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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

"The processors are so strong that they can deliver AI solutions without any additional GPU card, but we are also using some GPUs, which surely gives even better results."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is server management."
"The technical support from Cisco is fine."
"We've been quite happy with its capabilities so far."
"In terms of the features that I have found most valuable, that is basically the hardware, which is more dynamic."
"In most cases, computes compute, and there isn't much differentiation, but one point of differentiation is Intersight cloud management."
"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are agileness, ease of operation, and manageability."
"The integration with IT infrastructure is seamless based on our experience."
"The most valuable features about Synergy is the composability of it."
"The centralized management of HPE Synergy is beneficial because it is easy to manage and administer."
"Orchestrating automations is great because you can connect to other tools with the REST API and automate components."
"Synergy is much easier to use, which is saving us time. We are able to set the profiles for firmware upgrades. This makes the process for the care and feeding of the IT environment much simpler, quicker, and cleaner."
"Everything is combined in one chassis, you have storage, compute, networking. So you save a lot of space in the datacenter."
"The solution's greatest strengths lie in its ability to maintain a high availability and combine networking with hyper channel connectivity into a single component."
"The composable feature is amazing as it helps avoid downtimes."
"The insert RAM feature is the most valuable, and it is a simple software to integrate with others like service desk applications and engine management."
 

Cons

"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."
"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could improve integration with third-party solutions."
"The product must add customer-friendly monitoring features."
"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could improve by adding a wider portfolio because they only have two main categories, the C-220 and 240. There is no wide range of options as other solutions have, such as Dell. Additionally, if it was more flexible with the configuration it would be good."
"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."
"The C-Series is not designed to be as scalable."
"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."
"One of the features I want to see, which I will see with OneView 5.0, is to have all the OneView consoles in a single pane of glass. That will make it easy to see everything in one place and not have to log in to multiple consoles."
"The biggest lesson learned is knowing what you are connecting Synergy to, because there are caveats there and not everything necessarily plays well with Synergy."
"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."
"I would like the ability to take the storage tray that is in a chassis and share it out to multiple chassis, not just the servers within the same chassis. This would be more efficient with resources."
"The only good thing is that they have some powerful machines that you can use, such as the latest generations of HPE Compute that you can use."
"That means you're managing and you're monitoring your networking, your compute, your storage from it, but not everything works."
"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."
"Continue the path of integrating OneView into a single product. A lot of different people have different OneView experiences based on which product they have used it for."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​Best to buy all the blades configured for the same purposes of load balancing and failover or load shifting.​"
"We have to pay for the VMware and Cisco licenses."
"The price of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is high."
"The solution requires an annual licensing fee."
"If they plan to expand their infrastructure in periods, then simply Cisco is not a good choice."
"This solution is a little expensive."
"The price of the Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve. It's a little more expensive in comparison with Dell or HPE solutions."
"The price for Cisco is a bit higher than its competitors. We paid 40k for one server."
"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."
"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."
"We pay about £500 for the solution."
"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."
"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."
"We outright purchased Synergy."
"There is a perpetual license given when you purchase HPE Synergy."
"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."
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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
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