Cisco UCS Series vs. Dell PowerEdge R

Cisco UCS blades are very well suited if you want to have dense and easily managed environment that is flexible (server profiles). its perfect if you have a need for business critical applications that requires whole blade to run. in case of any hardware failure you can simply swap its profile with standby node and power your application server back up very quickly, not something you could do with a standard rackmount

Incentivized

We chose Dell PowerEdge R series because we need to consolidate a lot of physical load into a smaller number of nodes. Their hardware configuration, specifically for vSAN helps us achieve a high-density load in a very low number of physical servers. On top of that, they have lots of expansion ports, so we can increase our load internally on each other with simple upgrades.

Incentivized

• When used with VMWare, firmware changes cause minimal disruption.
• Simple system software updates using all-inclusive firmware bundles covering the individual parts.
• UCS, in contrast to other Cisco products, is stable and reliable, with relatively few hardware failures during its lengthy lifespan.

Incentivized

• Good price - Compared to other vendors’ server platforms. In our scenario (virtualization) we found out PowerEdge offers the best price/vCPU and RAM ratio.
• Customizable - We were able to select optimal memory/disk capacity for our use case. Other platform's minimum requirements were above our needs, hence needlessly expensive.
• Good warranty and service - Our project did not involve creating a big cluster with a lot of spare capacity, so the next business day warranty came handy.

Incentivized

• Some issues with the operating system were present in Memory's memory for some time. A few DIMMS had to be replaced before the current firmware stabilized the problem
• Although some of the templating is a little difficult to understand, this is typical of most Cisco products

Incentivized

• Getting DSAT report remotely does becomes a challenge sometimes
• Server rebooting becomes an issue, it does not starts up easily
• Server heats up sometimes a lot, emitting lot of noice

We are All satisfied with the value and Performance of the UCS servers

Incentivized

It is the best server in the market.

While Cisco's hardware is solid and long running, their software is usually the weak point. I will say that they are getting better with each release but if I had to find a problem with usability that would be it. Overall usability is good when you can work around software issues.

Incentivized

The Dell PowerEdge R range is just intuitive when you have skills engineers managing them in-house, although even with new members of staff on the team, the learning curve is very low providing they have previous general service hardware management experience. From the specification through to the management of this range, the usability is excellent.

Cisco TAC is simply unbeatable and that goes for Cisco UCS server support just as well as it does for Cisco CUCM software. TAC has a well-deserved, excellent reputation and I do not hesitate to call them or open a ticket online, because I always know that I will get the help that I need and get it quickly

Incentivized

We consider Dell's support to be best-in-class compared to other solutions and is also reasonably priced. Their SLA targets have almost always been met, except for minor occasions that have had extenuating circumstances. The service staff is also professional and thorough. Overall, we are very satisfied with the level of support we receive.

Incentivized

Installation was easy.

Easier to integrate and to use after that. It gives a better feeling as a server and it is better in performance also it is more durable. Offers a variety of use cases and also it is a very scalable server. Offers a great redundancy (has already [been] integrated) and also [gives] you easy access from terminal or GUI.

PowerEdge R servers was selected by CIO. I think the servers have lots of benefits for our company and are well placed on our projects. In most business cases they are working good and our management have a clear vision to upgrade them to the same brand with better specs. Hope to see this upgrade in close future.

Incentivized

• Life cycle of new hardware. We were able to refresh 40 existing servers with new ones in under a day
• When having to move chassis around, having to only move 4 cables instead of the 16 that would have been required for rack-mount servers

Incentivized

• From the perspective of physical server consolidations, when servers spread across multiple branch and remote offices are gathered into a central data center, this simplification process provides ROI in several ways. One, the configuration control, restriction of server access.
• Reduce complexity and enable greater standardization of hardware purchases, which lowers costs.
• Increased security of the move are important.
• The costs of moves, add-ins, and changes are reduced, as well as the costs of travel time and maintenance.
• Migrating legacy operating systems to a newer version via rehosting brings similar ROI benefits when it comes to server consolidation.

Incentivized