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Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE BladeSystem comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
8.2
Cisco UCS B-Series enhances performance and efficiency, reducing costs and power usage, surpassing expectations with minimal maintenance and strong returns.
Sentiment score
7.7
Users achieve substantial ROI and efficiency from HPE BladeSystem, with reduced costs, increased capacity, and high long-term benefits.
Additionally, we achieved server consolidation, running multiple services on fewer servers without purchasing new ones, resulting in significant financial benefits.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Users praise Cisco UCS B-Series support for professionalism, quick responses, and reliable 24x7 assistance, with occasional minor delays.
Sentiment score
6.7
Customer service is highly rated, but technical support quality varies by contract level, location, and initial response adequacy.
Cisco's technical support is highly helpful and responsive.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Cisco UCS B-Series offers robust scalability and flexibility, allowing seamless integration and effortless expansion to meet diverse needs.
Sentiment score
7.8
HPE BladeSystem offers excellent scalability, flexibility, and modularity, efficiently supporting large enterprise growth with minimal performance issues.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Cisco UCS B-Series is praised for its robust stability and reliability, despite minor challenges in certain operations.
Sentiment score
7.9
HPE BladeSystem is highly stable and reliable, with rare issues typically resolved quickly through updates or maintenance.
The stability of Cisco UCS B-Series is impeccable, as it has been running smoothly without any need for maintenance.
I do not have to call HP support frequently, which indicates its reliability.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco UCS B-Series needs improved storage integration, user-friendly management, lower costs, HTML5 transition, and better support for new technologies.
HPE BladeSystem users seek improved manageability, scalability, integration, simpler updates, enhanced UI, better support, and cost efficiency.
Last year, we faced challenges with firmware upgrades, but they were quickly resolved with assistance from Cisco TAC.
In general, there is a 10% to 15% price gap compared to competitors.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco UCS B-Series is costly but offers value and reliability, with discounts available during year-end negotiations.
HPE BladeSystem is costly but valued for reliability, with potential discounts and cost-effectiveness through proper sizing and features.
The management software, Cisco One, is priced a bit high but still considered reasonable.
In general, there is a 10% to 15% price gap compared to competitors.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco UCS B-Series excels in scalability, centralized management, ease of deployment, virtualization integration, and offers robust performance and reliability.
HPE BladeSystem offers reliability, modularity, and scalability with centralized management and seamless integration, optimizing space and enhancing resource efficiency.
Its administration capabilities provide easy access to performance reports, logs, and utilization data, which are essential for effective server management.
The feature I find most valuable is the ease of use.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS B-Series
Ranking in Blade Servers
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
73
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE BladeSystem
Ranking in Blade Servers
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
138
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 8.8%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE BladeSystem is 13.8%, down from 17.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Prasanth Kailasam - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports multiple hypervisors but needs to improve in the area of configuration
Speaking about how the tool can improve computing efficiency in data centers, I feel that, ultimately, there are other kinds of hardware or servers that Cisco provides. From a management perspective, certain aspects can be incorporated to help users understand their current standing. It would be good if certain larger configurations could also be made suitable for the tool to suit the needs of multiple customer bases. For virtualization needs, the product works well. I have dealt with certain virtualization environments using - Cisco UCS B-Series. As of now, the tool is fine. Cisco UCS B-Series recently got registered with Nutanix, one of the market's HCI platforms. Nutanix can run on Cisco. Cisco UCS B-Series' direction is right. I don't think any further improvement is required in the tool right now. The integration capabilities of the product are okay. I haven't seen any challenges when installing the tool in an environment. I think that the tool supports multiple hypervisors. Speaking about the feature that has improved our company's data center operation, I would say that the Cisco brand name provides our organization with the benefits we need from the product. I believe that manageability is one crucial aspect of the tool, considering that it is pretty easy to manage. Performance-wise, some improvements have been introduced in Cisco UCS B-Series. Whenever somebody evaluates and goes ahead with some traditional setup in their environment, along with HP and Dell, they can also consider Cisco as a part of it because it has become more cost-effective and competitive presently. Networking-wise, the tool is pretty strong, and it operates as a brand that actually helps with the support offered to customers. The support offered by Cisco adds a lot of confidence for the clients. I feel that Cisco is doing a lot of innovation in order to offer scalability and flexibility to adopt future technologies. I believe Cisco users might see a lot more solutions that get introduced in the market that might become more and more compatible with many products in the future. In the future, I think that users will see AI and other related aspects run pretty well in a Cisco environment. I would say that the benefits and value of the use of the product stem from the brand name attached to Cisco products. Cisco's support when you use Cisco UCS B-Series is good. In the networking space, Cisco has been a leader for a very long time, and the same kind of credibility is what you can expect when you consider Cisco UCS B-Series. Considering the availability of the products from competitors, I rate the tool a seven out of ten.
JuanDuque - PeerSpot reviewer
Very reliable, expands well, and is pretty simple to set up
It is very straightforward to set up. It's not complex. The length of deployment depends on the way that you configure the Blades. For example, if you're going to work with VMware, the time could be at least 25 to 30 minutes. It is not going to depend on the BladeSystem; it is going to depend on the time of the operate system deployed. The number of people you need for maintenance depends on the monitoring system that you have. For example, if you have a good monitoring system for this platform you're going to need less than ten specialists, but if you don't have a monitoring system to check the platform, probably you're going to need more than ten people.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS B-Series?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is easily scalable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS B-Series?
The licensing cost for three years, followed by an AMC for two years, is reasonable. However, the management software, Cisco One, is priced a bit high but still considered reasonable. No additional...
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS B-Series?
Last year, we faced challenges with firmware upgrades, but they were quickly resolved with assistance from Cisco TAC.
How would you choose between HPE's Bladesystem and Synergy?
For me, choosing between HPE’s Bladesystem and Synergy came down to which solution was more powerful, reliable, and stable. It turns out Bladesystem was the winner. Bladesystem is excellent because...
What do you like most about HPE BladeSystem?
The solution is scalable, offering flexibility and expansion options to meet changing business needs.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE BladeSystem?
In general, there is a 10% to 15% price gap compared to competitors.
 

Also Known As

UCS B-Series, Unified Computing System B-Series
HP ProLiant BL Series Servers, HP ProLiant BladeSystem
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, Anilana Hotels and Resorts, Anonymous Banking Group, Artoni Transporti, Bellevue, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Hertz, Houston Methodist, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Co.KG, Outscale, Sony Corporation, Talbots
EMIS Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE BladeSystem and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.