Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs HPE Synergy comparison

The compared Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #5 in Rack Servers , with an average rating of 8.8, and holds a 4.5% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 22.5% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

Read 29 Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers reviews

3,087 Views
1,896 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 90 HPE Synergy reviews

2,798 Views
1,995 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

HPE Synergy

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Executive Summary

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

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and others in Rack Servers.

To learn more, read our detailed Rack Servers Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Rack Servers

March 2025

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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 C-Series Rack Ser...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (5th), Density Optimized Servers (5th)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Blade Servers (1st), Composable Infrastructure (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are IT Hardware and Infrastructure solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is designed for Rack Servers and holds a mindshare of 4.5%, down 4.9% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 22.5% mindshare, up 22.0% since last year.

Rack Servers

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Ehsan Emad

Head of IT at Synnapex

The VIC card is the most important feature.

I rate Cisco USC C-Series Rack Servers 10 out 10. If you plan to buy a C-Series, you should be clear about why you want to use it because the uses vary. different. Whether you're using Cisco, HPE, Dell or any other brand, it's essential to define your use case. For example, are you using it for a simulation graphics, calculations, etc.? Depending on the use case, you might want to go with a small server with more CPU. Sometimes you need a light CPU with a powerful GPU. For example, if we have a C-Series with four CPUs at the same time, or we have a server that's handled two CPUs at the same time—the purpose is crucial. C-Series is good enough compared to other competitors like HPE and the other ones. The HPE C20 is one unit and has a lot of RAM support, but the C-series is number one, in my opinion.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product doesn't take up too much space on the rack and I like that."

"The hardware customization capabilities are great."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."

"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are integration and customization."

"The most valuable feature of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack is the use of databases, such as MySQL."

"In terms of the features that I have found most valuable, that is basically the hardware, which is more dynamic."

"The product's stability is good. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."

"The solution is reliable and easy to use."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

"This is above and beyond anything else any of the competitors have on the market. If you're researching this, you're going down the right path."

"The benefit is that it's going to be maintained, contrary to what we had last year, when the maintenance went off for the last generation of the servers that we had there."

"Great data storage and very good for software defined solutions."

"The manageability is its most valuable feature. It is a fully managed platform, which is very simple to manage."

"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."

"We're able to provision different applications, different demonstrations, add cloud-like speeds on-prem, which is unheard of in the industry."

"It has improved our procurement and day zero provisioning. We are bringing in racks of Synergy which are not populated with the blades, then we are buying the blades and populating them, as our business needs. This has been pretty helpful to be able to sort of pre-package the data center with the Synergy platform, then deploy servers into it as we grow."

"The hyper-converged infrastructure where everything is stateless is valuable. Basically, you have your compute storage and networking management."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"The product must add customer-friendly monitoring features."

"There is room for better integration with other brands."

"The solution needs more capacity and more scalability."

"The C-Series is not designed to be as scalable. They are designed to have enough RAM and enough CPU on their own side. If you want scalability, it's better to choose the B-Series— the Blade Servers — because those are much more scalable with Fabric Interconnect."

"The solution can be improved by adjusting the cost."

"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve by selling storage. Cisco doesn't sell storage, which is a problem because some customers ask for storage. There are several brands in the market, such as HPE, and Dell EMC. However, Cisco doesn't have any storage. This is where the tension comes from buying this solution."

"The pricing is too high and no discounts are available for our country."

"The scalability of the product is an area of concern where Cisco needs to focus on making some improvements."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"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."

"The cost is quite high."

"The only issue that we had was our rack was too small. The product is heavy, so it took a lot to get it in there."

"You can always improve some things."

"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 solution must concentrate on improving the product quality."

"It would be nice if the updates were not accompanied by downtime."

"Over the two years of using HPE Synergy, we have found some hardware failures that are frequent in the SOP models, CNA cards, and converged network adapters. These failures are frequently happening for a lot of the customers."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The prices of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are higher compared to the competition. When we try and sell against the competition, then it becomes quite difficult to sell"

"If they plan to expand their infrastructure in periods, then simply Cisco is not a good choice."

"This product is slightly more expensive when compared to others."

"The server itself isn't costly at all, but the CPU and the RAM can be pretty expensive. You can buy a UCS for $2,000, but the RAM and CPU can cost up to $80,000. The most expensive asset is the intel processor, but it depends on how many cores you want and the technology you want to use on your CPU, like Hyper-V, etc."

"This solution is a little expensive."

"The price of the Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve. It's a little more expensive in comparison with Dell or HPE solutions."

"The solution is expensive and I give the price a four out of ten."

"The pricing is expensive."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pricing and cost advice

"When we made the purchase of the hardware, we added Professional Services to it."

"Our IT infrastructure costs have gone up each year by 20 percent."

"We pay about £500 for the solution."

"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."

"The solution can be expensive because it requires both hardware and software purchases."

"The hardware licensing cost is reasonable."

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

"There is a perpetual license given when you purchase HPE Synergy."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

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 C-Series Rack Servers?

The C-series is the most valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

The solution is moderately priced.

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What needs improvement with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

The improvement should be done as per customer requirements.

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?

The pricing is relatively high compared to Cisco servers. However, due to the volume of my purchases, I get good discounts.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 58% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 24% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 2% of the time

Dell XR2 Rugged Server vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 2% of the time

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 31% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 23% of the time

Dell PowerEdge M vs HPE Synergy

Compared 20% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs HPE Synergy

Compared 1% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

March 2025

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

March 2025

Download HPE Synergy product report

Also Known As

Unified Computing System C-Series, Cisco UCS C-Series

No data available

Overview

UCS C-Series Rack Servers deliver unified computing in an industry-standard form factor to reduce TCO and increase agility. Each server addresses varying workload challenges through a balance of processing, memory, I/O, and internal storage resources.

Cisco

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.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Aegean Motorway, Anilana Hotels and Resorts, Artoni Transporti, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, City of Mississauga, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Kind en Gezin, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Nationwide, Quest, Talbots, University of St. Gallen

HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United

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