HPE Synergy Reviews

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.

We are resellers of HPE Synergy and I'm the CTO. 

Synergy has great data storage and it's a storage module. It's very good for software defined solutions. For example, customers needing a large data solution can use Synergy with blade and storage modules, but in a VMware environment for database solutions, Synergy is not useful. The important thing is the application - I think Synergy is a very good solution in some cases, but not for general purpose solutions or mixed environments, such as VM and physical environments that require larger storage.

I think the main issue with Synergy is a topology that HPE defines to connecting and creating a cluster. There are satellites and interconnecting modules which should interconnect with one special topology. If you want to change that and add another shelf in the cluster you have to change everything. I think it's very, very complex. But for example, in UCS, you have fabric interconnects, USC blades connect to fabric interconnects. It allows you to add more and more USC blades to the fabric interconnect. There is no connectivity between blades chassis. In Synergy, there are many connections between the blades chassis and I think that's the main issue. The other thing is that Synergy has a composer module that OneView runs on and which manages that cluster. I don't like HPE softwares. I think, for example, in comparison, the UCS manager is the better solution for managed blades than OneView. OneView is not as strong for that

It would be helpful if Synergy would add Cisco networking products, and network models in CSG, C 7000, maybe Blade models, software Cisco products, for example, b 22, CISCO B22 modules. I think the number of customers that use Cisco in their data centers is more than the customers that use HPE solutions. Because of that, I think HPE should add Cisco products and network modules to Synergy - I think that would be a good idea. 

I've been using this solution for two years. 

Although the setup is complex, once it's up and running, the product is stable. 

The scalability is very complex. In Cisco, you connect everything to fabric interconnect. You can attain the blades on their fabric interconnect so scalability is one of main issues in Synergy.

Because of the cabling between FLM modules and a composer, the initial setup is complex. We are more familiar with IPv4 than IPv6. I think the initial setup is more complex than for UCS or c7000.

This is a good solution but it has some issues. 

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

We use the Synergy Frame to host the main infrastructure for a big project. We have multiple Synergy Frames that are all managed by a single OneView interface.

The uptime and the performance meet our expectations, plus the integration with 3PAR is very good.

The OneView installed on the Composers has a very friendly user interface, which helps to manage the compute modules in the frame, compared to management used in legacy technologies.

The Online firmware update for the virtual connects has minimized our downtime windows.

The features we found most valuable are:

• Using only two virtual connect modules to support network for multiple frames
• Ease of management using the OneView Composer
• Online firmware update for the Virtual Connects, which are part of a single logical interconnect module

The OneView has improved a lot throughout the years with the release of the Synergy and OneView version 4, although it still has issues. The stability and smoothness of firmware upgrades for the compute modules can be improved by enabling full composability of the Synergy Frame.

We have been using this solution for two years.

This solution is very stable.

Our impression of the scalability is very good in terms of Composer and virtual connects, since you need only two of each for multiple frames.

Technical support for this solution has a very good initial response; however, escalation takes time, and most of the time the first level of support cannot solve your case.

We used a different solution previously, but we switched because of the ease of management, and in addition, this solution is future proof.

The initial setup is done by a partner and it is straightforward, but it takes time.

Our deployment was handled by a Vendor Team, and they are very experienced.

We did evaluate other options before choosing this solution, including Dell PowerEdge M1000e and Cisco UCS.

My suggestion is to go with HPE Synergy Composer v2 once it is released. 

Have HPE support with you while doing hardware upgrades.

We're using Synergy primarily as a replacement for our C7000 Blade servers, which are going out-of-life.

We use VMware ESX across all of our Synergy nodes. On top of that, we have a mixture of workloads from web servers, application servers, and Microsoft SQL databases.

Using this solution has allowed me to devote more time to other tasks since the administration is so easy.

Our business needs are somewhat static, so we do not often have to implement new business requirements. However, when we have had to spin things up quickly, we were able to do that in this environment.

This solution has greatly increased the efficiency of our IT infrastructure teams. We have fewer administrators working on the infrastructure, and we’ve now been able to transition a number of those people into DevOps roles.

This solution has decreased our deployment time, although I cannot give exact figures. I can say that we’ve been able to implement the Blue-Green Methodology as a result of the increased capacity that we have in the Synergy environment.

Using Synergy has reduced our cost of operations because it allows more dense placement of the virtual machines than our previous solution.

The most valuable features of this solution are the ease of management and the integration with OneView. The ease that we can allocate servers during busy times helps us to manage our IT landscape.

A faster Composer module would be a good inclusion for the next release of this solution.

I would like to see an increased variety of uplink options in the Virtual Connects.

The inclusion of these features would allow us to more easily grow our network infrastructure and accommodate future growth.

