Likelihood to Recommend 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
Read full review If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others. Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined. VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner. Read full review Cons 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 Read full review VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items. VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi. I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We are All satisfied with the value and Performance of the UCS servers
Read full review It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
Read full review Usability 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.
Read full review The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
Read full review Performance We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
Read full review Support Rating 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
Read full review I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
Read full review Implementation Rating Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review As long as you're using
Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
Read full review Scalability We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Read full review VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users. VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor. As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product. Read full review ScreenShots