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Cisco UCS B-Series vs HPE NonStop comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 2025

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
74
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
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS B-Series is 7.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE NonStop is 5.1%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cisco UCS B-Series7.5%
HPE NonStop5.1%
Other87.4%
Blade Servers
 

Featured Reviews

MB
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.
Roni Wijaya - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Dell has a huge portfolio of products."
"The scalability is good because it comes with Fabric Interconnects, and you can directly add more blades as you go. Therefore, scalability is not a problem."
"Faster deployments of new and replacement hardware compact footprint saves valuable space on the rack."
"The most valuable features of the solution are stability and security."
"Remote access to the server is very useful."
"Cisco UCS is a fantastic product that is widely deployed with excellent support."
"The product is easy to use."
"For UCS B series, its integration with devices like FI, N5K, and UCSM where we can configure Service Profile and the way it combines LAN, SAN, and the server on the blade is something I love."
"The HPE NonStop solution is rated with the highest level of availability in the industry."
"It is a nearly perfect product, although it also has some restrictions and short comings."
"Because we're able to get immediate support, this prevents downtime and directly impacts cost savings."
"It helps us to keep the business running 24/7."
"Implement it. You will never regret it."
"Feature-wise, the most valuable one is the fact that it has 100 hundred percent uptime every year. Secondly, it is stable."
"The stability of HPE NonStop is good."
"This is the standard for reliability and fault-resilience."
 

Cons

"The main issue with this solution is that it is quite vendor-restricted, meaning that when we use third party software, we cannot use all of the available configuration tools or pre-validated design features."
"We have to have Java to manage the infrastructure. It would be great if we can manage the infrastructure through a web browser."
"The license is expensive."
"The cost of the solution has room for improvement."
"Software defects that result in false environmental alarms have been a pain point for us."
"It needs a better UI. Cisco makes a great product, but doesn't know how to make a UI."
"Over time the solution became more unstable."
"Cisco TAC has been phenomenal in most cases, but we have had a couple of minor instances where the issue took a bit longer than it should have to be resolved."
"HPE NonStop could improve by having infrastructure management."
"Currently the NonStop platform doesn’t support virtualization of servers or CPU’s. Only storage."
"The NonStop system is well priced, but the software that runs on it is quite pricey."
"NonStop (formerly known as Tandem) in the Guardian OS could use another, friendlier macro language."
"It would be helpful if they brought the price down."
"There were some scalability issues. When we decided to migrate an application or port application, the limitations of these servers did not help us."
"It is not flexible...Not a lot of applications run on HPE NonStop."
"I would never advise someone to buy or to implement the new NonStop because it's hard to find skilled people."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive."
"It makes much more sense for individual licenses for distributed environments"
"It is highly-priced."
"UCS is expensive, and we will be migrating to the cheaper HP servers."
"Cisco UCS B-Series is an expensive solution."
"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."
"The product is expensive."
"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."
"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
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Construction Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise41
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
What is your primary use case for Cisco UCS B-Series?
The Cisco UCS B-Series servers are used to run backend databases ranging from small, medium, to large, running different versions of RDBMS such as Oracle, SQL, MySQL. It also includes cloud databas...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

UCS B-Series, Unified Computing System B-Series
HP NonStop, HPE Integrity NonStop
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco UCS B-Series vs. HPE NonStop and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.