Growing Aloe 'Hercules' in Mesa, AZ:

I have been growing one of these in my front yard since about 2008. I started it from a 2-3 foot tall plant that I got at a wholesale nursery in Phoenix.
How it deals with the low desert AZ sun: Having heard that these may not be capable of taking the summer sun, I started it out next to a 'Desert Museum' Palo Verde to provide midday to late afternoon shade, while the house provided shade for a good part of the morning. Very soon after I put the plant in, we lost the shade tree in a big Monsoon storm and for the next three years I ended up putting a shade structure over it during the hot summer months. Since we never took the stump of the DM Palo Verde out we had a decent sized tree back right at about the time the 'Hercules' got too large to build a shade structure over.
However, since then the 'Hercules,' which is going on 15 feet tall and has branched, has outgrown both the shade of the house and most of the shade of the shade tree. It gets some late afternoon shade in the summer (which is good). It has dealt with that amount of sun pretty well. It gets some sun-burned leaves, but with a good amount of summer irrigation it makes it through the summer quite well. So while I would not want to start one off without any shade, over time they adapt to deal with the summer sun pretty well.

Supplemental irrigation: When well established these plants can take a serious amount of water. Mine is planted near the house so it gets a good amount of run-off from the roof when it rains, and while I initially was concerned about getting it too wet (having lost an A. dichotoma, one of its parents, to too much moisture), the enormous growth spurts it puts on right after we get some good rain suggest that I could water it more than I do. Depending on rain, I water it about once a month in the non-summer months and once a week during the hot summer months (late May to late September).

Cold hardiness: I must say that the given hardiness of zone 8b seems optimistic to me. My plant got pretty serious leaf damage from a significant (for our area) cold spell with 3 nights in the low-mid 20s in early 2013. It survived, but it definitely took a while to grow out of those ugly damaged leaves. So while it might survive down to 8b, I would expect serious damage to the plant when T's hit the low 20s. It has withstood high 20s to low 30s just fine.

Photos to follow soon.

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"Hercules" is a hybrid between two large tree aloes (barberae x dichotoma) and has the potential to get truly huge, with pink flowers like the former and the textured trunk of the latter. It responds to regular water but does perfectly fine here with zero supplemental irrigation (months-long summer drought every year). Withholding water (which I would recommend) tends to favor the dichotoma phenotype. Plant is extremely tough and tolerates difficult growing conditions. Can be forced to branch profusely by decapitation near the top (leave several healthy leaves below the cut) and cuttings can be rooted.

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