Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the Rack Servers category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.1, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.5. Dell Technologies holds a 22.9% mindshare in Rack Servers, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Read 279 Dell PowerEdge R-Series reviews

20,909 Views
18,400 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

HPE Apollo Systems

Read 25 HPE Apollo Systems reviews

2,643 Views
2,273 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

HPE Apollo Systems

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

Dell PowerEdge R-Series and HPE Apollo Systems compete in the enterprise server category. Dell seems to have an edge in pricing and ROI due to its competitive and transparent pricing structure.

Features: Dell PowerEdge R-Series offers scalability, reliability, and intuitive management through iDRAC, with lifecycle management via OpenManage and robust security. HPE Apollo Systems excel in high-density storage and compute capacity for data-heavy applications and AI workloads, providing an adaptable environment with enhanced support for parallel processing.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerEdge R-Series could benefit from better pricing strategies, cleaner interfaces, and improved compatibility with external products. HPE Apollo Systems encounter high pricing challenges and limited scalability, which could improve with more flexible infrastructure integration and enhanced performance analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerEdge R-Series is versatile in deployment options, spanning private and hybrid clouds, with consistently high-rated technical support. HPE Apollo Systems benefit from strong on-premises deployments but have slightly lower customer support ratings and sometimes require improved communication in technical setups.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerEdge R-Series is recognized for its competitive pricing structure and clear licensing, resulting in cost savings and extended ROI. In contrast, HPE Apollo Systems are perceived as more expensive while still delivering solid investment returns in specific configurations like high-density storage.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems

April 2026

Download the complete report

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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

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Ranking in Rack Servers

1st

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

279

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (1st), Data Center Networking (4th), Blade Servers (3rd)

HPE Apollo Systems

Ranking in Rack Servers

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is 22.9%, down from 27.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Apollo Systems is 5.2%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Rack Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series	22.9%
HPE Apollo Systems	5.2%
Other	71.9%

Rack Servers

Featured Reviews

Tom van Mil

Systems Administrator at Lico Innovations B.v.

Supports flexible hosting needs through seamless upgradability and strong monitoring capabilities

The most valuable features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series for me are the feature richness and the upgradability. I really love the way that it is so dynamically applicable for every situation, and they manage to have an all-in-one solution for every single situation. Dell PowerEdge has supported the growth and operational success of my company through its great compute power and price-to-performance ratio. Every time Dell is at the top of its game for us, and there is just no other brand for us that is able to reach that kind of price-to-performance ratio. Dell PowerEdge R-Series has features that specifically cater to the needs of my small company, such as iDRAC. The iDRAC system is a complete feature set for managing servers and hardware technically and monitoring-wise. It really fits in our system and our ecosystem, and monitoring-wise, it is excellent. They have all these sensors available via different protocols and end points, which I love, and the ability to manage and control everything via the iDRAC interface is just a welcome bonus. In our use case, Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very flexible. It is another computer which helps a lot because of the durability over time. They keep running, making scalability for getting more of those resources in our environment so easy.

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Gökhan DURMAZ

Account Manager at TD SYNNEX

High-quality integration and strong support have optimized our rack server operations

HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity. When I speak about integrity, I speak about GPU integration or other integrations such as GPU integration, backup software integration, and hypervisor integration. Regarding the integration of high-speed interconnectors in HPE Apollo Systems, they impact computational tasks because the high-speed interconnect affects performance. I don't remember the specifics. Regarding the cooling technologies, they help to reduce operational costs. The positive impact I see from HPE Apollo Systems is that support is good and quality is good. In general, HPE Apollo Systems appears to be for rack servers with some optimization capabilities.

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 solutions accelerated GPUs have helped to support demanding workloads and to reduce data processing time in our organization."

"We actually have not had any failures in the last 7 years regarding availability."

"When it comes to running high-demand applications, we trust our Dell servers exclusively."

"I would evaluate the support from Dell as exceptional."

