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

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

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Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

Ranking in Rack Servers

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Density Optimized Servers (3rd)

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

Ranking in Rack Servers

1st

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

139

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Market share comparison

As of June 2024, in the Rack Servers category, the market share of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is 4.6% and it increased by 0.0% compared to the previous year. The market share of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 29.6% and it increased by 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Rack Servers

Unique Categories:

Density Optimized Servers

14.3%

No other categories found

Featured Reviews

Ehsan Emad

Head of IT at Synnapex

May 26, 2022

The VIC card is the most important feature.

I rate Cisco USC C-Series Rack Servers 10 out 10. If you plan to buy a C-Series, you should be clear about why you want to use it because the uses vary. different. Whether you're using Cisco, HPE, Dell or any other brand, it's essential to define your use case. For example, are you using it for a simulation graphics, calculations, etc.? Depending on the use case, you might want to go with a small server with more CPU. Sometimes you need a light CPU with a powerful GPU. For example, if we have a C-Series with four CPUs at the same time, or we have a server that's handled two CPUs at the same time—the purpose is crucial. C-Series is good enough compared to other competitors like HPE and the other ones. The HPE C20 is one unit and has a lot of RAM support, but the C-series is number one, in my opinion.

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reviewer2403441

Service Manager at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees

May 21, 2024

Enables us to go down in power consumption while at the same time provide more computing power to users

The world market for CPUs is excited. We have new ideas popping up left and right like new accelerator cards because there are GPUs. Dell is already working with Kalray, for example, that builds accelerator cards. There are new FPGA cards available on the market that are not in the portfolio. The last time I looked was when buying the new 760 Servers because it changes every couple of months, and not all Intel CPUs were certified. The adoption speed of new CPU and GPU technologies has room for improvement. However, I know coming from the technical side this is a lot of work, and it's difficult. I know they are working on it and it's not something you do in five minutes. We have to stay fair. It would be nice but I know that now Intel and AMD come up with new CPUs twice a year. In the past, there was a new CPU generation every two years and now it's every six months. So the developers of servers and all the devices and programs are running to keep up with the speed itself.

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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

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

"Excellent server solution with incredible network throughput."

"The C-series is the most valuable."

"Its hardware is really reliable. We also like Cisco for its support."

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

"The product's stability is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."

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

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

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

"I've been consistently impressed by the exceptional build quality of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers."

"The DRA cards for server management is the most valuable feature. They provide a clear overview of server settings and issues. We also like that the notifications are well-organized."

"Their support is very good and very effective."

"The newer servers are more energy-efficient compared to older ones."

"It is user friendly and easy to configure."

"The way it integrates with other brands and its manageability are valuable. It is easy to use."

"Their management tools are the most valuable. Our customers like the flexibility of being able to scale up and out. It is very easy for them to scale and add additional nodes and servers to their storage solutions, such as the ATI solution. It has very good quality and a great deployment model. Its warranty is also very good, and it is very stable. Their fixes have been quick if they have those."

"We use remote access a lot. They are fairly simple to use."

More Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers pros

Cons

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

"There is room for better integration with other brands."

"There is very little scalability for the cluster. If you need a higher availability, there is a user limitation. So that is the low side."

"On the contact center and video conferencing, I would definitely like to see more AI features. The AI features are key for us. You will find a lot of them in the cloud-based solution, but in the on-premises solution, they're hardly there. I would like to see the same AI features that are there in the cloud-based Cisco UC."

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

"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve by selling storage. Cisco doesn't sell storage, which is a problem because some customers ask for storage. There are several brands in the market, such as HPE, and Dell EMC. However, Cisco doesn't have any storage. This is where the tension comes from buying this solution."

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

"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."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"From the licensing model perspective, it might be useful for enterprises to get an overall enterprise license, rather than licensing each server. That is one option because we tend to buy the service with the licenses, but some of our older equipment does not have them."

"I do not have any qualms or problems with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. However, when it comes to the software, some of their competitors are already feeding a lot of performance and availability data to an online platform. We have not seen that with PowerEdge."

"There might be room for improvement, especially in the software aspect, such as firmware updates."

