Dell PowerEdge MX- Series Reviews

We are predominantly a service company that sells our own SaaS services to customers. We have our own application which we develop and host on this infrastructure. We have databases running, caching services running, data lakes running, and some portions we use to virtualize the infrastructure and specifically consume virtual storage as well.

The good part is it's a rack-mounted modular enclosure where we get all the combination of networking, compute, management, and power. This helps in scalability as much as possible in one particular box.

It certainly helps because it has redundant power supplies and the management layer is pretty decent where you get to know about the current consumption. In case of any specific blade failure, you just get that blade impacted rather than the whole chassis. This certainly helps to reduce the downtime.

Efficiency certainly improves because you don't need to manage separate boxes and your resources don't need to manage a whole set of boxes. Rather, within one management control, you get to see the complete status for every blade, every networking component, compute, memory utilizations, and cooling stats. Management becomes efficient and reduces the overheads for your resources to manage multiple boxes, making it quite flexible.

They can work on power consumption, which is probably not a direct feedback for Dell, but I would say the input power consumption itself is a challenge because the rated power is pretty high. This is the typical challenge. Once they work on that piece, it probably will help my resources use the power piece much more efficiently and maintain the ratio of rack space versus the complete rack-mounted module.

I would prefer that at this moment, the typical challenge that happens is the OS module goes into just the NVMe disk, which only has RAID 0 or 1 possible. They could do better there. If we can have one or two additional disk support, so that we can have RAID 5 as well managed at the OS layer, that will make the device much more robust.

Their support is pretty decent.

It is straightforward. I would not say it is very difficult.

Based on your use case, it certainly makes a lot of sense. In case if you're going for a consolidated single chassis workload, at that time, it makes sense. The ROI is predefined because that's the use case you are looking for.

From a cost standpoint, you have different use cases to cater. The first one is if you need to have ideal distribution maintained between the application and redundancies or resilience needs to be maintained between applications running on different one U boxes versus a specific requirement where you want to run everything together in a modular enclosure. These are two different use cases altogether.

We do compare solutions. Without comparison, there is nothing called a proper evaluation. We always compare. From a total ROI standpoint, Dell products and their support have a little bit of an edge than HP. In terms of cost flexibility, I see they are pretty decent.

They are equally comparable.

Though they have different edges, Dell is quite competitive.

We don't use Secure Access for now.

We are not dealing with Cisco at all at this moment.

We have Cisco Duo still continued, but not with other security products.

We do use Dell PowerScale. We use Dell PowerScale ECS.

There are several other products like PowerEdge as well. There are a couple of series from PowerEdge in the object scale that we use predominantly at this moment, along with a couple of network devices from Dell.

We use a couple of series including PowerEdge R-Series and PowerEdge XS, which I had already talked about.

We do have Dell PowerEdge MX- Series. We have XR-Series. These two are predominantly at this moment along with R-Series. These are the three predominant servers currently we are using.

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series would be much better because MX7000 is what we currently have.

Directly as such, we do not use Dell PowerEdge MX- Series to run any kind of AI workload. For AI workload, we normally have R-Series or XS-Series where we use GPUs as well to train and inference the data. Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is mostly being used as a connector. In a sense, it basically either runs my database or my unstructured file storage, and both things work well.

That's a major concern. Most organizations who are using a compact box face this issue. Though the consumption in compact boxes is lower, specifically with the latest boxes, the power consumption requirement has gone really high. The biggest challenge happens when you have compact boxes such as Dell PowerEdge MX- Series. Managing or maintaining the server ratio within a rack becomes jumbled up because per rack you get a limited power capacity.

It's very difficult to say, but at this moment, since it's a compact box, I would say it reduces the space requirements by certainly more than eighty percent.

I would rate this review overall as a nine out of ten.

In our data center, we have a lot of servers, and we have an infra server where we have a domain controller, a file storage server where we have a Dell server, an application server, and a proxy server in our setup. We mostly use the Dell server.

I am currently using only the MX- Series, and I never get a chance to use the modular design in Dell PowerEdge MX- Series.

