Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

An example of the use cases for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in my company is that we use them for virtualization platforms; currently, it's VMware, so the host that VMware sits on.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for me, my team, and the company is iDRAC. It's more user-friendly than the HPE products, and we can access them remotely, which is very important when we have a global presence, especially at smaller sites where we don't have a person on-site. So, iDRAC really helps us to get into that platform and do maintenance and things like that remotely.

The reliability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is another benefit I've realized from their usage. 

They look great, have a nice LCD on them, and are easy to manage and maintain in racks.

In thinking about how Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers can be improved, that's a tough one for me. I haven't had a problem yet. I don't have one additional feature I'd want to see on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

In terms of areas for improvement, maybe on the education side, working with third-party sellers on how easy their products are could probably help.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for three years.

To measure the success with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we use some monitoring software that tells us various different metrics of the server, and it doesn't ever go down, so it's been really good for us.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale really well with the growing needs of my company; we're not maxed out on the host servers we have now, so we could easily scale out from there and then get more servers if we need them.

I haven't had to use Dell's support yet, so I don't know for sure. They're really good, and we have a support contract for five years, however, we haven't had to use it.

Positive

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we were using HPE servers. The factors that led me to consider a change were manageability, as I didn't enjoy the interface of HPE, and then Dell actually seeded us a server for free to use, which blew my mind; it was really a lot easier to do that, so I encourage them to keep that program going since that appraoch works.

My experience with deploying Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is that it's super easy; we aren't very automated yet. However, it was very easy to set up the iDRAC part and then go into setting up the hard drives for ESXi without having any problems.

Since we've only been a server customer for about three years, we haven't had it even depreciate off our books yet, so it hasn't been long enough to really calculate that ROI.

It is easier for me to get licensing and pricing for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers; the licensing, specifically on their competitor's websites, is very difficult to find. In contrast, for Dell PowerEdge, it's very easy on their website to figure out what SKU you need.

Before Dell PowerEdge, I looked at Lenovo. However, on the server side, they're not quite there yet; we do use Lenovo for laptops and things. Other than that, I went directly from HPE to Dell.

I don't use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for my AI initiatives yet; primarily, we do that in the cloud right now. In terms of planning for AI on-prem, I have looked at all the AI factory stuff, and it's really appealing. In terms of AI in general, and how we could use it, we have scientific white papers that we go through, and it would be really good for scientists to be able to search through those and get really good responses versus trying to do it manually, which would save them a lot of time.

My advice to other companies considering Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is to go for it; it's a great product, and you won't be disappointed.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as a ten out of ten.

I am working as a pre-sales solutions architect. We provide technical solutions. We review a client's requirements and objectives, then provide the appropriate solution to the client. We also review the solution to find the most appropriate option for the client to ensure a good trade-off between technology and cost.

Customers use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers to deploy their business-critical applications, and these servers are recommended for VDI solutions. Companies in the financial and retail sectors use these servers to run their business-critical applications. 

We are currently using the 660 models.

The main benefit is from a cost perspective. Comparing the cost of HCI nodes and Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, the latter are much cheaper. Clients can choose tailored servers based on CPU speed, RAM size, and disk types, with various disk options including NVMe, SATA, and SSDs. We can customize the infrastructure servers.

From a cost perspective, they are much more beneficial for clients. We also get the pro deployment support from Dell for new deployments at the client's data center or service provider's data center, along with maintenance services until the end of the term.

Regarding sustainability goals, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers can be upgraded if they have a five-year warranty, and when they reach end-of-support life, they can be replaced with newer technology. Companies focus on upgrading existing servers to reduce costs and provide savings to the client.

As far as energy consumption is concerned, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers consume less energy compared to other servers. If you go with the HCI VxRail, the energy consumption is higher. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers consume less energy compared to other servers. They also come with thermal cooling nowadays, which also reduces the cost. It reduces the power consumption, or means KWA charges in data centers.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers do not require frequent downtime and can run continuously for up to one year without a hardware reboot. However, to reduce downtime, data centers should have redundancy or resiliency. All servers come with dual power supplies, and vendors provide hardware warranty and replacement within four hours for failed components. Downtime depends on the resiliency of the environment and server configuration. If HA is configured, any faulty hardware part can automatically fail over to another server. Resiliency is maintained at the VMware layer, so if a VM running on some servers goes down, it can move to other servers. 

