Cisco UCS B-Series Reviews

Primarily, we use UCS to run our virtualization stack.  

I think UCS is pretty typical of all blade servers in what is most valuable. We use it to try and save rack space. I think the ratio in terms of the number of units and the number of servers that we can get each chassis is quite good. We have a significant rack space saving in that regard. These B-series can hold up to eight servers.  

In terms of room for improvement, I think there is room for improvement with the service profile. Cisco products are technically quite bulky if you ask me. You really need to be very proficient technically to deploy it and to understand the assignment of the service profiles before you can really make the most of it. The product comes with a lot of technical overhead. I know they have advancements that are coming and I foresee they are ready to address that problem at least to a certain extent.  

For the purposes it is built for, I can not really think of any room for improvement, honestly. It is as advertised; it is doing what it is supposed to in the way the company represents it. I do not think they are really in need of any other improvement this year than what I know they already have on the roadmap. The only thing I can think of might be improving the user-friendliness.  

We have been using Cisco UCS B-series (Unified Computing System) for probably five years.  

The B-series is definitely stable, that is for sure. We rarely have any issues with the B-series. If there are any issues, we are covered by the four-hour response window and we can get parts replaced within a few hours if there's any faulty hardware. Stability is something I would say is over 90 percent better than most other products.  

The scalability of this Cisco product goes without saying because it is what the B-Series was designed to do. You can always add in additional blade servers to your existing chassis. So the scalability is really good and something Cisco built into the product.  

We have had contact with the technical support and this is usually for hardware replacements. That covers faulty memory or CPUs or motherboards — that kind of thing. It is typically day-to-day issues with hardware that we need service for.  

I would say that Cisco really excels in day-to-day operations — if you are talking about hardware replacement and things like that. Their model and framework are really mature. They know exactly what to do. The replacements are fast, the engineer that is assigned also knows what he is doing. So far our experience with Cisco technical support is pretty positive.  

We came to UCS from HP Proliant servers. When we transitioned into the Cisco UCS series, we obviously found that there were pros and cons in comparing these products.  

I think the HP Proliant user interface and user-friendliness are better than UCS. Cisco had an advantage in coming to the market later. They had the advantage in redeveloping and redesigning the server compute from scratch. So they designed it with management in mind. They deployed service profiles and they have a central overview of all the server hardware using the UCS B-series, and I think this was what really convinced us to transition to the Cisco hardware. Of course, the pricing is positioned better than the HP Proliant series which influenced the decision as well.  

Because we already have established the connects and configured the initial instance, putting in additional B-series blades is a breeze because everything is assigned to the service profile.  

So the initial setup depends on "how initial" you are talking about. If you are talking about the very first configuration including the server interconnects setup, then it is a bit cumbersome. If you are talking about additional setups after that, then it is a breeze. You really need in-depth knowledge about how service profiles and assignments are used before you can really make it work. This is coming from someone who had previous experience with the HP Proliant product where they did not really have service profiles. It is a different way of doing things.  

We had the luxury of engaging a vendor, the initial setup was all done by the vendor, which was good for us. It was really fast and was far enough along within half a day that they were able to deploy it.  

Advice that I might want to give to someone considering the product is that I would say they really have to know their own use case to determine whether UCS is applicable as a solution for what they need. The B-Series is really meant for data center deployment. I would not propose or suggest it for small or medium enterprises simply because the initial investment is quite high. You need to get a server interconnection if you get a chance. And if you are not looking to potentially deploy a large number of servers in the near future, then B-series is really not necessary — it is overkill.  

On a scale from one to ten (where one is the worst and ten is the best), I would rate the product as a nine-out-of-ten.  

To make it 10, the user-friendliness needs to be improved. Right now the user experience really detracts from the technical abilities of the product. The users need to have too much technical know-how. Cisco should make administration much easier and more straight forward. Maybe there could be some automation and translation of all the operations so that the user does not have to be so technically adept to operate it.  

The solution's most valuable feature is KVM Launch Manager.

The solution's console could be easier for accessing and managing internal help documents.

We have been using the solution for 15 years.

The solution's stability is good. Although, it is much more complicated regarding usage or management compared to other vendors.

I rate the solution's scalability a seven out of ten. It could be improved.

At present, we have implemented it on Hyper V clusters. We have eight blades on two clusters and six blades on one cluster. In total, we have 250 servers installed from those clusters.

The solution's initial setup process works fine.

The solution is a little more complicated compared to HP and PowerEdge configurations. Also, its KVM manager could be more straightforward similar to other vendors.

I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

It should have KVM connectivity similar to Dell and HP. Also, HP has a storage blade that helps connect monitors in case of network issues. We can plug in and access the keyboard and mouse to start with the task. It is not possible with Cisco Infrastructure.

