Cisco UCS B-Series Reviews

The solution's most valuable feature is KVM Launch Manager.

The solution's console could be easier for accessing and managing internal help documents.

We have been using the solution for 15 years.

The solution's stability is good. Although, it is much more complicated regarding usage or management compared to other vendors.

I rate the solution's scalability a seven out of ten. It could be improved.

At present, we have implemented it on Hyper V clusters. We have eight blades on two clusters and six blades on one cluster. In total, we have 250 servers installed from those clusters.

The solution's initial setup process works fine.

The solution is a little more complicated compared to HP and PowerEdge configurations. Also, its KVM manager could be more straightforward similar to other vendors.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

It should have KVM connectivity similar to Dell and HP. Also, HP has a storage blade that helps connect monitors in case of network issues. We can plug in and access the keyboard and mouse to start with the task. It is not possible with Cisco Infrastructure.

We do not use the Cisco UCS B-Series in our company. Rather, we support it for one of our customers.

Using this product allows for the virtualization of all things, including MAC addresses and the profile. If we have an issue in a physical server then we just have to remove it, put another one in its place, and reapply the profile.

I'm not an expert in using the UCS Blade but I work on it enough to speak a little bit about it. My primary job is support, although I perform some actions.

The most valuable feature is the ability to replace a server with another one, simply by applying the profile. This is not possible with others, where the MAC address is not virtualized.

If there is an issue with a server then it's simple to replace. In 10 minutes, it can be done, even if there's a hardware issue. This is the most powerful and important aspect.

This model does not support virtualization of the switch.

There are occasionally hardware problems that may be related to memory. 

I have been working with Cisco UCS B-Series for two years. The company was using the same solution before I joined.

Although we have experienced some hardware issues, that is normal for this product. Overall, it is stable.

This is a scalable solution.

We have four people that work with it.

When we have had hardware problems, technical support comes to our site to replace the defective part. The support team is good, including their response time.

I did not work with other similar products before this one.

There is a new model, the X-Series, that I would like to look at in the future. The B-series will be deprecated shortly. After which, we will need to replace it.

I was not part of the deployment, although I have performed general support such as creating profiles.

Overall, this Cisco Blade is really good. My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to purchase the support agreement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our clients. These systems are for advanced data.

The template feature is very good, and it works well.

The Boot from SAN function is good because using OTV, we can boot the device from any remote location.

I like the level of complexity that this product offers because I have a lot of relevant knowledge, which makes troubleshooting and performance tuning easier.

This product uses a converged network adapter because it is the only way to provide flexibility with both fiber and ethernet connections.

I have been working with the Cisco UCS B-Series for approximately three years.

This is a stable product. However, if the customer is using devices from different vendors on the same network then there can be some small problems.

This product is very much scalable. Once you are using active/passive devices, you can switch them depending on the needs of the infrastructure.

Only one of my clients has this device implemented.

The technical support is very good. They are very knowledgeable and have taught us a lot.

I work with a variety of Cisco products. For example, I have a lot of clients that are using Cisco firewalls. As such, I have a lot of experience with Cisco devices including HyperFlex, UCS, Nexus 7K, 5K, 2K, and 1K virtualization.

Some of my clients are using products from vendors such as HP or Dell, rather than using a Cisco Blade Server. I also have customers using VxRack and VxRail. the Cisco products consume less energy, and I prefer to implement them.

The level of complexity for the initial setup depends on the client. For example, new clients usually only require a normal design. For clients that redesign their network, there is some inherent complexity.

In general, a hyperconverged system is very easy to configure.

This is a premium device and our clients are not as concerned about the reasonableness of the price compared to satisfaction with their productivity.

