We performed a comparison between Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers and HPE ProLiant DL Servers based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Rack Servers solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the expansion and replacement of parts."
"The product's stability is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are integration and customization."
"Its hardware is really reliable. We also like Cisco for its support."
"The VIC card is the most important feature."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is server management."
"The initial setup is straightforward and easy to do."
"The hardware customization capabilities are great."
"When we need to, we can get through to technical support and get the right person."
"The solution is highly scalable."
"The most valuable features of HPE ProLiant DL Servers are very high quality."
"HP ProLiant servers provide redundant solutions for almost everything. You can set up multiple power supplies, with a primary power source and a secondary power supply connected on UPS. If the power goes out in the building, the UPS will supply power to the host at all times. The solution can run on batteries for many hours, depending on your battery and UPS capacity."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is scalability."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is HPE Integrated Lights-Out (iLO)...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"This solution is perfect. From the time of purchase, it was state-of-the-art, and still, after five, 10 years, they still meet our demands extremely well."
"One of the most valuable features is iLO, which is very good. Another thing is the HPE support is very good."
"The solution needs more capacity and more scalability."
"The price of the solution is problematic, not the solution itself. It could be less expensive."
"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could improve integration with third-party solutions."
"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 warranty and support periods should be extended."
"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."
"The initial setup could be easier."
"The scalability of the product is an area of concern where Cisco needs to focus on making some improvements."
"The documentation for HPE ProLiant DL Servers has room for improvement. For example, it says on the documentation that this specific product or part number is supported. Still, when you ask the HPE team, the reply is that it's not supported, so HPE should update the information on the documentation."
"The licensing fees are expensive and have room for improvement."
"The installation could be simplified."
"On the software side, I would like for the management of the server overall (including reviewing its health) to be a bit easier. Right now, we have something that sits on the server to make sure all hardware drivers and other thing are up to date. This is a pain to set up."
"The pricing of the solution is high compared to other products."
"The servers should include OneView for intelligence provisioning."
"The technical support is pretty good, however, they could be a bit faster and more responsive."
"It's scalable but we are switching to workstation for some software because the CPU speed isn't fast enough anymore."
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Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is ranked 5th in Rack Servers with 29 reviews while HPE ProLiant DL Servers is ranked 2nd in Rack Servers with 156 reviews. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is rated 8.4, while HPE ProLiant DL Servers is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers writes "The VIC card is the most important feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE ProLiant DL Servers writes "Good availability and management console with good reliability". Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is most compared with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers, Dell XR2 Rugged Server, HPE Synergy and IBM Power Systems, whereas HPE ProLiant DL Servers is most compared with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers, HPE Apollo, IBM Power Systems and HPE Synergy. See our Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs. HPE ProLiant DL Servers report.
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Another good question to consider is, how deeply are security and anti-tampering features built in? With the advent of Gen 10 servers HPE is implementing this right down in silicon whereas the rest of the marketplace is still using firmware features to try to accomplish this. This is arguably too late in the process to be able to guarantee what BIOS code you are actually running, what back doors have been slotted in or what spyware ‘features’ have been embedded!
Also, look where HPE are going with Synergy. They have taken a huge architectural leap forwards and the roadmap is hugely impressive.
I don´t know in deep Cisco servers, but if you compares a HP and a CISCO with identical hardware (same chipset, processor, amount of RAM,..), the benchmark are very similar.
In my humble opinión, it is very important ask for the warranty and tech support. And most important: if you need someday add more hardware to your server, you must know before if you don´t buy it to the server manufacture, you loose the warranty.
It is very tipical some server manufacturer sell very cheap their machines but when you need to add more memory and/or hard drives, it is obligatory buy them to the server manufacturer... an very expensive.
I would suggest visiting spec.org as there is a wealth of information available there. The benchmarks are run by the vendors but within guideline and industry verified. There are many different benchmarks available through this site depending on what you are really interested in.
Hope this helps
Depending on what kind of workload you are looking for, you can find some info. / results from www.spec.org. Since Cisco UCS and Proliant DL are commonly used servers in enterprise, there should be test results of various benchmark on these server models.
As per my experience, CISCO UCS C-series is having scalability issue but for HPE ProLiant DL RACk server is good in terms of scalability. HPE tech support is much better than CISCO UCS.
I suggest checking the key benchmark sites directly – TPC-C, SAP etc. Each benchmark is designed to test a specific system capability.
www.tpc.org
global.sap.com
I have attached the URL’s. The SAP testing is most revealing for overall systems performance and scalability. The most recent certifications show Cisco UCS servers eclipsing their HPE counterparts by notable margins. Standard Proliant systems are lower in total lines processed than Cisco units, and you have to move up to the HPE Synergy line to beat lower end Cisco C240 servers. However, the higher end 4-way Cisco C480 handily beats Synergy.