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Cisco UCS Series

Cisco UCS Series

Overview

What is Cisco UCS Series?

The Cisco UCS Series is a modular, high-density, high-availability, dual-node storage- optimized server suited for service providers, enterprises, and industry-specific environments. It provides dense, cost-effective storage to address your ever-growing data needs. Designed for a new class of data-intensive workloads,…

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Recent Reviews

Cisco UCS rocks

10 out of 10
February 08, 2023
Incentivized
It is used in manufacturing, enterprise and retail for numerous use cases and business needs that demand a reliable, scalable and modular …
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Awards

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Video Reviews

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Cisco UCS Series Review
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Product Details

What is Cisco UCS Series?

Active data demands agile infrastructure built from ongoing innovation and delivery. So the vendor presents the Cisco UCS Series Storage Servers to deliver rapid scalability and performance, and to activate data and insights in real time. They state its modular architecture provides users the right-size infrastructure for the workload and operate with the efficiency and predictable TCO needed.

Cisco UCS Series Competitors

Cisco UCS Series Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
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Cisco UCS Series Downloadables

Frequently Asked Questions

The Cisco UCS Series is a modular, high-density, high-availability, dual-node storage- optimized server suited for service providers, enterprises, and industry-specific environments. It provides dense, cost-effective storage to address your ever-growing data needs. Designed for a new class of data-intensive workloads, it is simple to deploy and excellent for applications for big data, data protection, software-defined storage environments, scale-out unstructured data repositories, media streaming, and content distribution.

HPE ProLiant DL and Dell PowerEdge R are common alternatives for Cisco UCS Series.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 8.8.

The most common users of Cisco UCS Series are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(121)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 46)
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Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The primary usage of the Cisco UCS Series platform that I currently interact with is related to UCS dedicated application “appliances” for specific network infrastructure systems like ACI, Nexus Dashboard, Catalyst Center, ISE, etc. The Cisco UCS Series systems are easy to rack and cable. Seems like a simple concept, but having a complicated process impedes implementation. Connecting and configuring the CiMC management is straightforward and gives access to vital system information and tools. Integrating this with Intersight in the cloud allows me to access a Dashboard of system health and receive alerts to any issues. The CiMC upgrade process, though time consuming, is very straightforward and easy to initiate and validate. The Cisco UCS Series systems that I have installed and managed have been resilient. Once the foundations are laid and the system is active in monitoring, we can focus on the applications. So far I have had no issues with performance very few, if any, hardware issues. This platform has served us well.
  • Ease of installation
  • Effective control systems
  • Stable platform
Platform is easy to interact with and provides robust services. There are many sizing options to fit most any application requirements.
February 08, 2024

Good but not cheap

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Cisco made use of their hardware, so we get Tac support for running HCS CC.
  • CIMC is not available from the OS as it with HP ilo
  • Excellent ability to manage the servers on mass
  • Very good support from tac
  • Could have made the move from flash based CIMC easier
  • More uniform of design for hardware spares
  • Longer term hardware support but they do fairly well
More straightforward to manage and upgrade than the HP equivalent hardware for Windows and especially around VMware ESXI support.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
With over 90 devices, the Cisco UCS Series allows us to move blades from the data center with no re-cabling and minimum downtime. It also allows us to deploy new servers with only a few clicks. The time it takes to take a server out of the box and have it running is less than 20 minutes. Also, by creating profiles, we can reuse those templates with only minor changes to make them work on other sites.
  • Flexibility
  • Deployment
  • Ease of use
  • No sub menus within sub menus
  • When there is an error in a template/profile, it would be nice for it to tell us exactly where that problem is.
Where scalability is needed, once the templates are created, deploying new servers with Cisco UCS Series is very easy.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
As a solution integrator, we sell and implement a wide range of Cisco UCS Series products; they are a well-optimized and reliable platform. The UCSX family brings innovative ideas and approaches to the table, so it gathers a lot of interest from our customers. The solutions are easy to implement, and most of our customers are satisfied with the quality and overall ease of use of the products.
  • Ease of installation
  • Service profiles
  • Scaleability
  • Pricing
  • Add AMD support to M7
Government customers are nice fit with Cisco UCS Series.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cisco UCS Series blades for both virtual and physical servers. We have automation that builds physicals using boot from SAN.
  • Boot from SAN
  • Remove hardware maintenance
  • Easy changes to infrastructure without including many other teams: networking, storage, etc...
  • Maintaining a standardized environment
  • Ease of implementing IaC elements
  • With the new Intersight, service profile moves are not as easy
  • OS version inclusion. Limited number of OS
  • Speed to deploy, sometime service profiles take a long while to deploy
  • More status of what is going on behind the scenes especially via python SDK or API- ECC errors, what state the deploy is in
In hosting physical servers, we are able to use automation for self-service. A user can request a physical server through a UI, the UCS API/python SDK is used to automation the request. It will boot from SAN. This allows for quick maintenance, especially as we use private cloud/datacenter co-lo. This works very well. Where it is less appropriate is where hosted applications charge by the CPU/core, like Oracle, or smaller applications.
December 19, 2023

