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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
6th
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 November 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 7.7%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Superdome X is 6.6%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco UCS B-Series7.7%
HPE Superdome X6.6%
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 architecture of this solution is very valuable; it has five traffic interconnects, and uses a network highway so bandwidth is never an issue."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to replace a server with another one, simply by applying the profile."
"The initial setup is pretty simple and straightforward."
"The stability of Cisco UCS B-Series is impeccable, as it has been running smoothly without any need for maintenance."
"For UCS B series, its integration with devices like FI, N5K, and UCSM where we can configure Service Profile and the way it combines LAN, SAN, and the server on the blade is something I love."
"It is less time-consuming to deploy the software."
"The solution is very unified and the technical team is very supportive, no help is needed from outside vendors."
"The most valuable features of the Cisco UCS B-Series are reports for virtualization and the large memory it has."
"It's an amazing product, an amazing technology, that has the best of that world: performance and uptime, and standardization."
"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."
"I like the robustness of the machine. Similar performance could likely be achieved with other configurations, but this machine is very stable."
"We've got a few of them, because we needed some really large machines. So far, they've been working pretty good."
"I would tell you that if you are looking for a product that can be used by multiple groups especially multiple groups with one point of administration, Superdome is very good."
"The most valuable features of HPE Superdome X are speed, performance, and resilience."
"In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"If you're looking for a solution where you need a lot of workload and power, it's a great solution."
 

Cons

"The solution’s technical support could be better."
"The pricing could be less."
"The license is expensive."
"This product uses a converged network adapter because it is the only way to provide flexibility with both fiber and ethernet connections."
"Cisco UCS B-Series competitors have similar features as they do, Cisco needs to make some changes to make their offering better."
"Pricing with Cisco is very high. The price is very inefficient."
"The license is expensive. Cisco should decrease the delay in the delivery of their products."
"There are patches that cannot be implemented without any downtime or reboot required."
"There's a big upfront investment, but the total cost of ownership should be cheaper over the long term."
"It would be helpful if you could do the maintenance completely online."
"Looking back to our original purchase of Superdome X, we bought the smallest model."
"I know we support Windows and I think it's Red Hat, and I'd like to see more OSs supported."
"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.""
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is a premium device and our clients are not as concerned about the reasonableness of the price compared to satisfaction with their productivity."
"Pricing will be based on your requirements so it is important to plan, engage, and negotiate directly with the Cisco Account Manager."
"The product cost is high."
"The pricing for Cisco products is always high."
"It is not a yearly subscription but a yearly support renewal that you need to do for Cisco UCS B-Series."
"Make sure you work with a vendor partner than can get you a substantial discount off of list pricing."
"Compared to the more in-demand hyper-converged environments such as Nutanix or DVX rail, Cisco UCS B-Series is even more costly due to the expensive fabric interconnects."
"We have to pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution."
"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
12%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
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: November 2026.
921,714 professionals have used our research since 2012.