Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE NonStop comparison

Cisco and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the Blade Servers category. Cisco is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #12. Cisco holds a 6.9% mindshare in Blade Servers, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 4.9% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Cisco UCS B-Series

Read 74 Cisco UCS B-Series reviews

1,289 Views
1,263 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

HPE NonStop

Read 12 HPE NonStop reviews

841 Views
841 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Cisco UCS B-Series

HPE NonStop

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

Cisco UCS B-Series and HPE NonStop compete in the enterprise server market. Cisco UCS B-Series appears to have the upper hand in scalability and integration, while HPE NonStop leads in reliability needed for mission-critical environments.

Features: Cisco UCS B-Series provides high-density blade architecture, unified infrastructure and advanced management options, such as centralized management using UCS Manager. It also facilitates seamless virtualization integration and service profile management. HPE NonStop offers unparalleled fault tolerance, continuous availability, and exceptional reliability vital for industries like banking and telecommunications. Its linear expandability allows for increased processing capacity by linking additional systems.

Room for Improvement: Cisco UCS B-Series could benefit from simplifying its complex UCS Manager and enhancing the user experience. It also needs to optimize its setup configuration process. HPE NonStop could improve by lowering its high upfront costs and minimizing complexities in deployment architecture. Additionally, enhancements in usability and user interface will aid in better client experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cisco UCS B-Series offers a streamlined setup with strong vendor support, making it easy to deploy and integrate. HPE NonStop is more complex to deploy due to its specialized architecture but is backed by in-depth customer service, providing excellent support for managing critical applications.

Pricing and ROI: Cisco UCS B-Series provides competitive pricing, focusing on cost reduction through automation and achieving a strong ROI. HPE NonStop, while more costly upfront, delivers long-term value through its substantial reliability, justifying its expense in mission-critical sectors with its 99.9% uptime and fault tolerance.

To learn more, read our detailed Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE NonStop Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE NonStop

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Cisco UCS B-Series

Ranking in Blade Servers

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HPE NonStop

Ranking in Blade Servers

12th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 6.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE NonStop is 4.9%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Blade Servers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cisco UCS B-Series	6.9%
HPE NonStop	4.9%
Other	88.2%

Blade Servers

Featured Reviews

Muhammad AlihyderBhuiyan

Head of IT Operations at NCC BANK LIMITED

Efficient server management reduces costs and supports seamless operations

Cisco UCS B-Series has reliably sustained smooth operations without the need for significant maintenance. Its administration capabilities provide easy access to performance reports, logs, and utilization data, which are essential for effective server management. Additionally, the integration capabilities are seamless, and the power consumption and heat generation are low, resulting in reduced cooling costs and increased financial benefits.

Read full review

Roni Wijaya

Vice President of It Operations at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

With a perfect record for uptime, the solution ensures a return on investment

Since it is a legacy tool, there is a need to change it for flexibility. I think now it has improved because the security is very good. It is very secure for the performance of the machine critical application service, and it is very good. I don't know how to speak more on improvement needed because it's a good enough tool. However, depending on the application, it's limited. Not a lot of applications run on HPE NonStop. It is not flexible because I know that because of the compatibility of Java with HPE NonStop. When we are using Java, the performance is not good.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features of the Cisco UCS B-Series are reports for virtualization and the large memory it has."

"I like that it's very manageable very easy to use and configure. I am not an expert, but the graphic user interface is quite simple very easy to use. It's a complete solution."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to replace a server with another one, simply by applying the profile"

"The solution is stable."

"The hardware is easily swappable and, utilizing the boot from SAN option, you can always keep your server intact due to the service profiles."

"The most valuable feature that the B-Series has is related to the structure and architecture of the solution because in these solutions, you are using fabric interconnect as an interconnect device. The beauty of fabric interconnect is that it can work as in-house mode."

"They've been responsive and helpful whenever we've needed assistance."

"It is less time-consuming to deploy the software."

More Cisco UCS B-Series pros

"Feature-wise, the most valuable one is the fact that it has 100 hundred percent uptime every year. Secondly, it is stable."

