Cisco UCS B-Series Reviews

We use them for a virtualization environment with VMware ESXi version 7.0, update 3. We have B200 M4 blades in a Cisco chassis connected to Fabric Interconnect switches 6632 with Tracy number 5108. 

The Fabric Interconnects are integrated with IBM V7000 storage through a Fabric Extender to connect to the IBM SAN storage, V7000.

We deploy VMs for the banking sector, such as credit union companies. Sometimes, the VMs hosting all the on-premises systems for disaster recovery (DR) purposes are shifted to the Azure cloud. This is a hybrid cloud environment.

The most beneficial feature is UCS Manager. It's the best way to manage hardware, creating group policies, like scrub policies and maintenance policies. It is managed through UCS Manager, creating WLAN numbers and MAC address policies. Making a profile and assigning it through Cisco UCS Manager for each blade is an easy task. 

In case of any outage, just replace the physical host, attach the profile from Cisco UCS Manager, and it will test the original one. So, UCS Manager is the best thing I'm using in Cisco UCS.

From a physical hardware point of view, it's excellent compared to Dell and HP, but from Cisco UCS Manager, it should be more user-friendly.

There are certain things not described in the UCS Manager, like changing or editing profiles. It should be more user-friendly.

In future releases, I would like to see an automated setup process.

I've been using Cisco UCS B200 M4 blades for the last ten years.

It is stable. It is much more stable than other hardware, like Dell and HP. 

During the upgrade earlier, it was recommended to upgrade from south to northbound, upgrade Viccars, then blade, then IO, then SaaS, then click interconnects, Site A, and then come to Site B.

Now, we have an opportunity to automate the upgrade activity. 

However, during our upgrades, when we did the entire infrastructure for FIA and FIB, during the reboot, FI failed very frequently. 

FIA or FIB failed in approximately six to seven situations out of ten upgrades. The replacement of FI took much more time than if we had a business hour for four hours; it took approximately one or two days. Running the entire infrastructure on FIB or a single FI is really risky. That is a main area of improvement for Cisco UCS.

From a scalability point of view, it is good. We did an upgrade for the memory, and it is stable and easy. We added some hosts in a cluster at the desk level. Scalability is fine.

I have been using it for the last ten years. In my current company, there are around 5,000 end users. 

But now, the users really want to move out of this solution. It's more difficult from a manageable point of view. We need a specific person with expertise to administer the environment. It totally depends on the cost. The users want to save costs, so they want to move to the cloud, either IBM cloud or Orange cloud. They want to move out; they don't want to expand further.

I contacted support for Cisco HyperFlex. There was some expansion for the desk.  Desk expansion in Cisco HyperFlex, so I did upgrade the disk in a three-node HyperFlex cluster. In two hosts, the disk was identified and acknowledged. In one of the hosts, it was not acknowledged. 

So Cisco Tech told me I needed to expand the disk simultaneously on each node. I have a three-node cluster, so I need to expand the disk on slot number seven on host one, slot number seven on host two, and slot number seven on host three. 

Once all the disks are acknowledged in three nodes, then it will balance the data in the cluster.

My company was using the HPE legacy.

The initial setup is easy, but it should be automated through JSON, Python, and more user-friendly. 

If someone asks me to deploy ESXi from Cisco UCS, attaching the hardware profile is easy. Still, for overall deployment, it's a bit lengthy. I want it to be automated, similar to the deployment for vXL through a portal, providing configuration in a JSON file and deploying approximately 50 hosts within half an hour.

It will configure the entire configuration through a JSON file. 

It is expensive.

My recommendation and advice in this matter totally depend upon the requirement and the nature of the business. 

For example, in the banking sector, with a heavy data workload on the premises and a need for high availability, I would definitely recommend Cisco for an on-premises environment. I might have the option with Dell, but I would compare Dell and Cisco.

Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten because the hardware is much more robust. But they have not expanded as per the user requirement. Firstly, it should be more user-friendly. Secondly, it should move to automation from the user's manager's point of view. It should be more user-friendly, and deployment should be easily done through automation.

We primarily use Cisco UCS B-Series in data center operations.

The system has reduced the number of customer aggregation requirements due to the aggressive network protocol cost.

Going inside with the management and monitoring is valuable. The aggregation in the data center is beneficial. It also makes management easier as we can manage everything from one place.

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.

I have been working with Cisco UCS B-Series for almost 12 years.

The performance, stability, scalability, and interface are fine.

The performance, stability, scalability, and interface are fine.

I would rate their technical support a six out of ten. They need more technical content in their documentation and perhaps more support personnel.

Positive

Before Cisco UCS B-Series, I worked with another system for about three years.

The initial setup was easy.

The pricing is competitive. While the UCS price was high before, it is more competitive now.

I would recommend that they include more technical content and ensure there is sufficient documentation available.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We get a few deployments here and there. Maybe we did one, two, or three years ago. Recently, we have done some blade architecture, but from Cisco. It's primarily about customer preference, so some customers prefer Cisco UCS.