Cisco UCS B-Series are the Blade servers where we have installed VMware.

The price of the solution could improve.

I have been using Cisco UCS B-Series for approximately eight years.

The stability of the Cisco UCS B-Series has been good. We have not had a problem.

Cisco UCS B-Series is scalable.

I rate the scalability of the Cisco UCS B-Series a ten out of ten.

The initial setup of the Cisco UCS B-Series is not a problem.

This solution is deployed in India and it is being used all over. We do not have plans to increase usage.

We use a few people for the deployment of the solution.

We have received a strong return on investment.

Cisco UCS B-Series is an expensive solution.

We plan to upgrade the Cisco UCS B-Series in 2024.

I recommend this solution to others.

I rate Cisco UCS B-Series a ten out of ten.

We do not use the Cisco UCS B-Series in our company. Rather, we support it for one of our customers.

Using this product allows for the virtualization of all things, including MAC addresses and the profile. If we have an issue in a physical server then we just have to remove it, put another one in its place, and reapply the profile.

I'm not an expert in using the UCS Blade but I work on it enough to speak a little bit about it. My primary job is support, although I perform some actions.

The most valuable feature is the ability to replace a server with another one, simply by applying the profile. This is not possible with others, where the MAC address is not virtualized.

If there is an issue with a server then it's simple to replace. In 10 minutes, it can be done, even if there's a hardware issue. This is the most powerful and important aspect.

This model does not support virtualization of the switch.

There are occasionally hardware problems that may be related to memory. 

I have been working with Cisco UCS B-Series for two years. The company was using the same solution before I joined.

Although we have experienced some hardware issues, that is normal for this product. Overall, it is stable.

This is a scalable solution.

We have four people that work with it.

When we have had hardware problems, technical support comes to our site to replace the defective part. The support team is good, including their response time.

I did not work with other similar products before this one.

There is a new model, the X-Series, that I would like to look at in the future. The B-series will be deprecated shortly. After which, we will need to replace it.

I was not part of the deployment, although I have performed general support such as creating profiles.

Overall, this Cisco Blade is really good. My advice for anybody who is implementing this solution is to purchase the support agreement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

Our whole VMware Farm is running on Flexpod, which uses the UCS B-Series for compute resources. Using the Blade along with Fibre Interconnect, it provides high availability and ease of migration to other hardware in case of failure. The cabling and power footprint is at the lowest so far.

It provides high availability with flexibility and a single point of administration using the Flexpod solutions. With all of the hardware on a single dashboard, it is easy to troubleshoot and to administer. The blade system provides faster back-end communication between systems.

The most valuable features of this solution are profiling, ease of administration, and monitoring.

Profiling provides easier deployment and configuration, especially if the new systems are intended only to increase compute resources.

The Dashboard is quite impressive and is, so far, the best based on my experience. It provides a detailed view that is easy to follow. The cross-links on the information are great.

I would like to see the availability increased during upgrades and patching. There are patches that cannot be implemented without any downtime or reboot required. If the newer version could eliminate downtime during patches or firmware upgrades, it would be great.

This solution is very much stable, especially the network side.

Scalability is very flexible, thanks to Profiling of the hardware on which you can transfer the profile of a system to another without any action or configuration needed.

Technical support is great all the way, although no major issues have yet been encountered in terms of UCS / Flexpod.

Prior to this solution, we used an HP Blade C3000 System. Based on the reviews and corporate standard we went to Cisco Flexpod solutions.

The initial setup of this solution is impressive.

The vendor helped us implement the Flexpod, and we would rate them an eight out of ten.

The price of this solution is a little bit higher, but given that this system is Cisco, it feels more secure and dependable.

We did not evaluate other options before choosing this solution.

Right now we haven't encountered any issues on our system that could result in our KPI being impacted.

Previously, the physical trappings of Cisco UCS, Intel chip-sets and UCS Manager were the most useful part of this server system. As we embrace new Intel CPU's, Chip-sets and memory, we are gaining added value from the original UCS design - which was a software construct based on XML API's and a suite of code that is really starting to blossom as a central automation vehicle, that scales to deliver new features and extended integration with a suite of security, management and performance offerings Cisco has added to its portfolio.

While UCS hardware leveraged standard x86 designs, the use of a single pane of glass to monitor, deploy and provision servers was a huge timesaver. Since its UCS release in 2009, Cisco has extended the core functionality with Central, a tool for managing multiple domains, Director - an automation tool and Performance Manager. In the past few years CIsco has been on a buying binge for the Data Center, snapping up Cliqr, Lancope, AppDynamics, ContainrX, and several others that are being integrated with in-house analytics tools like Tetration and external tools like Turbonomic to provide an incredibly powerful, secure automation platform that will be the foundation of a future autonomic server environment with adaptive security and dynamic self diagnosis.