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers enhance the overall flexibility of the operations. Based on the client's business objective and consumption requirements of the resources of CPU, memory, disk, and storage, we can customize Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We can offer a very competitive price to the client. We get a lot of options as well because multiple models are available in the market, and these servers are robust as well as reliable, and sustainable.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are good for the VDI environment. They are also good for the manufacturing industries, the healthcare sector, the financial sector, and the insurance sector. They are being used in multiple sectors.

The best features include CPU speed, as clients typically use 2.3 GHz CPUs. It provides multiple choices for CPU use and clock speed, ranging from 2.5 to 3.2 GHz. Regarding memory, it offers the latest memory sets for very fast access. The newer technology, after NVMe technology, ensures excellent performance with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. For external storage connectivity, it also supports HVA ports with speeds of 25 Gbps and 32 Gbps, which match network bandwidth, providing great performance and reduced latency. The servers also consume less energy compared to HCI VxRail.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have higher hardware costs compared to HPE ProLiant servers, which are cheaper. From reliability, performance, and sustainability perspectives, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have no match, but the price difference with other vendors is noticeable. 

If we look at the internal storage, Dell is much more expensive as compared to other vendors such as HPE.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for more than 10 years.

There are no stability issues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, and clients have good confidence in them.

Scaling up or down with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is easy, and vertical scaling is possible. Unlike VxRail, which requires adding new nodes for horizontal scaling, we can also deactivate CPUs in current technologies if they are underutilized.

I would rate their tech support a nine out of ten, as I have never faced any challenges.

Positive

It is very smooth because of the pro deployment services that Dell provides. It also depends on the client's environment and client infrastructure. Dell deployment is smoother than other vendors, as they do the rack stacking and cabling. They also test the hardware.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers provide clients with good cost savings and resale value, making them very cost-effective. Although there are differences in CPU clock speeds compared to other vendors, the reliability makes Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers the clients' choice.

Most clients are looking for currency savings as part of technology; they want to get away from tech debt. GenAI is taking good shape, so we work on automation or orchestration that we can offer to our clients and try to propose the best-in-class blended solution with emerging technologies. We prepare PoCs based on past experience and solutions provided to different clients. I work on the server side with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and Dell storage, mainly service storage and network-related products for top aggregation switches and management switches.

AI workloads depend on the client's requirements; however, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers can host them. Generally, we allocate three or four VMs to run AI applications such as Dynatrace and Ansible. For AI development, if a client opts for GenAI, it requires a longer time and more resources, as historical data requires substantial storage. We propose PowerStore servers for GenAI due to the increased processing power and storage requirements.

When considering Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers over a hyperscaler for AI computing, I would recommend hyperscaler servers for clients willing to invest in high performances. For high workloads, PowerScaler offers superior performance, speed, and agility.

I would recommend Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers if you want reliability, sustainability, and greater performance. You also get good technical support and maintenance support from Dell. With pro deployment, you can also get free deployment services from Dell.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a seven out of ten.

My team manages four data centers where we use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers to host our customers. We also use them ourselves for internal purposes. We have certain software platforms that we build in-house, which are homegrown, that we use on a daily basis on those servers. We also have some third-party software that we host on them that we use within the team.

As an automotive dealer management system provider, we provide hardware and software to automotive dealers using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We deploy a server on-site running Windows, and then our application along with the database. We can have it on-prem in the dealership, or if they prefer, we can host it, and we will do the same thing as a virtual machine in one of our data centers.

We really appreciate the security features that are built into the iDRAC within Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. They are modular, and we can build and request servers in the same way, whether it's now, six months from now, or a year from now. They're consistent. The user experience is consistent across them. It doesn't matter if you're logging into a T160 or a T350, or an older T330, that experience is the same across the board. Even with the new versions of iDRAC, technicians and our support teams are comfortable logging in and can navigate around easily enough without having to learn something new.

