Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the Density Optimized Servers category. Cisco is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5. Cisco holds a 14.5% mindshare in DOS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 20.6% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

Read 38 Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers reviews

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96% willing to recommend

HPE Apollo Systems

Read 25 HPE Apollo Systems reviews

3,785 Views
719 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

HPE Apollo Systems

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers and HPE Apollo Systems are prominent competitors in the server market. While Cisco gains an advantage in environments already using their technology due to performance and integration, HPE is notable for energy efficiency and features that appeal to high-compute applications.

Features: Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are recognized for high throughput, integration with Cisco environments, and scalability. HPE Apollo Systems feature energy-efficient design, advanced management capabilities, and support for large-scale tasks.

Room for Improvement: Cisco UCS C-Series could improve by enhancing management ease, reducing physical footprint, and streamlining integration processes. HPE Apollo Systems could benefit from simplifying installation, enhancing support availability, and optimizing cost management for smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers benefit from straightforward deployment and integration within Cisco-rich infrastructures, although customer service experiences vary. HPE Apollo Systems may require more complex setups, but offer reliable customer service, providing consistent support and long-term engagement satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers offer competitive pricing with strong ROI, especially beneficial for enterprises with existing Cisco investments. HPE Apollo Systems, though potentially higher in initial cost, deliver excellent ROI due to their energy efficiency and performance for large-scale environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs. HPE Apollo Systems Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs. HPE Apollo Systems

November 2026

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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

Ranking in Density Optimized Servers

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HPE Apollo Systems

Ranking in Rack Servers

10th

Ranking in Density Optimized Servers

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Density Optimized Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is 14.5%, up from 11.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Apollo Systems is 20.6%, up from 17.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Density Optimized Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers	14.5%
HPE Apollo Systems	20.6%
Other	64.9%

Density Optimized Servers

Featured Reviews

Md Rafique

Desktop support Engineer at a outsourcing company with 51-200 employees

Centralized servers have improved virtualization and now support critical workloads reliably

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could be improved by making its management interface more intuitive and simplifying configuration and troubleshooting tasks. Better automation for routine maintenance, firmware updates, and server provisioning would help reduce manual efforts for IT teams. I would also like to see more detailed real-time monitoring and predictive analytics to identify potential hardware issues before they affect business operations. Additionally, simplifying integration with third-party monitoring and virtualization tools, along with more transparent licensing and support costs, would make the platform even more efficient and easier to manage. One area where Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers could improve is simplifying day-to-day administration through better automation and a more user-friendly management interface. Our team would benefit from having a single clear view of server health, performance, firmware status, and potential hardware issues. Faster firmware updates, easier troubleshooting, and more detailed alerts would also help reduce manual checks and resolve problems more quickly. Additionally, improved documentation and quicker technical support for complex issues would make maintenance smoother and help the team manage the infrastructure more efficiently. The improvement would be to enhance predictive maintenance and capacity planning so that Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers can help identify potential hardware failures and resource bottlenecks before they affect business operations. More detailed performance analytics, proactive alerts, and simpler integration with third-party monitoring tools would be valuable. Additionally, improving the speed of firmware updates, simplifying lifecycle management, and providing clearer guidance during troubleshooting would help reduce maintenance effort. These improvements would make the platform easier to manage, improve infrastructure visibility, and help our IT team operate more proactively.

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Gökhan DURMAZ

Account Manager at TD SYNNEX

High-quality integration and strong support have optimized our rack server operations

HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity. When I speak about integrity, I speak about GPU integration or other integrations such as GPU integration, backup software integration, and hypervisor integration. Regarding the integration of high-speed interconnectors in HPE Apollo Systems, they impact computational tasks because the high-speed interconnect affects performance. I don't remember the specifics. Regarding the cooling technologies, they help to reduce operational costs. The positive impact I see from HPE Apollo Systems is that support is good and quality is good. In general, HPE Apollo Systems appears to be for rack servers with some optimization capabilities.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very nice and stable with an easy administration GUI."