The best features of the MX- Series are its performance, which can work 24/7 without rebooting. As for durability and solid hardware, the last reboot for this server was six months ago, and there are no blue screen errors; everything is fine.

The most valuable feature is that it does not experience downtime easily. Since we have had downtime getting the server down for troubleshooting and replacing parts, that situation has not happened while I am working.

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series has positively impacted my organization by being the backbone, and I am the gatekeeper for monitoring and troubleshooting. This product makes my life easy by not giving me any downtime and working up to the mark.

I wanted to highlight that sometimes the patches from the firmware are not compatible with the hardware, which can crash the operating system and mess up the RAID configuration. If the patches are corrupted from the software level, we can roll back from safe mode, but if they crash on a hardware level, the whole box goes down, and it is very difficult to get the server online.

The product cost is fine, but the licensing cost is much higher. For the licensing regarding Dell storage and warranty, if they could give us some discounts for extending the warranty on a Dell part, that would be beneficial for my organization.

I have been working for the last ten years with this Dell Blade server.

Everything is all good, and the RAM, RAM speed, and CPU core are fine. The fan is working for two to three years with no sound, and we are only going to do cleaning. All the Dell devices and the infrastructure are working fine.

My experience with the stability aspect is very positive. It is hard to get this server or the devices down with any hardware issue or patching. Despite power fluctuations, the server is working fine without motherboard or hardware issues.

I can say the scalability aspect of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is a 9.5, but if you want to convince me more, you can mention it as 10 out of 10.

I am not trying to convince you; that is my valid experience working with the technology, and I keep it at 9.5 for me and give it 9.5 to the company.

Once I log a case with the Dell vendor, they respond very well. If we need to replace the RAM module or have any troubleshoot activity, the Dell engineer will be available to fix whatever the issue is.

I purchased Dell directly through the Dell vendor, not through third parties.

When Dell PowerEdge MX- Series was delivered in my data center, the unmounting and mounting from the rack went very smoothly. They are cushioned with plastic and foam, and I do not have any difficulty mounting or unmounting in the rack. The quality is very high, and you can feel it.

I do not find significant differences because HP is also good. However, when you compare them, you cannot compare BMW with a Mercedes; they are all brands. Both technologies are very fine, but I go for Dell because it makes my life easy.

Regarding storage capacity, the local storage is fine, and we also have a Dell EMC for the storage. Both are working very well, so we are doing well from the Dell perspective.

If my company and my setup are working fine, I will definitely suggest going for Dell. The support, product, and application are good, and even after sales, Dell contacts us for feedback about any issues or planning for migration or purchasing other technologies. Their connectivity and communication with us is very frequent.

As a product, I rate Dell PowerEdge MX- Series as a very good product, and I would give it an overall rating of 9.5.

I use Dell PowerEdge MX- Series for a hyper-converged environment where I have VMware and ESXi running, along with vSAN.

I work with other Power products, specifically the PowerEdge MX7000 and VxRail, which is also a PowerEdge model.

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is modular, and the modularity of the system makes it easy to manage and plan what I need, as it supports connectivity to SAN or NAS.

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, particularly the MX7000, is good, and it is consolidated with more features like vSAN and ready load, although I have heard they might stop this product by next year.

I use VxRail, and I find it good because I can easily expand the capacity and compute, similar to PowerScale, making it easy to plan by adding more resources.

The most valuable features of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series that enhance my IT department's operational efficiency are its modularity and the simplicity in scaling up, which is excellent for planning.

The advanced networking capabilities of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series help maintain operations, as they have good features like SmartFabric that allow for easy plug and play upgrades.

SmartFabric is a good feature, and I am unsure if Dell PowerEdge MX- Series can run on Nutanix—I have not tried that yet.

The storage capacity of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series has benefited my organization's diverse application needs by connecting most of the MX to PowerStore, allowing for enhanced server compute levels without relying on internal storage.

I would like to see improvements in Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, such as increasing the clustering capability beyond the current ten chassis, similar to PowerScale, allowing for more sleds and compute options.

