Cisco UCS B-Series Reviews

I use this solution for general company services, including file-sharing, Microsoft services, active directory services, and backup solutions.

The most valuable features are monitoring and processing, which can handle a lot of throughput and are more powerful than the HPE series.

The graphic code that UCS can support is limited and less accessible than other systems. 

I've been using this solution for three years.

This solution is stable and powerful - we've had no problems with it.

The scalability is powerful.

The initial setup was complex, and deployment took two-and-a-half years.

UCS is expensive, and we will be migrating to the cheaper HP servers.

Cisco is a huge company that can support a lot of services and has the most powerful website, which means its systems are the most stable. I would advise potential customers to use and enjoy it because it is the greatest experience. I would give this solution a score of ten out of ten.

We use it for computing and virtualization. All the blade servers are used for database uploads.

We are a system integrator. So, we sell multiple type of software and hardware solutions. We implement solutions and provide support. 

We have multiple versions of the solution currently running. It depends on our customer.

The overall consolidation of hardware is helping us.

• Manageability
• Performance

I can connect Cisco UCS B-Series to multiple chassis and rack servers using a unified platform, then manage them on a single console.

The solution is stable. We haven't encounter any failures or problems in these particular servers. We have had three to four years without any downtime happening.

The technical support is good from Cisco. The type of service level purchase will determine the level of support response that you receive from Cisco.

The setup is a bit complex in terms of configuration. While as an admin or an end user, it is very easy to use. The configuration is a bit complex, as it requires very high technical expertise to apply it.

We are the integrator. We use two engineers for the deployment.

The time for deployment depends customer to customer and the number of servers that we deploy. For example, our last deployment took three days.

It requires some basic configuration, then you can just plug and play.

We still have multiple vendors that we work with. It depends on the customer requirements whom we select to work with.

We work with this solution because we find that the technology is superior to others.

We have also evaluated Dell EMC blade and rack servers, along with Cisco rack servers.

Our customers are very happy people.

The UCS environment as a whole. The hardware is easily swappable and, utilizing the boot from SAN option, you can always keep your server intact due to the service profiles. So if your blade has failures and you have a hot spare, you can transfer the service profile to a new blade and be operational in mere minutes. Huge for uptime and perfect for environments like VMware ESXi hosts, which is what I use them for primarily.

We can be scalable to a greater degree using Cisco UCS. The options available and the connectivity to a Nexus switch with universal ports have been a game changer.

The UCS manager interface needs to be cleaned up a bit and can be streamlined, but no major complaints. Get off Java once and for all and release 3.2 so it can be all HTML 5.

I have been using Cisco UCS since early 2011, so six and a half years.

B-Series blades, along with the C Series tack mounts are the most reliable server hardware platform I have worked with in my 20+ years in the industry.

None. Cisco UCS, to this day, has been the most easily scalable server product I have encountered. Hyper-converged solutions have potential, yet have not shown me that they are scalable at an enterprise level the way the B Series UCS are at this time.

Some of the best in the industry. Always helpful and mostly flexible.

In the past, I have used rack mount and blade solutions from Dell, HPE, and IBM. None of them have come close to the combination of performance and reliability that I get from Cisco.

Initial UCS setup is complex, but once you have your service profiles (templates) configured, adding new blades and provisioning boot LUNs is very easy. Cloning options make it even more so.

Nothing shocking. Very straightforward. Make sure you work with a vendor partner than can get you a substantial discount off of list pricing.

I have evaluated dozens of server solutions (Dell PowerEdge, IBM X series and HPE ProLiant) and many, many more.

Do it and don’t look back. Just make sure you get strong in-house knowledge of UCS early on, unless you are willing to outsource UCS support to an MSP. It is easily learnable, but there is a bit of a curve to support the overall UCS infrastructure at the start.

The ability to scale to multiple blades and multiple blade chassis quickly and easily.

Customers see benefits in the reduced time to deploy virtual servers. The ability to scale out quickly is an example of that.

The management interface in the current version is Java based. I would like to see a move away from Java based management consoles, which I think Cisco has already road-mapped for the UCS product range.

We completed a deployment of this solution in February 2015.

No, the product has been stable.

It is designed to address scalability.

Cisco technical support is always available 24x7. I rate Cisco technical support 10/10.

We specifically implemented UCS to cater specifically for a customer’s Cisco Unified Communication products, which were all running on Cisco Media Convergence Servers (MCS). The Cisco MCS platform is now End-of-Life, so UCS was the life cycle replacement option. The MCS platform also had limitations with virtualisation which the UCS product suite overcomes. More recently, the customer’s platform services team have recently purchased another Cisco 5108 blade server chassis and more UCS-B blade servers to replace their HP blade server solution.

Cisco publishes deployment guides which are straightforward to follow. The guides assume some knowledge of LAN, SAN and server administration and deployment.

