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Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs IBM PureSystems comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 2026

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 Converged Infrastructure
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
309
Ranking in other categories
Data Center Networking (4th), Blade Servers (2nd), Rack Servers (1st)
IBM PureSystems
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure for SAP HANA (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is 4.6%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM PureSystems is 5.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series4.6%
IBM PureSystems5.6%
Other89.8%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Tom van Mil - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
it_user6186 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com
PureSystems, something old, something new, something from big blue
PART I For a certain generation of IBM faithful or followers the recently announced PureFlex and PureApplication systems might give a sense of DejaVu perhaps even causing some to wonder if they just woke up from a long Rip Van Winkle type nap. Yet for another generation who may not yet be future…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a ten out of ten."
"It is user friendly and easy to configure."
"Dell PowerEdge R-Series products grow with the company's needs; they are scalable for my long-term plans."
"Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale really well with the growing needs of my company."
"Dell PowerEdge R-Series industry standard servers have robust options and offer intense security and management features including NVMe support, streamlined remote management, RAID support, and flexible customization from processor to network options."
"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."
"The iDRAC helps us monitor and manage our systems."
"The most valuable feature is OpenManage. We get a lot out of OpenManage because we have a sprawling infrastructure with around 100 data centers, and managing all of those separately is challenging."
"The strengths of the system is how the Flex scales from a very powerful, next generation BladeCenter all the way up to an IaaS platform."
 

Cons

"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 takes a long time to deliver the hardware. The riser cards can be better. The riser cards are where the PCI cards connect. They need to have more than two riser cards in the server because it can be difficult to connect sometimes."
"There needs to be more flexibility for business options."
"The Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Server did not scale to our expectations."
"I found pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerEdge servers to have some challenges."
"Dell PowerEdge R-Series can improve on its flexibility; having more flexible options would be beneficial."
"There were some issues that I encountered with the servers, but it is a result of having multiple server generations with different processors in place, which caused some problems with HA and DRS with VMware, but these don't necessarily qualify as issues with the servers themselves."
"After purchasing the product, customers have not been getting the support that they need in the early stages of getting set up."
"The FSM does not quite deliver in the areas it plays too. A fairly sluggish interface that is more complex and less streamlined than it perhaps could be, holds it back and deployment of certain functionality from the switches requires more user intervention than feels necessary."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's abundantly clear that the specific licensing requirements will be dictated by the intricacies of the machinery we deploy."
"Dell is priced better than alternative solutions."
"We would prefer it if the pricing were for half the cost. We have been expanding our company, and my boss stated that we must save money."
"I know the pricing for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers went up last year, and we weren't too happy about that, but it is what it is."
"The product is cheaper than HP servers, but the price could always be better."
"The pricing is great; very competitive. That's the reason we bought hundreds of them."
"The main reason I choose Dell there is cost. Dell is cheaper than HPE. Why would I want to pay a premium for an HPE product when I'm getting the same amount of support, the same amount of data protection, and the same amount of performance from Dell?"
"It is expensive. The price needs to be more competitive. Additional licenses are required to enable some of the features for scalability."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business112
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise129
No data available
 

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....
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
Regarding how Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved, something personal to me is the number of PCI Express slots in the back; however, that is an engineering choice. Otherwise, I am happy with th...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers serve as IO machines for talking to PCI Express devices. The use cases change over time, and I push data to the network for in-flight compute.
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Also Known As

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
PureSystems
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
ABT Online, Ascent Solutions Inc., Desert Research Institute (DRI), Reflexis, Esri, Avcilar Municipality, ValeCard, Computer Gross Italia S.p.A., DynaFront, Silvermoon Business Systems, Diasoft, BPTP, Temenos, Innovation Group, OneTree Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Rackspace Technology and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: July 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.