Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs HPE Synergy comparison

The compared Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #5 in Rack Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 5.2% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 18.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

Read 31 Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers reviews

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2,272 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,140 Views
2,135 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

HPE Synergy

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers and HPE Synergy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and others in Rack Servers.

To learn more, read our detailed Rack Servers Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Rack Servers

August 2025

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Helped 868,759 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

4.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (5th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Blade Servers (1st), Composable Infrastructure (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are IT Hardware and Infrastructure solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is designed for Rack Servers and holds a mindshare of 5.2%, up 4.9% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 18.8% mindshare, down 21.1% since last year.

Rack Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers	5.2%
Dell PowerEdge R-Series	27.4%
HPE ProLiant DL Servers	22.0%
Other	45.4%

Rack Servers

Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Synergy	18.8%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series	14.7%
HPE BladeSystem	13.7%
Other	52.8%

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Berthold Manz

CTO at ExperTeach GmbH

Seamless server transitions enhance IT infrastructure for AI projects and improve management capabilities

If you are integrated into the Cisco management solution, it is very easy to handle. The performance aspects of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are very strong. The ability to move from one server to another without changing anything is excellent. We can transfer all the identity of the servers between the servers.

Read full review

CarlosArdila

Project Manager, Information Technology at Telelago

Helps grow horizontally or vertically within one box or chassis

The initial setup is very easy. We deployed this in two days, including installation, system setup, firmware upgrades, configuration, and network connection. By the next day, we were already deploying virtual machines. We initially began with the Blade system. As the migration to SAP HANA approached, it seemed prudent to upgrade our hardware. Consequently, we facilitated their transition from the Blade system to Synergy. Subsequently, we collaborated closely with the SAP consultancy company to oversee the migration process, ensuring seamless integration of all workloads and sub-environments. We have four people working on the deployment, including a project manager, two specialists, and one tech support.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are integration and customization."

"The initial setup is straightforward and easy to do."

"Excellent server solution with incredible network throughput."

"On the Cisco side, there is a benefit in terms of server management. Cisco provides UCS Manager, which is a multi-tenant site manager. We can manage multiple sites while maintaining disaster recovery, a feature not available on other platforms."

"The solution is reliable and easy to use."

"The hardware customization capabilities are great."

"Cisco rack servers are very easy to integrate with other products from different vendors."

"The server can be configured easily."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

"The benefit is that it's going to be maintained, contrary to what we had last year, when the maintenance went off for the last generation of the servers that we had there."

"The wireless mounting system is excellent. We can use the monitor over the Internet and perform troubleshooting remotely with the connection to SQL. It includes a comprehensive monitoring tool. It offers many features, allowing us to update, manage, maintain, and troubleshoot the system efficiently."

"The solution help us to implement new business requirements quickly, since it is easy and quick to upgrade our capacity."

"The manageability is its most valuable feature. It is a fully managed platform, which is very simple to manage."

"It is really easy to use, because it's GUI-based. It is not command line based, like mainframes."

"It's more composable, you can use storage as well as compute blades. So maybe it's more versatile compared to the traditional blade systems."

"Its versatility, performance, and size are most valuable. It is very decent for its size. It has very good performance and very good specifications."

"Improved storage, scalability, and ease-of-use."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"The price of the solution is problematic, not the solution itself. It could be less expensive."

"There is room for better integration with other brands."

"The improvement should be done as per customer requirements."

"Some customers have complained about delivery time. So, the main weakness is the lead time."

"The hard drive of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is not very good. I have already replaced three of them."

"In the version we need to use, the manager is still reliant on a full Java install on a Windows OS. This is inconvenient and problematic if you have multiple management tools on different versions of Java or if you move to a machine without the appropriate Java environment."

"The product's stability and delivery time could be better."

"On the contact center and video conferencing, I would definitely like to see more AI features. The AI features are key for us. You will find a lot of them in the cloud-based solution, but in the on-premises solution, they're hardly there. I would like to see the same AI features that are there in the cloud-based Cisco UC."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"The technical support was about the only negative experience that I had. It was a mixed bag when we were first standing it up. We had some requirements from our information security department, and technical support wasn't able to give me immediate answers. They had to engage engineering, which they did, then they got me the answers. However, it took a week of back and forth conversations and phone calls to get it all worked out."

