUs that are coming in GEN 10
• The software

OneView software is quite new and that will cause some improvements. Once we have it completely set up with the automation part, it will certainly help us in getting towards our vision.

At this moment, stability is still good. HPE support helped us with the implementations, because we were the first customer in Europe who bought one of these. They were really helpful in getting us running.

Scalability is one of the main advantages. You can scale the different areas, like storage, compute, and memory, to your needs.

Technical support is very good. For HPE, this is also a new product. Not every field engineer has been certified, so sometimes they came with three people to look at it on our site.

I already knew for a couple of years that we needed to invest in this solution. We've been using the blade systems, the C7000s, for 10 years already. We knew at certain point that this model was going to be replaced eventually.

The initial setup was quite complex and it is being done by the HPE support department. It is not yet ready for customers to do themselves. In the end, it will be more straightforward. You will be able, at a later time, to automate and script it, so that eventually when you connect a new device, you will be able to have it automatically installed.

We evaluated Huawei, the Chinese company. When we select a vendor, we want one who can support and also deliver in all countries in the world where we do business. We don't want to have a vendor that can only deliver in Germany, for example. HPE can deliver in the USA, in Europe, and in Asia. That's important to us. We define standards in our headquarters. These are standard building blocks. We want to buy those in all of our data centers, all over the world: in Asia, in India, in China, and in the USA. That's important for us.

I would advise getting in touch with a HPE account manager. I think doing direct business with a vendor is the best way of getting the right information. From what we've seen, it is better than working via re-sellers or partners, who are often smaller and only work in one country. It's better to deal directly with the vendor, which is usually the case with large companies. If you are a small company, you may have to go via a re-seller or partner. It depends on the size of your company.

We do a lot with ESX and virtualization of workloads.

It streamlines network connectivity, fibre connectivity. It's made it all very simple, very easy. Once you get it set up, it's ready to go.

In terms of implementing new business requirements quickly, it helps with time to deployment. We bring a new server online and, within a few hours, we have it up and running and in production. It's absolutely decreased our deployment time by four or five hours per server.

Synergy helps with the efficiency of our IT infrastructure teams because I don't have to have the network guy do something for a new piece of hardware. Instead, I'm able to provision dynamically.

From a switch-port count and a fibre-port count point of view, it has definitely reduced our IT infrastructure costs.

Cable management is a big feature, in addition to time to deployment. We can buy a new server and have it up and running very quickly.

For managing our IT landscape I'm able to go into the profiles and the automating of firmware management across multiples nodes, and I am able to orchestrate all that with OneView.

I would really like a way to validate the firmware in my specific environment before trying to deploy it. Those were the issues we had early on with firmware upgrades, particularly around certificates. All in all, having some level of confidence aside from it just having been tested generically would help. Something more specific to my environment would be very helpful.

There is room for improvement in the speed; that would be the biggest thing. The time to deploy firmware... Everything takes a really long time. Having that all sped up would be nice. The 4.2 firmware release has helped tremendously with that. From my side, I see about a 30 percent improvement in speed already.

The solution is very stable. Early on we had firmware issues but those have gone away. It's moving forward very nicely.

The scalability of the solution is excellent.

Technical support has been good. Early on - we were more of an early adopter - there were some issues with support. Lately, support has been fantastic.

We were using straight DL380s before. In my previous life I used the c7000. The c7000 timeframe was up. We needed more density and fewer cables. It really wasn't too hard a decision.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward.

We used a VAR for the initial deployment. Our experience with them was excellent. They knew the product. They had set it up before; it was very obvious. Their pre-planning was top-notch. We were very happy with them.

For the second deployment we did not use a third-party, we did that all in-house.

We really didn't have a shortlist. We are an HPE shop from start to end.

I am very happy with the solution. I have no major complaints. Support is what I expect from HPE support when it comes to these products. It has simplified our operations. I don't honestly know if it's reduced costs. It probably hasn't as of yet, as we're not full.

We're not so much using it for hybrid cloud at the moment. We're using it more for day-to-day operations. We used HPE's Education Services to move to the solution.

I would rate Synergy at nine out of ten. Everything has room for improvement. This is a robust, stable, scalable solution. I have no major complaints at this time.

It's our day-to-day production device. We deploy our workloads and VMs in clusters on it.

The solution helps us to implement new business requirements quickly, by using the Composer for efficiency. It has also improved the productivity of our development team due to the efficiency of being able to deploy via Composer. We're able to deploy development environments rapidly. We have seen about a 25 percent reduction in deployment times.

Ease of use.

It's absolutely reliable. Zero outages.

It's easily scalable.

Technical support is solid. We really haven't had issues with it, so we haven't had to go down that path much yet.

We had aging gear. We went from c7000s into Synergy.

The initial setup was straightforward. We met them at the data center for four days. We racked, stacked, and deployed it. They showed me the ropes. It was easy.

We used an integrator/reseller. They were solid.

We've seen ROI through density and capacity into it. Where I had four c7000 chassis running a lot of standalone stuff, I was able to consolidate a lot of that and virtualize it. It has reduced our cost of operations and IT infrastructure costs, the latter by about 50 percent. With aging gear that needed long-term maintenance, consolidating into a chassis or two reduced maintenance costs.

We went with Synergy because it was the best-in-breed and the next generation, from the existing c7000s. We're exclusively an HPE shop, so we didn't really fish around.

Definitely go with it. Use this product. It's best-in-breed. The biggest lesson we've learned from using this solution is to continue using this solution.

I would give it a nine out of ten for sure because it's 100 percent reliable and for the ease of use. I seldom give anything a ten. There's always room for improvement, I'm just not thinking of a specific feature or two that are missing, but there is certainly a feature or two missing.