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Cisco UCS X-Series vs HPE Superdome X 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)
HPE Superdome X
Ranking in Blade Servers
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
11
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.
reviewer2056329 - PeerSpot reviewer
Professor at a educational organization with 1,001-5,000 employees
Robust product, helped with workload management and offers remote configuration
In this specific model, it could be beneficial to have a server configuration similar to Cisco, like the kind offered in HPE Superdome Flex X280. The ability to separate the chassis is important because we are forced to use two chassis even with lower loads. So introducing more flexibility in the Superdome environment would be helpful. One other problem is energy consumption. We are forced to use both chassis even when we only need, for example, all four processors. It's not always used at full capacity every day. When underutilized, we still need to have both chassis powered, which creates an energy consumption issue. While the machine can be configured to reduce consumption, the idea of having different possible configurations with varying chassis usage, similar to the Flex version, could be interesting for this model, too. This model leverages specific features of the Intel MAP board, so switching like in the Flex might be difficult due to the motherboard switching involved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"SDX gave us a very large RAM and we need that for the large-scale graph-handling applications."
"HPE Superdome X is a very resilient infrastructure, and stable."
"In summary, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"One of the really cool things about Superdome is, depending on the model you choose, you can put 8-16 blades in it, but because of the structure and the engineering behind it, you can actually have your blades partitioned and they're actually physically divided."
"CPU and memory, it's just pretty good and helps us to support the students and the teachers of the school."
"Superdome X is a system that can compete in terms of performance and uptime, but it's now standard. That is the great value. There are competitors like IBM, for example, but IBM has a propietary operating system. With Superdome X, you have a system that can run Windows, Red Hat, or VMware, but in a mission critical server."
"It's an amazing product, an amazing technology, that has the best of that world: performance and uptime, and standardization."
"This product is very reliable."
 

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."
"It would be helpful if you could do the maintenance completely online."
"In this specific model, it could be beneficial to have a server configuration similar to Cisco, like the kind offered in HPE Superdome Flex X280. The ability to separate the chassis is important because we are forced to use two chassis even with lower loads. So introducing more flexibility in the Superdome environment would be helpful."
"What would make it better from my point of view is if HPE spent more time on testing with the actual built-in Red Hat Linux drivers, as opposed to always trying to say, "Use our driver.""
"I know we support Windows and I think it's Red Hat, and I'd like to see more OSs supported."
"The technical support sucks, would be understating it. Because the first line and the second line support tend to give out stupid suggestions that are completely useless, and they aren't listening to anything."
"The price of this product should be cheaper."
"Looking back to our original purchase of Superdome X, we bought the smallest model."
"There's a big upfront investment, but the total cost of ownership should be cheaper over the long term."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing is not very cheap. I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, with one being very inexpensive, and ten being very expensive."
"There is a very expensive one-time cost with no licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
12%
University
11%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
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.
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
HP Integrity Superdome, HP Superdome X
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Pella
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS X-Series vs. HPE Superdome X and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.