Cisco UCS B-Series vs Lenovo Flex System comparison

"The most valuable feature is the service profile."

"The platform has valuable features for management and good monitoring tools. It provides efficient insights."

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

"The most beneficial feature is UCS Manager. It's the best way to manage hardware, creating group policies, like scrub policies and maintenance policies."

"The servers' resilience was particularly impactful."

"The scalability is good because it comes with Fabric Interconnects, and you can directly add more blades as you go. Therefore, scalability is not a problem."

"If we could get more reference architecture available on the portal, it would be helpful in making decisions"

"The most valuable feature is definitely the service profile."

"The stability and speed are always good. The processor is good and it's still working with our loads."

"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo Flex System is the storage system."

"The product is very user-friendly and has many resources at the enterprise level."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The Lenovo Flex System is very stable."

"We use the solution as a compute model to run the compute load on servers."

"It comes at a good price. We didn't face any problems with this product."

"Flex System's best features are its performance and stability."

"There is also a need for better local parts replacement, as HP is superior in this area."

"Despite the benefits gained from the product implementation, the cost could be more appealing if the overall cost of ownership were reduced."

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

"The high price of the solution is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The configuration is a bit complex, as it requires very high technical expertise to apply it."

"The integration is an area where Cisco UCS B-Series needs to provide users with more details."

"The aggregation in the data center is beneficial."

"The solution is difficult to set up."

"The most valuable feature of the Lenovo Flex System is the storage system."

"It does not have the same module flexibility that was present in IBM Blade. On the Blade System, I was able to choose between the Cisco module, or BMC module. Since the switch to Lenovo, I have not had the same choice of modules, only the BMC modules."

"The user-interface needs improvement, because they have an application from which we have to manage the whole system and all the infrastructure. This application is not working at our premises, because of some problem with the hardware itself. So although we brought it with our systems, and we used it to manage all the systems: the storage, the switches, and everything, nevertheless we have to support every part alone and enter the interface in one-by-one."

"The product could improve its integration capabilities."

"Continuing the production of this product is necessary. It is currently out of support, and we are seeking support from other sources besides Lenovo."

"The solution could improve by providing more integration with other platforms."

"The solution's firmware and driver upgrades are a bit difficult."

"I had some difficulties with the initial setup."

"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."

"The pricing for Cisco is less than for the HP Proliant series."

"The cost of the Cisco UCS B-Series is comparable to HP solutions but higher than Dell solutions."

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing costs of the solution on a yearly basis. Price-wise, it is an expensive product"

"Considering our market, I rate the pricing of Cisco UCS B-Series as a six."

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

"It is expensive."

"The product is expensive."

"We have the whole maintenance for the 3 years, starting the deployment. We also have the VMware license for 3 years and I think we have another license to buy. There are no additional costs besides licensing."

"There is a one-off payment to buy the equipment and the support is purchased annually."

"The price is interesting. I am able to quote a client based on their needs and offer them either Lenovo or Dell."

"The 14 blade server allows significant room for upscaling before having to invest in another chassis. You would have to purchase another chassis much sooner in the case of an eight or nine blade server."

"The is an annual license cost to use the Lenovo Flex System. If the price was less expensive and flexible overall and for additional features, our customers would be happier."

"We are just paying the operational cost, which is not much."