There is room for improvement with technical support, possibly including a change in leadership.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge MX- Series for about three years.

I find Dell PowerEdge MX- Series to be stable regarding stability and performance.

There have been no downtime or performance issues since this is an enterprise product, except for human error.

The modular design helps my infrastructure scale because it is easy to plan based on requirements, allowing purchases based on what I need, which is ready to scale out or scale up.

I find it very easy to plan and scale the system, with no challenges in that area.

For support of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, I would rate Dell a seven, as their support for EMC storage is not as strong as it is for servers, which I believe are better supported.

Positive

I am switching to Nutanix because Dell also sells Nutanix nowadays.

I heard we are considering a Nutanix solution to replace the MX7000 since it is going end of life by mid-next year.

I am new to Nutanix, but from what I have seen, it has bare-metal software like VMware, and I believe the hardware must be compatible for it to run effectively.

The deployment process is easy because I utilize OpenManage Enterprise, which is built into their management module, allowing straightforward setup and management of networks and fabrics.

I handle the deployment myself, as I have experienced staff familiar with the MX and VxRail.

The partner I worked with for deployment was called Accelerated Solutions.

I find it worth the money due to its modularity and consolidation capabilities, making it good for future planning.

I am not aware of the pricing aspect of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, as that is handled by another department, and I focus on the technical side.

I confirm that I am working with the MX7000 in an on-premises deployment.

The PowerEdge processor range is up to date; the server sleds launched around five or six years ago have seen new processors introduced every two years, with models progressing from 740 to 760.

I recommend organizations considering Dell PowerEdge MX- Series to take advantage of its modular features, which allow for a small start and significant growth. I gave this review an overall rating of 9.

Since they came out, we have been using Dell PowerEdge MX- Series in our company around 2017 or 2018. Our main use cases for Dell PowerEdge MX- Series include a number of applications, and we have some specialized applications that we use for our attorneys.

These features benefit our organization by enabling a faster response to any potential problems. Sometimes we experience memory or drive failures, so this service saves a bit of time.

Using this service has helped to reduce unplanned production downtime, though it is hard to quantify by how much.

It has improved the flexibility of our business operations.

I prefer the central pane of glass management feature of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series the most.

I value these features because it is easier to manage. If I have four to eight servers on a single Dell PowerEdge MX- Series chassis, it is considerably easier than having to go to one R series chassis at a time via the iDRAC.

My understanding is that they are shutting down Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, which is unfortunate due to the fact that they cannot keep up with power density. If there were some way to keep up with the power density, that would be great, but it does not appear that is necessarily happening.

Since they came out, we have been using Dell PowerEdge MX- Series in our company around 2017 or 2018.

I evaluate customer service and technical support as good. I have had no problems with that.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, we had the M1000 series and also the R series PowerEdge series, which we still use in many cases for special needs.

The specific factor that led me to consider the change to Dell PowerEdge MX- Series was that they were retiring the M1000 series.

I did not have any problem with the initial pricing or cost setup with Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, but I had some problems with ongoing maintenance and getting regular updates from Dell. Things would get out of maintenance and it became pretty complicated to manage, so we have gone ahead with an initial three-year warranty when we buy the hardware from Dell, and then we have a third party that manages it afterwards.

It is hard to say that it has reduced total cost of ownership because if you are preventing something, how do you know what you have not had to spend? However, I would say the answer is affirmative.

Thankfully, I do not get the energy bills, but I am assuming they are about average since I do not have that information.

I would say the impact on our organization's sustainability goals is decent. We receive power reports from our colo facilities, and we are still staying under our targets, so it is good that we are not exceeding our allotments.

I rate Dell PowerEdge MX- Series an eight and a half overall. My advice for other organizations considering Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is to keep up with your warranty expiration dates and watch for problems with DRAM, as we had some memory issues with some of those. However, Dell was always very fast on replacing it, so it is not a significant concern.

My use case for Dell PowerEdge MX-Series focuses on achieving maximum efficiency in handling our data workloads to enhance overall productivity.