Cisco UCS Series review

Joacim Wicander | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use these servers as both lab equipment. We run VMware ESXi and Linux on these servers. This is older servers (M4 and M5). We have tested running Kubernetes with the help of Intersight. This is on really old servers (M3).

We also have newer hardware (M6) that we are going to test Nutaninx on once that is released without Fabric Interconnects.
  • Central Management
  • Upgrades of Server firmware
  • RBAC
  • Server profiles
  • HCL during upgrades
  • Simplify network configuration
Cisco UCS Series servers can be used in any scenario as there are both blades (UCS-B and UCS-X) and rackmount servers (UCS-C).

For me, the best solution is with fabric interconnects because everything can be managed through the UCS-manager software running on the Fabric Interconnects or Intersight.

There are Cisco Validated Designs available for many different workloads on the servers.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We use Cisco UCS to implement and manage VMs and connectivity to storage which gives us a single point to manage are compute needs. We also moved from fCOE connections to iSCSI connections to make it easier to manage the switch connections.
  • Server VM management from the same unified system.
  • Multiple physical connectivity options such fCOE or iSCSI
  • High Availability
  • Integrate with multiple systems
  • There are network configuration limits, such as uplink limits.
  • iSCSI option should be advertised more
Cisco UCS is perfect for VM and storage management within your data center and the support from Cisco is great as well. If you only need a couple of servers, then it might not be a good fit, but for most medium to large organizations it is a good fit.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We currently use Cisco UCS Series to host our primary Virtualised Infrastructure (VMWare) - It hosts our core services.
  • Management
  • IPMI
  • Observability
  • Automation
  • Integration with Open Source Software
  • ZTP
It is well suited within a fully Cisco environment with FCs. It is potentially not as good as competitors otherwise.
June 09, 2023

UCS Review

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
mainly use UCS for our vmware farm and a few c series for dedicated linux/windows boxes for critical applications
  • scale to accomodate workloads
  • patch firmware
  • integrate with technology
  • Management UI
  • a page for single pane of glass
  • fault detection on hardware components
blade servers are really exceptional in a virtualized environment as it is very easy to scale
Antonio Braxton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We support all of the virtual servers hosting all of our critical applications. Cisco allows for great uptime and stability.
  • Central management
  • uptime
  • flexibility
  • bug remediation
  • roll out of better next generation education
Fabric Interconnects technology can't be beat.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
UCS series is used mostly because of density and efficient design suitable for VMware virtualization environment.<br>We use it for more than half of our private cloud hypervisor compute needs at this time.<br>Things I really like about the system - once you get the hang of it you can deploy full environment very quickly with minimal manual effort. its also convenient to have portable profiles, especially if you run business critical applications on physical hardware (without virtualization involved) as it allows you to swap damaged host in a matter of seconds if you are quick enough :)
  • Deployment speed
  • Space saving
  • UCS manager-> blades network simplification
  • We ran into issues with limited VLANs that can be configured in the UCS manager system, I heard that it being addressed i the new series using Intersite though apart from that solution has been solid.
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
February 08, 2023

