No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs HPE Synergy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
32
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (7th), Density Optimized Servers (3rd)
HPE Synergy
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Blade Servers (4th), 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 4.7% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 9.2% mindshare, down 21.3% since last year.
Rack Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers5.4%
Dell PowerEdge R-Series22.1%
HPE ProLiant DL Servers17.8%
Other54.7%
Rack Servers
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE Synergy9.2%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series9.1%
HPE BladeSystem8.4%
Other73.30000000000001%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1441011 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MS
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Excellent server solution with incredible network throughput."
"We have many people in my organization using Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers in the administration."
"It was simple to install and has given us no problems."
"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."
"What I really like about the Cisco USC Server is its service profile."
"The C-series is number one, in my opinion."
"It is very nice and stable with an easy administration GUI."
"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are agileness, ease of operation, and manageability."
"The manageability is its most valuable feature. It is a fully managed platform, which is very simple to manage."
"The solution has decreased the deployment time for a new blade, saving us three hours."
"The centralized management of HPE Synergy is beneficial because it is easy to manage and administer."
"In terms of managing our IT landscape, it helps by reducing complexity... We've taken one of our virtualization guys and turned him into a Synergy guy, and he's been able to understand the networking, he's been able to understand the OneView, he's been able to understand the Synergy. He manages all of those rather than our having to have multiple teams associated with it."
"We can put a bigger workload on there because the systems can produce a lot more resources now."
"Cable management is a big feature, in addition to time to deployment. We can buy a new server and have it up and running very quickly."
"We needed to move forward, so we could have a platform that we could rely on for the next ten or so years, something that we could go and deploy, taking advantage of all the functions that it has."
"OneView is head and shoulders above the competition in this space."
 

Cons

"I would like to see a little more integration with VMware."
"The C-Series is not designed to be as scalable. They are designed to have enough RAM and enough CPU on their own side. If you want scalability, it's better to choose the B-Series— the Blade Servers — because those are much more scalable with Fabric Interconnect."
"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could improve integration with third-party solutions."
"Absolutely we had scalability issues. We tried several times to upgrade, scale up, expand our infrastructure, but Cisco insists to demand excessive amounts of money."
"The warranty and support periods should be extended."
"The initial setup could be easier."
"Definitely the support area needs improving. Especially the time response in case of hardware failure."
"The capacity is quite small, so I need the CPU performance to be a bit higher. The memory is also limited, and we cannot upgrade more."
"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."
"One of the things that I would like to see, and could be in their road map, is getting virtual connect to 100 Gig throughput."
"I've found the user experience to not be that great."
"It's a lot more about some of the speeds and feeds, such as the 25, 50, 100 GB virtual connections."
"The speed in OneView and how it updates the entire configuration needs improvement. If they can do that, and it could be a little more clear on what impact different actions will have for certain things, that would be good."
"I would like it to connect to the HPE Cloud Connect compute platform for simplicity of our infrastructure."
"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."
"I would definitely like to see them fix the firmware updates on all the blades. No matter what operating system it is running on, make sure I can do the firmware as well as the software for those firmware components at the same time. I don't want to have to rely on an external product. Let's bring that product inside the menu so that I have a better experience with updates."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco is expensive, but we didn't look at the cost of the product. We were looking at reliability and support."
"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."
"If they plan to expand their infrastructure in periods, then simply Cisco is not a good choice."
"The server itself isn't costly at all, but the CPU and the RAM can be pretty expensive. You can buy a UCS for $2,000, but the RAM and CPU can cost up to $80,000. The most expensive asset is the intel processor, but it depends on how many cores you want and the technology you want to use on your CPU, like Hyper-V, etc."
"The solution is expensive and I give the price a four out of ten."
"​Best to buy all the blades configured for the same purposes of load balancing and failover or load shifting.​"
"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis, which is only $2,000 or $3,000."
"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."
"We outright purchased Synergy."
"It costs us around $60,000 a year."
"When we made the purchase of the hardware, we added Professional Services to it."
"The biggest cost is the VMware licensing."
"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."
"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs by 50 percent."
"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Rack Servers solutions are best for your needs.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is not troublesome, but it is confusing. It takes a lot of time to navigate licensing and to work through ...
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?
I think Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could be improved, but I'm not really a forward thinker; everything works pretty well with how we're using it. It's not really an improvement, but the soluti...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?
My main use case for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is hypervisors, using them as a hypervisor.
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Unified Computing System C-Series, Cisco UCS C-Series
No data available
 

Overview

 

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, IBM and others in Rack Servers. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.