"In most cases, computes compute, and there isn't much differentiation, but one point of differentiation is Intersight cloud management."

"In summary, this is a good product and it's sustainable."

"Cisco support is excellent; they provide instant support via calls, meetings, and WebEx, delivering solutions immediately."

"On the Cisco side, there is a benefit in terms of server management. Cisco provides UCS Manager, which is a multi-tenant site manager. We can manage multiple sites while maintaining disaster recovery, a feature not available on other platforms."

"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are agileness, ease of operation, and manageability."

"Its hardware is really reliable. We also like Cisco for its support."

"The solution is easily scalable."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

"HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity."

"It's allowed us to compete with cloud storage providers like AWS to put together a scalable on-premises solution of more than 20PB at a similar pricepoint."

"For us, the most valuable features are the price and density."

"we can use the same platform for several use cases: Hadoop, Ceph, and we are considering the server for another use case right now. It's a single solution, we only have to integrate it once and we can use it for several technologies."

"We had a PoC, as I said, and we were happy with it and decided to implement it, as it satisfies all our needs and is the perfect solution."

"HPE Apollo's most valuable feature is the ability to expand our storage capacity."

"The cost benefit of this solution is most valuable. It is quite effective for the work for which we are using it. We are mainly running video servers on these, and we are quite happy with the resilience, density storage, and streaming capacity of the system."

"We're going to buy another Apollo 6500. We may configure it with half the number of GPUs because that may be all we need. In a sense, we can see the Apollo 6500 being so powerful that we only need half the GPU capability that we have now."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

Cons

"The only thing I would change is to provide more proactive support."

"In the version we need to use, the manager is still reliant on a full Java install on a Windows OS. This is inconvenient and problematic if you have multiple management tools on different versions of Java or if you move to a machine without the appropriate Java environment."

"The C-Series is not designed to be as scalable."

"Absolutely we had scalability issues. We tried several times to upgrade, scale up, expand our infrastructure, but Cisco insists to demand excessive amounts of money."

"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 scalability of the product is an area of concern where Cisco needs to focus on making some improvements."

"Its accessibility and manageability can be improved. Currently, we have to visit the office to manage it. It should be manageable outside our network. I would like it to be on the cloud."

"On the contact center and video conferencing, I would definitely like to see more AI features. The AI features are key for us. You will find a lot of them in the cloud-based solution, but in the on-premises solution, they're hardly there. I would like to see the same AI features that are there in the cloud-based Cisco UC."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."

"One drawback which I had: When I needed to expand storage on the Apollo, I had significant problems getting disks for it. It was a very long wait-time. So, if I were to give any advice in regards to improving this product, I would say make more of the 8TB disks available quicker."

"Big stability issues with the CPU on the first generation which made them virtually unusable."

"If the workload is not purely sequential, then performance in the IO is less than optimal because it's optimized for streaming processing."

"The licensing could be greatly improved, I think."

"The solution's deployment, security, and scalability need improvement."

"If there's anything that hasn't been that stable, then it is the Lustre file system."

"I would want to see the flexibility of being able to run various network protocols including InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, as well as iSCSI, with iSCSI going up to 100 gigabytes per second - that would be outstanding."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have to pay for the VMware and Cisco licenses."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis, which is only $2,000 or $3,000."

"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."

"Best to buy all the blades configured for the same purposes of load balancing and failover or load shifting."

"This solution is a little expensive."

"The prices of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are higher compared to the competition. When we try and sell against the competition, then it becomes quite difficult to sell"

"The pricing is expensive."

"The solution is expensive and I give the price a four out of ten."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pricing and cost advice

"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."

"The price of the solution is more expensive than Dell which is their main competitor. However, there are times we have managed to receive a comparable price."

"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."