The most valuable features for Dell PowerEdge MX-Series include its reliability, scalability, and robust support options that help in our operational efficiency.

The value that Dell PowerEdge MX-Series brings to our organization is evident in the stability it provides, allowing us to focus on our core operations.

If I could improve Dell PowerEdge MX-Series, I would consider additional features that are more AI compliant, enhanced pricing options, and faster technical support response times.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge MX-Series for a significant amount of time, as we rely on it for high-performance computing within our data center.

The product scales well, which has been crucial as our demands have grown over time.

I have had user experience with the support team, and they have generally provided timely and effective assistance when needed.

I have indeed seen a return on investment with Dell PowerEdge MX-Series, which has positively impacted our budget and operations.

It has helped to reduce our total cost of ownership, making it a worthwhile investment over the long term.

I do not evaluate other solutions regularly because I find that the features provided by Dell PowerEdge MX-Series suit our needs quite well.

I actually do not know how long my company has specifically been using Dell PowerEdge MX-Series, as that information was not shared with me.

I have been in my current field for over a decade, which has provided me with valuable insights into the evolving technology landscape.

I do not have direct experience with Dell PowerEdge MX-Series pricing, as that aspect is generally handled by our financial team.

I understand how Dell PowerEdge MX-Series servers impact our organization's sustainability goals, as they are designed with energy efficiency in mind.

I would rate this review an eight overall.

Dell PowerEdge MX-Series is usually used for server operations, virtualization, or Oracle platform deployments, and some for databases.

What I like about Dell PowerEdge MX-Series is the whole integration, where you do not have a lot of cables, which is a strong point compared to others on the market. I believe customers choose Dell over other platforms, particularly Dell PowerEdge MX-Series, because of the whole integration; there are no cables, making it easier to integrate everything, and for some, it is simpler.

What needs to be improved about this solution includes networking because you are very limited with the options that you have. There are also limitations about the GPUs. Additionally, there was a problem with the deployment templates; it is quite complicated and not working as it is supposed to. It would help to have more communication with the customer regarding the problems and more explanation, as it is difficult to get it from support or from the administrative guides; it is not that straightforward.

This product is not convenient for smaller to medium organizations because you have more flexibility with standalone servers and the networking that you already have. If you are introducing such chassis, you have the additional costs of the switches and everything, adding to the investment. However, it is quite a good solution for tenders because once you set it up, it is like a single unit that can be placed inside the chassis, creating a constant relationship with the customer.

Dell PowerEdge MX-Series is not a good solution for AI due to the lack of support for the expansion of GPUs; there is a solution, but it is not a useful one.

The reason I do not give a higher mark, such as an eight or a nine, is that you have better solutions with standalone servers, not with this integrated approach.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge MX-Series for approximately ten years, as I work with a lot of Dell products.

The solution is mostly stable, with no significant issues regarding stability.

It is scalable, either by adding new servers or with the expansion of memory.

Regarding the technical support of Dell, I find it okay; I do not have any complaints about Dell's support. You get what you need, although sometimes it is hard to reach it for this product or other products. But once you get the support, it is quite good.

Standalone PowerEdge servers, such as rack servers or whatever other server you have in the portfolio. This integrated solution was quite good a long time ago when there was not such an amount of memory in the server; at that time, it was a good solution because you could achieve high density in a small footprint. Nowadays, you have one server with the capacity of the whole chassis, which is why we are selling more or less standalone servers. Additionally, you have many other options with working solutions that have GPU integrated into them.

The implementation of Dell PowerFlex is quite straightforward for me.

The deployment for this product requires approximately one or two days.

I did it all by myself.

We did not work a lot with other integrations, so more or less it was just Dell products, and there was limited support regarding the operating system on the blade servers. I would rate this product a seven overall.

I work specifically with servers. We have Dell Isilon and what I believe is an older VMAX. We also have Dell PowerEdge MX with blade servers and rackmount servers.

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series products are very reliable here. The hardware is what we appreciate about Dell, particularly the RAS capabilities. We have Dell PowerEdge on-premises, and we also have some Dell in Azure, though I do not work with them directly.

