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Cisco UCS X-Series vs Dell PowerEdge XE-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 Rack Servers
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Blade Servers (15th)
Dell PowerEdge XE-Series
Ranking in Rack Servers
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
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.
MW
Senior Solution Architect at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Flexible management has delivered reliable uptime and supported diverse workloads efficiently
There are some areas for improvement with Dell PowerEdge XE-Series; it's more of a Dell issue. They've promised changes, but engaging with Dell sometimes means they will take the customer on a direct model and cut the partner out. This isn't a technical issue, but a business one. When architecting a solution and introducing Dell to a customer, you sometimes get an email saying the customer wants to buy directly from Dell, leaving all my hard work and introductions for nothing. I believe Dell could add new features to Dell PowerEdge XE-Series in the future. There are many more CPU variants available than just Intel and AMD, and it would be nice to have a major vendor introduce another option outside of those. While I know it's difficult due to supportability and changes, that would just be a preference.

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."
"The solution is working fine; it is stable and reliable, has been stable for a long time, and there are no bugs or glitches, and it doesn't crash or freeze."
"PowerEdge XE is quite stable."
"The most valuable feature of these servers is the ability to store a lot—the capacity and the number of hard disk drives."
"The features of Dell PowerEdge XE-Series that I like the most are the performance and the GPU, and the benefits I have seen from running AI workloads on PowerEdge servers include high performance."
"This is a very stable product; we have implemented more than 60 servers over the past three years and we have not come across any issues with stability, making it a very reliable server."
"The solution has almost everything."
"The strong point of this solution is its compatibility with VMware and its resilience."
"Dell PowerEdge XE-Series is quite stable, as once all firmware and drivers are in place with the signed firmware, the system barely goes down and has high availability, 24/7 for 365 days, most of the time without any power failure, and even when running heavy workloads with either GPUs or storage, the system remains stable without issues."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"One requirement is the storage protocol, as the external storage protocol is not much used in the platform; only iSCSI is used and there is no support for FC or FC over NVMe."
"What I found in Dell PowerEdge XE-Series servers is the disk reading; sometimes with heavy imagery, we find it to be slow."
"Today, my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is difficult, but since one to two years ago, it has been very simple with Dell."
"Upgrading can be a bit difficult."
"For Dell PowerEdge XE Servers, particularly for standalone servers, extendability would be a great improvement."
"It should be easier to extend PowerEdge XE servers. We haven't architected them with an eye toward scalability. They have a fixed number of slots for hard drives, which is enough for our present use case, However, we would have more options if we could extend that. We could deploy the servers in a broader range of use cases with different requirements. It's fine for our current deployment with only a few thousand users. We're exploring other solutions like such as VxRail or PowerFlex for larger public-facing use cases."
"The big problem with Dell PowerEdge XE-Series is the volatility in pricing, so trying to find stability is pretty important to us."
"Current data centers are not ready to support heavy AI HPC clusters."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Dell has competitive pricing."
"You always want slightly cheaper, but overall, they are quite comparable and quite neutral."
"The pricing model is quite competitive."
"This solution is priced very reasonably."
"If you want an SLA for parts and equipment then you need to purchase a support agreement."
"There are different types of licensing available, that works well for customers. The product is not very much to purchase."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
7%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise7
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell PowerEdge XE Servers?
TCO percentage shows up to 73, 75, 80% improvement in power efficiency.
What needs improvement with Dell PowerEdge XE Servers?
In future updates of Dell PowerEdge XE-Series, I would appreciate dashboard optimization and AI integration. I am not utilizing any AI functionality of Dell PowerEdge XE-Series at this time.
What is your primary use case for Dell PowerEdge XE Servers?
I have used Dell PowerEdge XE-Series, which is a bit different series of rack server. The primary purposes of Dell PowerEdge XE-Series in my case are for servers, as we host multiple applications. ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
PowerEdge XE Servers
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Epsilon, ROZETTA CORP, JIGUANG, RACKSPACE, NEW BELGIUM BREWING
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS X-Series vs. Dell PowerEdge XE-Series and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.