Cisco UCS Manager is embedded in the cost of the fabric controllers and is used to manage the servers, chassis and fabric. It also serves as a link point for integrating tools like Director, Performance Manager and Central. Future additions to the UCS tool set are extensions that Cisco is feeling out how best to offer to customers - for straight purchase - or via subscription.

I encourage UCS users and those considering UCS adoption to dig into the subscription offerings and get some clarity on how they grow over time. For example, as powerful security tools like Stealthwatch (Lancope) are added, what other systems are required and how are those subscriptions managed. When Analytics are required - do you need a Gigabuck Third Party offering or are you going to jump on Cisco's Tetration bandwagon and roll your own? I push for simplicity with Cisco. However, you need good data for that conversation. Talk to the apps, dev and ops teams as to what is needed today, where you are going and what future needs will become vs what might be nice to have. Once you understand where you are going, you are in a much better position to negotiate with a relative newbie like Cisco on how best to get there.

Things will only get better going forward. UCS Manager is an XML construct. Everything is in software and can scale and expand with increased hardware capability, while other architectures require extensive effort on each end to develop hardware, then update and test a new rev of software for reliability and consistency.

The big challenge for Cisco today is they built UCS manager for Cisco CCIE's anxious and able to have every knob and dial available to tweak. As a result, UCS manager is overly complex relative to functions and features and a lot of effort can go into streamlining and simplifying the User Experience. However, after 8 years in the market and huge acceptance of its increased ROI over competitive offerings and an appreciation for what UCS provides in OPex reduction, you can buy experienced UCS engineers vs having to develop and train them, only to see them purchased by a competitor.

I have a client who is currently managing 1500 servers with two people for a mission-critical retail operation. Previous operations teams using HP and IBM servers required 4x more people to manage the same number of servers.

This product comes from Cisco, who is fourth in the worldwide supply chain. That means options take a bit longer to get to their platform, as they insist on doing their own quality validations. Right now, the market is rapidly transitioning to solid-state media and the Cisco options tend to be less varied and more expensive than a broader slate of products from HP, Dell or IBM.

Cisco UCS offers a scalable platform with tremendous OpEx advantages. However, Cisco does not have the storage play that Dell (With Cisco Partner EMC in its fold) and HP have. With their long position in the market place on the PC supply chain side, both Dell and HP source and deliver high volume, low cost, advanced enterprise solutions from previous consumer focused suppliers like Samsung and Toshiba. Example’s like Sandisk’s 3.8TB SSD used in EMC VxRail products and newly announced Samsung 15TB and 6.4TB 1M IOPs SSD come to mind. While Cisco still carries the earlier versions of similar technology from FusionIO, the next gen lower cost options from Samsung will take a while to be approved and provided by Cisco.

Cisco’s internal testing and validation processes – to assure UCS Manager compatibility - mean they lag both HP and Dell in delivery on the newest storage paradigms – specifically the breadth of the SSD and NVRam offerings. Both these trends (High performance, High capacity SSD, and NVRam) offer major changes in architectural models. For organizations that seels to push the bleeding edge in testing and development, UCS will lag in delivery by a quarter or two. This has little impact on mainstream enterprises who will not adopt before a technology is thoroughly vetted by industry “Pioneers” – usually mid-sized shops that “took a chance” on introducing a new platform into their relatively modest environment.

I have used UCS since 2008, when the product was first released.

No issues with stability that we have not seen across other systems. In particular, due to Cisco networking dominance, the focus is on drivers that work with their products for all the competitors as well. Networking is typically the server area with the most work to be done – but this is the strength of Cisco.

UCS originally promised to support 40 chassis per fabric – that has now been scaled down to 20 – which limits users to domains of “just 160” physical server blades. This has not proven to be an issue or obstacle. The release of UCS Central provides software to manage an array of fabrics so we can scale to thousands of physical servers.

This is a foundational core of the Cisco Data Center automation experience and is a far more robust platform than currently provided by competitors. Customer service from Cisco and its partner community is thus on par with the same exemplary service provided by its TAC teams for business critical network deployments.

Leveraging Cisco Network Technical Monitoring – the ability to call for a case and get resolution - is a process we are well aware of and very comfortable with.

HP was the incumbent, displaced by UCS, which has proven easier to manage scale and use. The HP system just had too many pieces and the iLO lockin was a major cost that the UCS architecture leapfrogged.

Initial setup requires some training due to its scale. It’s like riding a car vs driving a truck. You use the auto driving skills when you drive a truck – but there are a few things to be aware of. One of the nuances with UCS is that it is a fully abstracted, scalable environment. So you can set up your domain to accommodate a single server or 160 servers. This requires adopting a standard naming convention, IP addressing, etc. Once those are established, like a truck vs a car – you can haul a lot more freight with UCS.

Obviously, the worst-kept secret with all vendors is to negotiate as close to fiscal year-end as possible. For Cisco, the year-end is July 31st, so they are well positioned for organizations deploying summer projects. The other issue is the move to bundle licenses. That is great for highly dense environments like a data center, but it makes much more sense for individual licenses for distributed environments like hundreds of storefronts or clinics distributed across a wide geographic area.

As stated earlier, we had HP. As a marquis client they fought hard on equipment price to maintain their position. However, the decision was based on OpEx, which greatly favored UCS. Once we had a few systems in place and people trained up on their use, it was not long before HP was displaced. Because both the IBM and Dell management architectures were quite similar, we looked and got a few quotes, but did not see anything to justify further evaluation resources.

The biggest issue is automation. How to move the mundane tasks from people to machines; alert filters to improve management productivity and reduce overhead. Cisco is deploying a suite of products (Central, Director, Performance Manager, etc.), as are IBM, HP and even Dell. However, UCS manger provides such a robust base that the ability to scale and realize benefits is greater.

At the end of the day, the UCS product requires planning before just jumping in, due to its ability to scale. As a user, you need to evaluate naming conventions, IP addressing models and so forth – think about the entire enterprise as opposed to a single server or rack of servers.

Use very good hardware and innovative network elements, such as the VIC 10Gb cards that allow for traffic sequestration and partitioning across multiple virtual channels in a single link and of course UCS Manager. I actually have the patent on similar IP when we started blade server systems with an acquisition by Intel. The direct spin-off was the IBM Blade Center, but due to the IBM investment in Tivoli, they never used our central management system. Cisco took a network- vs compute-centric perspective as they embarked on their server designs and, with a clean sheet of paper, evolved a centralized manager for deployment and systems management that enables huge scales in management productivity.

The stability is very, very good. I haven't had any issues with it whatsoever over the past few years.

The scalability is very good. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

The solution basically offers us everything we need. It's very complete. 

The pricing could be improved, as it is a bit expensive solution.

The GUI is not the greatest. They could work on improving the interface.

I've been using the solution for a few years now. It's been a while. 

The stability, in general, has been amazing. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. Cisco is extremely reliable and offers good performance. 

The scalability has been great. We started with a small amount, and we started to test the solution. After that, we grew with it as we needed. It's been great and has fit our needs perfectly.

There are thousands of users on the solution. It's used extensively.

We haven't had cause to sue technical support too much. We have Cisco partners we can call if we have issues, however, we haven't had many problems to speak of. 

We have found the initial setup to be very simple and straightforward. It's not a complex process. A company shouldn't struggle with a deployment. 

The solution can be quite expensive and is a bit of a higher cost when compared to others on the market.

We're a customer and an end-user.

Our current version is an older version. Right now, we are considering replacing it with the newest one.

I'd recommend the solution to other users and companies. We've been pretty happy with it overall.

I would rate it at a nine out of ten.

Mostly VMs, for hosting virtual infrastructure. It represents 99 percent of our computing workforce.

The versatility of the solution is the most helpful to us.

The way the hardware is separated from the software definition of the components.

Better UI. Cisco makes a great product but doesn't know how to make a UI.

Very stable and very reliable.

It is a blade system so it's fairly scalable.

I've used technical support and it's above average.

We had a bad experience with IBM servers, which is why we decided to change solutions. Also, as a bank, the switch was a money-driven process. They offered us a very good deal to test the new solution and it became widely spread throughout the company. 

Reliability, price, support, and scalability are important factors for us in selecting a vendor.

Coming from a server background, it wasn't straightforward at all. It is a process that is closer to requiring telecommunication knowledge than server knowledge. Once you overcome that little step at the beginning it's fine, but at the beginning it was a little difficult to understand.

My advice to a colleague looking at this or a similar solution would be to test it. When we started, Cisco UCS was the first solution on the market and the only one that provided certain capabilities hardware-wise. It was the one with the most cores per CPU and it was the one with the most memory per blade server. Of course, now there are other vendors in the market. If I were to start the search process right now, I would consider Cisco UCS, but also other vendors like Dell and HPE, which are making new blade servers. They are coming up with different solutions and are catching up to the market. Until there is something really new on the market, like UCS had when they started, UCS is facing some competition.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. Two points go to the UI, which is lacking. Also, the way you can actually switch from one system to another doesn't allow for the easy transfer of all of the server definitions.