We have Cisco UCS as well, with most of them being blade servers with the chassis and Fabric Interconnect. I think Dell is slightly better than Cisco overall. However, Cisco does have some good points regarding the Fabric Interconnect and how they work with the chassis. For new systems, we are not going to use chassis anymore; we are transitioning to rackmount servers.

We are deploying Dell rackmount servers and Lenovo rackmount servers. We are also considering HP because most of our environment consists of Cisco rackmount and blade servers. We are pausing Cisco because we do not want to concentrate our servers with one manufacturer.

We have been using these products for seven to eight years.

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series is the primary server we have here.

The scalability is excellent. Connecting chassis together helps tremendously.

We appreciate Dell PowerEdge MX- Series with Intel processors or AMD processors. However, some specific Intel processor models they do not sell, so sometimes we have to adapt what we want when specifying new servers.

We use the Dell OpenManage solution to operate Dell PowerEdge MX- Series servers here, and I think it is an excellent solution.

I think Dell is not launching new Dell PowerEdge MX- Series servers. Regarding firmware updates, the complexity of seeing the compatibility matrix with the operating system and all the firmware that we have to install in Dell PowerEdge MX- Series blade servers, the chassis, and switches inside is challenging. It is complex and takes a long time to update the firmware. For example, one chassis with eight blade servers takes approximately four hours to update all the firmware inside.

We have been using this solution for a long time, approximately 6 years since 2019.

We appreciate customer service very much. When we had errors upgrading operating systems and did not upgrade the firmware with the right compatibility matrix, they supported us and helped us with various aspects, though they enforced that we follow the correct compatibility matrix.

Dell PowerEdge MX- Series products are more expensive than the few new servers we have from Lenovo and Cisco. In recent years, prices have increased here in Brazil. However, everyone is expensive because of RAM availability and manufacturing problems with memory.

We have Dell solutions and Cisco solutions, along with a few HP servers that are older and we are decommissioning. Overall, Dell PowerEdge MX- Series are solid products. I would rate this review an eight.

My main use cases for Dell PowerEdge MX- Series involve implementation, creating profiles for those servers, and implementing the OS on the servers.

I do not use Dell PowerEdge MX- Series for running AI workloads.

I really appreciate the iDRAC feature of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series the most.

We implemented our OpenShift on Dell PowerEdge MX- Series servers, started to use it for the ESXi server, and now we are implementing OpenShift on them.

We have all the things we need in there.

I do not know how Dell PowerEdge MX- Series can be improved; I think it is a perfect solution and we have OpenManage that manages all the servers together.

I do not think about any features that should be added for future releases.

Sometimes we need to manage the servers individually on the networking side. We have some issues there, and sometimes we would like to prevent a specific VLAN for one card and another VLAN for another card.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge MX- Series for about four years.

I have not encountered any unplanned downtime while using PowerEdge servers.

I evaluate their customer service and technical support as excellent. They provide great service.

Before Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, I was using the Isilon. The Isilon is different from Dell PowerEdge MX- Series, and we used Cisco before switching to Dell. It was an organizational decision that made us switch from Cisco to Dell.

I have seen a return on investment since implementing Dell PowerEdge MX- Series.

I was involved in the pricing, licensing, setup, and the cost of Dell PowerEdge MX- Series. I find that experience manageable because I do it with your support; I do not do it by myself.

This question is not so related to me, and it is difficult for me to answer it; I do not know if using PowerEdge servers has affected the overall flexibility of operations in the business.

We assess Dell PowerEdge MX- Series servers for energy consumption with the software to download the features.

We are a security organization, so we deal with sustainability goals less.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge MX- Series a nine out of ten overall.

When discussing Dell PowerEdge M, my clients primarily use it when they're not looking for a virtualization platform such as VMware or Microsoft Hyper-V but want compute and processing speed to run multiple applications in one cluster or one box. In such cases, we can propose MX7000 because, just as virtualization on the physical layer, MX7000 provides the same configuration to run multiple workloads in one cluster.

