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Cisco UCS X-Series vs Dell PowerEdge MX- Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 X-Series
Ranking in Blade Servers
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Rack Servers (10th)
Dell PowerEdge MX- Series
Ranking in Blade Servers
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2847909 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized profiles have simplified host deployments and have reduced configuration errors
I would say a form factor could improve Cisco UCS X-Series. We are in a life cycle replacement phase, and we face a situation where we have to upgrade the hardware, but to get to the next series, you have to upgrade all of it. The chassis, the backbone components, including fabric interconnect components that provide the networking, all have to be replaced at the same time. You cannot mix and match things. So you get to a situation in your life cycle replacement that you need to upgrade, but it does not make sense economically to just buy a newer blade when the whole life cycle replacement is on the horizon, and you are forced to just replace it all top-down. I would say a form factor that is more universal and is not going to require an overall hardware refresh would be beneficial.
Md. Shohel Rawshan Sarker - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
Blade platform has supported clustered production workloads and delivers strong performance
In the industry, there are currently blade solutions from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Cisco. Compared to those, all blade solutions are similar in design. In the chassis, there is a back panel where each blade has a card module that plugs into the blade chassis. The chassis contains a network switch as well as a SAN switch. The SAN switch and network switch combined to the blade module provide plug-and-play functionality. The throughput is also good. Dell PowerEdge MX- Series currently has two types of processors with speeds of 2.1 and 2.3 GHz, possibly 2.2 GHz as well. All applications in our environment run on these processors. However, I think the processor speed should be higher because the coming applications are all AI-based and require more powerful processing. As of now, there is no issue with the current processor clock speed for our running applications. They are all Gold processors. In our environment, we have designed a setup with Dell PowerEdge MX- Series chassis with two network switches in the back panel. The two network switches connect to the main upstream network switch with link aggregation protocol (LACP) bonding. Currently, 160 gig, 40, 40, 80, and 80 gig bandwidth is running. The throughput is 80 gig total. Each blade server has a 20 gig network connection and will get a maximum of 20 gig network bandwidth, while the total chassis will deliver a maximum of 80 gig bandwidth. However, it can go up to 160 gig because the upstream network switch supports QSFP+ modules that are 40 gig each, with two 40 gig connections totaling 80 gig. Dell PowerEdge MX- Series also includes a SAN switch. The SAN switch is in the back panel of the chassis and connects to our main central SAN switch, which is connected to central storage. It is easy to onboard our central storage to the blade server as required, and there is no issue with that. The benefits include the fact that Dell PowerEdge MX- Series blade servers have sixteen blade servers in a single chassis, which consumes minimal space in the rack and data center, as well as requiring minimal cabling. For cabling, there are only four network cables connected to the main upstream switch. When connected to the SAN switch, there are only four additional cables, totaling eight cables to the SAN switch. This results in no messy cables in the data center. Additionally, the performance is good enough based on our current applications running on the servers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco UCS X-Series scales with the growing needs of my organization very well, as much as you need it to with no issues whatsoever, and it scales whenever we need it to."
"The features I appreciate most with Cisco UCS X-Series are profile, profile deployment, and the ability to orchestrate configurations across all of the compute."
"It runs smoothly and supports mission-critical systems."
"It helps us to manage multiple chassis from a single website."
"The solution integrated well."
"What I like about Dell PowerEdge MX-Series is the whole integration, where you do not have a lot of cables, which is a strong point compared to others on the market."
"The solution's most valuable features are centralized monitoring and management and the ease of upgrading firmware."
"The installation is easy."
"Dell PowerEdge MX- Series enhances my IT department's operational efficiency through several valuable features, including modularity that allows for easy scaling and good planning, and advanced networking capabilities with SmartFabric that make upgrades plug and play while it takes care of everything."
"The biggest advantage of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is that its availability is very high, as we did not face any issue during these four years and the uptime was more than 99.8%, so the customer is very happy with this product."
 

Cons

"Cisco UCS X-Series can be improved with a longer lifespan. The products go end-of-support and end-of-life quicker than I would prefer."
"We are in a life cycle replacement phase, and we face a situation where we have to upgrade the hardware, but to get to the next series, you have to upgrade all of it."
"There is room for improvement in scalability."
"I suggest adding an additional network card within the blades, specifically for connectivity."
"I would like to see a broader range of chassis networking options."
"The caching is a bit weak, which can make the hardware non-responsive, especially on hypervisor layers like ESXi or Hyper-V."
"The biggest challenge happens when you have compact boxes such as Dell PowerEdge MX- Series. Managing or maintaining the server ratio within a rack becomes jumbled up because per rack you get a limited power capacity."
"Compared to other solutions, this blade server requires more stability."
"The costing could be improved as it is somewhat expensive."
"I believe that the tool’s support team is an area with certain concerns where improvements can be made."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The cost varies significantly depending on the server's configuration and can range from $10,000 to $60,000 for the same server line family."
"It was budget friendly."
"The pricing of PowerEdge Next is higher than it was before."
"I know we get three years basic, and the on-site licensing model for business seems fine. I wouldn't pay for a support plus or anything."
"The product is budget-friendly. The initial cost for each server was around 10,000 euros. It's a standard price, not too high or too low."
"The product is neither expensive nor cheap. It is manageable for medium enterprises as well."
"If we would not have gone with the vendor we might have been charged unnecessarily for packages we did not need."
"The solution's pricing is slightly higher."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS X-Series?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing all seems fair. It is handled by a different group in the organization, but when I compare it to other companies, Cisco is always cheaper.
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS X-Series?
Cisco UCS X-Series can be improved with a longer lifespan. The products go end-of-support and end-of-life quicker than I would prefer.
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS X-Series?
My main use of Cisco UCS X-Series is all for collaboration: setting up CallManager, Unity Connection, CER, Contact Center Express, and all of that.
What do you like most about Dell PowerEdge M?
The best feature is the idrac tools, which allows me to manage/config the platform from the Linux level.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerEdge M?
From a cost standpoint, you have different use cases to cater. The first one is if you need to have ideal distribution maintained between the application and redundancies or resilience needs to be ...
What needs improvement with Dell PowerEdge M?
They can work on power consumption, which is probably not a direct feedback for Dell, but I would say the input power consumption itself is a challenge because the rated power is pretty high. This ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Newport City Homes, Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC), Georgian College, AgreeYa Solutions, IIHT Cloud Solutions, Arizona State University, AudienceScience, University of the Incarnate Word (UIW), The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Holy Cross School
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS X-Series vs. Dell PowerEdge MX- Series and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.