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 9.0, and holds a 5.4% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #3 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 12.7% 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

2,348 Views
2,207 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,502 Views
2,276 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, IBM and others in Rack Servers.

To learn more, read our detailed Rack Servers Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Rack Servers

January 2026

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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

4.3

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 (3rd), 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 5.4%, up 4.4% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 12.7% mindshare, down 21.8% since last year.

Rack Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers	5.4%
Dell PowerEdge R-Series	25.9%
HPE ProLiant DL Servers	20.6%
Other	48.1%

Rack Servers

Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Synergy	12.7%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series	12.1%
HPE BladeSystem	9.9%
Other	65.30000000000001%

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

reviewer1441011

Sr, Manager- Network Solution Architect at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Comprehensive support and integration ensure smooth cloud infrastructure operations

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 servers. Potential areas for improvement may include a more flexible pricing model, better technical support, or tutorials from the vendor for users.

Read full review

Msheroz S

Works at Saudi Telecom Company

Manage servers efficiently with an integrated view while reducing downtime

My use case is to serve the complete IT environment of the telecom, including all cloud applications. I use HPE Synergy servers for my private cloud and for network management systems. 70% of my workload is running on HPE servers The integrated view, such as managing complete servers and…

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 technical support from Cisco is fine."

"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are agileness, ease of operation, and manageability."

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

"It is very stable and easy to use. It integrates easily with Cisco's cloud-based UC solutions. There are tools for management that make the management a bit easier, but we don't use them. We don't use what you would term as power users."

"The solution is easily scalable."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is server management."

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

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

"We have been able to give the deployment team what they request more quickly. We are able to quickly deploy what is being asked of us. If the development team needs a platform of 20 servers to run a particular platform, we can give that to them within a day or two."

"With OneView, we can take care of all our servers in one dashboard."

"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."

"It's very scalable. We like the idea that we can put four chassis in one of our racks, and we can connect up to 25 chassis, so the scalability to us, and being able to sync all those into one management portal, is unheard of. You can't really sync that many blades and chassis together in any other platform."

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

"The scalability is great."

"We like that the solution can be arranged for an all-in-one single pane of glass, something our customers find important."

"The most valuable features of this solution are the ease of management and the integration with OneView."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"The solution can be improved by adjusting the cost."

"The initial setup could be easier."

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

"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 solution needs more capacity and more scalability."

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

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

"The pricing is too high and no discounts are available for our country."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"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 initial setup was complex. It was slow and just didn't work. Even HPE couldn't make it work for 45 days."

"Its management needs some work. It is not the best in terms of management. It has decent management. Its user interface can also be better."

"I think we were promised a little more than we were given. It's true, they are working very hard to try to help remedy that."

"Having a seamless DR implementation would help significantly."

"There is certainly a feature or two missing."

"We had an issue during the initial setup with the 40 Gigabyte cards. They weren’t working, so we had to work really closely with HPE support to get them to work."

"The possibility of using storage directly in the frame in order to have bigger storage directly there, and not having an attached storage like SAN or NAS. That would be helpful."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

"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"

"The solution could be more cost-effective."

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

"This product is quite expensive and it would be better if it were cheaper."

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

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

"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."

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

"VMware is part of the cost. We bought the chassis, we bought the solution. The blades are roughly running us $60,000 a pop right now."

"The licensing is more around the software for RGS, because we are deploying bare metal installs. It is mainly the operating system and any lights-out management. So, licensing is minimum. We are licensing it annually."

"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."

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

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

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Computer Software Company

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	31
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

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

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

We are running AI on Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers, and we can do it sometimes even without any GPU.

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

I would strongly recommend Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers to others.

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 46% of the time

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

Compared 18% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

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

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle SPARC Servers 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 21% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 19% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

February 2026

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

January 2026

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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