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Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs Dell XR2 Rugged Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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 Rack Servers
Ranking in Rack Servers
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Data Center Networking (4th), Blade Servers (5th)
Dell XR2 Rugged Server
Ranking in Rack Servers
14th
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 27.5%, down from 28.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XR2 Rugged Server is 0.5%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rack Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Masuood - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles workloads and diverse applications efficiently
We have a lot of VMs on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. On a single server, we have probably hosted 14 or 15 VMs. Out of these, 8 to 10 are continuously running, and four of them are backup VMs, so it can handle a good workload. For cybersecurity, it is only accessible on the intranet; it is not accessible through the web. We use it for local development purposes, and it is behind our firewall. Its security is strong. We handle a lot of test data for government and confidential customers. It is safe and strong locally. We have not experienced any security issues. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime if we need to replace a hard disk, instead of completely shutting a server, there is a hot swap feature. It is quite good in that aspect. Usually, for any activity, there is a downtime of about 30 minutes. It has saved a lot of time. We have tried AI workloads for a development environment for a government customer in Singapore. The servers are hosted in Singapore. It is an ML-based engine with AI. It is a government project where data is processed, and we run it on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The benefit of running AI workloads on PowerEdge Servers is that it is easy to allocate memory. The application we are running is memory intensive. It is pretty easy to scale memory and storage.
Jesse_B - PeerSpot reviewer
Simple to scale, high availability, and top level service and support
Dell XR2 Rugged Server's technology is always on the competitive edge, with the most current technology. They have proven reliability. If you're looking for a mission-critical system and support is important to you, then this is something a solution you should consider. I rate Dell XR2 Rugged Server a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspects include hot swapping and the elasticity as far as being able to scale."
"It's very easy to get new systems in the data center and to get them ready for production."
"Compared to the other vendors and generations, this one tends to be more user-friendly, so you spend less time trying to get where you want to go."
"The best features of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are the service, the availability of the equipment, and the relational price quality."
"Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are user-friendly."
"It operates without any downtime. It runs 24 hours and 365 days. The downtime is there for an hour or two only when I do an upgrade, but it is within the SLA."
"You can use Dell PowerEdge hardware for anything. It supports everything such as file servers, web servers, and DB servers. It can support all critical servers and applications. There are bank applications running on PowerEdge servers."
"We are using the Dell PowerEdge Rack Server for core banking applications. It is working fine and we are happy with it."
"The scalability of the Dell XR2 Rugged Server is good and easy to do."
"The storage and the disc performance in terms of IOPS is great."
 

Cons

"This solution helped us reduce our rack footprint. It reduced our power consumption including size and weight."
"In Pakistan, the vendors or the partners of Dell are not providing a good environment. They need to improve their support and hire partners that have certified support sources. Currently, we are not getting good deployment experience. However, after deployment, Dell solutions perform very well."
"The accessibility when opening up the chassis could be improved, but since we haven't had to do that since installation, it's not a big deal for us."
"Power consumption is probably on everyone's top of mind regarding Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers; they use a lot of power and create a lot of heat. Also, the noise levels are pretty high, though I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done about it."
"For the internal SD card of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I would add driver packs so that when you're trying to image bare metal, you don't have to worry about trying to find all the drivers you need to install whatever OS it could be, specifically in our environments in the fed space, since trying to use USB devices is difficult, so adding things on the USB stick and plugging them in for drivers is most of the time not possible."
"The data analytics for this solution could be improved."
"They need improvement in spare part availability in Argentina, but the servers are very good from a hardware point of view."
"PowerEdge is able to run the latest high-demand applications for our use case. They host our clusters and facilitate the building of environments."
"Dell XR2 Rugged Server could improve if there was more customization allowed."
"It lacks a modular option to expand to a 16-bay system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very competitive."
"You can't have computed performance without using more power. That said, when I consider the power consumption and performance of the MX740c, depending on how much memory you install on each blade, you get the best bang for your buck."
"I personally think the pricing and licensing of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is actually fairly decent, though the way the business runs leads to sticker shock anytime we give them a quote."
"The pricing could always be better."
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"The price of this solution is reasonable. It's very comparable to similar solutions."
"Dell is pretty good. good. I had a conversation with Dell a while ago due to a vendor. We got much better pricing from a competitor. When I looked at another company, Dell called me and asked why am I looking at someone else when they have a distributor. I told them that their pricing was not good, so Dell went back to the distributor, and we got much better pricing"
"The pricing for this solution is competitive compared to others on the market."
"The price of one Dell XR2 Rugged Server is approximately $10,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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 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?
Mainly, I would like to improve the speed of storage response. We would like to improve our performance by using disks without rotation. The price is better now, and I think it will be better in th...
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Also Known As

PowerEdge R
XR2 Rugged Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
DIGISTOR - Secure Data Storage
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs. Dell XR2 Rugged Server and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.