Cisco UCS E-Series Servers have been reliable. I think that's one of the big things. Their hardware has been pretty, pretty reliable. I have noticed some issues with their controllers failing due to the thermal paste drying up and the heat sinks falling off causes them to fail. But that was something we experienced last year. It took almost five years for any hardware failure. And even that was like a $100 repair. So nothing too major.
Additionally, the UCS GUI is pretty straightforward. The server itself is a lot easier to maintain than some of the other Cisco equipment, like the routers and switches.
They are really easy to maintain. I've added RAM to them. I've done a lot of other things with the virtualization.
In terms of what needs improvement, I would say 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. You just look at it and you're like, well, is it this with this one? Or this with this one? My model matches this, but my CPU is running this. It's just a nightmare. It would be a whole lot better if they could clean up their documentation on it.
It would be good if they organized that more making it a little bit easier for people who don't understand the language as much. I think that's kind of what Cisco in general is, if you're not a CCNA or something like that you're going to have a lot of trouble managing and maintaining it. I think that's probably one of the biggest failure points with Cisco, from their documentation all the way to their products. I mean it's a solid product for sure. And they have some of the best experts working for them. But for small house users and schools, it's not really feasible.