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Dell PowerEdge XR-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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 XR-Series
Ranking in Rack Servers
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Rugged Servers (1st)
HPE Apollo Systems
Ranking in Rack Servers
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Density Optimized Servers (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is 2.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Apollo Systems is 5.4%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rack Servers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerEdge XR-Series2.6%
HPE Apollo Systems5.4%
Other92.0%
Rack Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Reliable servers have supported critical banking workloads and reduced downtime and costs
For improvements on Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I suggest enhancements in the support features, such as implementing a feature where the system can call home to Dell support to open a call automatically. Ideally, as a customer, I would just receive a message stating that a call has been opened, and if it's a failed hard disk, it should already be ordered automatically without much intervention for the customer. Many customers rarely check their systems in the data center, so I would love to see major improvements in health monitoring features that allow the system to automatically send alerts to Dell, open calls, and send parts automatically or implement self-healing features whereby a system can detect certain errors and try to correct itself unless it involves something permanent that it cannot correct. These are the features I expect in the new versions of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series to make the management and support of the system easier.
Gökhan  DURMAZ - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Using Dell PowerEdge servers has indeed affected the overall flexibility of my customer's operations and businesses."
"I appreciate the management tool, iDRAC, in Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, as it is convenient for administrators to use when managing Dell PowerEdge XR-Series."
"Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is better compared to other servers and runs more efficiently, with stability and reliability that have been good so far."
"The Dell teams are always knowledgeable, always great to work with, and always on top of their game."
"Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is very popular and we are selling this as a standard."
"Using Dell PowerEdge XR-Series has helped reduce my total cost of ownership compared to other solutions such as HP or Lenovo, which are servers I have used."
"There are two main advantages as a customer: performance, which is stable, and the support, which is quite good."
"Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is a super server, so compared to HP, I see big differences from the technical side."
"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."
"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."
"It's pretty flexible. You can choose how much storage you put on the server. You can have one to three nodes, depending on whether you want more CPU or storage."
"Stability has been extremely good."
"We previously used the DL380s; compared to those, Apollo has roughly four times the amount of space per server, which means we can really do a lot."
"It's going to meet our needs moving forward, it is scalable."
"For us, the most valuable features are the price and density."
"It enables us to implement software defined solutions very easily, because Apollo servers are certified for use with Linux systems"
 

Cons

"I think Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved in appearance. I would say that the improvement opportunity is probably on the monitoring side, the overall monitoring side."
"The support could work faster, but that is the only small thing that could be better."
"There are many areas to improve in Dell PowerEdge XR-Series."
"Certainly, the first negative aspect is the cost because the biggest challenge today is the way component costs are going higher."
"In comparison with them, Dell hardware and services are good and fine, but they do not have any own operating systems."
"I suggest virtualizing the CPU between multiple operating systems on the same server."
"Regarding the weakness of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I think the main drawback is that it is more expensive than other servers."
"One of our issues is that we currently have an eight-bay system. I'd like to migrate to a 16-bay system, but there isn't a modular option available."
"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."
"We are quite happy with it, but its price and storage density can be better."
"We are struggling a little bit with some of the configuration we need to do, particularly with write capability to drives."
"We would like to see improved cooling because that is quite an issue. If you put that much compute power into a single rack, cooling really becomes an issue. And there is room for improvement there."
"The technical support for HPE Apollo Systems could be improved."
"We could, perhaps, use more GPUs in the future, go from eight to 16 GPUs per instance. That could run head-to-head against the DGX-1, the DGX-2 that NVIDIA has developed in their own chassis. That would be interesting to see."
"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
"HPE Apollo's after-sales support and technical support should be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of one Dell XR2 Rugged Server is approximately $10,000."
"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."
"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."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
14%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
I find Dell PowerEdge's pricing reasonable. The price has been reasonable until now, and we cannot blame them because any other vendor is facing the same situation. Servers and hardware components ...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
For improvements on Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I suggest enhancements in the support features, such as implementing a feature where the system can call home to Dell support to open a call automatica...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
I still have experience with Dell products, particularly as I'm still working with Dell PowerEdge and others. I've been mostly dealing with Dell PowerEdge. We recently deployed Dell PowerEdge to ou...
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.
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

XR2 Rugged Server
HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DIGISTOR - Secure Data Storage
Weta Digital
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge XR-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.