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Cisco UCS Manager vs HPE OneView vs SolarWinds NPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Cisco UCS Manager is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE OneView is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NPM is 3.8%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

Edwin Mwosa - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced network oversight with rapid issue identification and good efficiency
We mainly use Cisco UCS Manager to integrate and manage our Cisco switches across the building. We also utilize it for network integration. It provides an integrated solution for our Cisco environment, streamlining our operations and managing multiple Cisco devices like switches and routers Cisco…
Trevor Watkins - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides firmware compliance and the ability to connect to iPO
I've been involved in various upgrades. It's pretty easy to set up with vCenter. We just push out an appliance template in vCenter. We run ours on virtual servers. Deployment can be done by just one person. The number of people needed for maintenance will depend on your server inventory. If you have more than 100 servers, you will need three to five people. If you have 500 to 1,000 servers, you will need a team of 10 to 20 people.
Masud Alam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers alerting service to trigger alerts and easy to manage
For end-user performance monitoring, we like features such as availability of our all devices and device/interface monitoring. We have also used NCM (Network Configuration Manager) for our network. We use the alerting service to trigger alerts based on specific thresholds, like CPU or memory utilization exceeding a certain percentage. There are AI network initiatives in SolarWinds NPM for some lengthy issues. For example, it shows availability reports. But for bandwidth monitoring, it's not very clear how much bandwidth is being consumed. SolarWinds provide real-time bandwidth monitoring. It is not difficult to manage the network with SolarWinds. We have one customer with a satellite location. If we have a large network with, let's say, 43,000 elements, and our current SolarWinds license supports only 30,000, we would need to create another polling engine to accommodate the additional 13,000 elements. It's limited to the polling engine, so we can only support 30,000 elements per engine. So it's only for 30,000, but we have at least 40,000 elements in our network.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco UCS Manager is recommended for its ease of deployment and management capabilities."
"It's robust."
"We can configure the Cisco UCS Manager, the profiles and interactions with the resource we manage."
"The solution is highly scalable, mainly because of the templates that make it easy for you to actually edit on the system."
"Cisco UCS Manager is overall a good package because it gives a GUI interface and a CLI."
"What I like most about Cisco UCS Manager is the ease of administration. It also allows the central management of maintenance, installation, and configuration activities."
"A main feature of Cisco UCS Manager is its reliability, as all of the computing blades are in cluster mode."
"The most valuable features are flexibility and management."
"It monitors all our servers, and if there is any problem it straight away sends us an alert. If It's a faulty component, we can see it from there. It sends an alert."
"Provides the strongest support for automation."
"I don't have to use CD-ROMs or anything like that to provision the servers."
"We could literally swap out a piece of hardware, slide one back into the chassis, and immediately - about three reboots later - it was identical. We didn't have to worry about configuring it, we didn't have to spend any time getting anything into place. It came back and it healed the environment almost immediately."
"​The stability is very good. I have never had an issue with it over the three years that I have been using it."
"​It is very stable. We have had no downtime nor issues in approximately a year. ​"
"If you have a lot of devices, like we do, then you have to have one single pane of view, otherwise we lose too much time. So, we needed this type of solution."
"Administration-wise it's going to be easier. More smooth and more flexible."
"SolarWinds NPM is a scalable solution since it can handle a huge number of users."
"The nice thing about SolarWinds is that it's kind of all-in-one. I can manage the status of my networking devices, whether they are up or down, I can see how much traffic is going across an interface, and I can run a report that tells me exactly what that traffic is."
"The people in technical support are very good."
"The connectivity of the solution is very good."
"It is scalable."
"I love the GUI. Almost everything is accessible through the web interface. It is very user-friendly. It is easy to drag and drop resources wherever you want them."
"The product is scalable."
"I found a lot of valuable features in SolarWinds NPM, such as the customized application monitoring that allows you to customize any monitoring and script customization, and you also have the option to deploy and upgrade SolarWinds NPM online, which is very useful for my organization."
 

