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Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs Dell PowerEdge MX- Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 8, 2026

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 E-Series Servers
Ranking in Blade Servers
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series
Ranking in Blade Servers
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is 3.6%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is 9.1%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series9.1%
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers3.6%
Other87.3%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Solution Architect at COPYCAT LIMITED
Automation and integration capabilities streamline IT infrastructure management
The most valuable feature of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is the Cisco interface. The server management and automation capabilities have been outstanding in automation, greatly benefiting our IT team. Pricing is acceptable, and these servers have had a significant impact on cost savings and operational efficiency. The integration with Cisco routers simplifies the IT infrastructure.
Md. Shohel Rawshan Sarker - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Blade platform has supported clustered production workloads and delivers strong performance
In the industry, there are currently blade solutions from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Cisco. Compared to those, all blade solutions are similar in design. In the chassis, there is a back panel where each blade has a card module that plugs into the blade chassis. The chassis contains a network switch as well as a SAN switch. The SAN switch and network switch combined to the blade module provide plug-and-play functionality. The throughput is also good. Dell PowerEdge MX- Series currently has two types of processors with speeds of 2.1 and 2.3 GHz, possibly 2.2 GHz as well. All applications in our environment run on these processors. However, I think the processor speed should be higher because the coming applications are all AI-based and require more powerful processing. As of now, there is no issue with the current processor clock speed for our running applications. They are all Gold processors. In our environment, we have designed a setup with Dell PowerEdge MX- Series chassis with two network switches in the back panel. The two network switches connect to the main upstream network switch with link aggregation protocol (LACP) bonding. Currently, 160 gig, 40, 40, 80, and 80 gig bandwidth is running. The throughput is 80 gig total. Each blade server has a 20 gig network connection and will get a maximum of 20 gig network bandwidth, while the total chassis will deliver a maximum of 80 gig bandwidth. However, it can go up to 160 gig because the upstream network switch supports QSFP+ modules that are 40 gig each, with two 40 gig connections totaling 80 gig. Dell PowerEdge MX- Series also includes a SAN switch. The SAN switch is in the back panel of the chassis and connects to our main central SAN switch, which is connected to central storage. It is easy to onboard our central storage to the blade server as required, and there is no issue with that. The benefits include the fact that Dell PowerEdge MX- Series blade servers have sixteen blade servers in a single chassis, which consumes minimal space in the rack and data center, as well as requiring minimal cabling. For cabling, there are only four network cables connected to the main upstream switch. When connected to the SAN switch, there are only four additional cables, totaling eight cables to the SAN switch. This results in no messy cables in the data center. Additionally, the performance is good enough based on our current applications running on the servers.

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 are that they are efficient and easy to setup."
"The server management and automation capabilities have been outstanding in automation, greatly benefiting our IT team."
"Overall, the Cisco chassis is pretty good, pretty stable and easier to configure as compared to HP and others."
"The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability."
"Stability-wise, it is a good product that remains stable."
"Cisco has better visibility and manageability for disaster recovery."
"What I can advise other prospective customers is that they should not worry about Cisco's support, stability, and performance."
"They are really easy to maintain. I've added RAM to them. I've done a lot of other things with the virtualization."
"The solution integrated well."
"The biggest advantage of PowerEdge is that it is cost-effective, and its performance and infrastructure are much better than other competitors like Lenovo and HP, with very good performance even when you are using it at one hundred percent load."
"Overall, Dell PowerEdge MX- Series are solid products."
"It's great for managing overall infrastructure."
"One of the best aspects of PowerEdge is that it provides a consolidated hardware infrastructure, allowing multiple servers in a simple ten-rack unit."
"The good part is it's a rack-mounted modular enclosure where we get all the combination of networking, compute, management, and power, which helps in scalability as much as possible in one particular box."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The biggest advantage of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is that its availability is very high, as we did not face any issue during these four years and the uptime was more than 99.8%, so the customer is very happy with this product."
 

Cons

"The product should also be available in a standard edition or a standard license since currently there is a need to pay for an extra license, which is very expensive, especially when considering the budgeting part of our company."
"I would like to see improvements in VMware integration with Cisco, especially in terms of documentation and integration tools. Support of NVIDIA integration would also make it better."
"The processing capacity could be improved."
"I am always asked to justify why we should purchase such expensive hardware when there are other brand names available with same capacity for a lesser price."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement. There could be more collaborative tools included."
"The biggest pain point for us is the matrix for the firmware upgrades. It is a pain. You look at that thing, you might as well be reading Greek. It would be a whole lot better if they could clean up their documentation on it."
"I think that's probably one of the biggest failure points with Cisco, from their documentation all the way to their products."
"It is not a solution that is cloud ready."
"One area for improvement is VLAN configuration."
"The biggest challenge happens when you have compact boxes such as Dell PowerEdge MX- Series. Managing or maintaining the server ratio within a rack becomes jumbled up because per rack you get a limited power capacity."
"I did not have any problem with the initial pricing or cost setup with Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, but I had some problems with ongoing maintenance and getting regular updates from Dell."
"Dell PowerEdge MX-Series is not a good solution for AI due to the lack of support for the expansion of GPUs; there is a solution, but it is not a useful one."
"I suggest adding an additional network card within the blades, specifically for connectivity."
"I would like to see a broader range of chassis networking options."
"Dell PowerEdge M needs to run AMD CPUs on it."
"Technical support is not good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing costs of the solution. The most expensive server from Cisco is Cisco UCS B-Series."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable. From a commercial point of view, the prices are okay."
"It's expensive, they are quite pricey."
"It was budget friendly."
"If we would not have gone with the vendor we might have been charged unnecessarily for packages we did not need."
"I know we get three years basic, and the on-site licensing model for business seems fine. I wouldn't pay for a support plus or anything."
"The product is budget-friendly. The initial cost for each server was around 10,000 euros. It's a standard price, not too high or too low."
"The cost varies significantly depending on the server's configuration and can range from $10,000 to $60,000 for the same server line family."
"The solution's pricing is slightly higher."
"The pricing of PowerEdge Next is higher than it was before."
"The product is neither expensive nor cheap. It is manageable for medium enterprises as well."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Wholesaler/Distributor
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?
The pricing of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is okay, costing around 30,000 per year. Support is included in this cost.
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?
I would like to see improvements in VMware integration with Cisco, especially in terms of documentation and integration tools. Support of NVIDIA integration would also make it better.
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?
I use Cisco UCS E-Series Servers ( /products/cisco-ucs-e-series-servers-reviews ) for managing our IT infrastructure and supporting AI-driven projects. The integration with Cisco routers simplifies...
What do you like most about Dell PowerEdge M?
The best feature is the idrac tools, which allows me to manage/config the platform from the Linux level.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerEdge M?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is good.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerEdge M?
My understanding is that they are shutting down Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, which is unfortunate due to the fact that they cannot keep up with power density. If there were some way to keep up with t...
 

Also Known As

UCS E-Series Servers
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Navaho,  MiroNet AG, Columbia Sportswear
Newport City Homes, Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC), Georgian College, AgreeYa Solutions, IIHT Cloud Solutions, Arizona State University, AudienceScience, University of the Incarnate Word (UIW), The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Holy Cross School
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs. Dell PowerEdge MX- Series and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.