"We don't have any issues with the stability of HPE NonStop."

"The stability of HPE NonStop is good."

Cons

"The solution’s technical support could be better."

"USC Central seems a bit confusing for technicians."

"There is a delay in the product's reporting and the rebooting system compared to servers from other vendors."

"Previously, the unified port functionality allowed the same port to function as both FC and Ethernet, however, this has now changed."

"The monitoring features and integration with other products can be improved."

"It should be more user-friendly."

"The initial setup and service profile deployment can be tricky and should be improved for ease of use."

"The pricing could be less."

More Cisco UCS B-Series cons

"HPE NonStop could improve by having infrastructure management."

"It is not flexible...Not a lot of applications run on HPE NonStop."

"It would be helpful if they brought the price down."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Considering our market, I rate the pricing of Cisco UCS B-Series as a six."

"Cisco UCS B-Series is an expensive solution."

"The cost of the blade servers is okay, but the cost of Fabric Interconnects ends up increasing the overall costs. For example, suppose it costs 3,500 USD per blade server. When you include the Fabric Interconnects, you could pay up to 30,000 USD. Therefore, compared to the cost of servers from Lenovo, Huawei, Dell, or HP, the cost of Cisco servers can be high. However, Cisco gives good discounts (about 90% to 94%) to partners and to customers who are already using Cisco servers. New Cisco customers do not get the level of discount that an existing customer does. Because you can get discounts with Cisco, I would give pricing a rating of four out of five."

"It makes much more sense for individual licenses for distributed environments"

"Cisco UCS B-Series is not a cheap solution."

"Pricing with Cisco is very high."

"The pricing for Cisco products is always high."

"The price of this solution compared to others is fair."

More Cisco UCS B-Series pricing and cost advice

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the pricing an eight."

"The price of the solution is too high. If they lowered the price substantially it would open up more opportunities. It's considered a replacement for the old 9000 boxes of HP. If it had a lower price, we would be able to compete in the financial, and other sectors and other solutions such as Terraform. Having a high price makes other solutions more attractive."

"HPE NonStop is definitely on the higher end."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Performing Arts

11%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Retailer

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	41

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS B-Series?

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is easily scalable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS B-Series?

Comparing Cisco UCS B-Series with traditional servers, while its initial cost may be slightly higher, it is not as expensive as Oracle Exadata, making it a worthwhile investment. It pays off in the...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cisco UCS B-Series?

There is a need for Cisco UCS B-Series to evolve and scale vertically, particularly with the increasing data demands and the integration of AI, ensuring the solution remains certified and capable u...

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Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 17% of the time

Fujitsu CX1000 vs HPE NonStop

Compared 11% of the time

Lenovo Flex System vs HPE NonStop

Compared 10% of the time

HPE BladeSystem vs HPE NonStop

Compared 9% of the time

More HPE NonStop Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS B-Series

January 2026

Download Cisco UCS B-Series product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE NonStop

January 2026

Download HPE NonStop product report

Also Known As

UCS B-Series, Unified Computing System B-Series

HP NonStop, HPE Integrity NonStop

Overview

Based on Intel Xeon processor E7 and E5 product families, Cisco UCS B-Series Blade Servers work with virtualized and non-virtualized applications to increase: Performance, Energy efficiency, Flexibility and Administrator productivity.

Cisco

When availability matters, the new HPE Integrity NonStop X enables you to stay ahead of your competition by mitigating the risk of downtime and effortlessly meeting your business processing, OLTP, and database requirements all with an industry-standard x86 architecture. HPE brings you an unparalleled portfolio of HPE Integrity NonStop systems the NonStop i family and the NonStop X family. These systems deliver the highest level of availability for the most-demanding, high-value workloads and customer-facing applications.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Aegean Motorway, Anilana Hotels and Resorts, Anonymous Banking Group, Artoni Transporti, Bellevue, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Hertz, Houston Methodist, Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Co.KG, Outscale, Sony Corporation, Talbots

Bankart, Capital Securities Corporation

Buyer's Guide

Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE NonStop

December 2025

Free Report: Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE NonStop

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