Cons

"Getting a CLI report on routers, switches, or any other CLI configuration device is difficult."
"Its user interface can be improved. It can be more user-friendly."
"Cisco UCS is expensive compared to others. The Cisco UCS Chassis is more expensive than a standalone server, but some companies require standalone servers because of their production load and affordability. You need to pay more if you require more features on the Blade or if you need more ports on the switch."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost and complexity to set up. It doesn't work straight out of the UCS, so someone who knows what they're doing is needed immediately, and it can be quite confusing."
"Cisco UCS Manager is not a scalable solution because once you have 160 blades, it cannot be expanded more."
"I would like to see improved visibility into the operating system, enabling us to identify issues directly from the operating system itself."
"Some settings are still fairly well hidden, even the basic ones."
"I would like to see Cisco UCS optionally work as a hyper-converged system because right now, it only operates as a converged system."
"My main complaint is about the blades on the frames, which seem to have a lot of problems. We often have to call HPE for replacements, such as for memory."
"We've had issues, for example, with RAM."
"The speed and performance of the solution are areas where the product lacks and needs improvement."
"We ran into a couple of issues here and there with the baselines for the firmware and not having enough space on the appliance itself to be able to have more than two baselines."
"It would be better if we can add every HPE device to OneView, such as MSA, as well as the other servers like the DL server and ML server."
"I think HPE could make more user-friendly interfaces, exclude Java and move to an HTML5 platform, make more detailed documentation, and lower the price."
"The tool doesn't send automated alerts via email...We should be able to receive notification emails when a server or hardware issue arises, which would be helpful if someone is unavailable in the office."
"The interface is a bit bland. It does its job, but it could have a better interface."
"A need for improvement is in the technical support provided by SolarWinds."
"SolarWinds needs to upscale on observability and add full-fledged observability features, including security features."
"The solution's network discovery and node addition processes need more work."
"The integration with the APIs and the web servers deployed can definitely be improved."
"The solution is considered expensive."
"The interface could be made more user-friendly."
"SolarWinds NPM could improve the graphics of the interface and more customized reporting."
"The solution is not always good with new features, so it's take a long time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You buy the hardware and then you get Cisco UCS Manager for free."
"With product discounts which can be negotiated, the product is a great value."
"We need to take a license for each port, which amounts to a big sum."
"The pricing for Cisco UCS Manager is okay for its market, so it's a four out of five for me."
"Cisco UCS Manager’s annual licensing fee is expensive."
"Cisco UCS is more expensive than Dell and HP, but it is more reliable. I see less issues and it's quite stable."
"​I am happy with the price."
"I feel the product's price falls a bit on the higher side."
"HPE could lower the price."
"The solution is free to use, but if you want the management aspect you require a virtual machine such as C7000 or Synergy which require licenses."
"​Use it. It is free."
"Synergy does not require iLO licenses but servers and enclosures must be purchased."
"When it comes to the government, money is never an issue, so it was excellent in terms of the HPE OneView licensing cost. Hitachi was cheaper, but I'd rate HPE OneView cost-wise as eight out of ten."
"HPE had some other solutions, but they were actually quite expensive to buy. So, when OneView came along, it was kind of reasonable in terms of price for licenses, etc."
"I think that the cost has risen, but the functionality and versatility is way above other products."
"Though I don't remember the price for SolarWinds NPM, its price is somewhat okay when you compare it with other tools in the market. The price isn't too high and isn't too low, so it's okay."
"There are a lot of sub-products and it just continued to increase the price."
"We pay for SolarWinds NPM yearly. We buy it and then we renew it, but it's not subscription-based. I don't remember the value exactly, because it's my manager who manages pricing, but we pay $60,000 per year for all the solutions. Pricing will also depend on the number of devices. We have a lot of devices."
"The solution's pricing is low compared to a lot of other tools in the market."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten"
"The pricing is in the middle. It's not particularly cost-effective, but it's not overly expensive either."
"SolarWinds NPM is very expensive, and we pay ten thousand yearly."
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 31, 2015
Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor
I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco UCS Manager?
When one server fails, we can attach the service profile to a new server, which saves a lot of time.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco UCS Manager?
My experience with the pricing of Cisco UCS Manager ( /products/cisco-ucs-manager-reviews ) is that it is reasonable....
What needs improvement with Cisco UCS Manager?
For improvements, while the current graphical user interface is satisfactory, it could be further simplified for diff...
What do you like most about HPE OneView?
The most valuable features of HPE OneView are environment monitoring, the ease of firmware upgrade, and the ability t...
What needs improvement with HPE OneView?
My main complaint is about the blades on the frames, which seem to have a lot of problems. We often have to call HPE ...
What is your primary use case for HPE OneView?
We use HPE OneView ( /products/hpe-oneview-reviews ) to manage our Synergy frames. We have multiple OneView environme...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
It actually depends on the exact purpose or kind of devices (network devices, servers, something else). Some tools ar...
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
We are partners with SolarWinds and we sell a lot of Network management to large enterprises also because of scalabil...
 

Also Known As

No data available
HP OneView
Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor, SolarWinds Network Bandwidth Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Management Science Associates, Peak 10, Virtual Consulting Professionals
Asante, ITS Nordics, Columbus Communications, Mansfield Oil
Microsoft, Federal Express, Hewlett-Packard, and MasterCard
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring. Updated: June 2025.
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