Cisco UCS rocks

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used in manufacturing, enterprise and retail for numerous use cases and business needs that demand a reliable, scalable and modular compute infrastructure that is programmable using open APIs. Cisco UCS asking with intersight provides unrivalled flexible manageability via a centralised cloud based Dashboard that provides operational status, alerts, faults and remediation actions.
  • High availability
  • Performance
  • More competitive pricing
  • Better storage options
  • Integration with public cloud
High performance analytics and big data applications, data warehousing and AI/ML
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At first we deployed UCS B-series into our Datacenter to host our production virtual machines. All is managed throw UCS Central. After some training and initial configuration, adding new blade take a couple of minutes. It has deeply decrease human action issues and administration time. This year we have deployed a new UCS Mini at a remote production site. Configuration was prepared before devices purchasing and so deployment was very fast and secured.
  • Centralized configuration
  • Blade interchangeability with service profiles
  • Secured and centralized hardware drivers upgrades
  • Secured changes like adding VLAN
  • Need learning and training to create proper profiles
  • Support is not automated: need to manually create cases
We used UCS-B on central Datacenter and on main production sites for the more sensible workloads (ERP, Databases, VDI)
It is not suitable for Remote Office and Branch Office for costs reason.
It has been preferred to Hyperconverged systems to allow more flexibility.
It replace HPE Blades which are less easy to use and to monitor.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
When it comes to our virtual environment, UCS is the primary computer both at our primary production location and here at our office. Due to our switch to UCS blades, we no longer operate in a traditional server environment. With UCS and VMWare, upgrading firmware is simple and causes no service interruptions. When adding more blades to scale, we may pre-configure them in advance so that they work right out of the box once they're inserted into the template.
  • 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.
  • Some OS memory vulnerabilities existed for a while.
  • We ended up swapping out several DIMMS, however the newest firmware appears to have resolved the issue for for now.
  • Though not as user-friendly as other Cisco products, the template system is often adequate.
For a long time, we experimented with Supermicro and relied on Citrix. There is no alternative to UCS because it is the only one that offers such a comprehensive set of features. Ability to control all aspects of operation, including hardware, software, and firmware, from a single location. In our perspective, Cisco was among the first to completely overhaul the standard server architecture. Even though there are several attractive new hyper-converged options on the market, we continue to upgrade our infrastructure using just UCS.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have made use of it to assist in lowering total cost of ownership and increasing agility factor. Every server maintains a healthy processor, memory, input/output, and internal storage resource balance in order to adapt to the shifting demands of the workload. This offers a centralized location from which information may be retrieved from either the virtual or real infrastructure. The product is of high quality and has a user-friendly design.
  • Virtualization, storage, and networking all in one place.
  • Backup Plans for Publishers and Consumers in Case of Disaster.
  • Both the Publisher and the Subscriber have excellent access to the Network's offerings.
  • VLAN setup may be a pain.
  • In previous releases, it was more difficult to alter report settings.
  • False positives occur occasionally while using the MWI.
It works effectively in environments where physical infrastructure is still prevalent and when virtualization is implemented on a very simple level. This helps to simplify the total number of devices that are linked. Some customers are still apprehensive to make the switch, but the Cisco UCS Series can interact with their existing, legacy operating system.
Colin Moynihan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Discuss problems with customers and understand their requirements. Big sales with partners (Netapp/Pure). Large deployments are a huge benefit.
  • Speed of Deployment
  • Flexible platform support
  • Mixed workloads
  • More investment with UCS mini going forward
  • Cost benefit compared to other vendors
  • More information UCS migrations with CIMC supervisor being retired
Large deployments can be reliable platforms once running and software support. Lead times are really hurting at the moment.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Cisco UCB Series for voice and voicemail services. We would like to use them for remote worker services and integration with emergency alert systems.
  • QOS
  • MOH
  • License Management
  • Ease of Management
  • Disaster Recovery with Publisher and Subscriber
  • Great access to Network services for Publisher and Subscriber
  • The MWI has intermittent false positives
  • Reports are not easily customizable on older versions
  • vLan configuration can be cumbersome
The options in the admin control panel are easily identifiable; there is lots of great community information for troubleshooting; managing the UCS series switches is easily managed.
June 13, 2022

Cisco UCS My Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Normally we use these servers for virtualization. Always using Vmware as Hypervisor. In them, we mount different types of virtual machines, for example, Windows Server that is used as domain controller servers, DHCP servers, Active Directory, etc. In addition, we also use them to implement other Cisco services such as Cisco Prime Infrastructure, CMX, Cisco ISE, and even virtual Wireless controllers.
  • Excelent Performance
  • A very useful function is the CIMC in which you can monitor and even manage some of the server's own functions remotely.
  • HTML based kvm works great.
  • Perhaps something I don't like about these servers, especially the C-220 and 240 models, is that they are very large and 2 people are needed to mount them in the rack.
These servers are an excellent option for large networks where several virtual servers can be mounted, as this saves space and energy. In addition to other services as mentioned above, Cisco Prime Infrastructure, Cisco CMX, Windows Servers, vWLC. All this with the help of VMware as Hypervisor. An example where it would not be a good option would be in a small network or a small office where only 1 or 2 servers are required. In this case, I think the cost-benefit ratio is not adequate.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Both our main production site and our site use UCS as their primary virtual machine. All of our servers have been replaced with UCS blades, thus we no longer have a traditional server setup. UCS and VMWare have made firmware upgrades a snap, with no downtime, because to their integration. Once the blade comes, the template is ready to go as if it had been there all along. This is another benefit of scaling up with additional blades.
  • Long-term reliability. There have been few hardware failures with Cisco UCS throughout the years, unlike some of the company's other systems
  • Easy OS updates and full firmware packages that cover all of the sub-components, there is little downtime for firmware upgrades
  • 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
Cisco was a pioneer in redefining the traditional server paradigm, and it's the only one we've seen so far. When it comes to infrastructure upgrades, we're not tempted by the latest hyper-converged offerings. The HP Poliant and HP blades were our go-to weapons for years. However, nothing has come close to matching UCS's comprehensive offering. Network, computing, and storage management capabilities have not yet been beaten.
Ayush Dhawan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have used it to help in reducing the TCO and increase agility factor. Each server addresses changing workload challenges from a balance of processing, memory, I/O, and its internal storage resources.
this provides single pane to get information from virtual or physical infrastructure.
It is a good product and has good interface
  • Easy information gathering
  • Single user interface
  • Integrated networking, virtualisation & storage
  • Pricing
  • Better API integration to Clour
  • Availability
It is suited well for the infrastructure where the presence of Physical infra is still dominant and virtualisation is though basic setup. This helps in simplying number of connected devices. Cisco UCS Series has the ability to integrate to traditional OS which is present with some clients which are still hesitant to migrate
January 15, 2022