In terms of ROI, our customers are very happy with Cisco UCS B-Series. For instance, a customer we worked with five years ago, a utility company, is very happy and is even planning to do a refresh because the solution has been running without many issues in terms of downtime and support tickets. Once you set it up the right way, you're good to go.

The most valuable feature is the service profiles. When you get a faulty blade, all you need to do is just decommission that blade and plug in a new one. The decommissioned blade is associated with the service profile, and you connect a new blade, associating it with the same profile the older blade had. This allows for the same settings, like the MAC addresses, management IPs, and worldwide port names for the storage to be retained, making maintenance quite easy.

Regarding improvements, there's a drawback with the FC functionality being removed from the Nexus switches, which we used to do integration with. Now, this requires having a different standalone switch for storage connectivity. Previously, the unified port functionality allowed the same port to function as both FC and Ethernet, however, this has now changed.

I can say it's been a while since we first started using Dell PowerEdge M. We don't deploy it every now and then, however, we did one deployment two or three years ago. Recently, we have been working with blade architecture from Cisco.

In terms of stability, our customers are very happy. There's a customer who has been using the solution for five years without many issues in terms of downtime and support tickets.

The technical support from Cisco is efficient. If the issue is a priority one, you can get on a call and have a technical engineer assigned right away. They are very efficient.

Positive

The initial setup is very straightforward and easy. It enables integration with multiple storage vendors. You can also tightly integrate it with VMware for managing distribution switches and virtual networks.

We have a team behind that does the fieldwork. I oversee and come in when needed to position products for customers, proposing and advising in terms of OpEx and CapEx.

Our customers have had good ROI with Cisco UCS B-Series. For example, a utility company has been using it for five years without significant issues and is planning a refresh.

The pricing depends on the size of the deal. If the deal is huge, you get better margins from Cisco. Also, if you were the one who initiated the deal, you get a better margin over other partners.

We are running many applications for a logistics provider. We do the storing of goods for our partners and transport and so on.

The most valuable features of the solution are stability and security.

The solution’s pricing could be improved and made cheaper.

I have been using Cisco UCS B-Series for five to six years.

We haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s stability so far.

I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.

We haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s scalability. Around 1,000 to 2,000 users are using the solution in our organization, and we may plan to increase the usage.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward.

We implemented the solution through an in-house team.

We have to pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution.

We have a team of around 50 people to deploy and maintain the solution. I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten.

We use the solution to help manage our data centers.

Stateless Blade is the best feature. If we have a blade go down we find that the server continues to work well.

The technical support is sometimes delayed and has room for improvement.

The cost of the solution has room for improvement.

I have been using the solution for ten years.

Cisco UCS B-Series is stable.

The solution is scalable by adding additional hardware.

The technical support is good but can sometimes be delayed.

Positive

We use HPE BladeSystem and Cisco UCS B-Series but we are going to replace them both with the Cisco X210c M6 series because of the high performance.

The initial setup is straightforward. The configuration is also simple.

The implementation is completed in-house.

The cost of the Cisco UCS B-Series is comparable to HP solutions but higher than Dell solutions.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Around ten administrators are required to manage the solution.

I recommend the solution to others because it has good performance and is highly stable with little downtime.

We've used blades and hyperflex. It's for data center refreshes and greenfield solutions. We've done a lot of HCI Solutions.

We're basically taking old three-tier storage, no compute, networking solutions and then pulled into an ACI solution hyperflex or blades. I've worked on both the UCSX series and also the B series. M6, M7, and M5, and with a lot of fabric interconnects - just pretty much anything and everything for UCF.

Over the years, it's been it's come a long way from going from UCS manager to intersite managed solution. So we're doing a lot of cloud type management where we've been able to use that as which are like tenant managed services solutions with Cisco UCS and Hyperflex. We have managed services. Engineers that do manage all the customer's inter-site portal configurations, and then also we manage all the deployments, and pretty much we build run books and everything for them so that they know how to customers know how to how to work with their the hard new hardware for the hyperflex environments. Overall infrastructure-wise, we manage that for them, and they just manage internally.

It's modular. You can get higher-density blades within the 5108 chassis and the 9508 chassis. With the X series, it's even better, as you can add bigger blades and more processing and memory. It is a lot more resource-intensive and scalable. 

The solution is stable.

The setup is straightforward. 

InterSite is still working on a lot of bugs. Specifically, going from UCF's manager to all strictly interstate-managed environments, there have been a lot of challenges. It is a challenging environment as far as migration from UCS manager director to strictly an inter-site managed in the cloud. Cisco's still working out those bugs. We've been doing a lot of troubleshooting.  

I would like to see more density within the blades compared to HPE and other Dell blades. They do have more slots available. However, the UCSX series that's going to be a game-changer. I'm going through advanced architect training for that engineering training for that product as well. I foresee that X is probably going to replace the C or B series blades since you'll be able to get more density. In the end, you may be able to get double the nodes per slot.