There are cost benefits of using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Since we buy many of them, plus they're smaller, they're very efficient regarding CPU and power. We can max out that process on that RAM and have it run four or five years without worrying about having any issues or thermal problems.

There is essentially no learning curve. The iDRAC features are heavily used for our out-of-band management with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Other servers have similar products, and having the license included with the server is beneficial rather than as an additional charge later.

We're working on implementing support agents and business intelligence work within the next year, currently determining our hardware needs and data storage requirements.

Due to the fact that we use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in both data centers and dealerships, we can move workloads seamlessly. If a dealership wants to move to a hosted environment, we can transfer that workload from the physical server directly to our data center, and vice versa.

New Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers consistently perform better as technology improves. The progression from 7200 RPM disks to 10K disks, 15K disks, and now to SSDs and NVMe storage has led to substantial improvements. As NVMe generations advance from Gen4 to Gen5, the throughput improves significantly. Newer servers with updated technology provide faster throughput, more IOPS, and less power consumption with solid-state storage. The newer Xeon processors are more power-efficient while handling increased workload.

I would prefer more flexibility when configuring Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Some challenges we see when looking for a server include wanting a two CPU server without necessarily needing a larger server. Perhaps a smaller server with more processor choices would be beneficial. On some of the smaller ones, you might not be able to get a larger 16-core processor, only an 8-core. This forces you to go up to a larger server to get the desired processor, which increases the cost. There's no real benefit to having that bigger chassis just for the sake of that processor.

We use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in both rack and tower configurations, and we have been using them for approximately 20 years.

When we encounter a performance issue with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, it's typically due to the fact that we've overloaded that server, or if we're running a virtual machine, we haven't added enough resources to that virtual machine. 

We experience hard drives wearing out approximately every five years. However, we don't have many issues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and rarely call support for hardware issues. 

Occasionally, a power supply or hard drive will fail, maybe a fan (things that are moving) however, other components such as RAM and CPU remain reliable. We have servers that we've had for seven years that are still operational.

For most of our customers, if they start to grow, we can exchange their Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. If they started with something a T160, a smaller server, and they need to grow, we may just add hard drives into that box. If they need more RAM, we can add that in there. If they need a larger server, we can move their workload over to a larger server and replace it. The process is really straightforward.

We currently have 650 employees and are growing.

Dell support is great. When we call them, there's usually a wait when placing the initial call, possibly half an hour before receiving a callback, but once we have a case created and a tech involved, we can email them back and forth, and they respond really quickly.

In situations where we have a harder issue impacting the server, having a faster response time would be beneficial, as many of these servers carry production workloads. If a drive fails and the storage array is in a degraded state with reduced capacity, waiting half an hour for support feels much longer.

Dell support rates nine out of ten.

Positive

We have examined other competitors, however, with the volume we buy, we get such a great deal from Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers that it isn't financially viable to switch.

When examining a potentially new Dell PowerEdge Rack Server, we typically receive one on a loaner basis. We examine the disk IOPS, as our application is heavily database-driven. High IOPS is important to ensure we can move data in and out of the database quickly. We examine the CPU and clock speed as well. We typically put one of our workloads on that server, and we have built-in metrics in the software that run against it, along with other benchmarks such as PassMark, which provides data we can compare to other servers to determine if the new server gives us equal or better performance compared to previous models.

Due to our purchase volume, Dell provides excellent service. We utilize their deployment services. For larger cluster servers, we use their deployment services to help build, spec, configure, and install. Their support is excellent. If we have an issue with the server, using the secure connect gateways, that server will automatically call home to Dell, open a ticket, and notify us of detected issues, such as an imminent hard drive failure. They automatically dispatch parts and potentially a technician.

We have seen a return on investment in Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers baserd on our volume purchasing, though exact numbers are not known.

Since we purchase Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in quantity, we receive a discount for buying many of them. As we replace aging servers with new ones, we return the older servers to Dell.

Specifically, when examining clustered servers, the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers solutions were superior overall. The benchmarks we ran showed higher scores on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers compared to competitive servers. It's not just about price; they actually perform better as well.

