Cisco UCS X-Series Reviews

The main use cases are hosts and application workloads.

The features I appreciate most with Cisco UCS X-Series are profile, profile deployment, and the ability to orchestrate configurations across all of the compute. Instead of doing one-off configurations per server or per host, you can do group deployments and make configurations to all of the hosts at the same time.

An example of how these features have benefited my organization is efficiency and reduction of user error, such as user configuration errors, because it is automated. You can make the change one time and then apply it across the board.

I would say a form factor could improve Cisco UCS X-Series. We are in a life cycle replacement phase, and we face a situation where we have to upgrade the hardware, but to get to the next series, you have to upgrade all of it. The chassis, the backbone components, including fabric interconnect components that provide the networking, all have to be replaced at the same time. You cannot mix and match things.

So you get to a situation in your life cycle replacement that you need to upgrade, but it does not make sense economically to just buy a newer blade when the whole life cycle replacement is on the horizon, and you are forced to just replace it all top-down.

I would say a form factor that is more universal and is not going to require an overall hardware refresh would be beneficial.

We have been using Cisco UCS X-Series for seven or eight years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Cisco UCS X-Series as really good.

I would say Cisco UCS X-Series scales really well with the growing needs of my organization. It is baked into the solution because of the way the templates and the policies work. If you ever get to a point where you are creeping up on your compute thresholds, you just buy another blade. As long as you have chassis space, you just slot it in, apply the templates, and add it into your virtualization environment, and you are good.

I think in earlier times, the customer service and technical support have been better. It depends on who you get. In many cases, we have engaged with our account representatives to drive the TAC cases if we have issues. Overall, depending on the issue, if it is a real complex problem, those can be difficult to get support on, but overall, support is pretty good.

Prior to adopting Cisco UCS X-Series, we were using what they call pizza box setups. Whereas Cisco UCS compiles all that form factor into a chassis that is a lot smaller, traditionally it would be one-off hosts. The space consumption was a lot more with the previous solution because it requires a lot more rack space to get all that compute into a rack.

Whereas with Cisco UCS X-Series, that is why it is really nice; you can shrink down your space consumption because of the chassis and the microblades.

I did not do a chassis deployment, but I do not suspect it would be all that difficult because of the way the templates and the policies work. I have deployed subsequent blades and that is all super seamless.

Cisco optimizes the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup, though I do not know how that would apply to my environment. I do not know in what way the end-to-end visibility offered by Cisco is referring to.

My experience with pricing, setup, and licensing has been good. The pricing is what it is. If you are committed to a product, in our case Cisco, it would have to be a drastic price increase for us to get off of Cisco because once you get acclimated to a product line, you do not necessarily want to get off unless there is a really good reason. The pricing has been good; I would say it is competitive with other hardware vendors.

I rate this review an 8 out of 10.

My main use of Cisco UCS X-Series is all for collaboration: setting up CallManager, Unity Connection, CER, Contact Center Express, and all of that.

What I appreciate most about Cisco UCS X-Series is its modularity; it is easy to configure. The modularity allows me to replace things easily.

The end-to-end visibility from Cisco improves our organization's troubleshooting capabilities greatly and makes it much easier to get everything resolved.

Cisco UCS X-Series can be improved with a longer lifespan. The products go end-of-support and end-of-life quicker than I would prefer.

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

I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues that I would report on.

Cisco UCS X-Series scales with the growing needs of my organization very well. It scales as much as you need it to, with no issues whatsoever, and it scales whenever we need it to.

I would rate the customer service and technical support an 8 out of 10.

The reason for that rating is that sometimes support gets farmed out a little too much and it is not always actual Cisco employees. However, I am giving an extra point because they have established a couple of TAC centers in Canada.

Prior to adopting Cisco UCS X-Series, we deployed a couple of Windows Servers and a couple of HP products.

I have seen ROI from Cisco UCS X-Series.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing all seems fair. It is handled by a different group in the organization, but when I compare it to other companies, Cisco is always cheaper.

We do not let Cisco address the specific challenges that we face with hybrid and distributed enterprise networks. Cisco UCS X-Series optimizes the experience in a hybrid or distributed enterprise setup by streamlining the entire experience, whether it is getting support or getting anything set up from the start.

What stood out to me during the evaluation process of coming into Cisco UCS X-Series is that the positive aspect is that once you understand it, everything is simple. The negative aspect would be the learning curve; it takes a little time to get there.

I would rate this product 9 out of 10.