"The most valuable features are resiliency, reliability, easy installation, maintenance, and compatibility with other systems or servers."

"With this kind of product, we are solving a lot of problems, or issues that we had before with regards to performance."

"PowerEdge is flexible and adaptable. You can you can build whatever you want from it."

"The system management capabilities of PowerEdge helped increase stack productivity, the solution's accelerated GPUs helped support demanding workloads for some of our customer's environments, and PowerEdge helped to reduce data processing time in our company which has made us work faster."

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series pros

"It's very hard for a professor to amass the supercomputing resources, so I've been very fortunate to have that level of supercomputing at our disposal and that has really enabled us to do the world's leading superhuman AI research."

"The solution is well documented in a data sheet."

"For us, the most valuable features are the price and density."

"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance on that."

"The cost benefit of this solution is most valuable."

"The cost benefit of this solution is most valuable. It is quite effective for the work for which we are using it. We are mainly running video servers on these, and we are quite happy with the resilience, density storage, and streaming capacity of the system."

"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance."

"It's very reliable. I haven't had a single failure at all in the year and a half; not the slightest problem with it."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

Cons

"When trying to quote devices and servers for our Mexico City offices directly with Dell instead of through a partner, we encountered some challenges. It took several months to negotiate appropriate pricing, requiring escalation to the director of Dell Mexico and communication with Dell US."

"Regarding scalability, I would say Dell PowerEdge R-Series is not as scalable as some newer technologies such as Nutanix, which I have had the opportunity to use and find offers significantly better scalability for IT server operations."

"I would like more resilience because, for all companies, cybersecurity is important."

"The price is the only thing that can be improved."

"I'd like to see improvement with the analytics reports, they could be more useful than they currently are."

"One area where Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could improve is integration."

"There's always room for support improvements, and the AI features could continue to be enhanced as the relationship with Nvidia grows."

"After the expiration of support, it is sometimes challenging to find parts like hard drives, especially for obsolete models."

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series cons

"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."

"One drawback which I had: When I needed to expand storage on the Apollo, I had significant problems getting disks for it."

"One drawback which I had: When I needed to expand storage on the Apollo, I had significant problems getting disks for it. It was a very long wait-time. So, if I were to give any advice in regards to improving this product, I would say make more of the 8TB disks available quicker."

"I would want to see the flexibility of being able to run various network protocols including InfiniBand, Fibre Channel, as well as iSCSI, with iSCSI going up to 100 gigabytes per second - that would be outstanding."

"If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo."

"HPE Apollo Systems is a bit expensive, and there are some issues with scalability."

"We have tried to used standardization using Ubuntu Linux and it's been hard. They had some difficulties getting the RAID configuration up and running because there are no drivers for it."

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is cheaper than HP servers, but the price could always be better."

"The pricing of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has been a little problematic. It was sticker shock with our most recent purchase compared to the previous one, and there's a gap in pricing at our current level because what we do isn't very compute-intensive, resulting in a mismatch where we fit into an in-between category without an exact solution available."

"It is expensive. The price needs to be more competitive. Additional licenses are required to enable some of the features for scalability."

"Dell's solution was cheaper than HP's solution."

"We have a strong agreement in place with our parent company, that typically ensures favorable pricing terms for us, although occasionally we may need to negotiate with Dell representatives for further discounts to provide competitive pricing to our customers."

"The price is reasonable. You have to pay if you want quality. When we purchase something, we have to do some market analysis, and I haven't seen a significant difference compared to other solutions."

"The solution’s pricing is competitive with other products."

"The pricing is good compared to other products."

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series pricing and cost advice

"It is an expensive solution but it is worth the money. The standard licensing cost is for the GPU and the features that someone is using. There are additional charges but they depend on the solution."

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."

"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."

"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."

"The price of the solution is more expensive than Dell which is their main competitor. However, there are times we have managed to receive a comparable price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

University

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	101
Midsize Enterprise	59
Large Enterprise	117

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

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....

