UCS C240 M6 vs ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Plus. Both Gen3 Ice Lake Xeon, both now end of sale (Cisco C240 M6 end of sale 2025-09-29; HPE lists DL380 Gen10 Plus as obsolete). Neither can be bought new from the OEM in 2026.
At a glance
| Spec | UCS C240 M6 | ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Generation | M6 (Cisco) | Gen10 Plus (HPE) |
| CPU sockets | 2 | 2 |
| Max memory | 8TB DDR4 | 8TB DDR4 |
| Drive bays | 28 SFF | 24 SFF |
| End of sale | 2025-09-29 | obsolete, no longer sold |
| End of support | 2030-09-30 | not public (HPE end-of-life notice requires sign-in) |
| Lifecycle | end of sale | end of sale |
| Remote management | CIMC + UCS Manager | iLO 5 Advanced |
| RAID family | UCS-RAID 12G SAS Modular / Cisco 12G SAS HBA | Smart Array P408/P816/MR416i-p/MR216i-p |
| OEM support plan | SmartNet / Solution Support (TAC access) | Foundation Care / Proactive Care (24×7 Call-to-Repair) |
Platform and silicon
Both Gen3 Xeon Scalable (Ice Lake), 32 DDR4-3200 DIMM slots, 8TB max memory, PCIe Gen4. Silicon parity. Platform behavior differs: C240 M6 scales cleanly into Intersight (Cisco’s cloud-managed ops platform); DL380 Gen10 Plus lives in OneView / InfoSight on HPE side. Both expose Redfish for vendor-neutral ops.
BMC and remote management: CIMC + UCS Manager vs iLO 5 Advanced
CIMC + Intersight on C240 M6. iLO 5 + OneView + InfoSight on DL380 Gen10 Plus. Intersight cloud-telemetry is a strong play for multi-site distributed estates. InfoSight is equally strong but with longer track record and richer AI/ML-driven fault prediction.
Storage and RAID
C240 M6: up to 16 LFF or 28 SFF (with rear expansion) with Cisco 12G Modular RAID (LSI/Broadcom-based). DL380 Gen10 Plus: 24 SFF with Smart Array MR416i-p. Both support NVMe. Mixed SSD/HDD RAID groups are generally smoother on DL380.
Firmware and tooling ecosystem
HUU + Intersight automation on Cisco. SPP + OneView profile-driven on HPE. Both can fully automate firmware across 100+ nodes. HPE’s track record on this is longer.
Total cost of ownership: 3-year and 5-year horizons
Cisco ran higher than HPE in new-price while both were on sale. Support parity: SmartNet and Foundation Care are priced alike by the OEMs, ICD Care+ on quote.
Refurb market reality
C240 M6 refurb market is thin — Cisco’s installed base is enterprise-deep but refurb channel is narrow. DL380 Gen10 Plus refurb is moderate and growing. For 2026 refurb buying at scale, DL380 Gen10 Plus wins on availability.
Third-party maintenance vs OEM renewal
SmartNet is historically expensive to renew; ICD Care+ is a material cost-saver on M6 at year 3-5 mark. Foundation Care Extended on DL380 Gen10 Plus is competitive with ICD Care+ through year 5; ICD wins thereafter.
When UCS C240 M6 is the right call
C240 M6 when: Intersight cloud-managed estate matters; Cisco switching runs your network; SmartNet relationship is established; fabric policy-driven ops is your north star.
When ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Plus wins
DL380 Gen10 Plus when: HPE is incumbent; you want transition path toward Gen11 same-family; OneView profile-driven ops matters; Aruba is in-rack.
ICD catalog today
UCS C240 M6: memory, SSDs, HDDs and RAID controllers from the ICD Cisco catalog.
ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Plus: memory, SSDs, HDDs, RAID controllers and power supplies from the ICD HPE catalog.
Both platforms ship from Cairo, with same-day delivery in Cairo and Giza. Cross-reference sheets, firmware bundles, and compatibility checks come free with every quote. Need parts for both sides of a mixed estate? One ICD quote covers every brand you run.
Typical workload fit
C240 M6 wins in UCS fabric-attached deployments where policy-driven provisioning matters — Cisco ACI, Intersight-managed multi-site, NFV workloads. DL380 Gen10 Plus wins in traditional on-prem virtualization, HPE-standardized estates, and as a transitional platform for customers moving toward Gen11.
Frequently asked
Can I mix C240 M6 and DL380 Gen10 Plus in one VMware cluster? Yes with EVC set for Ice Lake baseline.
Refresh horizon
Both platforms have roughly 3-5 years of OEM support runway remaining. ICD Care+ life-extension pushes that to 8-10 years for both.
Performance parity
With identical CPU, memory and storage configurations, the two platforms perform within a few percent of each other on mixed virtualization workloads, because they share the same Intel silicon. Differences show up mainly in power efficiency at partial load, where fan-curve tuning matters, so compare the published SPECpower results for your exact configuration.
Real deployment notes
Customers running C240 M6 in fabric mode with UCS Manager report significantly faster service-profile-driven bare-metal provisioning than DL380 Gen10 Plus with OneView profile replay. For rapid deployment at scale, UCS fabric has a real operational advantage; for long-lived general-purpose compute, the difference does not matter day to day.
Related: UCS C240 M6 parts catalog | ProLiant DL380 Gen10 Plus parts catalog | ICD Care+ single-vendor-agnostic support.