The solution is expensive.

Sometimes, support isn't as fast or knowledgeable as customers need them to be.

I've used the solution for probably over ten years. 

It's pretty stable. I'd rate the reliability eight out of ten. 

The B series is pretty scalable. You can have several chassis within an FI pair. Then you could have multiple UCS domains. Now, with the InterSite, you can have multiple configurations more so than the UCSB series with the InterSite managed solutions where you can have B series and you can have both UCS manager and InterSite yet you can't have both. With the UCS X series available, that's another game change.

Our customer base definitely intends to increase usage.

From a partner perspective, we pretty much can troubleshoot more in-depth than some of the tech engineers. We've had a lot of tech engineer engagements with our large customers, and wasn't that I wasn't that impressed. They just seemed not to have a full understanding of what the customer issues were, and that took a long time to sort out. 

They also had multiple tech engineers involved. That prolonged the overall support for the customer. We jumped in and had more expertise, and we were able to help solve the issue before the tech in a lot of cases.

Neutral

The initial setup was straightforward. 

You can deploy on-premises. We've also worked with customers in remote installations where they would rack a stack, and then we would do a remote configuration on everything if it's through either a VPN or a Webex session, a Cisco secure Webex session. If it's InterSite, we can pretty much do it remotely. There's no UCS manager available to support that now, and everything's pretty much in the cloud managed, which is nice.

I typically note a three-year ROI.

The solution is pricey, and Cisco's prices change every month - or, at least, it seems that way. It's a constant challenge for our customers. However, we work with account executives at Cisco and work to get discounts. 

New users need to definitely understand how the UCF manager works. They need to understand InterSites, fabric interconnects, and how everything connects both up links to the northbound core switches and make sure all the connectivity is correct. 

Connectivity is a big issue. If you don't have the right connectivity configured specifically for the UCS manager with the FIs and also the fabric modules coming off the chassis, there will be a lot of issues. I've seen a lot of attack-related issues going forward. Users need to make sure that they have everything configured correctly.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use it for our digital adjustment. It's a technology that allows you to unify all the major components you need. You have the networking component, and your servers are connected too. We have an established enterprise system for data, and we do not use the historical component of the use case. We only use the networking and the server component. It is a very robust and reliable solution.

It has reliability, high availability, and a low total cost of ownership. Your servers stand a better chance of having data available because the total cost of ownership is very low. Once you buy it, you can almost afford to go to the last, because you don't need to buy another one.

The upgrades could be improved because the software needs various upgrades to be safeguarded against liability. Cisco should be very close to the customer to tell them if they need a new upgrade. In addition, they should include other features to make it useful for public cloud computing.

We have been using this solution since 2014, deployed on-premises.

It is stable and one of the most reliable systems I've ever encountered. You won't regret going for Cisco UCS B-Series because it is very good.

It's already made to scale, so you don't need to buy add-ons. In addition, you can use it to restore almost all your needs, not just for Cisco UCS B-Series. We have over 50,000 jobs running on our servers, which is valuable to our whole organization.

There is wide support. Anytime we have some FDN issues that we cannot fix, we get help from Cisco support. The technical support is very reliable, but you must buy it when buying the service.

The deployment was easy, but you must be skilled to complete it. It requires two engineers to deploy and takes a minimum of five days. Regarding maintenance, you get everything from Cisco and have to follow the guides.

The price is competitive. It's not too expensive, it's good, and it's worth the price.

I rate this solution a ten out of ten. I recommend the solution to others because they will gain from using it, and it is very reliable.

We use it primarily for computing purposes.

The complexity is reduced by having one blade with four servers and half-blade servers. The server profile makes it easier to deploy and to manage with Cisco UCS Manager.

Cisco provides good flexibility to choose different products or different equipment within the blade servers, like CPU memory, logic board, etc., to make your own server. Other vendors don't have this option.

If a customer is moving towards a UCS-only solution, then it would be great if storage could be provided with it.

Compared to the deployment of servers such as Dell XCDs, the deployment of UCS servers is more complex. They take longer to deploy.

I have used Cisco UCS B-Series for around two to three years.

These are not stable servers because we have seen some cases where the servers have gone down when there were power fluctuations. Though the servers came with in-built batteries and in-built SPS, the blade servers were not accessible. They're designed to have one blade not dependent on another blade, but they still went down.

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.

I have not had any issues with technical support. Because the solution has been in the market for 15 years now, the support is mature. I'd give technical support a rating of nine out of ten. 

Positive

As a partner who has deployed multiple servers, I found the initial deployment to be okay. However, it was not the easiest process. From a customer's perspective, the initial deployment can be a challenge. The customer could do something unknowingly that could make the whole system go down. Because we need to create server profiles, etc., I would rate the initial setup at three out of five.

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.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Cisco UCS B-Series at eight.