This is a product that I recommend. If somebody instead chooses to implement a Dell, then they will have a converged system or will be using NetApp. This is much more complex than setting up a hyperconverged system.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We host mostly our production environment in these Blades. We choose this series due to the reliability/stability and for ease of scalability. We are a 24/7 business and uptime is most critical for us. Stable environment with 99.99% uptime including a good scalable architecture is something like "Gold with Fragrance"

Management wise, I liked the "Service Profile" concept where we can create the appropriate profiles for the blades and just deploy them with ease. Time management and getting the configuration right is important so that there are no hassle during the initial setup. Performance wise, I like it better than the HP Proliant servers.

We jumped from old HP servers to this UCS and, of course, we very much like it in terms of its security, its interface, its functionality, the CPU, the memory and its central management interface. The computing power that it's given us has greatly improved the processing of our system. Overall, it's good.

Integration with the storage to get a heatmap of what's going on in the storage site could be improved -- the dashboard, that kind of thing. We have a virtualized environment and it's the same dashboard that links together the front end, the VMware and the backend storage. We have to use multiple views, multiple solutions for that. We log in to multiple places to see what's going on in the storage, what's going on in the switches, on the Blades, on the VMware. It would be great if there was a single platform, a dashboard that could integrate all of those. That kind of improvement wouldn't just help me but would also benefit management. If they want to see what's going on, for example, to get a five-year forecast, and the dashboard could show how much space is left for computing power, or show that something is not working, that would make a difference. 

I've been using this solution for five years. 

I especially like the scalability aspect because, compared to the HP servers that we had before, those were rack-mount servers whereas the Blade is just a plug and play. If we need more computing power, we just bring a new Blade and plug it in and auto-conservation setup in the profiler takes over the new Blade and it's that easy. We are a team of three admins using this solution. 

We haven't had a chance to contact Cisco for any issues because everything has been running smooth and fine. And we have our corporate team as well. If there's an issue we reach out to them first before reaching out for support. It's been three years and we haven't had any major issues, we've been able to solve anything that's come up. 

In short, management with a central dashboard is really good as compared to the older HP Proliant environment. You have a bird's eye view of your infrastructure through the dashboard.

The initial setup was pretty good. It was a new thing for us and took us some time, but it was good, it was straightforward. We had to deploy it here first to make sure everything was up and running. It required a lot of regression tests before moving it to the actual production site and that's what took time. It wasn't the time taken to configure it, but the time taken to deploy the whole system in the production site. We did the deployment ourselves. 

Having experience with the product for over 5 years, the ROI is definitely over our expectations. The level of performance improvement has increased in such a way that we are able to scale up with the ability to process more data (faster), making our customers happy with the output. 

Price wise, Cisco B-series was better. 

We compared it with HP C7000 series blade infrastructure but the Cisco B-Series cost that was presented to us and the comparison of performance details were superior.

I haven't had experience with others series, like the C-Series. I hope they are good but so far, after three, four years, this has been good and we haven't had any issues. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

We are a system integrator and promote Dell solutions to our customers. We deal mostly with mid-range storage, servers, and some backup solutions.

It allows us to offer a variety of Dell products to our customers, helping them with secure data backup and recovery, particularly those in the financial sector.

Dell has a huge portfolio of products. It's easy to find whatever you need, and you can combine many types of products into a solution.

Dell should address the issue of direct support and spare parts availability in our region. There can be problems if a specific part is not in stock, which is a big issue for our market.

We have been familiar with Dell Data Domain for about three or four years.

Dell does not provide direct support in our region, which is a big disadvantage. Other vendors such as Cisco, HP, and Lenovo do not have this issue.

Neutral

Cisco UCS pricing is reasonable and competitive. However, with Dell, the additional cost of spare parts and the lack of direct support add to the overall cost of the equipment.

HP, Lenovo, and other vendors do not have the same issue with spare parts and support as Dell.

We sometimes recommend Cisco UCS B-Series over Dell for midsize enterprises, government institutions, financial sectors, and other various types of companies. It depends on the situation and the customer's preference.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

Cisco UCS B-Series are the Blade servers where we have installed VMware.

The price of the solution could improve.

I have been using Cisco UCS B-Series for approximately eight years.

