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Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 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 C-Series Rack Ser...
Ranking in Rack Servers
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Density Optimized Servers (3rd)
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
Ranking in Rack Servers
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Data Center Networking (4th), Blade Servers (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is 4.8%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 27.4%, down from 28.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rack Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Kalpesh Savaliya - PeerSpot reviewer
Good support, and this product well-suited to our size of environment
We use these rack servers for terminal operating systems The initial setup could be easier. I have been working with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers for five years. This is a stable product. For our use case, this product is scalable up to 16 blades, including two sites. I don't know how well…
Syed Masuood - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles workloads and diverse applications efficiently
We have a lot of VMs on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. On a single server, we have probably hosted 14 or 15 VMs. Out of these, 8 to 10 are continuously running, and four of them are backup VMs, so it can handle a good workload. For cybersecurity, it is only accessible on the intranet; it is not accessible through the web. We use it for local development purposes, and it is behind our firewall. Its security is strong. We handle a lot of test data for government and confidential customers. It is safe and strong locally. We have not experienced any security issues. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime if we need to replace a hard disk, instead of completely shutting a server, there is a hot swap feature. It is quite good in that aspect. Usually, for any activity, there is a downtime of about 30 minutes. It has saved a lot of time. We have tried AI workloads for a development environment for a government customer in Singapore. The servers are hosted in Singapore. It is an ML-based engine with AI. It is a government project where data is processed, and we run it on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The benefit of running AI workloads on PowerEdge Servers is that it is easy to allocate memory. The application we are running is memory intensive. It is pretty easy to scale memory and storage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The technical support from Cisco is fine."
"In most cases, computes compute, and there isn't much differentiation, but one point of differentiation is Intersight cloud management."
"It is very nice and stable with an easy administration GUI."
"The hardware customization capabilities are great."
"The C-series is the most valuable."
"The solution is reliable and easy to use."
"The VIC card is the most important feature."
"The initial setup is straightforward and easy to do."
"Dell support is the best."
"The solution's lifecycle management with iDRAC works really well, and it is a valuable feature because it helps with maintenance and keeping track of what we have in our company."
"Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is a user-friendly solution that provides performance stability."
"We can pull out elements and change them ourselves."
"The feature of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers that I value the best is the iDRAC, as it is extremely good and simplifies tasks."
"No down time and it's very user friendly."
"I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as a nine out of ten overall."
"I find Dell PowerEdge Servers to handle diverse applications and evolving needs effectively, but we have to upgrade the hardware periodically."
 

Cons

"Some customers have complained about delivery time. So, the main weakness is the lead time."
"There is very little scalability for the cluster. If you need a higher availability, there is a user limitation. So that is the low side."
"The hard drive of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is not very good. I have already replaced three of them."
"I would like to see a little more integration with VMware."
"The only thing I would change is to provide more proactive support."
"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve by selling storage. Cisco doesn't sell storage, which is a problem because some customers ask for storage. There are several brands in the market, such as HPE, and Dell EMC. However, Cisco doesn't have any storage. This is where the tension comes from buying this solution."
"The pricing is too high and no discounts are available for our country."
"The product must add customer-friendly monitoring features."
"Maybe on the education side, working with third-party sellers on how easy their products are could probably help."
"I would like to change the physical rails to be more like how HPE rails are formatted and organized."
"I'd like to take the complexities out of all the different tools that surround it, like OpenManage."
"I would prefer more flexibility when configuring Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Some challenges we see when looking for a server include wanting a two CPU server without necessarily needing a larger server."
"As the disks and memory should be expandable, I would highlight scalability as an issue."
"One of the things that I've noticed is that over time, the system degrades, meaning that little things don't work. For example, the hard drive would need to be replaced or iDRAC would not be functioning properly. We may have to flash the firmware. It is not like some other hardware where it just runs without issues for four or five years. With Dell, generally, there are little hiccups here and there."
"In older models, for instance, Melanox adapters remain a necessity, and they have sporadically caused complications."
"Dell needs to focus more on SMBs, helping us get the most out of our products. For example, at events, there should be very specific SMB sessions where there are Dell technicians, engineers, and Dell executives meeting with us and finding out what we need. Dell is big on promoting the fact that they're part of our team and that they want to be our partners, and I would like to see them actually partner with us. Do it less with the big Fortune 500 companies and do a little bit more with us SMBs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The server itself isn't costly at all, but the CPU and the RAM can be pretty expensive. You can buy a UCS for $2,000, but the RAM and CPU can cost up to $80,000. The most expensive asset is the intel processor, but it depends on how many cores you want and the technology you want to use on your CPU, like Hyper-V, etc."
"The price of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is approximately 20 percent more than other solutions."
"The solution could be more cost-effective."
"The price for Cisco is a bit higher than its competitors. We paid 40k for one server."
"If they plan to expand their infrastructure in periods, then simply Cisco is not a good choice."
"This product is quite expensive and it would be better if it were cheaper."
"We have to pay for the VMware and Cisco licenses."
"This product is slightly more expensive when compared to others."
"I am satisfied with the pricing of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and would rate the cost as seven out of ten, with ten being the best."
"If price isn't a concern, I would recommend it."
"It has generally been very competitive. It is not the best, but it is very competitive."
"I don't know about the product's licensing part. Price-wise, it is an okay product. I believe that the cheaper the better, but I think that the product's price is okay."
"The pricing is great; very competitive. That's the reason we bought hundreds of them."
"There is room for improvement in making it more cost-effective."
"It's a bit of a shock when you have to find the money, but the pricing is very competitive, so I'm happy with that."
"The pricing could always be better."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

When shopping for a rack server, would you go with Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem rack servers were the better fit for us. We ultimately decided to go with Dell EMC Poweredge....
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
It has helped us reduce unplanned downtime by 20% to 30%.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have higher hardware costs compared to HPE ProLiant servers, which are cheaper. From reliability, performance, and sustainability perspectives, Dell PowerEdge Rack Serve...
 

Also Known As

Unified Computing System C-Series, Cisco UCS C-Series
PowerEdge R
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Aegean Motorway, Anilana Hotels and Resorts, Artoni Transporti, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, City of Mississauga, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Kind en Gezin, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Nationwide, Quest, Talbots, University of St. Gallen
NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,632 professionals have used our research since 2012.