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Cisco UCS X-Series vs HPE Synergy comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.1
Cisco UCS X-Series offers long-term ROI with cost-effective installation and operation, despite higher initial costs compared to competitors.
Sentiment score
6.8
HPE Synergy reduces operational costs, accelerates deployments, consolidates workloads, and offers substantial ROI through savings and efficiency.
Previously, I could implement two or three chassis in one day or less than five to six hours, making it very efficient.
Senior VMware Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Regarding return on investment, it is very good since I have used Cisco B200 M4 servers that ran smoothly even after support ended in 2019.
Senior System Engineer at SiliconSt.
I believe Cisco UCS X-Series does a great job of staying up and requiring very little maintenance, so it does save money on the personnel needed to manage the system.
Senior Manager, Information Technology Operations Architecture & Engineering at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
8.2
Cisco UCS X-Series support is praised for being brilliant, responsive, and fast, with high satisfaction and robust hardware.
Sentiment score
6.5
HPE Synergy support praised for knowledgeable responsiveness, though some users faced initial challenges, especially with newer technologies, needing escalation.
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Cisco's technical support at around nine or even nine point five.
Senior System Engineer at SiliconSt.
I am giving an extra point because they have established a couple of TAC centers in Canada.
Technical Advisor at a government with 10,001+ employees
One of the most important factors for me regarding Cisco UCS X-Series is that I have not opened a ticket with support, which reflects very good hardware with no need for support tickets.
Senior VMware Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
I would rate the technical support from HPE Synergy, and for all other solutions, as very good and appreciable with a score of nine out of ten on a scale from one to ten.
Presales engineer and consultant at Hybrid Tech
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.9
Cisco UCS X-Series offers scalable architecture for easy expansion and integration, supporting growth with seamless addition of chassis and blades.
Sentiment score
7.6
HPE Synergy provides scalable expansion with seamless hardware integration, though some users find component management challenging across data centers.
If you ever get to a point where you are creeping up on your compute thresholds, you just buy another blade.
Senior Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Cisco UCS X-Series scales with the growing needs of my organization very well.
Technical Advisor at a government with 10,001+ employees
I connect four chassis to the same Fabric Interconnect, and we have two Fabric Interconnects and four chassis, with each chassis supporting about eight blades, totaling 32 blades connected to only two Fabric Interconnects.
Senior VMware Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Users praise Cisco UCS X-Series for stability, efficiency, and chassis design, with no performance issues or downtime since 2016.
Sentiment score
7.9
HPE Synergy is stable and reliable, with minor setup issues mitigated by updates, redundancy, and strong support.
I never felt any challenge, with no blade crashes, making Cisco UCS X-Series a very stable product that ensured our services run perfectly with zero downtime.
Senior System Engineer at SiliconSt.
Cisco UCS X-Series is very stable, not just stable but very stable.
Senior VMware Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
I would assess the stability and reliability of Cisco UCS X-Series as really good.
Senior Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users recommend simplifying Cisco UCS X-Series management, extending product longevity, enhancing automation, and addressing pricing competitiveness.
HPE Synergy users seek better integration, speed, networking simplicity, support, storage sharing, UI enhancements, and improved security and deployment.
A form factor that is more universal and is not going to require an overall hardware refresh would be beneficial.
Senior Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We prefer the chassis and the idea of the chassis itself with blades inside it, as it is much better for us than rackmount blades.
Senior VMware Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
Cisco UCS X-Series can be improved with a longer lifespan.
Technical Advisor at a government with 10,001+ employees
Currently, it supports only two drives in the blade server, which can be limiting.
Pre-Sale Specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Setup Cost

Cisco UCS X-Series users have mixed opinions on costs, with some finding them high and others fair or lower.
HPE Synergy's high costs include notable VMware licensing fees, but discounts and strategic value may justify the expense.
Cisco is always cheaper.
Technical Advisor at a government with 10,001+ employees
I find their pricing maybe expensive compared to others, but stable, with no issues and so on.
IT Oriented at a government with 201-500 employees
I find the pricing to be very high.
Senior System Engineer at SiliconSt.
Pricing in the blade server market is very competitive, with HPE offering a competitive price.
Pre-Sale Specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Valuable Features

Cisco UCS X-Series offers modular design, centralized management, and integration, enhancing efficiency, scalability, and ease of use.
HPE Synergy offers composable infrastructure, flexibility, and OneView integration, enhancing deployment, resource management, scalability, and system reliability.
Instead of doing one-off configurations per server or per host, you can do group deployments and make configurations to all of the hosts at the same time.
Senior Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
The end-to-end visibility from Cisco improves our organization's troubleshooting capabilities greatly and makes it much easier to get everything resolved.
Technical Advisor at a government with 10,001+ employees
Cisco UCS X-Series is very stable, and since I installed the UCS X-Series 9508 chassis with 210C compute blades more than one year ago, I have not opened any tickets with Cisco for hardware failure or any other issues.
Senior VMware Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
It offers significant compute power in approximately ten rack units, making it practical for workload optimization.
Pre-Sale Specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS X-Series
Ranking in Blade Servers
13th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (6th)
HPE Synergy
Ranking in Blade Servers
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Composable Infrastructure (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Tanesh Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at SiliconSt.
Policy-driven infrastructure has simplified management and improved end-to-end troubleshooting
Regarding aspects of Cisco UCS X-Series that I would like to see improved, I was an operator and not in research, but everything seems up to the mark. Whenever I faced any type of issue, solutions were nearby, leaving me with few suggestions for enhancements. In terms of features and functionalities for improvement in Cisco UCS X-Series, I can say that if I compare Cisco UCS with other brands, I can proudly note features that must be included in Cisco UCS X. However, my experience is limited, as I primarily worked with Cisco UCS and sometimes Dell physical PowerEdge servers.
MS
Works at Saudi Telecom Company
Manage servers efficiently with an integrated view while reducing downtime
My use case is to serve the complete IT environment of the telecom, including all cloud applications. I use HPE Synergy servers for my private cloud and for network management systems. 70% of my workload is running on HPE servers The integrated view, such as managing complete servers and…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS X-Series?
I find their pricing maybe expensive compared to others, but stable, with no issues and so on.
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS X-Series?
Cisco UCS X-Series is okay, and I do not see any room for improvement. I do not know what additional features I would like to see in the future to make it better. I expect AI integrations in the fu...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS X-Series?
I have been working with Cisco UCS X-Series. I am the end user.
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...
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...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS X-Series vs. HPE Synergy and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.