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Cisco UCS B-Series vs PowerEdge C 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
PowerEdge C
Ranking in Blade Servers
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Density Optimized Servers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 8.3%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PowerEdge C is 0.5%, down from 0.9% 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.
Niraj  Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Good return on investment, round the clock technical support, and easy to install
PowerEdge C is used in both corporate and industrial settings One of the main features that attract customers to buy their products is the great management tool and almost zero failure rate, making it easy to use. As far as I'm concerned, the current product works perfectly fine and I don't see…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The feature that I found the most value is the abstract and stateless capacities."
"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."
"The ratio in terms of the number of units and the number of servers that we can get each chassis is quite good."
"Great security and functionality."
"The Dual Fabric design allows for online/in-service upgrades during production with no impact."
"From a return on investment perspective, Cisco UCS B-Series is worth the money."
"I like that the hardware is separated from the software definition of the components."
"If we could get more reference architecture available on the portal, it would be helpful in making decisions"
"It provides the necessary infrastructure for our operations."
"I like the feature that allows for a backup and that is suitable for me."
"PowerEdge servers have high CPU processing power, and the support is also good."
"The product stability has been excellent."
"Every new version is better than the previous one."
"The hybrid solution is much more stable than other products."
"It was not complex to deploy."
"The management platform is great."
 

Cons

"Its scalability could be better."
"The high price of the solution is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"There is a delay in the product's reporting and the rebooting system compared to servers from other vendors."
"Integration with storage could be improved."
"The GUI is not the greatest."
"Cisco UCS B-Series competitors have similar features as they do, Cisco needs to make some changes to make their offering better."
"The solution is difficult to set up."
"There has been an increase in quality issues."
"There is some trouble with the stability part of the product, making it an area where improvements are required."
"The product’s pricing could be a little cheaper."
"A feature that needs to be added is the ability for full container storage."
"The need to update the firmware and check if there is any bug in the product is one of the areas where Dell PowerEdge C falls short and needs to make improvements."
"It would be better if it worked with SMTP servers on the cloud. Right now, it only allows notifications via the SMTP server. In the next release, I would like to have a better processor."
"For improvements, the iDRAC application isn't very intuitive to handle."
"Its customer service could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost of the blade servers is okay, but the cost of Fabric Interconnects ends up increasing the overall costs. For example, suppose it costs 3,500 USD per blade server. When you include the Fabric Interconnects, you could pay up to 30,000 USD. Therefore, compared to the cost of servers from Lenovo, Huawei, Dell, or HP, the cost of Cisco servers can be high. However, Cisco gives good discounts (about 90% to 94%) to partners and to customers who are already using Cisco servers. New Cisco customers do not get the level of discount that an existing customer does. Because you can get discounts with Cisco, I would give pricing a rating of four out of five."
"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."
"Considering our market, I rate the pricing of Cisco UCS B-Series as a six."
"The cost of the Cisco UCS B-Series is comparable to HP solutions but higher than Dell solutions."
"The product is expensive."
"It is highly-priced."
"Pricing with Cisco is very high."
"The type of service level purchase will determine the level of support response that you receive from Cisco."
"When we talk about pricing it is the cheapest on the market that I have found."
"We buy licenses for the solution's advanced features."
"The product costs can be high, especially for disks and other components."
"PowerEdge C is a product that is priced at a medium range, so it is not too expensive."
"Despite the slightly higher price, we prefer Dell due to the high quality of their products."
"PowerEdge C is a reasonably priced product, and the pricing depends on how many years you need the product. The cost also includes the support."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"There is a need to pay towards the annual subscription-based licensing model offered by the solution. The product is moderately priced. Price is a critical issue, and it is always good to have moderately priced solutions."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
16%
Venture Capital & Private Equity Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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.
What do you like most about PowerEdge C?
The solution provides good support and service.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PowerEdge C?
PowerEdge is quite a costly solution, and I would rate the pricing around seven or eight on a scale from one to ten with ten being the most expensive.
What needs improvement with PowerEdge C?
With reference architectures like VX rack, the update process is quite painful. They could automate or simplify it more. There are prerequisites to go through, and that's usually the only time-cons...
 

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
NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS B-Series vs. PowerEdge C and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.