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Cisco UCS X-Series vs IBM Power Systems 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
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Blade Servers (23rd)
IBM Power Systems
Ranking in Rack Servers
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
73
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.
Foluso  Jibowo - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Hiperdist Ltd
Has empowered enterprises with secure and cost-effective solutions
When discussing disadvantages, I do not see many areas for improvement because we have received good testimonies from every client. IBM gives customers peace of mind. One challenge, which I would not really call a challenge, is that initially people have the notion that IBM Power Systems is quite expensive. However, IBM does not lose deals based on price. This is a message we need to keep communicating to people who feel that IBM is on the high side in terms of cost. We encourage them to have a discussion with us about their total cost of ownership over three or five years. There is a notion in the market that IBM is expensive, which is false. However, once we engage and show them their return on investments and their total cost of ownership savings, they tend to embrace IBM.

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."
"Active Memory Expansion allows you to compress your memory on the run time to allow you to have less physical memory available, but provision more memory to your partitions, as everything will be compressed on the fly."
"Power Systems is a bit more costly than other products in the market, but in terms of ROI and the longevity, performance, and reliability that Power Systems provides, it's worth it in the long run."
"Power Systems' best features include its user-friendliness and self-checking/self-healing abilities."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The uptime feature is great."
"IBM Power Systems are more capable because they have their own file system, CPUs, and accelerators, making them more capable than the other OEMs."
"Power uniquely positions our bank in the industry because we are almost 100% virtualized, so we're cloud-ready, if you will."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Power Systems is its performance."
 

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."
"I would say that in general we would prefer it if the software was more transparent, in terms of how you are using it."
"Licensing has always been an issue, but with IBM machines a serial number is licensed with support."
"I would like to see IBM Power Systems integrate with all cloud types."
"If you asked me what I'd like added, I'd say that it'd be nice if they ran GPUs, however, I know that's not the direction they're going. That said, I would appreciate it if they offered GPU support."
"If you take advantage of some of these real advanced features, for oversubscribing as an example, it's not supported on Linux on Power. So that stops us, in particular, from going that way."
"They could improve responsiveness, ownership of problems, and technical acumen on the first level."
"Regarding the OpenPOWER Foundation, at first I was kind of skeptical."
"Its price can be improved. It is too high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is designed for a large workload, as opposed to a small workload. For our circumstances, and even as an independent, I can't buy a Power system to experiment on. It can't happen. You cannot buy them."
"Power Systems is a bit more costly than other products in the market, but in terms of ROI and the longevity, performance, and reliability that Power Systems provides, it's worth it in the long run."
"IBM Power is more expensive than other rack-mount servers, and you have to have a license for everything, including cores and memory."
"The price of the solution depends upon the configuration part of it. Based on what configuration you want to go for it, there is a range like IBM Power Systems POWER9 and IBM Power Systems Power10."
"IBM Power Systems is very expensive."
"Its price is too high."
"Its price depends on the sizing."
"Why should I be charged for that use rather than a single CPU, a single socket?"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise42
 

Questions from the Community

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What needs improvement with IBM Power Systems?
In my opinion, the product can be improved by maintaining it and not sunsetting it; that would be my recommendation for IBM. I used to work for IBM for nineteen years, and I know, unfortunately, I ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Power Systems?
I am an architect and system administrator, and I'm responsible for anything related to IBM Power Systems. In IBM Power Systems, I have found a lot of valuable features such as LVM, TCP, ODM, RSCT,...
What advice do you have for others considering IBM Power Systems?
I would recommend IBM Power Systems to others. I have given this review a rating of ten out of ten.
 

Also Known As

No data available
IBM OpenPOWER LC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Cipher
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