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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

"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."
"Customers see benefits in the reduced time to deploy virtual servers."
"Easy to deploy, scale and expand based on a number of server range available, with centralization for different resources including network, compute and storage."
"It's highly scalable, and with everything set up, downtime is never an issue when adding blades."
"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."
"The platform has valuable features for management and good monitoring tools. It provides efficient insights."
"The Dual Fabric design allows for online/in-service upgrades during production with no impact."
"Overall service and support from Cisco is very good."
"They've been very reliable since we started using them in 1978, but we're going to replace them in a few years."
"If you are contemplating a fault-tolerant, high uptime transaction processing machine with above normal transactions volumes - to act as a transaction server with infrequent changes to code - and you simply must have bulletproof performance - this might be the ticket."
"We don't have any issues with the stability of HPE NonStop."
"The stability of HPE NonStop is good."
"The HPE NonStop solution is rated with the highest level of availability in the industry."
"Technical support is A++. If there is a problem, HPE will fix it."
"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."
 

Cons

"The management interface needs a lot of improvement. As it is right now, it's a pain to use. It's not user-friendly."
"The initial setup and service profile deployment can be tricky and should be improved for ease of use."
"The initial setup process is complex."
"There is also a need for better local parts replacement, as HP is superior in this area."
"There is a delay in the product's reporting and the rebooting system compared to servers from other vendors."
"Next generation support for VMware needs to be introduced as it does not support eighth-generation VMware."
"Cisco UCS B-Series competitors have similar features as they do, Cisco needs to make some changes to make their offering better."
"Despite the benefits gained from the product implementation, the cost could be more appealing if the overall cost of ownership were reduced."
"The hardware fails often, and I feel that HP really needs to pay more attention to this issue."
"HPE NonStop could improve by having infrastructure management."
"The NonStop system is well priced, but the software that runs on it is quite pricey."
"It is not flexible...Not a lot of applications run on HPE NonStop."
"NonStop (formerly known as Tandem) in the Guardian OS could use another, friendlier macro language."
"I would never advise someone to buy or to implement the new NonStop because it's hard to find skilled people."
"Currently the NonStop platform doesn’t support virtualization of servers or CPU’s. Only storage."
"If pushed, then the only thing I can think of would be utilities provided by the vendor."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution is a little bit higher, but given that this system is Cisco, it feels more secure and dependable."
"Cisco products are at the high end in terms of cost, but everything is included with the licensing fees."
"The type of service level purchase will determine the level of support response that you receive from Cisco."
"Pricing with Cisco is very high."
"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."
"Considering our market, I rate the pricing of Cisco UCS B-Series as a six."
"The licensing cost is a little bit expensive because by default, it depends on your fabric interconnect model. Most of the time, however, Cisco provides a lot of promotions to the customers, so the cost can be waived for many projects. The price of the chassis itself is fair."
"The product is expensive."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is very cheap, and ten is very expensive, I rate the pricing an eight."
"HPE NonStop is definitely on the higher end."
"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."
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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...
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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.