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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
10th
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
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Composable Infrastructure (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is 3.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Synergy is 11.9%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HPE Synergy11.9%
Cisco UCS E-Series Servers3.7%
Other84.4%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

AK
Solution Architect at COPYCAT LIMITED
Automation and integration capabilities streamline IT infrastructure management
The most valuable feature of Cisco UCS E-Series Servers is the Cisco interface. The server management and automation capabilities have been outstanding in automation, greatly benefiting our IT team. Pricing is acceptable, and these servers have had a significant impact on cost savings and operational efficiency. The integration with Cisco routers simplifies the IT infrastructure.
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The server management and automation capabilities have been outstanding in automation, greatly benefiting our IT team."
"What I can advise other prospective customers is that they should not worry about Cisco's support, stability, and performance."
"Cisco has better visibility and manageability for disaster recovery."
"The product's most valuable features are stability, speed, and scalability."
"They are really easy to maintain. I've added RAM to them. I've done a lot of other things with the virtualization."
"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."
"The product is overall stable."
"Overall, the Cisco chassis is pretty good, pretty stable and easier to configure as compared to HP and others."
"A single unified infrastructure that can be optimized for all workloads via software makes our life easier."
"Support is very helpful."
"In today's world, there isn't a better solution to create a private cloud for them."
"If you can get it set up right and get a little bit of expertise in it, it's a wonderful platform."
"There is no comparison between installing a server by hand versus having everything automated in place, which makes a big difference by averting human errors, making life easier, and making operations much easier."
"Synergy is much easier to use, which is saving us time; we are able to set the profiles for firmware upgrades, making the process for the care and feeding of the IT environment much simpler, quicker, and cleaner."
"The solution is built very well; it's very robust and durable."
"The solution's greatest strengths lie in its ability to maintain a high availability and combine networking with hyper channel connectivity into a single component."
 

Cons

"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."
"I am always asked to justify why we should purchase such expensive hardware when there are other brand names available with same capacity for a lesser price."
"The platform's pricing needs improvement. There could be more collaborative tools included."
"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."
"It is not a solution that is cloud ready."
"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 processing capacity could be improved."
"I think that's probably one of the biggest failure points with Cisco, from their documentation all the way to their products."
"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."
"One of the features I want to see, which I will see with OneView 5.0, is to have all the OneView consoles in a single pane of glass. That will make it easy to see everything in one place and not have to log in to multiple consoles."
"The possibility of using storage directly in the frame in order to have bigger storage directly there, and not having an attached storage like SAN or NAS. That would be helpful."
"The stability is not good right now. We have had a couple of outages where we have received 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."
"In our case, it would not be an improvement over the way our company functions; we have unique scaling demands, and our storage demands scale very differently than our compute demand scales, so doing HCI anything doesn't really fit well with how we operate."
"We had an issue during the initial setup with the 40 Gigabyte cards. They weren’t working, so we had to work really closely with HPE support to get them to work."
"I would like more storage with this solution, because we still need 3PAR or other storage outside the box for the amount of data that we have."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"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 pricing of the solution is reasonable. From a commercial point of view, the prices are okay."
"The solution is expensive."
"It's expensive, they are quite pricey."
"We do CAPEX."
"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."
"Nutanix was really hard to implement, and it was very pricey compared to what we get from Synergy."
"The Nutanix platform came in a little more expensive than the Synergy."
"When we made the purchase of the hardware, we added Professional Services to it."
"We bought everything outright to start with. We don't do much consumption-based stuff."
"We don't have to pay for Synergy because it's part of our plan."
"Synergy has lowered our total cost of ownership significantly. I would say ballpark around 25 percent, maybe more."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS E-Series Servers?
I use Cisco UCS E-Series Servers ( /products/cisco-ucs-e-series-servers-reviews ) for managing our IT infrastructure and supporting AI-driven projects. The integration with Cisco routers simplifies...
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: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.