Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs HPE Synergy comparison

Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the Blade Servers category. Cisco is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.4. Cisco holds a 1.6% mindshare in Blade Servers, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 21.3% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers

Read 7 Cisco UCS E-Series Servers reviews

243 Views
108 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 88 HPE Synergy reviews

3,569 Views
2,572 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers

HPE Synergy

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

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

Find out in this report how the two Blade Servers solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs. HPE Synergy Report (Updated: October 2024).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs. HPE Synergy

October 2024

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Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers

Ranking in Blade Servers

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HPE Synergy

Ranking in Blade Servers

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Composable Infrastructure (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Synergy is 21.3%, down from 22.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

DavidMbugua

Group General Manager-ICT at SkyLink

Stable product with efficient security features

We use Cisco UCS E-Series Servers to host enterprise systems The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability. We rarely encounter downtime issues, and it has an expandable memory storage. Additionally, it blends well with Cisco's security tools. The platform's pricing…

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Petr Student

Senior Technical Architect at Tietoevry

The composable infrastructure allows you to build and stack shared capacity

The hardware is fine but OneView needs additional event management and filtering options. Documentation could better describe the solution's configuration possibilities. Sometimes there are firmware or software difficulties when connecting between networks or with storage. The solution is a hardware that is defined by its software so management issues can occur on servers or within the software running the hardware. For example, an electric car depends on its software. If the software is bad, then you can expect issues and problems that might not allow you to start the car. A technician might have uploaded the wrong code into firmware or a software developer might have make code mistakes and these things cause issues. The solution can only be as reliable as the software used to run it.

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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

"Cisco has better visibility and manageability for disaster recovery."

"The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability."

"The Cisco chassis is very easy to configure and any network engineer or expert can configure the solution and easily integrate it with the chassis."

"They are really easy to maintain. I've added RAM to them. I've done a lot of other things with the virtualization."

"The most valuable features are that they are efficient and easy to setup."

"Stability-wise, it is a good product that remains stable."

"The product is overall stable."

"It makes life easier for us when we are deploying new technology, as we have the building blocks already in place."

"The solution is built very well. It's very robust and durable."

"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."

"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."

"We bought it with the intent to replace the c7000 workstation blades. It is bigger than the workstation blades in core count, memory, and graphical capabilities. So, it has broadened us in that regard, and we have more capabilities."

"The Online firmware update for the virtual connects has minimized our downtime windows."

"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 product enables the centralization of all administrative tasks."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"One thing that could be improved is the cost - it is very high for this Blade chassis as compared to other vendors. Especially in Asia. Asian customers mostly prefer a cost effective, cheaper solution."

"The biggest pain point for us is the matrix for the firmware upgrades. It is a pain. You look at that thing, you might as well be reading Greek. It would be a whole lot better if they could clean up their documentation on it."

"It is not a solution that is cloud ready."

"The tool must be made compatible with multi-vendor ecosystems."

"The processing capacity could be improved."

"The platform's pricing needs improvement. There could be more collaborative tools included."

"The product should also be available in a standard edition or a standard license since currently there is a need to pay for an extra license, which is very expensive, especially when considering the budgeting part of our company."

"Continue the path of integrating OneView into a single product. A lot of different people have different OneView experiences based on which product they have used it for."

"I'd like to see the firmware updates, as well as the built-in OneView and imager in Composer, become a little more powerful and faster."

"I would like the ability to have my storage components accessed from any other frame across the backplane. If we have a storage module and we run out of space in that frame, it'd be nice to be able to share it across the frames. You can do it with hyperconverged. Why can't you do it with Synergy?"

"The solution should support Cisco or other vendor interconnect models."

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

"We had an issue during the initial setup with the 40 Gigabyte cards. They weren’t working, so we had to work really closely with HPE support to get them to work."

"I would like to see more nodes in a single chassis so we wouldn't have to purchase additional chassis."

"Instead of having Synergy vertical, make it horizontal. It is easier to stick in when it is vertical."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive, they are quite pricey."

"The product is expensive."

"The pricing of the solution is reasonable. From a commercial point of view, the prices are okay."

"There is a need to pay towards the licensing costs of the solution. The most expensive server from Cisco is Cisco UCS B-Series."

"The solution is expensive."

"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 hardware licensing cost is reasonable."

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

"The cost is high and that is a drawback for some customers."

"We are satisfied with its price."

"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."

"We pay about £500 for the solution."

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

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?

The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability.

See all answers

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

The product is expensive. I rate its pricing a five out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?

The platform's pricing needs improvement. There could be more collaborative tools included.

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...

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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?

Synergy is more expensive than Cisco.

See all answers

Comparisons

Super Micro SuperBlade vs Cisco UCS E-Series Servers

Compared 66% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs Cisco UCS E-Series Servers

Compared 34% of the time

More Cisco UCS E-Series Servers Competitors

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 24% of the time

Dell PowerEdge M vs HPE Synergy

Compared 22% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 22% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 9% of the time

HPE Apollo Systems vs HPE Synergy

Compared 6% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers

November 2024

Download Cisco UCS E-Series Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

November 2024

Download HPE Synergy product report

Also Known As

UCS E-Series Servers

No data available

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Cisco

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Overview

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers are next-generation, power-optimized, x86, Intel Xeon 64-bit blade servers designed to be deployed in Cisco Integrated Services Routers Generation 2 (ISR G2) and the Cisco 4451-X ISR. These price-to-performance-optimized single-socket blade servers balance simplicity, performance, reliability, and power efficiency. They are well suited for applications and infrastructure services typically deployed in small offices and branch offices.

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.

Sample Customers

Navaho, MiroNet AG, Columbia Sportswear

HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs. HPE Synergy

October 2024

Free Report: Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs. HPE Synergy

Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs. HPE Synergy and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.

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