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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 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 Superdome X is 6.6%, down from 10.7% 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 Superdome X6.6%
Other86.1%
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 stability of Cisco UCS B-Series is impeccable, as it has been running smoothly without any need for maintenance."
"Dell has a huge portfolio of products."
"Easy to deploy, scale and expand based on a number of server range available, with centralization for different resources including network, compute and storage."
"The most valuable features are monitoring and processing, which can handle a lot of throughput and are more powerful than the HPE series."
"Great security and functionality."
"I can connect Cisco UCS B-Series to multiple chassis and rack servers using a unified platform, then manage them on a single console."
"Cisco UCS is a fantastic product that is widely deployed with excellent support."
"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."
"HPE Superdome X is a very resilient infrastructure, and stable."
"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."
"We've got a few of them, because we needed some really large machines. So far, they've been working pretty good."
"If you're looking for a solution where you need a lot of workload and power, it's a great solution."
"We like the flexibility with the platform and our ability to stretch it across a lot of different areas of the company and product lines."
"SDX gave us a very large RAM and we need that for the large-scale graph-handling applications."
"This product is very reliable."
"CPU and memory, it's just pretty good and helps us to support the students and the teachers of the school."
 

Cons

"There is also a need for better local parts replacement, as HP is superior in this area."
"Pricing with Cisco is very high. The price is very inefficient."
"Cisco is not going for perpetual licensing."
"The high price of the solution is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Cisco is behind as far as SSD qualifications and options allowed, relative to other vendors, but that is in keeping with their philosophy of a stateless working environment."
"The main issue with this solution is that it is quite vendor-restricted, meaning that when we use third party software, we cannot use all of the available configuration tools or pre-validated design features."
"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."
"Its scalability could be better."
"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."
"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.""
"The price of this product should be cheaper."
"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."
"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."
"It would be helpful if you could do the maintenance completely online."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It makes much more sense for individual licenses for distributed environments"
"We have to pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution."
"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."
"The pricing for Cisco products is always high."
"Considering our market, I rate the pricing of Cisco UCS B-Series as a six."
"Cisco UCS B-Series is not a cheap solution."
"Cisco UCS does not require a license. However, this license is not specific to users."
"Make sure you work with a vendor partner than can get you a substantial discount off of list pricing."
"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
Construction Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Government
10%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

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: June 2026.
902,588 professionals have used our research since 2012.