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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
90
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 20.9%, down 30.3% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 20.6% mindshare, down 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

"HPE Apollo's most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."
"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."
"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."
"HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."
"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."
"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 has had a positive effect on the efficiency of our IT infrastructure team. The manageability of it is so easy, we're able to install it quickly, and replacement parts are easy to get in and out quickly."
"Improved storage, scalability, and ease-of-use."
"The solution helps us to implement new business requirements quickly with some app deployments."
"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."
"They're easy to swap and move around the datacenter, for sure. They don't occupy too much space for what they offer."
"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."
"There is no problem with the scalability."
"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."
 

Cons

"We are quite happy with it, but its price and storage density can be better."
"We could, perhaps, use more GPUs in the future, go from eight to 16 GPUs per instance. That could run head-to-head against the DGX-1, the DGX-2 that NVIDIA has developed in their own chassis. That would be interesting to see."
"The solution's deployment, security, and scalability need improvement."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."
"If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo."
"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."
"The solution must concentrate on improving the product quality."
"We have flaky things, like a lot of bad fans."
"Having a seamless DR implementation would help significantly."
"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."
"There is certainly a feature or two missing."
"I think we were promised a little more than we were given. It's true, they are working very hard to try to help remedy that."
"We had an issue during the initial setup with the 40 Gigabyte cards. They weren’t working, so we had to work really closely with HPE support to get them to work."
"It has been in the external integrations to other platforms that we have, which aren't HPE, where some of our challenges have been. I would like to see some integrations with non-HPE platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."
"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."
"It costs us around $60,000 a year."
"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."
"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."
"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."
"We are satisfied with its price."
"We outright purchased Synergy."
"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."
"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
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

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?
Pricing in the blade server market is very competitive, with HPE offering a competitive price. Competitor products include Dell's MX series and Cisco's UCS X series.
 

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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