The Cisco hardware you've come to expect!
October 02, 2020

The Cisco hardware you've come to expect!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Modules Used

  • Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers
  • Cisco UCS S-Series Storage Servers

Overall Satisfaction with Cisco UCS Series

As a manager of the IT Department, our network admins came to me about purchasing a Cisco UCS (B series), and it is currently being used for the majority of our computing and virtual server needs. We have moved our entire existing physical server pool to these blades and chassis systems. They have continually outperformed our older rack-mounted servers from HP and Dell in pretty much every area besides power usage! As an engineer, I have a lot of hands-on experience with similar products; the UCS specifically answers a lot of requests that the others could not. The UCS system has completely replaced our existing hardware that was due for updates. We are now fully switched over to the Cisco UCS series as our main server farm. For my role, I wanted to get a system that worked well for our admins and made their jobs easier overall!

Pros

  • Great chassis and blade design.
  • Power efficiency with latest B series.
  • Super fast performance.
  • Cisco makes great hardware.
  • The company backs up their product with great support.

Cons

  • The software is buggy at times.
  • The UI is very complex and confusing.
  • Cisco's licensing is occasionally a headache.
  • Patch management can be troublesome.
  • UCS has recovered our investment in record time.
  • Well made and very few hardware issues.
  • Blade management does take some extra time to learn due to software complexity
  • Space savings as we've moved to a single rack.
  • Wiring reduction when moving from old existing servers.
The Cisco systems are much more compact and you can fill it full of blades that are equally or even more powerful than the full-size HP and Dell units of similar specs. Cisco has managed to make everything super easy to use, wire, and configure. Once it's running, you don't have to worry much about upkeep, as it just runs and runs!
Cisco support for the UCS is the same experience you will have with most of their other product lines. And what you've come to experience is short wait times for tier 1 issues and quick callbacks for others. The same goes for their UCS line and also hardware turnaround is very fast. When we have a high priority ticket we can literally call and be on the phone with someone within minutes, and as you know when you're under the gun each minute is crucial.
This is probably where I will ding them the most. Cisco is a hardware company first, and a software company second (maybe third?). In the past few years, they definitely have been getting better by coming to a single UI design language but the UCS interface is still behind by quite a bit. If you don't mind running on a couple of versions old software, then you can run a more stable version and get by. If there are major security updates you may not be able to swing this, however. So just know when you're on the latest and greatest you tend to deal more with bugs.

Do you think Cisco UCS Series delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Cisco UCS Series's feature set?

Yes

Did Cisco UCS Series live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Cisco UCS Series go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Cisco UCS Series again?

Yes

Its hard not to suggest Cisco UCS when it easily outperforms the other major server providers in price per performance metrics. You get usually a faster box, and well designed hardware for less. Support is top tier. Only thing people may have a problem with is Cisco's often times confusing and unnecessarily complex licensing structure. If you have limited space, the UCS is a life saver. We wanted to reduce our wiring and rack space and with the Cisco system we've got it all in a single rack now.

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