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Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs HPE Synergy 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 E-Series Servers
Ranking in Blade Servers
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HPE Synergy
Ranking in Blade Servers
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Composable Infrastructure (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is 2.9%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Synergy is 19.5%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HPE Synergy19.5%
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers2.9%
Other77.6%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

DavidMbugua - PeerSpot reviewer
Stable product with efficient security features
We use Cisco UCS E-Series Servers to host enterprise systems The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability. We rarely encounter downtime issues, and it has an expandable memory storage. Additionally, it blends well with Cisco's security tools. The platform's pricing…
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"They are really easy to maintain. I've added RAM to them. I've done a lot of other things with the virtualization."
"The product is overall stable."
"The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability."
"Cisco has better visibility and manageability for disaster recovery."
"Stability-wise, it is a good product that remains stable."
"The most valuable features are that they are efficient and easy to setup."
"The server management and automation capabilities have been outstanding in automation, greatly benefiting our IT team."
"The Cisco chassis is very easy to configure and any network engineer or expert can configure the solution and easily integrate it with the chassis."
"With OneView, we can take care of all our servers in one dashboard."
"We've found the scalability to be reasonable if you are ready to invest in it."
"The i3S module can be configured to provision storage to all blade servers and boot to any operating system without needing local hard drives."
"The stability of the solution is very reliable."
"We bought it with the intent to replace the c7000 workstation blades. It is bigger than the workstation blades in core count, memory, and graphical capabilities. So, it has broadened us in that regard, and we have more capabilities."
"Everything is combined in one chassis, you have storage, compute, networking. So you save a lot of space in the datacenter."
"The initial setup is fine."
"It makes it simpler for me to manage my environment. It is one pane of glass, compared to multiple."
 

Cons

"The processing capacity could be improved."
"I would like to see improvements in VMware integration with Cisco, especially in terms of documentation and integration tools. Support of NVIDIA integration would also make it better."
"The product should also be available in a standard edition or a standard license since currently there is a need to pay for an extra license, which is very expensive, especially when considering the budgeting part of our company."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement. There could be more collaborative tools included."
"It is not a solution that is cloud ready."
"The biggest pain point for us is the matrix for the firmware upgrades. It is a pain. You look at that thing, you might as well be reading Greek. It would be a whole lot better if they could clean up their documentation on it."
"One thing that could be improved is the cost - it is very high for this Blade chassis as compared to other vendors. Especially in Asia. Asian customers mostly prefer a cost effective, cheaper solution."
"The tool must be made compatible with multi-vendor ecosystems."
"I would really like a way to validate the firmware in my specific environment before trying to deploy it. Those were the issues we had early on with firmware upgrades, particularly around certificates. All in all, having some level of confidence aside from it just having been tested generically would help. Something more specific to my environment would be very helpful."
"Synergy could probably do some code enhancements to simplify the deployment a bit more."
"The post-sales activity needs improvement. There is some sort of convoluted spreadsheet that you have to fill in prior to the platform being delivered. It seems a little bit out-of-date and inefficient. Surely, there is some sort of web page configuration tool online that a customer could use. Then, it could be validated by somebody else, like a partner or HPE technical resource, then that would be a lot more efficient."
"The stability is not good right now. We have had a couple of outages where we have receive very good support from HPE. However, we have not been able to come up with cut and dried reasons for why the outages have occurred. They have not been able to be reproduced, so it has been difficult getting our trust back."
"The pricing can be improved as it is a costly solution due to sanctions in Iran."
"The Synergy platform is HPE-specific and more for on-premises. You're kind of locked in with VMware and the HPE with the VMs. The Nutanix offering is a bit more flexible."
"Gen 11 is being released. That's going to have a lot of advantages over Gen 10 and previous generations in terms of the cooling modules in the servers to keep them cooler and run with more efficiency and better performance. There are more management features with iLO 6 and the latest OneView management."
"It has been in the external integrations to other platforms that we have, which aren't HPE, where some of our challenges have been. I would like to see some integrations with non-HPE platforms."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable. From a commercial point of view, the prices are okay."
"It's expensive, they are quite pricey."
"There is a need to pay towards the licensing costs of the solution. The most expensive server from Cisco is Cisco UCS B-Series."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"The platform that we run Synergy on is all virtualized. Our primary cost is likely VMware."
"The Nutanix platform came in a little more expensive than the Synergy."
"We outright purchased Synergy."
"When we made the purchase of the hardware, we added Professional Services to it."
"The solution can be expensive because it requires both hardware and software purchases."
"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."
"VMware is part of the cost. We bought the chassis, we bought the solution. The blades are roughly running us $60,000 a pop right now."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?
The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?
The pricing of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is okay, costing around 30,000 per year. Support is included in this cost.
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?
I would like to see improvements in VMware integration with Cisco, especially in terms of documentation and integration tools. Support of NVIDIA integration would also make it better.
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...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

UCS E-Series Servers
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Navaho,  MiroNet AG, Columbia Sportswear
HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS E-Series Servers vs. HPE Synergy and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.