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Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Superdome X comparison

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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
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE Superdome X
Ranking in Blade Servers
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 7.6%, up from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Superdome X is 6.7%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco UCS B-Series7.6%
HPE Superdome X6.7%
Other85.7%
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.
reviewer2056329 - PeerSpot reviewer
Professor at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Robust product, helped with workload management and offers remote configuration
In this specific model, it could be beneficial to have a server configuration similar to Cisco, like the kind offered in HPE Superdome Flex X280. The ability to separate the chassis is important because we are forced to use two chassis even with lower loads. So introducing more flexibility in the Superdome environment would be helpful. One other problem is energy consumption. We are forced to use both chassis even when we only need, for example, all four processors. It's not always used at full capacity every day. When underutilized, we still need to have both chassis powered, which creates an energy consumption issue. While the machine can be configured to reduce consumption, the idea of having different possible configurations with varying chassis usage, similar to the Flex version, could be interesting for this model, too. This model leverages specific features of the Intel MAP board, so switching like in the Flex might be difficult due to the motherboard switching involved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Cisco solution provides a unified dashboard which enhances virtualization tasks, allowing configurations from a single interface. It also helps with space and power management, which are vital for data center efficiency."
"VirtualNICs/HBA allow us to redesign completely the IO schema (network and storage) without needing to upgrade or acquire additional hardware and controllers."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is easily scalable."
"Since its UCS release in 2009, Cisco has extended the core functionality with Central, a tool for managing multiple domains"
"The most valuable features of the solution are stability and security."
"The solution is stable, the scalability is good, everything is nice and I like that it is centrally managed, it's very easy to manage once you have everything set up, the performance is great, and technical support is helpful."
"Remote access to the server is very useful."
"Having experience with the product for over 5 years, the ROI is definitely over our expectations."
"This product is very reliable."
"SDX gave us a very large RAM and we need that for the large-scale graph-handling applications."
"If you're looking for a solution where you need a lot of workload and power, it's a great solution."
"In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"The most valuable features of HPE Superdome X are speed, performance, and resilience."
"One of the really cool things about Superdome is, depending on the model you choose, you can put 8-16 blades in it, but because of the structure and the engineering behind it, you can actually have your blades partitioned and they're actually physically divided."
"Superdome X is a system that can compete in terms of performance and uptime, but it's now standard. That is the great value. There are competitors like IBM, for example, but IBM has a propietary operating system. With Superdome X, you have a system that can run Windows, Red Hat, or VMware, but in a mission critical server."
"CPU and memory, it's just pretty good and helps us to support the students and the teachers of the school."
 

Cons

"The management interface in the current version is Java based."
"The high price of the solution is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"They use LSI for their RAID, while they may be robust RAID controllers, they lack a lot of functionality that Adaptec or HP Smart array."
"The pricing could be improved, as it is a bit expensive solution."
"Next generation support for VMware needs to be introduced as it does not support eighth-generation VMware."
"USC Central seems a bit confusing for technicians."
"Software defects that result in false environmental alarms have been a pain point for us."
"Cisco is expensive and difficult to manage. The product is not intuitive. It also needs to improve storage management and upgrades."
"Looking back to our original purchase of Superdome X, we bought the smallest model."
"There's a big upfront investment, but the total cost of ownership should be cheaper over the long term."
"What would make it better from my point of view is if HPE spent more time on testing with the actual built-in Red Hat Linux drivers, as opposed to always trying to say, "Use our driver.""
"In this specific model, it could be beneficial to have a server configuration similar to Cisco, like the kind offered in HPE Superdome Flex X280. The ability to separate the chassis is important because we are forced to use two chassis even with lower loads. So introducing more flexibility in the Superdome environment would be helpful."
"The price of this product should be cheaper."
"HPE Superdome X can improve by adding a lot of cloud capabilities to allow this solution to be cloud-ready in case the customer wants to move it to the cloud."
"I'd like to see the onboarding of some storage class memory to really expand the already very large RAM, into something that could be even much bigger."
"It would be helpful if you could do the maintenance completely online."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing for Cisco is less than for the HP Proliant series."
"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."
"UCS is expensive, and we will be migrating to the cheaper HP servers."
"It is not a yearly subscription but a yearly support renewal that you need to do for Cisco UCS B-Series."
"It is highly-priced."
"The price of this solution compared to others is fair."
"From a business point of view, the price is on the higher end."
"The type of service level purchase will determine the level of support response that you receive from Cisco."
"There is a very expensive one-time cost with no licensing fees."
"The pricing is not very cheap. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with one being very inexpensive, and ten being very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
 

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...
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Also Known As

UCS B-Series, Unified Computing System B-Series
HP Integrity Superdome, HP Superdome X
 

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
Pella
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE Superdome X and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,212 professionals have used our research since 2012.