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Cisco Nexus vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 26, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Nexus offers strong ROI with cost savings, reliability, and ease of use, balancing initial costs with long-term benefits.
Sentiment score
7.1
Dell PowerEdge R-Series delivers financial benefits through reliability, cost-effectiveness, seamless integration, and long lifecycle, enhancing productivity and morale.
Speeding up our response times and reducing errors and incidents with automation and available APIs.
By not having to worry about it, I would estimate we save two to four hours a week, depending on what's happening, such as if we need to spin up a new server, which would contribute to more time if done the old way.
In my immediate case for antenna analysis, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer a reduction from days of computing to half a day or hours.
The value of uptime to us is critical.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Cisco Nexus boasts responsive, knowledgeable support with quick resolutions, though service quality sometimes varies between representatives or escalation steps.
Sentiment score
7.5
Dell PowerEdge R-Series support is valued for responsive service and expertise, despite minor delays and communication issues.
For us, we have a time advantage because we know the solution, and the technological refresh is easier.
It has always been scheduled maintenance, which says a lot for a production environment, as we haven't had to call in a trouble ticket for the actual hardware during its entire run.
Typically, the contacts we have on-site are very knowledgeable, they come in within a day and usually have it fixed and taken care of if there are issues.
When we had a power supply failure out of the box, we called support, and they delivered the replacement within four hours as promised.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Cisco Nexus offers scalable solutions for enterprises, supporting numerous nodes with flexibility despite cost concerns.
Sentiment score
7.5
Dell PowerEdge R-Series is scalable and adaptable, supporting diverse workloads with modular upgrades for growing business needs.
The scalability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is excellent.
Any outages or blackouts are limited to particular servers, not affecting the whole chassis or enclosures.
We bought our product with scaling involved, and we've been scaling it up anytime we've needed more storage.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Cisco Nexus is highly stable, with minor bugs, improved reliability, and long uptime, enhancing user satisfaction significantly.
Sentiment score
7.9
Dell PowerEdge R-Series offers reliable, robust performance with minimal downtime and efficient operation under demanding workloads, ensuring user satisfaction.
Initially, the stability of Cisco Nexus, particularly with the ACI, was problematic due to unstable codes, requiring replacements.
Over four years, we've had less than 1 percent downtime.
There is a feature to update the server while it is running, so there is no need to restart.
We have truly not had any downtime on the infrastructure at all.
 

Room For Improvement

Cisco Nexus requires better GUI, programmability, multi-tenancy support, simplified licensing, improved tools, automation, integration, and competitive pricing.
Dell PowerEdge R-Series improvements include memory speed, management, scalability, documentation, integration, security, pricing, support, and noise reduction.
When I talk about data centers, which are critical infrastructure and centralized application hubs, the Nexus platforms should be highly stable.
The solution is on-premises and stable.
It might be pretty expensive for other companies.
We need to know about any upcoming updates so that we can plan accordingly.
The beneficial aspect of that feature was that we could skip the PowerStore and just have the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers alone, as they also served as storage, which helped us save money.
This forces you to go up to a larger server to get the desired processor, which increases the cost.
 

Setup Cost

Cisco Nexus pricing is high, with complex licensing and significant costs, though discounts are possible through negotiation.
Dell PowerEdge R-Series pricing is seen as competitive and valuable for its reliability, support, and transparent pricing.
The price of Cisco Nexus is on the higher side due to the premium services Cisco offers.
All solutions are very expensive and not an economy solution.
They have been stable and running for years without performance downtime or significant disc failures.
Some customers find it cheaper due to contractual agreements, while others find it expensive, especially when scaling up.
The software associated with servers, like VMware subscription licenses, drives costs.
 