"It is an expensive solution but it is worth the money. The standard licensing cost is for the GPU and the features that someone is using. There are additional charges but they depend on the solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	18

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

It's very expensive in comparison to other products.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

The price is the only disadvantage I see.We are comfortable; the client didn't report to us anything that they want to add to this equipment now or in the future. All that they want is more scalabi...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

My main use case for Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is unified communication on UCS servers. A specific example of how I use Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers for unified communication involves the ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?

It is too early to say what improvements HPE Apollo Systems could implement because the report still needs to come out and the customer needs to properly evaluate the solution.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?

My main use case for HPE Apollo Systems is replacing many of the servers and storage boxes at one of the customer's sites to achieve workload optimization and optimized solutions. Additionally, whe...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?

My advice for someone considering HPE Apollo Systems is that if they are looking for consolidation and their workload involves high availability requirements, or if they want to utilize GPUs, then ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Compared 31% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Synergy vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 7% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Competitors

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 12% of the time

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 11% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

HPE Synergy vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 4% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

November 2026

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

October 2026

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Also Known As

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

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo

Overview

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers offer reliable hardware, ease of operation, and seamless integration. With scalable and high-performance features, these servers are designed to meet enterprise needs effectively while maximizing space efficiency without sacrificing computing and memory power.

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are well-regarded for stability and flexible management, supporting applications like virtualization and data center workloads. Key features include server virtualization, robust support, and efficiency in design, ensuring high flexibility and adaptability. Customers often deploy them for cloud infrastructure, IP telephony, and collaboration tools, using them for computing, storage, and managing physical and virtual networks. While they excel in many areas, enhancements in scalability and integration with third-party solutions are desired, alongside expanded technical support and storage options.

What are the standout features?

Reliability: Robust hardware ensures stable operations.
Scalability: Supports growth with flexible server expansion.
Boot from SAN: Efficient booting for streamlined operations.
Virtual Interface Card (VIC): Enhances virtualization capabilities.
Intersight Cloud Management: Simplifies server management through automation.

What benefits should users expect?

Manageability: Simplifies server operations with efficient tools.
Performance: Delivers high computing and memory power.
Integration: Seamlessly works with various enterprise applications.
Flexible Expansion: Easily add or replace components as needed.
Support for Virtualization: Ideal for VMware and other virtualization platforms.

Adopted across industries, Cisco UCS C-Series is often used in government, finance, and telecommunications sectors. They support workloads ranging from virtual desktops to complex databases, offering flexibility and efficiency for hosting solutions like VMware ESXi, SQL, and Oracle. Companies leverage their strengths for both physical and virtual IT infrastructures.

Cisco

HPE Apollo Systems deliver high compute and storage density, scalability, and environmental efficiency with exceptional performance for AI initiatives and data capturing across diverse applications.

HPE Apollo Systems are characterized by their dense compute and storage capabilities, offering flexibility in configurations to meet the demands of AI, deep learning, and high-performance computing. Their management software simplifies deployment, ensuring effective performance across tasks that require significant storage. While Apollo Systems are designed for efficiency and scalability, improvements can be made in security, tech support, and integration with hypervisors and backup solutions. Enhancing cooling and licensing processes, connectivity, and faster drive writing capabilities are also areas for growth.

What are the key features of HPE Apollo Systems?

High Compute Density: Supports intense processing needs efficiently.
Scalability: Easily adaptable to growing data demands.
Environmental Efficiency: Minimizes energy consumption, enhancing sustainability.
Flexible Configurations: Caters to a range of applications from AI to data storage.
Reliable Performance: Consistently delivers under various workloads.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Cost Effectiveness: Reduces expenditure with its efficient design.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly fits into diverse IT environments.
Performance Enhancement: Boosts operational efficiency and output.
Easy Deployment: Streamlines the setup process for quick operation.

HPE Apollo Systems find extensive use in sectors such as telecom, supporting high-performance computing and AI workloads. They optimize Linux servers, replace legacy systems, and serve as storage solutions across industries. Their applications span from big data management in Splunk clusters to backup solutions in medical faculties, enhancing compute power and storage within compact racks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

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

Weta Digital

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs. HPE Apollo Systems

November 2026

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