"The flexibility of card use could be improved."

"There are certain aspects, features, and functionality on the motherboard that need improvement."

"The Industrial and healthcare areas both need improvement."

"Lately, we feel that we need an improvement in our servers. Surprisingly, we have seen some servers here that do meet these characteristics. They are slightly smaller servers."

"Considering from a hardware perspective, some areas of concern were network cards on the models we had in our organization, which were fairly inaccessible, so we had to remove the whole motherboard and, basically, the whole system to get rid of or swap a network card."

More Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution is expensive and I give the price a four out of ten."

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

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

"We have to pay for the VMware and Cisco licenses."

"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."

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

"My company has an agreement with Cisco to get discounted rates. It is one of the reasons why we chose the product."

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

"At present, the pricing seems a bit high for us."

"One of the clients has been offered a price of $18,000 instead of the regular price of around $25,000."

"The high cost of Dell PowerEdge Rack Server licenses is attributed to the pre-installed Windows Server operating system from Microsoft."

"The solution's prices are good, especially considering what you get to use...The licensing aspect of the solution is also fine."

"They seem to have become more expensive. I've not done a comparison with other vendors recently. If the price increases more, we would need to do a comparison next year just to make sure that we are benchmarking our server purchases correctly."

"The main reason I choose Dell there is cost. Dell is cheaper than HPE. Why would I want to pay a premium for an HPE product when I'm getting the same amount of support, the same amount of data protection, and the same amount of performance from Dell?"

"Dell is pretty good. good. I had a conversation with Dell a while ago due to a vendor. We got much better pricing from a competitor. When I looked at another company, Dell called me and asked why am I looking at someone else when they have a distributor. I told them that their pricing was not good, so Dell went back to the distributor, and we got much better pricing"

"You can't have computed performance without using more power. That said, when I consider the power consumption and performance of the MX740c, depending on how much memory you install on each blade, you get the best bang for your buck."

More Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

25%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

20%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

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.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

The solution is moderately priced.

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

The improvement should be done as per customer requirements.

When shopping for a rack server, would you go with Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem rack servers were the better fit for us. We ultimately decided to go with Dell EMC Poweredge....

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?

It has helped us reduce unplanned downtime by 20% to 30%.

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?

We are quite satisfied with our latest configurations. We don't have big complaints at the moment. The response time could be better. Everyone is very busy nowadays. It's important to get issues re...

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Comparisons

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Dell XR2 Rugged Server vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

HPE Synergy vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 2% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Competitors

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

Compared 37% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

Compared 37% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Apollo vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

Compared 4% of the time

Huawei FusionServer RH Series Rack Servers vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

Download Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers product report

Also Known As

Unified Computing System C-Series, Cisco UCS C-Series

PowerEdge R

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Cisco

Dell Technologies

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.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are designed to optimize performance and efficiency in a data center environment, supporting various applications. Based on user reviews, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers supporting tasks from basic web hosting to more demanding applications like data analytics and virtualization. They are engineered to offer high performance, reliability, and scalability. With a focus on automation and integrated security, these servers simplify operations and protect against threats, making them a smart choice for businesses of all sizes.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are a robust, secure, and scalable solution that can meet the diverse needs of businesses, backed by comprehensive support. Benefits to look for in reviews include performance, reliability, scalability, and customer support.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers key features include:

Scalability: These servers can easily scale to meet growing business needs, supporting more workloads and processing power.
Integrated Security: From hardware to firmware to the operating system, Dell PowerEdge servers are designed with security in mind, offering layers of protection.
Energy Efficiency: Advanced thermal design and energy-smart technology help reduce operational costs and environmental impact.
Automation: With Dell EMC OpenManage, the management of servers is streamlined, allowing for automated deployment, monitoring, and updates.

In terms of implementation, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are used across various industries, from small businesses to large enterprises. They serve as the foundation for IT infrastructure, powering critical applications in healthcare, finance, education, and more. The adaptability of these servers means they can be tailored to specific industry needs, from handling large datasets in research institutions to supporting high-transaction databases in financial services.

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

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco

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