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Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS B-Series
Ranking in Blade Servers
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE Synergy
Ranking in Blade Servers
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Composable Infrastructure (1st)
 

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 Synergy is 21.9%, up from 21.8% 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.
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The architecture of this solution is very valuable; it has five traffic interconnects, and uses a network highway so bandwidth is never an issue."
"The Cisco solution provides a unified dashboard which enhances virtualization tasks, allowing configurations from a single interface. It also helps with space and power management, which are vital for data center efficiency."
"I like that the hardware is separated from the software definition of the components."
"In terms of the flexibility of the tool to adapt to technology needs, I think it is a very good solution."
"The solution is stable."
"The most valuable features of the solution are stability and security."
"The solution has the ability to reuse or divide the networking, making it a flexible networking environment."
"The platform has valuable features for management and good monitoring tools. It provides efficient insights."
"Give us the ability to seamlessly migrate from one operating environment to another within minutes, which is invaluable."
"Changing the form factor in Synergy allows us to have more RAM, which is significantly helpful for us."
"In terms of the productivity of our deployment team, the amount of time has been decreased a lot. In the past, to deploy one c7000 chassis with 15 or 16 blades, we literally used to spend two to three weeks. But with a Synergy, it's very quick. Within three days we can do the deployment."
"The Synergy environment provides us with one view. We're able to manage the entire stack, top to bottom, from that single view."
"The scalability is great."
"It makes life easier for us when we are deploying new technology, as we have the building blocks already in place."
"As we purchase and install more Synergy chassis, then we will be able to manage them together as one entity, as opposed to multiple separate cabinets."
"Great data storage and very good for software defined solutions."
 

Cons

"Cisco is expensive and difficult to manage. The product is not intuitive. It also needs to improve storage management and upgrades."
"There is also a need for better local parts replacement, as HP is superior in this area."
"The upgrades could be improved."
"This product uses a converged network adapter because it is the only way to provide flexibility with both fiber and ethernet connections."
"The graphic code that UCS can support is limited and less accessible than other systems."
"There are patches that cannot be implemented without any downtime or reboot required."
"Integration with storage could be improved."
"USC Central seems a bit confusing for technicians."
"The setup was a bit complex."
"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."
"I would like the ability to take the storage tray that is in a chassis and share it out to multiple chassis, not just the servers within the same chassis. This would be more efficient with resources."
"I would definitely like to see them fix the firmware updates on all the blades. No matter what operating system it is running on, make sure I can do the firmware as well as the software for those firmware components at the same time. I don't want to have to rely on an external product. Let's bring that product inside the menu so that I have a better experience with updates."
"If it would be possible to connect clusters of five with other clusters, so that they could all share resources, that would change the game for us. It would make it a viable solution for us."
"The stability is not good right now. We have had a couple of outages where we have receive very good support from HPE. However, we have not been able to come up with cut and dried reasons for why the outages have occurred. They have not been able to be reproduced, so it has been difficult getting our trust back."
"We'd like to see faster networking in the back-end."
"I would like more storage with this solution, because we still need 3PAR or other storage outside the box for the amount of data that we have."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."
"From a business point of view, the price is on the higher end."
"The licensing cost is a little bit expensive because by default, it depends on your fabric interconnect model. Most of the time, however, Cisco provides a lot of promotions to the customers, so the cost can be waived for many projects. The price of the chassis itself is fair."
"UCS is expensive, and we will be migrating to the cheaper HP servers."
"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."
"The pricing for Cisco products is always high."
"The pricing for Cisco is less than for the HP Proliant series."
"When we made the purchase of the hardware, we added Professional Services to it."
"It costs us around $60,000 a year."
"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."
"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."
"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."
"Synergy has lowered our total cost of ownership significantly. I would say ballpark around 25 percent, maybe more."
"The licensing is more around the software for RGS, because we are deploying bare metal installs. It is mainly the operating system and any lights-out management. So, licensing is minimum. We are licensing it annually."
"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

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 pricing is competitive. While the UCS price was high before, it is more competitive now.
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.
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 Synergy?
It is a good product for hypervisors.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?
The pricing is relatively high compared to Cisco servers. However, due to the volume of my purchases, I get good discounts.
 

Also Known As

UCS B-Series, Unified Computing System B-Series
No data available
 

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
HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Synergy and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.