Valuable Features

Cisco Nexus is praised for flexibility, scalability, strong security, and ease of use, making it ideal for data centers.
Dell PowerEdge R-Series excels in scalability, reliability, security, and performance, offering efficient remote management and versatile configurations for businesses.
The VPC feature of Cisco Nexus is great because it provides an active-active way of forwarding the traffic and avoids blocking any of the links.
For us, we have a time advantage because we know the solution, and the technological refresh is easier.
I would recommend Cisco Nexus for large enterprises and the government sector, as they can afford it.
They keep running for at least five to seven years without any issues.
With PowerEdge Servers, I don't need a one-to-one ratio redundancy, which leads to about eighty percent downtime reduction.
One of the valuable features is Active Directory, which helps in managing the network.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Nexus
Ranking in Data Center Networking
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
107
Ranking in other categories
LAN Switching (4th)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series
Ranking in Data Center Networking
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
228
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (4th), Blade Servers (5th), Rack Servers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Data Center Networking category, the mindshare of Cisco Nexus is 17.8%, up from 16.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is 1.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Networking Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series1.7%
Cisco Nexus17.8%
Other80.5%
Data Center Networking
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Faisal Ikram - PeerSpot reviewer
Has experienced high costs in core deployments but continues to appreciate strong support and switching performance
Cisco Nexus may not be very popular because of the requirements that we come across, as it will go into the core data centers, whereas we work with most of the corporate sectors, so Cisco Nexus is not a frequent seller, and you'll find more edge switches selling in the market. It might be pretty expensive for other companies. I don't think there are any other particular disadvantages of Cisco Nexus besides their pricing.
Ravi Ramananda - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers unmatched security, stability, and uptime
Based on my experience, one area where Dell could improve the PowerEdge R-Series servers is in the disk bus controllers. There is a need for advancements in this area from a hardware perspective. While PowerEdge has several AI-enabled models and is making strides in technology, I believe that the hard disk controllers need to be more effective compared to competitors like Lenovo and HPE. Currently, even when using SSDs or SaaS disk models in my Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, the throughput is roughly 10%-15% lower compared to similar offerings from HPE and Lenovo. While this doesn't have a major impact on my business, it is worth noting since Dell has a strong position in Gartner ratings. Overall, the hardware quality is good, but I frequently encounter errors that are not hardware-related; they're mainly cyclic errors where the server struggles to process data as quickly as other manufacturers' controllers. Despite this, I am completely satisfied with the functionality of the Dell PowerEdge R-Series. Flexibility is a debatable topic, and I would rate it about a six out of ten. When it comes to flexibility, we do need to account for downtime if we want to extend or make changes. There are very few hot-pluggable devices in Dell servers compared to others, making online plug-and-play opportunities limited. So, I would rate flexibility as a six rather than a five.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise82
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business79
Midsize Enterprise52
Large Enterprise95
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Nexus?
The product's initial setup phase is very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Nexus?
We are a reseller, and we sell products to our customers.
What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus?
Cisco Nexus may not be very popular because of the requirements that we come across, as it will go into the core data centers, whereas we work with most of the corporate sectors, so Cisco Nexus is ...
When shopping for a rack server, would you go with Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem rack servers were the better fit for us. We ultimately decided to go with Dell EMC Poweredge....
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
It has helped us reduce unplanned downtime by 20% to 30%.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
For the most part, there’s no need for improvement in areas like manageability and security; they’ve covered those quite well. The storage controllers are also very well designed, and the support f...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advanced Medical Transport, Banco de Guayaquil, Baylor Scott & White Health, BH Telecom, Bowling Green State University, Calligaris, Children's Hospital Colorado, City of Biel, Del Papa Distributing, Department of Justice, Dimension Data, Dualtec Cloud Builders, Electricity Authority of Cyprus, Grupo Industrial Saltillo (GIS), Hertz, K&L Gates , LightEdge, Lone Star College System, Management Science Associates, Mindtree, NBC Olympics, Quest, Sony Corporation, The Department of Education in Western Australia, Valley Proteins
NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus vs. Dell PowerEdge R-Series and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.