I recommend Dell PowerEdge M for certain mid-size customers as long as they are not looking for a virtualization platform. They can consider PowerEdge M, MX7000, which takes up only 7U rack space, allowing them to initially start with two blades and scale up to seven in the same enclosure, ensuring future scalability without needing to buy additional space.

The most valuable function of Dell PowerEdge M, particularly with MX7000, is its future scalability, which is advantageous because if the customer is changing their network infrastructure from 1GB or 10GB to 25GB or 400GB, the MX7000 fabric switch can support that, making future scalability completely available.

In terms of potential room for improvement regarding Dell PowerEdge M, I would want to see something such as dense nodes and additional storage, as well as multiple network connectivity on the blades.

The functions that I would want to see from Dell are not limited to just what I mentioned, but currently, I feel no additional features are needed.

I suggest adding an additional network card within the blades, specifically for connectivity.

I have been working with and on Dell PowerEdge M hardware predominantly for around 5+ years, including rack and modular servers.

For the stability of Dell PowerEdge M, I would rate it a 9 or 9.5.

Regarding scalability, I can scale up to 64 enclosures, and each enclosure can hold around 7 blades. This scalability exists, and it won't be a constraint at all.

Regarding technical support from Dell, I find them to be one of the best support providers in the industry right now. On the support front, I rate them a solid 9.

I am primarily working mostly on data center solutions with Dell, such as servers, storage, networking, on the hardware part.

HP is the main competitor for Dell PowerEdge M in the market.

If I compare Dell and HP, the main benefit of Dell is its management console, known as iDRAC with OME, which allows management of up to 8,000 devices, not limited to Dell products but including other brands as well. This gives Dell an advantage compared to HP's ILO.

The initial setup of Dell PowerEdge M is a little bit complex, but not significantly because we provide the deployment completely from our end. With our deployment, it is a seamless process, so there's nothing major to worry about.

My clients mostly have this setup with our help.

We utilize AI technology with Dell PowerEdge M through a module known as CloudIQ, which provides automation and takes care of predictive analysis and reporting.

When rating Dell's pricing model, it varies case by case and configuration by configuration. Sometimes Dell may be a little costlier, but that is considering the services and solutions we are providing, which can be adjustable.

HP is the main competitor for Dell PowerEdge M in the market.

If I compare Dell and HP, the main benefit of Dell is its management console, known as iDRAC with OME, which allows management of up to 8,000 devices, not limited to Dell products but including other brands as well. This gives Dell an advantage compared to HP's ILO.

I rate Dell PowerEdge M a 9 out of 10.

We are using it for multiple in-house applications and databases. We have multiple edge servers in our cluster, and we are managing the load in a cluster environment with a virtualized setup, which helps automatically balance utilization.

One of the best aspects of PowerEdge is that it provides a consolidated hardware infrastructure, allowing multiple servers in a simple ten-rack unit. This suits our business needs of using less space with maximum capability. It is expandable and scalable, with the ability to add more servers in additional chassis.

There isn't much that needs improvement as PowerEdge fulfills our requirements. However, the costing could be improved as it is somewhat expensive. Minor improvements are always possible, however, nothing specific comes to mind.

We have been using it for more than three to five years.

We are not facing any latency or performance issues. The solution performs well without any problems.

The solution is scalable. We can put 16 servers in one chassis and expand by adding additional chassis with more blades whenever needed.

Support is good, meeting our needs satisfactorily. If asked to rate support from one to ten, I would give it an eight.

Positive

We also use servers such as Dell, Lenovo, Dell EMC hybrid storage, and Denodo servers.

The installation process is straightforward. It is as simple as any other infrastructure. Two people are needed for the hardware aspect, but one person is sufficient for configuration.

In terms of pricing, it is not cheap yet rather average. Comparatively, Dell is better than Lenovo in manageability, especially when it comes to firmware and driver upgrades.

I would rate PowerEdge M an eight out of ten. I have no immediate advice for improvements as it meets our current requirements.