Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs HPE Synergy comparison

The compared Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise solutions aren't in the same category. Cisco is ranked #5 in Rack Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 5.2% mindshare in the category. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #1 in Blade Servers , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 17.4% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

Read 31 Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers reviews

2,367 Views
2,272 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

HPE Synergy

Read 91 HPE Synergy reviews

3,140 Views
2,135 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Ser...

HPE Synergy

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers and HPE Synergy based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo and others in Rack Servers.

To learn more, read our detailed Rack Servers Report (Updated: October 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Rack Servers

October 2025

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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...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

4.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Rack Servers (5th), Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

HPE Synergy

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Blade Servers (1st), Composable Infrastructure (1st)

Mindshare comparison

While both are IT Hardware and Infrastructure solutions, they serve different purposes. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is designed for Rack Servers and holds a mindshare of 5.2%, up 4.8% compared to last year.
HPE Synergy, on the other hand, focuses on Blade Servers, holds 17.4% mindshare, down 21.2% since last year.

Rack Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers	5.2%
Dell PowerEdge R-Series	27.2%
HPE ProLiant DL Servers	22.0%
Other	45.6%

Rack Servers

Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HPE Synergy	17.4%
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series	14.2%
HPE BladeSystem	12.9%
Other	55.5%

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Berthold Manz

CTO at ExperTeach GmbH

Seamless server transitions enhance IT infrastructure for AI projects and improve management capabilities

If you are integrated into the Cisco management solution, it is very easy to handle. The performance aspects of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are very strong. The ability to move from one server to another without changing anything is excellent. We can transfer all the identity of the servers between the servers.

Read full review

CarlosArdila

Project Manager, Information Technology at Telelago

Helps grow horizontally or vertically within one box or chassis

The initial setup is very easy. We deployed this in two days, including installation, system setup, firmware upgrades, configuration, and network connection. By the next day, we were already deploying virtual machines. We initially began with the Blade system. As the migration to SAP HANA approached, it seemed prudent to upgrade our hardware. Consequently, we facilitated their transition from the Blade system to Synergy. Subsequently, we collaborated closely with the SAP consultancy company to oversee the migration process, ensuring seamless integration of all workloads and sub-environments. We have four people working on the deployment, including a project manager, two specialists, and one tech support.

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

"The processors are so strong that they can deliver AI solutions without any additional GPU card, but we are also using some GPUs, which surely gives even better results."

"The server can be configured easily."

"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are integration and customization."

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

"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 feature of this solution is the expansion and replacement of parts."

"The technical support from Cisco is fine."

"In terms of the features that I have found most valuable, that is basically the hardware, which is more dynamic."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers pros

"The temporal value of it. If I only need a particular amount of compute for a specific period of time during business hours, then at night, I'm running a bunch of batch jobs, or doing something else, that ability to swap a profile, swap templates, and have compute assigned to something else, saves significant amount of money. As long as you are tying it into the automation and orchestration layers, it becomes much easier to do."

"The solution help us to implement new business requirements quickly, since it is easy and quick to upgrade our capacity."

"In terms of managing our IT landscape, it helps by reducing complexity... We've taken one of our virtualization guys and turned him into a Synergy guy, and he's been able to understand the networking, he's been able to understand the OneView, he's been able to understand the Synergy. He manages all of those rather than our having to have multiple teams associated with it."

"The most valuable features of HPE Synergy are the two composers."

"Great data storage and very good for software defined solutions."

"Its versatility, performance, and size are most valuable. It is very decent for its size. It has very good performance and very good specifications."

"OneView is head and shoulders above the competition in this space."

"It has improved our procurement and day zero provisioning. We are bringing in racks of Synergy which are not populated with the blades, then we are buying the blades and populating them, as our business needs. This has been pretty helpful to be able to sort of pre-package the data center with the Synergy platform, then deploy servers into it as we grow."

More HPE Synergy pros

Cons

"Technical support could be more responsive."

"The product must add customer-friendly monitoring features."

"The improvement should be done as per customer requirements."

"The product's stability and delivery time could be better."

"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 warranty and support periods should be extended."

"I would like to see a little more integration with VMware."

"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."