Great all-around server

Pjeter Gjergjaj | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Used as host for large network architecture for a large provider [in the]USA. Very easy to use and delivers as per the datasheet released with UCS. It is versatile and offers a range of support for different architectures. Was used for [a] host of 4g arch (open stack and RH platform) but also is used now for 5G Arch.
  • Hardware
  • Storage
  • Networking
  • Access
  • KVM
  • Raid controller
Very reliable. It is widely used by large providers across the world. So you can't go wrong if you decide to purchase it.
Tim Lillis | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We replaced our HP C Series blade chassis with UCS back in 2013. Since then we have upgraded the chassis and blades once, rolling the old chassis' to our DR site. UCS serves as our main [computer] for our virtual environment at both our main production site as well as for our DR hot site. We no longer have a classic server environment as we have moved to all UCS blades. Combined with VMWare, UCS has made firmware upgrades a breeze without downtime. Another bonus is when scaling up with new blades, we pre-configure the blade before it arrives and once it is plugged in, the template has it ready to go as if it were there all along.
  • Minimal downtime for firmware upgrades when paired with VMWare
  • Easy OS upgrades with complete firmware packages that cover all of the subcomponents
  • Solid performance over time. Unlike some other Cisco products, UCS is well baked and has lasted a very long time with barely any hardware failures.
  • Memory for a while had a few bugs with the OS. We ended up replacing a handful of DIMMS before the latest firmware seems to have stabilized the issue.
  • Some of the templating is not intuitive, but this is on par with most things Cisco.
We played with Nutantix and used HP blades for years. But nothing really has matched the complete package that is included with UCS. The ability to manage the network, compute, and storage, alongside the firmware in one place, has yet to [beat]. Cisco was one of the first to revolutionize the old school server model and has yet to beat in our opinion. Some of the new hyper-converged products look nice, but we keep sticking to UCS when upgrading our infrastructure.
Chethan Chandra | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used Cisco UCS B, C series blades in our Datacenters to host Database workloads both on bare metal and Xen.
  • Seamless to plug and play, be it for new blades or maintenance of existing blades.
  • Reliable, provides low or no latency High Availability.
  • Easy to scale out chassis & blades.
  • We couldn't rely on baremetal requirements with more than 1TB memory.
  • Hardware support handling was different by regions, some good some not so good.
We use [Cisco] UCS [Series] for bare-metal database workloads & Xen hypervisors. It handles the smaller workloads, up to 1TB of memory, the failover is fast and reliable. The smaller app servers are never to be worried about. In general, works well for hosting 1-2 large-scale solutions. For scenarios where the solutions need a larger scale (more databases, larger database, multiple solutions, multiple tiers), the "blade" concept will not work. This is where you should consider the 4U or 8U servers, to consolidate workloads spread across multiple chassis and smaller blades. This may be expensive but is much easily maintainable.
October 25, 2021

Cisco UCS Series Review

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Cisco UCS rack-mount servers as a corporate standard for our data centers and local branches to provide compute for the different applications and services. The UCS platform provides a stable environment that is also easy to manage and support.
  • Easy to manage.
  • Performance.
  • Excellent reliability.
  • Deploy in less time with fewer steps.
  • Price.
  • You need to pay for SMARTnet to get support.
  • High hardware cost.
I would definitely recommend evaluating Cisco UCS Series in your company. You pay a little bit higher price but you will receive a reliable, stable and manageable infrastructure. You could also choose Cisco offers advanced purchasing or leasing options.
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