HPE Synergy Reviews

We use HPE Synergy for infrastructure virtualization.

It is better to build the virtualization environment in this manner. To be honest, it is flexible and powerful.

The solution's greatest strengths lie in its ability to maintain a high availability and combine networking with hyper channel connectivity into a single component.

There is always room for improvement.

Based on our use cases, I don't believe there are any additional features required.

I have been working with HPE Synergy for three years.

There are two versions of HPE Synergy, both known as Gen10. One is available only in hardware form, while the other is the Gen10 Plus, which has been recently released. However, we are currently using the 480 Gen10 version.

HPE Synergy is very stable.

I would rate the scalability a nine out of ten.

The implementation process is straightforward. It is not complex.

We had assistance from the vendor to deploy it.

The design and the physical setup are identical. As long as the configuration is done correctly, there should be no issues with operations such as patching and firmware updates.

I would rate HPE Synergy a ten out of ten.

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.

I'm a system integrator and service delivery manager dealing with strategy. We are an HPE partner company. 

The interfusion and administration are great features that all HPE products have. I also like the flexibility including configuring the interconnects on the use of the chassis.

I find the product documentation to be disorganized; it's not intuitive and the info required for checking a specific step-by-step configuration is buried under too much literature. This could be a more robust solution with an effective internal storage portfolio for the servers. If they were to provide an end-to-end NDM product, that would be much better.

I've been using this solution for over a year. 

The solution is quite stable. 

The solution is scalable for our customers' requirements. 

In general, the technical support is pretty good but it's not the best here in India. There is a lack of knowledge, especially in the storage area. We had implementations that required some workarounds and support wasn't able to help because they were working with a specific scripted plan and didn't have enough information to deal with all aspects of the deployment. 

The initial setup is very easy and straightforward. 

Our customers are generally medium to enterprise size clients and mainly in the banking sector. HPE is currently running neck and neck with Dell but if I had to make a choice, I'd recommend HPE. If all your requirements are well-defined, pre-deployment and implementation is easy.

I rate it nine out of ten.

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.

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.

Ease of use, manageability, the time given back to the operations staff for managing and applying Synergy are the most valuable features.

It gives more time back to our operations team. It helps us track and report automatically to HPE for any issues.

The composable Synergy infrastructure makes our life easier by having a single-pane-of-glass to go to. There is one place to get alerts, monitor the performance and troubleshoot.

The Synergy API is new for us, but it is something that was common to us. We were familiar with the APIs and working with them, in the past. It is easy for us to use.

IT automation gives back time to the operations staff, making it easier for implementation and deployment.

HPE Synergy software-defined infrastructure simplifies our operations by quickening deployment, quickening roll-out and services to our clinicians and physicians.

Although it is modular, the shared infrastructure is highly available. We know that there are power availability, redundancy network and availability in the redundancy throughout the stack. We're very comfortable with it.

In the future for Synergy, we would like to see SaaS connectivity and sharing of storage between frames.

Stability is great. The system functions in a high-availability mode, so we've done updates and stayed online. It's great for us.

Scalability is good, we've got full frames so we've scaled all of our frames all the way up.

The technical support has been awesome. They have worked with us, we were the first installation in America. They've been great with their support.

Although the platform was new, we made the decision to invest in it because we believe in our partner HPE; they have come through in the past for us, and we have a long, standing relationship with them. We thought that this was just something else, even though it was bleeding edge for us, we decided to do the implementation and partner up with them.

The initial setup was somewhat new, not just to us, i.e., the customer, but also to the implementation team.

Get hands-on experience with HPE OneView. You need to understand Synergy and what your host will need from the connectivity and I/O perspective.

Go for it.

It's useful for virtualization, and we run all our applications in HPE Synergy.

I like that it's suitable for virtualization. It's also stable and scalable. The newer version has a lot of memory, and you don't have to worry about updates.

The performance could be better. The converged network cards initially didn't work. However, later on in the newer version, they came up with 50 GB network cards to replace the 20 GB ones, and it's perfectly fine now. At times, it could also be more stable.

I have been using HPE Synergy since 2018.

HPE Synergy is stable.

HPE Synergy is a scalable composable infrastructure. We have 12 networks and about 1,500 users on the networks.

I have contacted technical support whenever it was required.

The initial setup was very easy. I installed and deployed this solution within a day. We have one engineer managing and maintaining this solution.

I implemented this solution by myself.

We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan.

I evaluated a lot of options like Dell, Nutanix, and more before choosing HPE Synergy.

I would recommend this solution to potential users.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give HPE Synergy a ten.

We primarily use the solution in order to deploy an on-prem client.

The most valuable feature within the solution is the main management offering. They call it the GreenLake offering. It's the OPEX model. They manage that for the client.

The stability is very good so far. The performance has been reliable.

The solution is easily scalable. You can expand it if you want to.

If you have the right team in place, the initial setup is pretty straightforward.

Technical support is excellent. They are very helpful.

They're way ahead of the game. The software-defined fabric they have is very good.

They actually have a different offering with Nutanix. That's more generic. The Synergy platform is HPE-specific and more for on-premises. You're kind of locked in with VMware and the HPE with the VMs. The Nutanix offering is a bit more flexible.

I've been using the solution for about a year and a half. That was when it was installed by a client. It hasn't been too long.

We have the stability to be reliable. The performance is good. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is extremely scalable. It's one of the highlights of the product for us. If a company needs to expand, it can do so with ease.

It's a data center offering. Whatever applications are installed on there, and, in our case, there are hundreds of applications installed, services all the users.

We have been in touch with their technical support and they assisted us in the implementation process. Their assistance is top-of-the-line. The team is helpful and responsive. We're quite satisfied with the level of support provided.

I have experience with Nutanix. I would say with Nutanix, the sky's the limit there. It's very comprehensive and it integrates with all the clouds - and you have the on-prem as well if you need it.

The initial setup isn't too complex. It's straightforward. With the team we had, it was fairly easy. We also had assistance from HPE throughout the process, and having their insights were helpful.

In general, the maintenance is handled by HPE. We don't have to worry about it.

HPE was there all along the way. It was very good. They're very good to work with.

I can't discuss the exact amount of money we pay for licensing. The amount is confidential.

It's my understanding that the deal we arrived at was very competitive.

We are consultants. HPE is simply a service provider for us.

I don't recall which version of the solution we are using.

I would advise others considering the solution to consider the Nutanix HPE with the GreenLake as an alternate. There is just a little bit more flexibility in a product like Nutanix, although they are all good.

I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten.