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Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Integrity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

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 B-Series
Ranking in Blade Servers
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE Integrity
Ranking in Blade Servers
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.4
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 7.3%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Integrity is 4.0%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco UCS B-Series7.3%
HPE Integrity4.0%
Other88.7%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

MB
Head of IT Operations at NCC BANK LIMITED
Efficient server management reduces costs and supports seamless operations
Cisco UCS B-Series has reliably sustained smooth operations without the need for significant maintenance. Its administration capabilities provide easy access to performance reports, logs, and utilization data, which are essential for effective server management. Additionally, the integration capabilities are seamless, and the power consumption and heat generation are low, resulting in reduced cooling costs and increased financial benefits.
JQ
Oracle Database Administrator at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
Robust security layers have supported mission-critical banking and protected sensitive data
Where I have not really enjoyed is the flexibility of doing things. You are just in a straitjacket with what they give you. The flexibility of doing things is limited compared to other platforms. The backup and restore features on that module were a bit old. I couldn't create a snapshot and provision a server in minutes. The VM features that I can use now easily were not that easy with HPE Integrity and were not even available for us. I had a lot of interaction with HPE Integrity and wanted to move to a different platform for a different experience. I did not see any products matching the Dell PowerFlex environment in terms of server capabilities when it comes to HPE Integrity. We are now using Oracle products and Oracle Data Guard. Oracle on HPE Integrity was a bit more difficult because you have to get separate patches, separate tunables, and separate kernel settings for HPE Integrity. Everything was so proprietary on HPE Integrity, making it difficult to have one solution. The Dell Linux environment with Oracle Linux OS now will be much easier.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Great consolidation, high mem capacity, excellent reduction on ports."
"Easy to deploy, scale and expand based on a number of server range available, with centralization for different resources including network, compute and storage."
"VirtualNICs/HBA allow us to redesign completely the IO schema (network and storage) without needing to upgrade or acquire additional hardware and controllers."
"The scalability is very good."
"Running in the VCE Vblock gives us the flexibility to deploy a large virtual workload of servers."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to replace a server with another one, simply by applying the profile."
"Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) provides unified, embedded management of all software and hardware components in the Cisco UCS, is scalable, and controls multiple chassis while managing resources for thousands of virtual machines."
"I like that the hardware is separated from the software definition of the components."
"The tool provides good performance and productivity."
"If one needs a system with first class stability that may be an expensive solution, HPE Integrity is a way to go."
"We use it as a database server for SAP systems, and it is performing very well."
"The benefit provided by the solution for my organization stems from the fact that it provides maximum reliability and availability to users."
"We currently deployed HP Integrity blade servers; they offer great versatility, redundancy, and a rapid method of deploying multiple virtual guests within 10 minutes."
"The Integrity series combined with the software layer presents an excellent Mission Critical landscape that brings simplicity in a complex landscape to the foreground."
"The added value of Integrity has always been the reliability of the processors and all the parts in the servers."
"HPE Integrity is a mission-critical server, and we are using it for our SAP; we require zero downtime, which is why it is typically used in environments like banks or air traffic control where the downtime requirement is absolute zero."
 

Cons

"The management interface needs a lot of improvement. As it is right now, it's a pain to use. It's not user-friendly."
"The configuration is a bit complex, as it requires very high technical expertise to apply it."
"Cisco is expensive and difficult to manage. The product is not intuitive. It also needs to improve storage management and upgrades."
"Initial setup was complex. UCS deployment and management requires deep knowledge of the platform."
"The upgrades could be improved."
"Integration with the storage to get a heatmap of what's going on in the storage site could be improved -- the dashboard, that kind of thing."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved and made cheaper."
"The cost of the solution has room for improvement."
"With the announcement last year from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise that they are no longer supporting Itanium 2 processors, which means HP-UX is going to die soon in a couple of years."
"Don't do it. Go x86."
"Since Intel featured this product as a mainframe class, it should perform closer to a mainframe."
"The virtualization of HPE Integrity could be simplified. We have discussed this issue with HPE and hopefully, they will have an update."
"We're moving away from Integrity as it's more pricey than the Intels."
"HPE Integrity needs improvement in terms of pricing for scalability."
"HPE Integrity is a pain. HPE hasn't put much work into developing the solution in the past few years because it will be discontinued soon."
"Where I have not really enjoyed is the flexibility of doing things. You are just in a straitjacket with what they give you."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"It makes much more sense for individual licenses for distributed environments"
"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."
"We have to pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution."
"Make sure you work with a vendor partner than can get you a substantial discount off of list pricing."
"Cisco UCS B-Series is an expensive solution."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing costs of the solution on a yearly basis. Price-wise, it is an expensive product"
"Cisco UCS B-Series is an expensive solution."
"Price-wise, the solution is very expensive."
"The pricing is the best."
"There is no license required to use HPE Integrity."
"The price is not very expensive."
"HPE Integrity's pricing could be better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Construction Company
20%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS B-Series?
Comparing Cisco UCS B-Series with traditional servers, while its initial cost may be slightly higher, it is not as expensive as Oracle Exadata, making it a worthwhile investment. It pays off in the...
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS B-Series?
There is a need for Cisco UCS B-Series to evolve and scale vertically, particularly with the increasing data demands and the integration of AI, ensuring the solution remains certified and capable u...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS B-Series?
The Cisco UCS B-Series servers are used to run backend databases ranging from small, medium, to large, running different versions of RDBMS such as Oracle, SQL, MySQL. It also includes cloud databas...
What needs improvement with HPE Integrity?
Where I have not really enjoyed is the flexibility of doing things. You are just in a straitjacket with what they give you. The flexibility of doing things is limited compared to other platforms. T...
What is your primary use case for HPE Integrity?
We are still working with HP products, specifically HPE Integrity servers. We are about to migrate this year to Dell. For Unix, because we are using Unix now, we're going to move to Linux on that p...
What advice do you have for others considering HPE Integrity?
Data protection and application support features are important considerations. My total experience has been seven out of ten. Regarding disaster recovery, we just have the servers that we configure...
 

Also Known As

UCS B-Series, Unified Computing System B-Series
HP Integrity Superdome , HP Integrity, SGI Altix
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, Anilana Hotels and Resorts, Anonymous Banking Group, Artoni Transporti, Bellevue, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Hertz, Houston Methodist, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Co.KG, Outscale, Sony Corporation, Talbots
Home Credit Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Integrity and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.