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 8.6, and holds a 5.1% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 19.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% 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 31 Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers reviews

2,486 Views
2,387 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,239 Views
2,235 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: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Rack Servers

August 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

4.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (5th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

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 5.1%, up 4.9% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 19.5% mindshare, down 21.0% since last year.

Rack Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers	5.1%
Dell PowerEdge R-Series	27.6%
HPE ProLiant DL Servers	21.9%
Other	45.4%

Rack Servers

Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Synergy	19.5%
HPE BladeSystem	14.0%
HPE Superdome X	9.8%
Other	56.7%

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Berthold Manz

CTO at ExperTeach GmbH

Seamless server transitions enhance IT infrastructure for AI projects and improve management capabilities

If you are integrated into the Cisco management solution, it is very easy to handle. The performance aspects of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are very strong. The ability to move from one server to another without changing anything is excellent. We can transfer all the identity of the servers between the servers.

Read full review

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is the expansion and replacement of parts."

"The initial setup is straightforward and easy to do."

"It is very nice and stable with an easy administration GUI."

"The solution is stable."

"The solution is easily scalable."

"In most cases, computes compute, and there isn't much differentiation, but one point of differentiation is Intersight cloud management."

"What I really like about the Cisco USC Server is its service profile."

"The solution is scalable."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

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

"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."

"Ability to easily re-utilize parts of the hardware for different purposes."

"In the data center, you see customers with a lot of blade enclosures and a lot of servers, and this solution works fine."

"The solution's greatest strengths lie in its ability to maintain a high availability and combine networking with hyper channel connectivity into a single component."

"The most valuable features are the converged network adapters."

"Changing the form factor in Synergy allows us to have more RAM, which is significantly helpful for us."

"It's a fully integrated solution with OneView."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"On the contact center and video conferencing, I would definitely like to see more AI features. The AI features are key for us. You will find a lot of them in the cloud-based solution, but in the on-premises solution, they're hardly there. I would like to see the same AI features that are there in the cloud-based Cisco UC."

"There is very little scalability for the cluster. If you need a higher availability, there is a user limitation. So that is the low side."

"The improvement should be done as per customer requirements."

"The product's stability and delivery time could be better."

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

"The hard drive of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is not very good. I have already replaced three of them."

"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could improve by adding a wider portfolio because they only have two main categories, the C-220 and 240. There is no wide range of options as other solutions have, such as Dell. Additionally, if it was more flexible with the configuration it would be good."

"The solution needs more capacity and more scalability."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"Gen 11 is being released. That's going to have a lot of advantages over Gen 10 and previous generations in terms of the cooling modules in the servers to keep them cooler and run with more efficiency and better performance. There are more management features with iLO 6 and the latest OneView management."

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

"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."

"We had some challenges during the implementation and a few issues afterward, but they were all sort of related to how Synergy interacts with Nexus. Our Nexus on the network side is managed by another group, and they had just gotten Nexus, so they weren't really familiar with how Nexus even worked. Getting these two to interact well was the majority of our issues. It really didn't have anything to do with Synergy. It points to know the environment that you are putting it in and making sure you are dotting all your i's and crossing all your t's when you are figuring out what their requirements are to communicate."

"The main challenge we faced was that when it was installed it just did not work. There were faulty components and it took weeks of troubleshooting to find the faulty components, get them replaced. Getting help from HPE was difficult. Nobody knew about the product. It was a brand-new product and people had not been trained on it. That part was not a great experience."

"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."

"The installation and initial setup process is complex and needs to be improved."

"Technical support was time consuming and unsatisfactory. The initial product setup was complex, lasing around three weeks to a month."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Best to buy all the blades configured for the same purposes of load balancing and failover or load shifting."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis, which is only $2,000 or $3,000."

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

"The price for Cisco is a bit higher than its competitors. We paid 40k for one server."

"The solution could be more cost-effective."

"My company has an agreement with Cisco to get discounted rates. It is one of the reasons why we chose the product."

"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."

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

"The solution has reduced our IT infrastructure costs because we have had to buy less services than we used to."

"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."

"VMware is part of the cost. We bought the chassis, we bought the solution. The blades are roughly running us $60,000 a pop right now."

"We do a biannual renewal. I know how much that renewal is, but I don't know how much it breaks down to be just Synergy, since we have our VMware, all of our physical equipment, etc. all rolled up into one renewal, which is a little over $300,000 every two years. However, only a subset of that is the Synergy product."

"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."

"There was at least about a 20 percent savings in cost over our purchase based on the purchase price of the compute modules themselves versus what we've had to pay before. It was significantly less."

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

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

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

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.

See all answers

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

I may not be the right person to comment on advanced improvements because we are just using basic functionalities. We are getting all the functionalities which we used to get in other OEM rack serv...

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?

As far as the prices are concerned, rack mount solutions are less expensive than HPE Synergy prices; however, HPE Synergy prices are higher but justify themselves as the solution accommodates all t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Synergy?

In my opinion, for future improvements in HPE Synergy, there should be better management of power consumption complexity as well as an increase in the number of servers that can fit in a single Syn...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Compared 52% of the time

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

Compared 22% of the time

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

Compared 9% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 28% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 25% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 15% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

September 2025

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

September 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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