There are improvements that can be made in the area of OneView integrations and firmware, with respect to how the proper firmware versions are matched to the OneView installation that you have. 

This solution has been quite stable for us, so far. There have been a number of updates and the product is still going through a maturity cycle, so I expect that the stability will continue.

For the most part, our developers are not aware of the underlying infrastructure on which they're doing the work, but that’s probably a good thing because if they were aware then it may be for bad reasons. We’ve had a lot of success with continuous uptime on these boxes, so it’s not really noticed by our developers.

One of the reasons that we purchased Synergy is that it's easily scalable.

Technical support has been a bit of a mixed bag. When we've had issues, we've called in and sometimes it's taken a while to get to a resolution. Generally, I would say that I'm satisfied with technical support.

We have used the HPE PointNext services, and they are very knowledgeable engineers.

We were using C7000 Enclosures and some Rack Mount servers. Our existing C7000 Blade Chassis Enclosure was performing well, but it is going end-of-support so we needed something new. We did an evaluation of Synergy and we found that it fit our needs.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward.

We used a value-added reseller and hired the HPE installation services to come with the solution. They assisted us with setting it up, and the experience was quite good.

We have seen ROI, although I do not have datapoints that I can share.

We pay for licensing on the fibre channel uplinks, on the Virtual Connect, which is an add-on. This is in addition to the VMware and Microsoft licensing for the operating systems.

Our IT infrastructure costs have not been affected by this solution. Most of our infrastructure surrounding and supporting Synergy was already purchased prior to it being set up.

We did not look outside of HPE, as we're exclusively an HPE shop on the compute side. We looked at the available offerings and wanted to make sure that they fit our needs through a proof of concept.

Synergy is definitely a solution that I would recommend for forward-thinking IT shops.

The biggest lesson that I have learned is to make sure that you do all of the available training sessions on the new technology.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We use this solution to run both our production and non-production environments. We currently do not have any cloud initiatives, but we bought it so that we can be future protected for the cloud.

Where it used to take one week to re-image or upgrade our hosts, it can now take one day.

This solution helps us with new business requirements because we have the ability to expand or add more frames, depending on the requests from the business process.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the ease of deploying servers, profiles, and images.

Having that single pane of glass is a good feature for the management of our environment.

The vendor needs to focus on the features that are already included and make them better.

The installation and initial setup process is complex and needs to be improved.

Once this solution is implemented, it is very stable.

One of the reasons we chose this solution is because it's highly scalable.

I don't think that the technical support for the product is there yet. I think that they're building up people to that novel technology, but there's very limited knowledge at the first and second level of support for this product.

The initial setup of this solution is complex. The interconnects would not connect and nobody knew why. It took at least forty days to complete.

We used an integrator for our deployment. We felt that they lacked in-depth knowledge of the product. They knew the service stuff, but if something went wrong then they didn't really know how to bring it back online.

I would say that we haven't seen ROI yet, but it was a way to get off of our old chassis and we had to start fresh. I would say that we will have our savings by year five.

This solution has decreased our deployment time by approximately sixty-five percent.

My advice is that if you're looking for a product that helps you save time when deploying your hosts, then this is the perfect solution. It is flexible and can handle many different workloads.

The biggest thing that I have learned from using this solution is to be patient. Once it's up and running it's great.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use Synergy for VMware and some physical servers.

There is no comparison between installing a server by hand versus having everything automated in place. That makes a big difference. By automating we can avert human errors. Life becomes easier and operations become much easier.

It helps us manage our IT landscape by reducing the amount of manual work we have to do.

In terms of implementing new business requirements quickly, so far my exposure to Synergy is the fact that we can automate everything. We can easily spin up a new virtual machine and scale up our capacity for VMware. If we need to scale out or scale up an application we can do it very easily. We can have the VMware infrastructure ready in no time.

Overall, it has made us more efficient. On the infrastructure side, we have more control over the firmware and how we are managing our physical servers.

Synergy has also decreased our deployment time and reduced our cost of operations.

• It provides us with automation at the hardware level. 
• Coordination through HPE OneView is great.

I would be more comfortable if Ansible actually rolled back the data used for automating platforms. If it could be communicated to the upstream Ansible, I wouldn't need to go back and forth and validate the libraries as we upgrade the Ansible version. The backward compatibility is there, but if we need to spend time testing the code frequently, it will make our lives difficult, and we might lose some production cycles.

It's pretty stable. We wouldn't have bought it otherwise.

It's scalable.

I don't have any experience with HPE technical support.

If someone is looking at HPE Synergy, c7000, or Cisco UCS, Synergy is worth a shot because it provides a lot of flexibility and automation. It can make the lives of operations team members, or whoever is managing the hardware, much better due to the automation. The biggest thing that I like about Synergy is the automation.

