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 8.3, and holds a 4.8% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 20.6% mindshare. Additionally, 95% 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 29 Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers reviews

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1,639 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 90 HPE Synergy reviews

2,408 Views
1,668 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Rack Servers

June 2025

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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

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (5th), Density Optimized Servers (3rd)

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 4.8%, down 4.9% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 20.6% mindshare, down 21.8% since last year.

Rack Servers

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Kalpesh Savaliya

Asst. Manager IT at APM Terminals, Inc.

Good support, and this product well-suited to our size of environment

We use these rack servers for terminal operating systems The initial setup could be easier. I have been working with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers for five years. This is a stable product. For our use case, this product is scalable up to 16 blades, including two sites. I don't know how well…

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The C-series is the most valuable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."

"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 product doesn't take up too much space on the rack and I like that."

"The solution is stable."

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

"It has centralized our server management and allows us to treat servers like a pool of resources instead of discrete devices."

"It is very nice and stable with an easy administration GUI."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

"We're able to provision different applications, different demonstrations, add cloud-like speeds on-prem, which is unheard of in the industry."

"Valuable features include its dependability, reliability, and the ease of managing the system."

"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 stability is very good. We haven't had any outages."

"Give us the ability to seamlessly migrate from one operating environment to another within minutes, which is invaluable."

"There is no problem with the scalability."

"The i3S module can be configured to provision storage to all blade servers and boot to any operating system without needing local hard drives."

"For me, this is the best frame server technology available in the market. We can compare it to Cisco UCS. It is robust and stable, and it is also easy to deploy and scale. Their support is the best."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"I would like to see a little more integration with VMware."

"The only thing I would change is to provide more proactive support."

"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could improve integration with third-party solutions."

"Definitely the support area needs improving. Especially the time response in case of hardware failure."

"I think the pricing is high. Cisco has to look for bundling this solutions with other applications."

"The warranty and support periods should be extended."

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

"The product must add customer-friendly monitoring features."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"You can always improve some things."

"The Synergy platform is HPE-specific and more for on-premises. You're kind of locked in with VMware and the HPE with the VMs. The Nutanix offering is a bit more flexible."

"A big thing for me is moving InfoSight for ProLiant into OneView, or at least connecting it. Today we have to use the iLO Amplifier Pack and that would require us to reconfigure iLO on every single one of the servers, independently, to get that data into InfoSight. We're really looking for a single control and management plane."

"Over the two years of using HPE Synergy, we have found some hardware failures that are frequent in the SOP models, CNA cards, and converged network adapters. These failures are frequently happening for a lot of the customers."

"The post-sales activity needs improvement. There is some sort of convoluted spreadsheet that you have to fill in prior to the platform being delivered. It seems a little bit out-of-date and inefficient. Surely, there is some sort of web page configuration tool online that a customer could use. Then, it could be validated by somebody else, like a partner or HPE technical resource, then that would be a lot more efficient."

"I would really like a way to validate the firmware in my specific environment before trying to deploy it. Those were the issues we had early on with firmware upgrades, particularly around certificates. All in all, having some level of confidence aside from it just having been tested generically would help. Something more specific to my environment would be very helpful."

"The solution must concentrate on improving the product quality."

"A faster Composer module would be a good inclusion for the next release of this solution."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product is slightly more expensive when compared to others."

"The price of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is high."

"Cisco is expensive, but we didn't look at the cost of the product. We were looking at reliability and support."

"This solution is a little expensive."

"The price of the solution could be better when compared to other solutions. However, when we purchased the solution we received Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers in a bundle with other hardware, such as IP phones and networking switches."

"The price for Cisco is a bit higher than its competitors. We paid 40k for one server."

"The solution could be more cost-effective."

"If they plan to expand their infrastructure in periods, then simply Cisco is not a good choice."

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

"We outright purchased Synergy."

"The price point is a little high. We were able to get a good deal on a promotion, to go with it. It would be nice to see the prices come down a little bit."

"There was at least about a 20 percent savings in cost over our purchase based on the purchase price of the compute modules themselves versus what we've had to pay before. It was significantly less."

"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."

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

"The biggest cost is the VMware licensing."

"We are satisfied with its price."

"We have already paid once. It is just the price for the permit and its use. It seems you don't have to keep paying for it, but I am not sure."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

The improvement should be done as per customer requirements.

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 do you like most about HPE Synergy?

It is a good product for hypervisors.

See all answers

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

Pricing in the blade server market is very competitive, with HPE offering a competitive price. Competitor products include Dell's MX series and Cisco's UCS X series.

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Compared 56% of the time

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

Compared 24% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 2% of the time

HPE Apollo Systems vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 30% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 23% of the time

Dell PowerEdge M vs HPE Synergy

Compared 17% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

June 2025

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

June 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

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and others in Rack Servers. Updated: June 2025.

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