"It has affected the productivity of our development team in a bad way. When we first stood the hardware up 18 months ago, the image streaming capacity and capability were not very good at all. We had hoped that it would allow us to be more composable and be able to switch over from one version of an operating system to another version of an operating system. However, it wasn't ready for prime time yet. Therefore, we had to go back to a deployment of bare metal install. We are still waiting and trying to figure out how we can do the composable infrastructure."

"Gen 11 is being released. That's going to have a lot of advantages over Gen 10 and previous generations in terms of the cooling modules in the servers to keep them cooler and run with more efficiency and better performance. There are more management features with iLO 6 and the latest OneView management."

"Synergy could probably do some code enhancements to simplify the deployment a bit more."

"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."

"I would like more storage with this solution, because we still need 3PAR or other storage outside the box for the amount of data that we have."

"The power consumption is very high, and there should be a more efficient way of reducing the power requirements while maintaining high performance."

"HPE Synergy could improve its remote support."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive and I give the price a four out of ten."

"The price of the Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve. It's a little more expensive in comparison with Dell or HPE solutions."

"This solution is a little expensive."

"The pricing is expensive."

"The price of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is approximately 20 percent more than other solutions."

"Best to buy all the blades configured for the same purposes of load balancing and failover or load shifting."

"The solution requires an annual licensing fee."

"The prices of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are higher compared to the competition. When we try and sell against the competition, then it becomes quite difficult to sell"

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pricing and cost advice

"We pay about £500 for the solution."

"We pay for licensing on the fibre channel uplinks, on the Virtual Connect, which is an add-on."

"The Nutanix platform came in a little more expensive than the Synergy."

"For me, the scalability is how much money that I need to spend on switches for how many frames, which ultimately means servers. To get the best bandwidth before the most recent product announcement, I have buy new switches every three frames. The competition is shipping a product right now where I only need switches every ten frames."

"We do a biannual renewal. I know how much that renewal is, but I don't know how much it breaks down to be just Synergy, since we have our VMware, all of our physical equipment, etc. all rolled up into one renewal, which is a little over $300,000 every two years. However, only a subset of that is the Synergy product."

"The platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."

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

"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

The C-series is the most valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

The solution is moderately priced.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

I may not be the right person to comment on advanced improvements because we are just using basic functionalities. We are getting all the functionalities which we used to get in other OEM rack serv...

See all answers

How would you choose between HPE's Bladesystem and Synergy?

For me, choosing between HPE’s Bladesystem and Synergy came down to which solution was more powerful, reliable, and stable. It turns out Bladesystem was the winner. Bladesystem is excellent because...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?

As far as the prices are concerned, rack mount solutions are less expensive than HPE Synergy prices; however, HPE Synergy prices are higher but justify themselves as the solution accommodates all t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Synergy?

In my opinion, for future improvements in HPE Synergy, there should be better management of power consumption complexity as well as an increase in the number of servers that can fit in a single Syn...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 53% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 21% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 10% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

HPE Apollo Systems vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 28% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 25% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 7% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs HPE Synergy

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

September 2025

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

September 2025

Download HPE Synergy product report

Also Known As

Unified Computing System C-Series, Cisco UCS C-Series

No data available

Overview

UCS C-Series Rack Servers deliver unified computing in an industry-standard form factor to reduce TCO and increase agility. Each server addresses varying workload challenges through a balance of processing, memory, I/O, and internal storage resources.

Cisco

HPE Synergy, the first platform built from the ground up for Composable Infrastructure, offers an experience that empowers IT to create and deliver new value instantly and continuously. It is a single infrastructure that reduces operational complexity for traditional workloads and increases operational velocity for the new breed of applications and services. Through a single interface, HPE Synergy composes physical and virtual compute, storage, and fabric pools into any configuration for any application. As an extensible platform, it easily enables a broad range of applications and operational models such as virtualization, hybrid cloud, and DevOps. With HPE Synergy, IT can become not just the internal service provider but the business partner to rapidly launch new applications that become the business.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Aegean Motorway, Anilana Hotels and Resorts, Artoni Transporti, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, City of Mississauga, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Kind en Gezin, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Nationwide, Quest, Talbots, University of St. Gallen

HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United

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