Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy comparison

Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the Blade Servers category. Cisco is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.4. Cisco holds a 8.3% mindshare in Blade Servers, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 21.8% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS B-Series

Read 72 Cisco UCS B-Series reviews

1,595 Views
1,152 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 89 HPE Synergy reviews

3,366 Views
2,439 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS B-Series

HPE Synergy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco UCS B-Series and HPE Synergy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Blade Servers solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Synergy Report (Updated: December 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Synergy

December 2024

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Helped 824,053 peers since 2012

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS B-Series

Ranking in Blade Servers

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HPE Synergy

Ranking in Blade Servers

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Composable Infrastructure (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 8.3%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Synergy is 21.8%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Olalowo Olaleye

Senior VMware\Cloud Solutions Engineering Consultant · at Shell

A great solution with high availability, reliability and a low cost of ownership

It has reliability, high availability, and a low total cost of ownership. Your servers stand a better chance of having data available because the total cost of ownership is very low. Once you buy it, you can almost afford to go to the last, because you don't need to buy another one.

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CarlosArdila

Project Manager, Information Technology at Telelago

Helps grow horizontally or vertically within one box or chassis

The initial setup is very easy. We deployed this in two days, including installation, system setup, firmware upgrades, configuration, and network connection. By the next day, we were already deploying virtual machines. We initially began with the Blade system. As the migration to SAP HANA approached, it seemed prudent to upgrade our hardware. Consequently, we facilitated their transition from the Blade system to Synergy. Subsequently, we collaborated closely with the SAP consultancy company to oversee the migration process, ensuring seamless integration of all workloads and sub-environments. We have four people working on the deployment, including a project manager, two specialists, and one tech support.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Since its UCS release in 2009, Cisco has extended the core functionality with Central, a tool for managing multiple domains"

"The Dashboard is quite impressive and is, so far, the best based on my experience."

"The solution is very reliable in comparison to the other brands."

"The hardware is easily swappable and, utilizing the boot from SAN option, you can always keep your server intact due to the service profiles."

"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 scalability is very good."

"From a return on investment perspective, Cisco UCS B-Series is worth the money."

"The stability provided by the product is its most valuable feature for our organization."

More Cisco UCS B-Series pros

"The flexibility to link them together and configure them gives us the ability to scale out easily, to add more compute resources as needed... The way that they're scalable and flexible means we can add additional servers in quickly... We're not spending a lot of time doing procurement and building of physical servers."

"Being able to connect my 3PAR arrays to the Synergy platform is the most valuable aspect to me."

"It's very scalable. We like the idea that we can put four chassis in one of our racks, and we can connect up to 25 chassis, so the scalability to us, and being able to sync all those into one management portal, is unheard of. You can't really sync that many blades and chassis together in any other platform."

"We have more control over the firmware and how we are managing our physical servers."

"The stability of the solution is very reliable."

"Cable management is a big feature, in addition to time to deployment. We can buy a new server and have it up and running very quickly."

"The most valuable features of HPE Synergy are the two composers."

"Technical support is excellent. They are very helpful."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"The GUI is not the greatest."

"This product uses a converged network adapter because it is the only way to provide flexibility with both fiber and ethernet connections."

"The product pricing needs improvement."

"This model does not support virtualization of the switch."

"Cisco UCS B-Series competitors have similar features as they do, Cisco needs to make some changes to make their offering better."

"Compared to the deployment of servers such as Dell XCDs, the deployment of UCS servers is more complex. They take longer to deploy."

"There are some shortcomings in the product when you look at it from the perspective of the area involving multiple configurations, making it an aspect where improvements are required."

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

More Cisco UCS B-Series cons

"I'd get the firmware to be a little more secure and a little more streamlined."

"The speed in OneView and how it updates the entire configuration needs improvement. If they can do that, and it could be a little more clear on what impact different actions will have for certain things, that would be good."

"We have flaky things, like a lot of bad fans."

"Its management needs some work. It is not the best in terms of management. It has decent management. Its user interface can also be better."

"The only good thing is that they have some powerful machines that you can use, such as the latest generations of HPE Compute that you can use."

"We had an issue during the initial setup with the 40 Gigabyte cards. They weren’t working, so we had to work really closely with HPE support to get them to work."

"The initial setup was complex. It was slow and just didn't work. Even HPE couldn't make it work for 45 days."

"The technical support was about the only negative experience that I had. It was a mixed bag when we were first standing it up. We had some requirements from our information security department, and technical support wasn't able to give me immediate answers. They had to engage engineering, which they did, then they got me the answers. However, it took a week of back and forth conversations and phone calls to get it all worked out."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product cost is high."

"Cisco UCS B-Series is an expensive solution."

"Pricing will be based on your requirements so it is important to plan, engage, and negotiate directly with the Cisco Account Manager."

"The price of this solution compared to others is fair."

"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."

"It is expensive."

"Cisco UCS does not require a license. However, this license is not specific to users."

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

More Cisco UCS B-Series pricing and cost advice

"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs by 50 percent."

"For temporal use, when you throw on the fact that you're essentially doubling your capacity, right there you could claim a 50 percent TCO reduction."

"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."

"The price point is a little high. We were able to get a good deal on a promotion, to go with it. It would be nice to see the prices come down a little bit."

"For me, the scalability is how much money that I need to spend on switches for how many frames, which ultimately means servers. To get the best bandwidth before the most recent product announcement, I have buy new switches every three frames. The competition is shipping a product right now where I only need switches every ten frames."

"In our whole environment, the cost is in the millions. On this particular chassis, the annual cost is 12 blades times approximately $40,000."

"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."

"We pay about £500 for the solution."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

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.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS B-Series?

The pricing is competitive. While the UCS price was high before, it is more competitive now.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS B-Series?

If we could get more reference architecture available on the portal, it would be helpful in making decisions. Also, the content should be more extensive, especially technical content.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about HPE Synergy?

It is a good product for hypervisors.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?

Synergy is more expensive than Cisco.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerEdge M vs Cisco UCS B-Series

Compared 23% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs Cisco UCS B-Series

Compared 19% of the time

Super Micro SuperBlade vs Cisco UCS B-Series

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs Cisco UCS B-Series

Compared 6% of the time

More Cisco UCS B-Series Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 24% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 24% of the time

Dell PowerEdge M vs HPE Synergy

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Apollo Systems vs HPE Synergy

Compared 6% of the time

HPE Superdome X vs HPE Synergy

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS B-Series

December 2024

Download Cisco UCS B-Series product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

December 2024

Download HPE Synergy product report

Also Known As

UCS B-Series, Unified Computing System B-Series

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Cisco

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Overview

Based on Intel Xeon processor E7 and E5 product families, Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers work with virtualized and non-virtualized applications to increase: Performance, Energy efficiency, Flexibility and Administrator productivity.

HPE Synergy, the first platform built from the ground up for Composable Infrastructure, offers an experience that empowers IT to create and deliver new value instantly and continuously. It is a single infrastructure that reduces operational complexity for traditional workloads and increases operational velocity for the new breed of applications and services. Through a single interface, HPE Synergy composes physical and virtual compute, storage, and fabric pools into any configuration for any application. As an extensible platform, it easily enables a broad range of applications and operational models such as virtualization, hybrid cloud, and DevOps. With HPE Synergy, IT can become not just the internal service provider but the business partner to rapidly launch new applications that become the business.

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

HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Synergy

December 2024

Free Report: Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Synergy

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Synergy and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.

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