The overall rating for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is ten out of ten.

We have both the XE line servers in our data center that we're using for large language model. 

We also have, with our new fresh deployment going into stores, deploying four Nvidia L4 cards. We're doing inferencing at the edge for our Dell apps, for security stuff, for loss prevention. So a lot of AI work is going into that on those Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

Our partnership with Dell provides a consistent platform across our 1800 locations.

Dell is a critical partner for our company. We have a great partnership. They have excellent sales and technical teams, and their long-term support teams. They are very engaged with us. They help us work through things and they're also very competitive on pricing. It has been at or above industry grade for the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

I would increase the life cycle management and those life cycle management tools. I know that's a big focus of Dell now with their private cloud experience. And then also with the enhancements to OME that are coming down the line.

Speaking on the XE series specifically, the internal service to the system, if you need to get to a DIMM or anything similar, requires that you remove all three risers and the storage controller. It's not very internally service friendly.

We've been deploying Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers since 2021.

It has been at or above industry grade for the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

Everything from our original VX Rail stuff scaling out in our data center to just our edge platforms, which is a much smaller, four-node cluster, hasn't been an issue scaling.

We have dedicated support. We have a great representative, LaShonda, who helps us navigate that. We also have a TAM, a full-time TAM, Brandon, who does a great job of working with us to meet and talk about our concerns and issues that we see. 

It deserves a rating of ten out of ten. We have a great sales team. If we have questions, they're available 24/7. If we need escalations, they're there, they make it happen. We definitely enjoy that aspect of it.

Positive

It went through RFP and that gets cycled through. All the big players, HP, Dell, Lenovo, all those vendors get sorted through.

We've had no problem with the deployment of Dell. After deployment, we have joined Dell's managed services as well. 

We're getting a lot of efficiencies and increasing our density, especially as the product line matures. We've been able to shrink down our core counts to reduce our licensing at the edge. We are definitely seeing ROI on our investment.

The pricing in our case is very competitive and very good.

I can't think of anything specific to add regarding alternate solutions.

Rack is the model we're using and the kind of functionality we're employing. 

I would give Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers an overall rating of eight out of ten.

All of our server infrastructure is PowerEdge, and it's all HCI PowerEdge.

By having Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we wanted density. We wanted to have a small power and cooling footprint. That's why we have PowerEdge and VxRail.

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 automation built into OpenManage for firmware upgrades and life cycle management really helps us out.

I recommend not locking the GPU behind a different license for iDRAC. We've talked to the product team, and it hasn't changed yet. I don't understand why they do that because you can't get very many metrics out of iDRAC Enterprise, as you have to go to the Data Center for a GPU, which seems pointless.

I wouldn't change anything else since I haven't had any other headaches with the platform. I find the pricing and licensing on par with the market.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers at my current company for six years, and beyond that, probably 20.

The stability and reliability are extremely high. We rarely have failures even in places that aren't necessarily maintained. It's a workhorse.

Scalability is a big factor for us, along with time to deployment and ROI, which are all pretty significant.

We have 26,000 people in our organization, with about 400 people per venue.

I work with customer service and tech support all the time. My impressions from working with them on the PowerEdge side are very high. We've had some challenges around VxRail after the Broadcom stuff, but I have nothing bad to say about PowerEdge. 

I would rate their support an eight overall because it's still kind of a challenge for us. We're not tech direct currently, so it's challenging to call in and deal with the script response of 'have you tried turning it off and on again?' rather than getting escalated quickly. Better escalation would be nice, and quicker escalation would be appreciated.

Positive

Deploying the product is super easy. It's going to get easier, but for us, it's simply dropping it in a rack, powering it, networking it, and everything gets provisioned for what we need pretty quickly.

We have seen ROI. While I can't share metrics at scale, we have replaced a couple of venues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and replaced our VxRail. We project to save somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 million over the next three years when we get the rest of them done.

It's pretty much on par.

We evaluated Lenovo and Supermicro. Lenovo didn't have their eggs in the basket for any way to manage at scale, and Supermicro is kind of the same, plus there's just a big relationship with Dell that we can't ignore.

