We performed a comparison between Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers and HPE ProLiant DL Servers based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Rack Servers solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The product doesn't take up too much space on the rack and I like that."
"The initial setup is straightforward and easy to do."
"The solution is reliable and easy to use."
"The most valuable features of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers are integration and customization."
"The most valuable feature of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack is the use of databases, such as MySQL."
"The hardware customization capabilities are great."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."
"It is very stable and easy to use. It integrates easily with Cisco's cloud-based UC solutions. There are tools for management that make the management a bit easier, but we don't use them. We don't use what you would term as power users."
"The technical support from HPE ProLiant DL Servers is very good. We can contact them through various means and they are responsive, they are quick."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is HPE Integrated Lights-Out (iLO)...Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The pricing of the product is fair and not too expensive."
"We decided to switch because this solution provides more memory density."
"We use HPE Datacenter support, and it is good support. It is automatic support. When I have a problem, the question is written automatically."
"The most valuable features are the value and the scalability."
"One of the most valuable features is iLO, which is very good. Another thing is the HPE support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is scalability."
"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack could improve by selling storage. Cisco doesn't sell storage, which is a problem because some customers ask for storage. There are several brands in the market, such as HPE, and Dell EMC. However, Cisco doesn't have any storage. This is where the tension comes from buying this solution."
"The C-Series is not designed to be as scalable. They are designed to have enough RAM and enough CPU on their own side. If you want scalability, it's better to choose the B-Series— the Blade Servers — because those are much more scalable with Fabric Interconnect."
"The only thing I would change is to provide more proactive support."
"The hard drive of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is not very good. I have already replaced three of them."
"There is room for better integration with other brands."
"The product's stability and delivery time could be better."
"Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers can improve by providing customization features to allow us to deploy them on the cloud. For example, we need VMware to allow us to accomplish a cloud deployment."
"I think the pricing is high. Cisco has to look for bundling this solutions with other applications."
"On the software side, I would like for the management of the server overall (including reviewing its health) to be a bit easier. Right now, we have something that sits on the server to make sure all hardware drivers and other thing are up to date. This is a pain to set up."
"The hardware was frequently faulty and sometimes broke down."
"If they could put a SAN storage or resend it in the same product, it would be very helpful and more powerful."
"The initial configuration process could be simpler."
"The technical support could be a little faster."
"I would like the solution to improve its storage and performance. Also, I would like to replicate data between on-premises and cloud in future versions."
"The price of the solution could be less expensive to be more competitive."
"The solution could improve by providing more best practices from an architectural point of view. What are some recommended configurations for use, such as in a VM environment? HP provides some best practices but they are based on VMware, not on Red Hat. It would benefit for others to see the different use cases. How the HPE ProLiant DL Servers were used in the context of Red hat virtualization, and some configurations as an example to allow us to identify some points that we can improve in our platform. We could make our system more reliable and scalable."
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Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is ranked 5th in Rack Servers with 29 reviews while HPE ProLiant DL Servers is ranked 2nd in Rack Servers with 156 reviews. Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is rated 8.4, while HPE ProLiant DL Servers is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers writes "The VIC card is the most important feature". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE ProLiant DL Servers writes "Good availability and management console with good reliability". Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers is most compared with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers, Dell XR2 Rugged Server, IBM Power Systems and HPE Apollo, whereas HPE ProLiant DL Servers is most compared with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers, HPE Apollo, IBM Power Systems and HPE Synergy. See our Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs. HPE ProLiant DL Servers report.
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Another good question to consider is, how deeply are security and anti-tampering features built in? With the advent of Gen 10 servers HPE is implementing this right down in silicon whereas the rest of the marketplace is still using firmware features to try to accomplish this. This is arguably too late in the process to be able to guarantee what BIOS code you are actually running, what back doors have been slotted in or what spyware ‘features’ have been embedded!
Also, look where HPE are going with Synergy. They have taken a huge architectural leap forwards and the roadmap is hugely impressive.
I don´t know in deep Cisco servers, but if you compares a HP and a CISCO with identical hardware (same chipset, processor, amount of RAM,..), the benchmark are very similar.
In my humble opinión, it is very important ask for the warranty and tech support. And most important: if you need someday add more hardware to your server, you must know before if you don´t buy it to the server manufacture, you loose the warranty.
It is very tipical some server manufacturer sell very cheap their machines but when you need to add more memory and/or hard drives, it is obligatory buy them to the server manufacturer... an very expensive.
I would suggest visiting spec.org as there is a wealth of information available there. The benchmarks are run by the vendors but within guideline and industry verified. There are many different benchmarks available through this site depending on what you are really interested in.
Hope this helps
Depending on what kind of workload you are looking for, you can find some info. / results from www.spec.org. Since Cisco UCS and Proliant DL are commonly used servers in enterprise, there should be test results of various benchmark on these server models.
As per my experience, CISCO UCS C-series is having scalability issue but for HPE ProLiant DL RACk server is good in terms of scalability. HPE tech support is much better than CISCO UCS.
I suggest checking the key benchmark sites directly – TPC-C, SAP etc. Each benchmark is designed to test a specific system capability.
www.tpc.org
global.sap.com
I have attached the URL’s. The SAP testing is most revealing for overall systems performance and scalability. The most recent certifications show Cisco UCS servers eclipsing their HPE counterparts by notable margins. Standard Proliant systems are lower in total lines processed than Cisco units, and you have to move up to the HPE Synergy line to beat lower end Cisco C240 servers. However, the higher end 4-way Cisco C480 handily beats Synergy.