Cisco UCS Series vs. Supermicro SuperBlade

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

Supermicro may be well suited if what you will be deploying on the servers is supported, because if you don't, you may have no support at all. In our case, we have had some hardware problems where the support is not efficient compared to other experiences we had (HP, DELL). On the other hand, their servers price is quite good, so it's a win win if you are looking for better prices than other vendors.

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 IPMI management, detailed information
• Their Redfish API is also a good tool to configure/retrieve information from the servers, good for scalability
• Documentation Online for new updates is up to date (BIOS/FW)

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

• Their support could be better, it is not the fastest we've got in touch with
• We have seen strange behaviour on some of their servers, it's better to check if the OS you will be running is supported on their support matrix first

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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

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

My experience with the support was not that good, it always takes a lot of time to get somewhere when raising a support case. I gave it a 6 because I think they have room for improvement here, It could be good if they would act quicker and send in replacements for faulty hardware.

Incentivized

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.

The supermicro superblade servers are performing really well on our infrastructure, we are running a broad set of applications: voip, JAVA, linux, windows, hypervisors, etc. They are easy to install and configure and the price is a winning situation. On the other hand, The support is not so good, HP and DELL are stronger in this point. If you get any failures on your systems, they will replace them immediately, but supermicro will ask for a lot of information on the case before handing out replacement hardware, which makes it slow.

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

• Their price has allowed us to save money when buying servers on bulk

Incentivized