In terms of AI initiatives, a lot of our potential use cases revolve around players, as we're trying to figure out how we can leverage AI to better their experience, such as checking into the bay and giving them advice as they're going through their bay journey. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers can help with that because it is the platform our whole business runs on - it's the foundation. 

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine out of ten, as I never give a ten.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for as long as they have existed, in my opinion, so approximately 20 years. I am involved in working with Dell PowerEdge R-Series by doing system designs for our customers, choosing the systems, and since we also operate the systems in the data center for our customers, I also handle the operations.

My use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series are completely mixed, since we come from the publishing sector. Some are publishing systems, image editing systems, image systems, image archiving systems, web servers, and database servers, so really across the entire landscape.

I could not really say offhand which application I find the most valuable. As I said, I have been working with them for a very long time, and system management works very well.

System management works well for us in operations, and that is of course a key point for us. Otherwise, I would not know a single point that I could highlight.

It works so well due to our fairly long experience with it, and even when a new version comes out, we are integrated into it relatively quickly. Integration into third-party systems, monitoring, and other systems is also quite good.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series improves our company by supporting our work and our operations. The company itself does not become better or worse just because I would use another manufacturer. However, I have had very good experiences with Dell systems, and the price-performance ratio has always been great. In that respect, we have been quite satisfied over the years.

I cannot really say how Dell PowerEdge R-Series could be improved. The range of systems is quite large, from small to large, from one socket to two sockets and four sockets. There has always been a suitable system for us for each use case. The choice of CPUs, RAM configuration, and modifications is very large, partly even a bit too large, because I sometimes get lost in the configuration options, but nothing negative really stands out to me at this point.

In the server environment, it is probably more secondary, but what might actually be a small added value for Dell PowerEdge R-Series would be if there were also a server line that had higher graphics performance out of the box. For topics regarding terminal services, Citrix, and similar applications, I can install appropriate GPU accelerators, but sometimes that is already oversized. If the server itself had more graphics performance and GPU onboard, that would be an absolute added value, as I would have many use cases where I could use that, because the next step, an extra GPU with the licensing that comes with it, is a completely different cost level.

I have been working in this field for 33 years.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has always grown well with my company's needs in the past. We also have customer additions and departures, of course, whereby for the additions, relatively quickly relatively large quantities of systems must be procured. That has always worked well so far, and the delivery and the whole handling with Dell was always top-notch. There were no problems.

I would rate the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series as very good, with few defects. There is sometimes a defect in a system, especially since we have a large number, but that is really marginal.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series products grow with my needs.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is scalable for the company's long-term plans.

It fits because the portfolio of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is quite large. Even if we now got a relatively small customer who does not have the financial background to run large systems, I would still find something suitable in the Dell portfolio. That is different with some other manufacturers, but here the range is very broad, so that I can actually find the right thing for every use case and every budget.

For a company like mine, smaller in size, Dell PowerEdge R-Series contributes to growth and operational success through customers using more services or new customers joining. It supports our operations, and due to the reliability and good price-performance ratio, it helps, of course, but the company does not grow solely because of that.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate customer service as a nine. The support is good, and of course, we have little contact because we have few problems, but I have only heard positive things from my employees.

Positive

Compared to previous servers from HP, I would say it had a better price-performance ratio back then. However, today I no longer make the comparisons. The manufacturers all use similar components from similar suppliers. For CPUs, it is Intel and AMD, and there are not many alternatives, so the prices overall are probably similar. However, I have always had good experiences with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, so there is no reason to benchmark other manufacturers again and make a general switch, because we also have a large stock of Dell systems.

I used another solution for similar needs many years ago when we had HP systems in parallel with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, which are similar in their series to the Dell systems. However, that was so long ago that I cannot really verify or reference it anymore.

I no longer use those systems simply due to a strategic decision. We also had a small share of Fujitsu systems, and managing three system managements and three patch managements becomes too big for a small or medium-sized company. That means we decided to focus on one manufacturer, and in this case, it was Dell because my experience with the systems and the hardware was better than with the others, and the price-performance ratio was also somewhat better.