Cisco publishes deployment guides which are straightforward to follow. The guides assume some knowledge of LAN, SAN and server administration and deployment.

Cisco is expensive and difficult to manage. The product is not intuitive. It also needs to improve storage management and upgrades. 

I have been working with the product for one year. 

I would rate the product's stability a seven out of ten since we encountered bugs during the upgrade. 

The product is scalable and my company has 5000 users for the solution. 

The product's tech support has good people. However, the people in level 1 support do not know what they are talking about. Level 3 support is good. 

Neutral

I would rate the product a seven out of ten. We have two administrators for the product. The tool is a good product but maintenance is not easy. 

• Virtual NICs/HBA
• Nexus FC/Ethernet convergence

VirtualNICs/HBA allow us to redesign completely the IO schema (network and storage) without needing to upgrade or acquire additional hardware and controllers.

• Hardware platform configuration

I have used this solution for three years. We are currently using Cisco UCS, Chassis Model UCS5108, I/O Modules UCS-IOM-2208XP, Fabric Interconnect Model UCS-FI-6248UP, and Cisco Nexus 5548.

We had some issues with certain NX-OSs in the Fabric Interconnect.

I have not encountered any scalability issues.

Technical support is 7/10.

I did not previously use a different solution. I’ve previous experience with HPE BladeSystem. UCS looks to me more flexible and powerful.

Initial setup was complex. UCS deployment & management requires deep knowledge of the platform.

It is expensive (like all converged platforms). From a cost perspective, UCS must be evaluated seriously in order to determine if the company requirements justify the acquisition. It is important to take into account that UCS is an end-to-end solution. Integration with Cisco Nexus is a must.

Before choosing this product, I did not evaluate other options, but in the convergence market, UCS should be evaluated as a clear option to evaluate.

Training, training, training and planning, planning, planning!

• Flexibility,
• Management
• VMware interoperability

It's helped us to develop a new platform for virtualization, with a small footprint, and improved our computing power efficiency.

It could be helpful to have a wizard to make the setup routine better, and a wizard to help with the managerial processes to avoid misconfiguration issues.

We've been using a Cisco 6296, 5100 Chassis, B-Series server B200M3, VIC1280 for two years.

We have had no issues with the deployment.

There have been no performance issues.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

They are very professional.

Our system used to be based on the usual rack servers, with Dell M1000 based blades.

The hardware setup was easy. The initial setup through the manager requires a deep understanding of the platform.

We implemented it with the assistance of an integrator who were a Cisco partner. I definitely recommended you get professional assistance to help with the initial run phase. It's critically important to provide formal learning to the internal team that will be in charge of the day-to-day operating activities.

I'd recommend that you create a "turn Key" solution pack, including both hardware and platform licensing, and guest licensing. You could also get this by implementing it through re-sellers.

We also looked into HP servers, but decided that Cisco was better in most areas. Combined with Nexus switches, it provides us with a versatile solution for a virtual platform including SAN fabric capability build in, networking flexibility and SDN, and is better to management.

You need to have at least a basic understanding of the product concept and architecture variations in order to better understand use cases and ROI estimation in order to get the initial sizing right, and create the right scaling plan.

We use it in our data center. In our infrastructure, we virtualize our servers.

I like that it's very manageable very easy to use and configure. I am not an expert, but the graphic user interface is quite simple very easy to use. It's a complete solution.

We have to have Java to manage the infrastructure. It would be great if we can manage the infrastructure through a web browser. 

We have Dell EMC, and I would like to connect my product directly to the chassis. I would like to have an interface to integrate the storage directly chassis and not through the network. If that could be possible, that would be great for me. 

I have been using Cisco UCS B200 since 2015.

We haven't had any problem or any outage, and it's always running. Every process and everything you run, memory and cache memory, is always running. It's very stable.

I think it's very scalable. I have an opportunity to provide for more Blade Servers, and if I need more power or resources, I just have to provide the Blade Servers. Right now, we have two administrators.

When we had a problem once with a virtual server, our Cisco partner came to us within three hours and provided support. It was very good.

We have stand-alone servers, and we used Dell Servers. For example, we installed VMware on top of the server. When we needed more power or infrastructure that's a little bit easier to buy, we bought this Cisco UCS platform.

I don't know if it was straightforward because our partner set up and deployed this solution. It took about 20 days to implement this solution.

We received the infrastructure entirely configured by our partner. It was a very good experience.

Before you buy infrastructure like this, I would recommend some training. It'll help to get really good training in infrastructure management. For example, in my case, a quick overview when I started to manage the infrastructure definitely helped. It's very hard because at the beginning you are a little lost. The infrastructure is easy to manage, but it would be better if you take time before you install the infrastructure to learn more.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Cisco UCS B-Series a nine.