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers cons

"One of the issues that we that we have been having is with the firmware baselining. So, we need to just making sure that we get that working. However, we are in the early stages. It may well be that we just tweak a few things."

"Product documentation is disorganized."

"ICMs could be better in this model. When you look at its competitors, the most critical point is the throughput. HPE is the best with the ICM module, which is an interconnect module that connects the servers of the frames to the LAN and SAN. HPE Synergy should also support the latest processors provided by Intel."

"I think we were promised a little more than we were given. It's true, they are working very hard to try to help remedy that."

"We'd like to see faster networking in the back-end."

"The pricing can be improved as it is a costly solution due to sanctions in Iran."

"The initial setup was complex. We had a couple of bright engineers working on it, and they figured out a lot of things that they don't know... The problem was that they couldn't find documentation easily, to walk them through setup when they just didn't know the platform."

"When templates are created, there are some steps where you need to reboot the machines. Being in production, this is not a good idea. For example, if you reconfigure the network, you should not have to reboot the machine. You should just apply the new template and that's it."

More HPE Synergy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve. It's a little more expensive in comparison with Dell or HPE solutions."

"The solution requires an annual licensing fee."

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

"The price of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is high."

"This product is quite expensive and it would be better if it were cheaper."

"The price of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is approximately 20 percent more than other solutions."

"This product is slightly more expensive when compared to others."

"The price for Cisco is a bit higher than its competitors. We paid 40k for one server."

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

"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."

"We have already paid once. It is just the price for the permit and its use. It seems you don't have to keep paying for it, but I am not sure."

"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."

"When we made the purchase of the hardware, we added Professional Services to it."

"For temporal use, when you throw on the fact that you're essentially doubling your capacity, right there you could claim a 50 percent TCO reduction."

"There was at least about a 20 percent savings in cost over our purchase based on the purchase price of the compute modules themselves versus what we've had to pay before. It was significantly less."

"For me, the scalability is how much money that I need to spend on switches for how many frames, which ultimately means servers. To get the best bandwidth before the most recent product announcement, I have buy new switches every three frames. The competition is shipping a product right now where I only need switches every ten frames."

"The cost is high and that is a drawback for some customers."

More HPE Synergy pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	30
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers?

The C-series is the most valuable.

See all answers

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

The solution is moderately priced.

See all answers

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

I may not be the right person to comment on advanced improvements because we are just using basic functionalities. We are getting all the functionalities which we used to get in other OEM rack serv...

See all answers

How would you choose between HPE's Bladesystem and Synergy?

For me, choosing between HPE’s Bladesystem and Synergy came down to which solution was more powerful, reliable, and stable. It turns out Bladesystem was the winner. Bladesystem is excellent because...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?

As far as the prices are concerned, rack mount solutions are less expensive than HPE Synergy prices; however, HPE Synergy prices are higher but justify themselves as the solution accommodates all t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Synergy?

In my opinion, for future improvements in HPE Synergy, there should be better management of power consumption complexity as well as an increase in the number of servers that can fit in a single Syn...

See all answers

Comparisons

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

Compared 51% of the time

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

Compared 20% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

Compared 4% of the time

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

Compared 3% of the time

More Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Synergy

Compared 26% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE Synergy

Compared 23% of the time

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 14% of the time

Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE Synergy

Compared 8% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs HPE Synergy

Compared 2% of the time

More HPE Synergy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers

November 2025

Download Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Synergy

October 2025

Download HPE Synergy product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

UCS C-Series Rack Servers deliver unified computing in an industry-standard form factor to reduce TCO and increase agility. Each server addresses varying workload challenges through a balance of processing, memory, I/O, and internal storage resources.

Cisco

HPE Synergy, the first platform built from the ground up for Composable Infrastructure, offers an experience that empowers IT to create and deliver new value instantly and continuously. It is a single infrastructure that reduces operational complexity for traditional workloads and increases operational velocity for the new breed of applications and services. Through a single interface, HPE Synergy composes physical and virtual compute, storage, and fabric pools into any configuration for any application. As an extensible platform, it easily enables a broad range of applications and operational models such as virtualization, hybrid cloud, and DevOps. With HPE Synergy, IT can become not just the internal service provider but the business partner to rapidly launch new applications that become the business.

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

HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United

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