Compared to the other product that I have used, I would rate Synergy at eight out of ten. This is a cool platform. Compared to UCS this is a little better, more user-friendly.

We use it for our analytics platform.

We're able to support the placement of devices a lot more quickly.

It helps us manage our IT landscape because it's very scalable, so we can add nodes as we need to.

When it comes to implementing new business requirements quickly, the solution is helpful. We had to build out a topology to support new software that we're running. We were able to just drop it in and, within a week, we were up and running.

It has also 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.

Synergy has decreased deployment time. We have gone from about a week down to two days.

The most valuable feature of the solution is its manageability.

I would like to see more nodes in a single chassis so we wouldn't have to purchase additional chassis.

The stability is great. We haven't had any issues with it so far.

The scalability of the solution is similar to the previous c7000.

We haven't had to open a case with technical support, which is great.

We used HPE's c7000 previously. The switch was a customer-driven decision.

The setup was straightforward.

We used a reseller. We've always worked with Comport and they're a great partner.

We were able to reduce our turnaround time on some of our projects, from upwards of three or four days down to a couple of hours.

The solution hasn't reduced our cost of operations or IT infrastructure cost. Our TCO is about the same.

We didn't look at any other vendors for this solution.

Definitely look into it. It's a great solution. Do your research to make sure that it's for you.

The biggest lesson I have learned from using this solution is that HPE builds great solutions in blade infrastructure.

I would rate Synergy an eight out of ten, mostly because of the reduction in the number of nodes.

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.

We use it for mission-critical applications and mission-critical databases. An example is that we host development servers on it.

In terms of managing our IT landscape, the solution helps us allocate more servers when needed, within the cluster.

Synergy also helps us implement new business requirements quickly. We needed a new VMware cluster for a particular application. We were able to throw those Synergy hosts in there and create it really quickly for QRadar, and attach a lot of storage to it.

It's something that is easy to implement and get moving on and I don't have to worry about anything else.

• Dependability
• Reliability
• The ease of managing the system

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.

The stability is great.

The scalability is very good. It's easy to scale out: Throw a blade in there and apply a profile to it and move on.

Technical support is great. HPE has always had great technical support.

We were running out of resources and some of our hardware was getting old and needed to be replaced. We used Cisco UCS and we still use it. We purchased both of them to leverage out our resources with our different vendors.

The initial setup was a little complex because it was a new system for us; different than the c7000 enclosures that we used before.

We used a reseller and our experience with them was very good.

We can put a bigger workload on there because the systems can produce a lot more resources now. I would say it has reduced our cost of operations; I couldn't imagine it doesn't. It has also reduced our IT infrastructure costs, although I don't deal much with the cost side of things.

I can't say that I had a shortlist because I've only got two vendors that I use: Cisco and HPE.

Do your research but evaluate this system.

I rate it an eight out of ten because there's no perfect system. Ten is perfect but every system has its little glitches.

We use it for our infrastructure. We have multiple servers, therefore we use it as our main infrastructure for applications to host our servers.

We don't have a hybrid cloud environment. We use on-premise.

It has made our IT infrastructure teams more efficient. Previously, we had a standard infrastructure, which was compute, power, and storage. They had to run from one place to another to create a virtual machine. Now they can do everything in one shot.

In our old infrastructure, we had very high I/Os. Now, with Synergy, this has been reduced.

The newer technology is driving business and easing the administration process.

Synergy is a composable infrastructure. To have the ability to create:

• Workloads
• Power
• Compute
• Storage.

This is what drew us to Synergy.

With OneView, we can take care of all our servers in one dashboard.

It is very stable. We never had any issues with it.

It is highly scalable.

I have not used the technical support because I haven't had any issues.

Our infrastructure was very old. We had a lot of high I/Os. It was taking us a long time to create servers, etc. We knew that we had to change.

The initial setup was very straightforward. It took us around six hours to set it up. There were no complications at all, because Synergy comes as a box. You don't have to do anything. You just have plug it into the network, and that is it. It's done.

We used a reseller, KDCC, for the deployment. They was great.

We used HPE’s Pointnext services to help move to this solution. They were great. The Professional Services of HPE were great. They came and set it up, making it an easy process.

We haven't seen any ROI, and it hasn't reduced our cost of operations.

The solution has decreased our deployment time by 70 percent.

It costs us around $60,000 a year.

The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs by 50 percent.

We looked at Dell EMC, VCE, and HPE. We went with the newest technology, which was composable infrastructure. The others were just hyper-converged infrastructure.

I would recommend the product. My team is very happy with the way the product is right now. It is an excellent product. We hadn't any issues with it.