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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 Boot from SAN function is good because using OTV, we can boot the device from any remote location."
"Cisco UCS B-Series is flexible as it can be built as a standalone system and expanded horizontally and vertically in a cluster mode, with a standout feature being the Unified Fabric which combines LAN and SAN, reducing the need for numerous cables and offering consistent configuration, unlike traditional setups."
"The scalability, high availability, and security all combined is a good offering."
"Easy to deploy, scale and expand based on a number of server range available, with centralization for different resources including network, compute and storage."
"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."
"None of them have come close to the combination of performance and reliability that I get from Cisco."
"Customers see benefits in the reduced time to deploy virtual servers."
"The most valuable features of HPE Superdome X are speed, performance, and resilience."
"CPU and memory, it's just pretty good and helps us to support the students and the teachers of the school."
"SDX gave us a very large RAM and we need that for the large-scale graph-handling applications."
"One of the really cool things about Superdome is, depending on the model you choose, you can put 8-16 blades in it."
"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."
"HPE Superdome X is a very resilient infrastructure, and stable."
"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."
"We've got a few of them, because we needed some really large machines. So far, they've been working pretty good."
 

Cons

"The solution’s pricing could be improved and made cheaper."
"The configuration is a bit complex, as it requires very high technical expertise to apply it."
"The cost is expensive and has room for improvement."
"The price of this product is too high. They should work to make it more affordable."
"The configuration is a little bit complicated and could be made simpler."
"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."
"The upgrades could be improved."
"The product pricing needs improvement."
"It would be helpful if you could do the maintenance completely online."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Cisco UCS B-Series is not a cheap solution."
"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."
"The cost of the Cisco UCS B-Series is comparable to HP solutions but higher than Dell solutions."
"The pricing for Cisco is less than for the HP Proliant series."
"The licensing cost is a little bit expensive because by default, it depends on your fabric interconnect model. Most of the time, however, Cisco provides a lot of promotions to the customers, so the cost can be waived for many projects. The price of the chassis itself is fair."
"The product is expensive."
"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
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
9%
Performing Arts
8%
Manufacturing Company
15%
University
10%
Government
10%
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 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.
893,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.