Why does Cisco still make UCS?
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…and the blade market is 8% of the server market.
"Today I learned that UCS represents less than 4% of the x86 server market and is not strategic to Cisco."
Cisco is #1 in the x86 blade market with 52% market share.
Lots of uninformed posts in this thread.
I don't know that it makes sense to not have a dedicated FI rather than run on any switch. I would worry quality would degrade even further and create more finger pointing for support. While on the decline, I do believe there will still be a significant need for on-prem environments for the next 10 years. While the public cloud is better for most applications, there are still many critical environments that need some sort of onsite computing.
No. We have sold off to Lenevo as part of our ransom package.
I think the FIs are the problem too. People get irritated having to buy more licenses and support for more ports on the FIs, that has always been a sore spot for customers. People also do not stuff as many servers behind a single domain like they were told was such a great idea when UCS first came out. Sure there are plenty of small shops doing this, but they're also not buying UCS either and whi honestly cares about them because they don't make or break any vendor to begin with? Scale out architecture is what people are interested in and many people have been bitten more than once by bad UCS code and botched upgrades that took their entire infrastructure down because they had too much behind a single pair of FIs. All this and people are sick of buying the FIs, why can't Cisco put this functionality into the switches and just get rid of the FIs?
UCS is still a great product, probably the best for on prem server needs. I’m a little worried Cisco is going to try for too much with Intersight. They risk ba----dizing the platform with IMM and not focus on the size and scale of the FI. Cisco needs to learn that license fatigue will be their demise. Time will tell.
By no means am defending UCS, but that blog and author are not authoritative by any means, he's got a hard on for Cisco. I do believe Cisco responded to him publicly, I wouldn't use him as a reference in any argument as he's got a clear sl--t and he's just a troll anyways.
"Try learning a bit about the product and market before commenting on it, you just make yourselves sound very unintelligent. "
Today I learned that UCS represents less than 4% of the x86 server market and is not strategic to Cisco.
https://blocksandfiles.com/2021/09/16/cisco-ucs-servers-nowhere-to-go-except-out-of-cisco/
Is it the same fate with HPE servers?
Just like Apple still fetches a high price for their laptops, which have long been commodity items, there will always be a niche for UCS. I am not defending UCS by any means because the niche is getting smaller and smaller and their persistence on trying to shove blade systems to everyone is ridiculous. Blades are a dying market but there will always be a small market for them, but at least with UCSX they have something that will go at least another decade but it's likely the last time you'll see a new chassis system. Where Cisco could have done better is their rack servers, but instead of making them competitive from a price perspective they have dug their heels in and kept them priced well above way everyone else. Intersight is actually a great product but they expect you to buy their overpriced servers and then hound you to pay for an upgraded Intersight license over the free one. A better strategy would be for them to bring the price of the servers down and better position Intersight as what we should be paying for, but instead they want us to pay a premium for both.
A decade ago UCS was an innovative product.
Today servers are a commodity business.
I expect Cisco will try to sell it off or sunset it.
UCS or for those old timers here Project California was/is a decent product. Just chambers and MPLS completely timed it wrong and GTM was a disaster .. they introduced a cloud capable platform built to handle cloud workloads and tried to sell it via traditional Cisco channel and as an on prem solution. A technical CEO would have built a more relevant GTM and quite possibly Cisco would be seen as a cloud success company! But hey never tell a Cisco sales guy they don’t understand technical strategy they all go off in huff and ask HR to layoff those ‘trouble causers:-)
Lot's of very ignorant very uninformed posts in this thread. Try learning a bit about the product and market before commenting on it, you just make yourselves sound very unintelligent.
I thought UCS was the rack that held the bare metal blades that ran the virtual servers that are created and managed via VMware running on the UCS "firmware" that integrated all the blades together to share the CPU, RAM, networking and storage resources.
But yes, I hated working with UCS and VMware. It was so much fun trying to manage a rack that required Adobe Flash to access the management server and was still supported for a year after Flash died and would no longer run.
Talk about an non-value-add to over-complicate/engineer additional process layer(s) for deploying virtual servers that are already going to be virtualized... thanks Cisco UCS!!!
Sounds Stoopid?? That's Cisco UCS for ya...
Doesn't everybody want lots of on-prem x86 servers with a slow and klunky management interface? It is the future of IT