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Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Superdome X 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 Superdome X
Ranking in Blade Servers
7th
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 May 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 7.3%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Superdome X is 7.0%, down from 10.8% 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 Superdome X7.0%
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 most valuable features of the Cisco UCS B-Series are reports for virtualization and the large memory it has."
"My advice for anybody who is considering Cisco UCS is that if it's within your budget, I recommend it because they are popular in the market and it is easy to find experts."
"Cisco UCS changed the server blade game, converging network and compute into a single profile-based platform."
"It's faster to provision virtual servers than physical, and it has very good orchestration with UCS Director 5.2."
"It's modular."
"Easy to deploy, scale and expand based on a number of server range available, with centralization for different resources including network, compute and storage."
"If we could get more reference architecture available on the portal, it would be helpful in making decisions"
"The most valuable features are monitoring and processing, which can handle a lot of throughput and are more powerful than the HPE series."
"I like the robustness of the machine. Similar performance could likely be achieved with other configurations, but this machine is very stable."
"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."
"We've got a few of them, because we needed some really large machines; so far, they've been working pretty good."
"We've got a few of them, because we needed some really large machines. So far, they've been working pretty good."
"It's an amazing product, an amazing technology, that has the best of that world: performance and uptime, and standardization."
"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."
"HPE Superdome X is a very resilient infrastructure, and stable."
 

Cons

"The configuration is a little bit complicated and could be made simpler."
"The configuration is a bit complex, as it requires very high technical expertise to apply it."
"The initial setup is not easy."
"We have to have Java to manage the infrastructure. It would be great if we can manage the infrastructure through a web browser."
"The license is expensive."
"It could be helpful to have a wizard to make the setup routine better, and a wizard to help with the managerial processes to avoid misconfiguration issues."
"It needs a better UI. Cisco makes a great product, but doesn't know how to make a UI."
"The graphic code that UCS can support is limited and less accessible than other systems."
"It would be helpful if you could do the maintenance completely online."
"There's a big upfront investment, but the total cost of ownership should be cheaper over the long term."
"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 know we support Windows and I think it's Red Hat, and I'd like to see more OSs supported."
"The technical support sucks, would be understating it. Because the first line and the second line support tend to give out stupid suggestions that are completely useless, and they aren't listening to anything."
"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

"The price of this solution compared to others is fair."
"The cost of the Cisco UCS B-Series is comparable to HP solutions but higher than Dell solutions."
"Considering our market, I rate the pricing of Cisco UCS B-Series as a six."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing costs of the solution on a yearly basis. Price-wise, it is an expensive product"
"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."
"Pricing will be based on your requirements so it is important to plan, engage, and negotiate directly with the Cisco Account Manager."
"Make sure you work with a vendor partner than can get you a substantial discount off of list pricing."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"There is a very expensive one-time cost with no licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
University
10%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
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: April 2026.
892,678 professionals have used our research since 2012.