It is a robust and reliable machine and can be used in different scenarios. If you have a requirement for a high end physical server to host your organizations different online services then you can use ProLiant DL. It can also be used in an environment where there is a need to host multiple different virtual machines on two or more physical servers.
Synology DiskStation would be well suited for a smaller organization of under 100 employees where you have a lot of collaborating between teams and clients. If you have to have a common space to save documents and project files so both employees and clients can access or upload if needed, this product is perfect! You can create links for clients to access or upload files, while you and your coworkers have a shared collaboration space. If you have a large team, over 100 I would not recommend this product. For us, it seemed to work really well because there were about 20 of us using it, but it is hard for me to imagine it working well for a group that is 5x our size. I don't know, maybe it would still work really well. If you had to know exactly when something was updated and have real times updates on things being added, I would also not recommend this product.
File serving for Windows PC's is outstanding in terms of compatibility and performance and reliability
The cloud storage service is like our own private dropbox and very helpful
The backup for business make backup a no brainer with backup to the box and hyperbackup providing a off-site cloud backup option to Synology Cloud or a plethora of other options
With upgrades to newer versions of VMware, HP has not provided VMware images with loaded drivers, this could be an issue for future upgrades to VMware users on HPs. The support forums discuss this and we wonder why no images are available.
Lilo support can be limited. These servers were preconfigured for us. HP was not able to help with this, telling us it must be in the preconfigured setup.
The base server did not meet our needs and the price ramped up quickly with add-ons to utilize SAN.
the focus of synology is on SMB users, we have a 1.3PB Synology NAS unit that needs higher-end DiskStation software to handle the 95 x 16TB drives we have
in summary, Synology NAS software doesn't handle enterprise customer needs
syncing of files with android and IOS devices, in particular with DSM 7, the Synology Cloud sync software doesn't work (the staff are working on a release in the coming months). But syncing files from mobile devices to the Synology NAS is a key reason 2 of our Synology NAS units were purchased, and without the syncing we are limited
It provides us with great ROI compared with other solutions. It is also a versatile product, having NAS and SAN product lines depending on the business requirement. Furthermore, the implementation of dual controller lines would allow us to consider it for more critical applications to supplement the more enterprise-level SAN solution. It also is a wonderful backup solution, having all the applications available after purchase of the appliance without the further need to purchase additional software or licensing.
Usability is generally good. I mostly like to use the management interface on HPE servers. GUI is well placed and provides easy access to management and reporting. Firmware upgrade is usually smooth, drivers install correctly and provide good quality of service. We have enough ports and interfaces to connect to the servers and some room to upgrade.
The Synology DiskStation is easy to set up and manage. The interface is clean and features are well documented. These units are reliable and can be set up to do scheduled integrity checks so failures can be mitigated before they halt business operations. The available packages for expanded roles makes these devices versatile.
In over a decade, not once had we had a bad call with HPE support, not only were they have extremely qualified engineers but the speed in answering and addressing users is bar none. The same can not be said about support from other competitors in our experience over the years.
Support is pretty solid. There is good documentation and the help articles inside the interface provide you answers to common questions and instructions for many scenarios that you may encounter. I have not needed to speak with support very often and my experiences have been good overall with their support team.
I've used Dell poweredge servers and they were great too, but I found remotely deploying HPE hardware was significantly easier and faster. One thing I love about HPE is when i got to deploy an OS remotely via iLO I can utilize the virtual media URL as opposed to mounting an iso. these eliminates the SSL overhead and the OS can be deployed in under an hour. Mounting an ISO has proven reliable but due to the SSL overhead it can take hours. In addition i found im able to register my HPE hardware with HPE and they provide me a clean IT dashboard of all of my hardware and they give me alerts as to expiring support coverage, if a server is down or reporting an error. its a very solid and reliable solution all around.
Synology NAS replaced any cloud storage for way cheaper, more controlled and expansible. Qnap is the second best and was also an option but back then it had less functionalities. It does the backup just as Synology DiskStation but the support was better on the Synology DiskStation. That and the fact the price and modules for physical expansion are available, Synology DiskStation became my choice
They last forever. We only replace them when newer versions of VMWare don't support our oldest models. Our refresh cycle on virtual hosts is 6 or 7 years.
Plenty of third-party service support available when the warranty is up. This helps extend the life cycle as well.
DiskStation has provided an accessible storage solution to our developers for local backup that they can control. No need to contact IT to do anything. This has been a win for IT and our users.
DiskStation provides good support in a mixed PC/Mac environment, eliminating the need for multiple solutions. It can act as a file share for both platforms, and as a result, provides ease of access, regardless of what a user is using for their OS.
While DiskStation provides quotas per user, I'd also like the ability to set policies - so that business-critical data is getting backed up to Enterprise-focused storage, and not to our local DiskStation. This is partly a people problem but could be addressed by enabling policies that disable code from being stored.