The stability of the Cisco UCS B-Series has been good. We have not had a problem.

Cisco UCS B-Series is scalable.

I rate the scalability of the Cisco UCS B-Series a ten out of ten.

The initial setup of the Cisco UCS B-Series is not a problem.

This solution is deployed in India and it is being used all over. We do not have plans to increase usage.

We use a few people for the deployment of the solution.

We have received a strong return on investment.

Cisco UCS B-Series is an expensive solution.

We plan to upgrade the Cisco UCS B-Series in 2024.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate Cisco UCS B-Series a ten out of ten.

We use this solution for infrastructure management.

The architecture of this solution is very valuable; it has five traffic interconnects, and uses a network highway so bandwidth is never an issue.

The main issue with this solution is that it is quite vendor-restricted, meaning that when we use third party software, we cannot use all of the available configuration tools or pre-validated design features.

We would like to see a storage solution added to this product as, at present, there is no file system storage available.

Also, this product is very expensive, and whilst they will apply discounts for larger projects, these are not as competitive as those offered by other vendors of comparative solutions.

We have been working with this solution for over eight years.

We have found this to be a very stable solution.

In our experience, this is a scalable solution.

We find the technical support team to be knowledgeable and responsive, but they are often slow to come back with a root-cause analysis of our issues.

Positive

The initial setup for this solution is easy and straightforward.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

The UCS Manager, UCS Blades including chassis, and Main Data Centre Virtualization Physical Infrastructure on VMware between sites act as our critical and secure data center environment.

This solution is reliable, expandable, agile, manageable, and scales easily, allowing us to focus on using UCS Manager. We are now expanding the Cisco Hyperconverged solution embedded with the UCS manager.

This is the plus to expand the reliability, expandability, redundancy, and availability of our data center infrastructure environment.

This host-provisioning solution gives us peace of mind, SLA level, and ease of management from the operation team. It is reliable and gives me confidence when I upgrade firmware and expand the capacities of the data center.

Think about adding compute in 30 minutes instead of hours of technical effort. It reduced the amount of time that tech spent on support and operations instead of maintaining the whole infrastructure level.

ROI for the UCS manager solution is high and has lifted pressures and stressful burdens upon SWE.

Overall, all functionalities are excellent.

The feature that I found the most value is the abstract and stateless capacities. 

USC Central seems a bit confusing for technicians.

Many functionalities that are not used for a small environment should be enforced at the enterprise level.

I would like to see USC Central offered free for use, as well as made simpler to use for technicians. This will improve its adoption rate, especially for environments that are not exposed to the internet.

We have been using UCS Managers and UCS Blade for more than five years.

Stability-wise, it is excellent.

This is a scalable product.

Technical support is excellent.

With the help of Cisco tech support, I just finished an upgrade of firmware and felt that the support team is helpful and proactive in helping customers.

I feel that Cisco tech has value. They provided me assistance and guided me through difficulties. Overall, I felt that they were excellent and I appreciated it very much, especially the consistency in following up on what is happening, including progress.

I had used HP enclosures in a different environment.

The initial setup is always straightforward.

We initiated the engagement with Cisco Tech Team, and eventually, we can take ourselves.

The ROI is huge and I was surprised after seeing it when the environment was set up and stable.

I was not involved with the specific pricing agreement, so I don't know. However, I am familiar with some of the aspects.

Generally, the cheaper, the better. I believe that this is part of the procurement management that must be involved with requirements. Pricing will be based on your requirements so it is important to plan, engage, and negotiate directly with the Cisco Account Manager.

I have an excellent relationship and experience with them. They are accommodating in all areas such as reaching out, checking and engaging in setup and configuration of equipment that has arrived, training, help in designing, consulting, pricing, and licensing.

As part of our evaluation phase, we researched three vendors. Each was assessed using a scorecard to rate each in terms of functionality as it related to our environment. The scale was from one to five.

Overall, this is an excellent product.