See all answers

What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?

It has helped us reduce unplanned downtime by 20% to 30%.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?

The prediction of hardware error using some AI tools could still be improved.

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?

It is too early to say what improvements HPE Apollo Systems could implement because the report still needs to come out and the customer needs to properly evaluate the solution.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?

My main use case for HPE Apollo Systems is replacing many of the servers and storage boxes at one of the customer's sites to achieve workload optimization and optimized solutions. Additionally, whe...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?

My advice for someone considering HPE Apollo Systems is that if they are looking for consolidation and their workload involves high availability requirements, or if they want to utilize GPUs, then ...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 33% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 12% of the time

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 8% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 5% of the time

Lenovo Edge Servers vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 15% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 6% of the time

Lenovo High-Density Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 6% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

May 2026

Download Dell PowerEdge R-Series product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

May 2026

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Also Known As

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo

Overview

PowerEdge R-Series delivers high performance, flexibility, and scalability for data centers. It supports demanding tasks with robust management tools and advanced cooling, providing reliability and efficiency across various workloads.

Engineered for large deployments, PowerEdge R-Series supports extensive configurations optimizing performance in data centers. With features like advanced cooling and energy-efficient architecture, it empowers organizations to manage heavy workloads while facilitating seamless scalability. It offers remote management, robust security, and integration with VMware ensuring operational excellence and high availability for business-critical applications.

What are the key features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series?

Scalability: Supports flexible configurations for diverse workloads.
Remote Management: iDRAC and OpenManage facilitate easy oversight.
Energy Efficiency: Architecture helps reduce energy consumption.
Security: Robust features ensure protected performance.
VMware Integration: Enhances manageability and productivity.

What benefits and ROI should you look for?

Performance: Handles high-performance and demanding tasks.
Flexibility: Offers easily upgradable configurations.
Reliability: Provides consistent performance with long-term support.
Efficiency: Reduces energy use and operational costs.
Ease of Use: Simplifies management and maintenance.

PowerEdge R-Series is deployed across industries for virtualization, database hosting, and application servers. It supports environments like VMware and Hyper-V for AI, cloud infrastructure, and computing tasks. Widely used by finance, healthcare, and academia, it enhances reliability and efficiency of IT infrastructure.

Dell Technologies

HPE Apollo Systems deliver high compute and storage density, scalability, and environmental efficiency with exceptional performance for AI initiatives and data capturing across diverse applications.

HPE Apollo Systems are characterized by their dense compute and storage capabilities, offering flexibility in configurations to meet the demands of AI, deep learning, and high-performance computing. Their management software simplifies deployment, ensuring effective performance across tasks that require significant storage. While Apollo Systems are designed for efficiency and scalability, improvements can be made in security, tech support, and integration with hypervisors and backup solutions. Enhancing cooling and licensing processes, connectivity, and faster drive writing capabilities are also areas for growth.

What are the key features of HPE Apollo Systems?

High Compute Density: Supports intense processing needs efficiently.
Scalability: Easily adaptable to growing data demands.
Environmental Efficiency: Minimizes energy consumption, enhancing sustainability.
Flexible Configurations: Caters to a range of applications from AI to data storage.
Reliable Performance: Consistently delivers under various workloads.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Cost Effectiveness: Reduces expenditure with its efficient design.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly fits into diverse IT environments.
Performance Enhancement: Boosts operational efficiency and output.
Easy Deployment: Streamlines the setup process for quick operation.

HPE Apollo Systems find extensive use in sectors such as telecom, supporting high-performance computing and AI workloads. They optimize Linux servers, replace legacy systems, and serve as storage solutions across industries. Their applications span from big data management in Splunk clusters to backup solutions in medical faculties, enhancing compute power and storage within compact racks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco

Weta Digital

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems

April 2026

Free Report: Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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