I was not involved in the deployment or initial setup of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, but I was involved in the sizing and procurement.

I have not seen a return on investment through Dell PowerEdge R-Series that can be measured in any way with data. We have a return on investment, otherwise our business model would not be profitable, but I could not give any exact figures. It can certainly be quantified, but it is not measured in detail. However, I am more the technical part of the whole story. That may be measured in other areas by our controlling, but I actually cannot prove it.

When I think about the pricing of Dell PowerEdge R-Series licensing, I see that the systems have certainly gone up quite a bit in price compared to about ten years ago. The technology behind it justifies the price accordingly. Purchasing a server nowadays is already different, purely financially, than a few years ago, but that may be similar in other areas. Software is also not exactly cheap.

At the moment, there are no AI initiatives in my company, and Dell PowerEdge R-Series does not support AI initiatives in any way. That may come in the future, though, as AI is certainly a topic at our company as well. However, it is purely in the application area and not actively operated by us ourselves. We are still waiting to see in which direction it goes and where use cases arise for our customers.

My company is not very big in terms of employees, as we have 60 employees. Customer base wise, we are at three to four thousand workplaces now.

I would not necessarily say that Dell PowerEdge R-Series has features specifically tailored to the needs of small or medium-sized businesses, but due to the modularity and different series, depending on company size, there is actually something for every need. If only high-end systems were on offer, then I would certainly look for another supplier, because we are more in the mid-range, such as R760 and R770 in various expansion stages. That is our bread-and-butter system. High-end systems, four sockets, or larger configurations are rather rare in our use cases.

I do not use performance indicators or benchmarks to measure Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

I cannot name a specific example where the product has improved my business outcome, as nothing comes to mind right now.

I would rate this review with a rating of nine.

My company's use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series include virtualization, backup, and administrative tasks, such as management and patch management.

For small or medium-sized companies, VX-Rail, which is based on Dell PowerEdge R-Series, has definitely contributed to growth and business success. We have been able to use significantly more storage, the systems became much faster, and thanks to redundancies, downtimes have dropped to zero. We haven't had any major IT outages for six years now thanks to Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series definitely has features specifically tailored to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. iDRAC helps the local administrator monitor the system, temperatures, system status, and similar metrics. It reports to different systems, and the adaptability of the system and its manageability is very good.

The feature I consider the most valuable about Dell PowerEdge R-Series is iDRAC, which is a very important system for remote management, allowing me to control, monitor, and manage the server. Apart from that, the product quality is enormous, and failures are virtually non-existent. Support services from Dell are very good, and it's consistently positive. It's basically always a well-rounded package.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has improved my company, even though it's difficult to measure whether there was an improvement since we define our workloads ourselves. Downtimes are minimized, even though none have occurred so far, but when they do, they are very short thanks to the appropriate support services. I can always rely on the systems; they're always available, and in terms of support, I always quickly reach someone who can help me further without any problems.

Nothing comes to mind spontaneously about what could be improved with Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

I actually find nothing currently missing in this area because you can configure the servers accordingly when ordering, and you get everything you need in that sense.

There's not much about the support that I could still improve; there was this one isolated case where I had an issue and they couldn't really help me, but otherwise, I think overall, I'm very satisfied. The nine is just to ensure they don't forget to keep making an effort; I couldn't name anything specific.

I find nothing specific that needs to be improved, but I agree there is still room for improvement.

I have been working in this field for twenty-two years, regardless of the position I currently have.

Regarding reliability and stability, I can confirm that I don't experience crashes, outages, or performance issues. Sure, things can fail, and anything can break. That's why, as an IT administrator, I build in redundancies. Hardware failures have not led to any work stoppage, so I have full satisfaction in this area.

Dell products grow with the needs of the company and are scalable for our long-term plans. The projects we've done with Dell so far are always set up to provide scalability. In those projects, they look at the current workload to size the products sensibly and ensure there are options available for further growth, whether that's through adding more hard drives, expanding network cards, or adding graphics cards for other workloads—all are possible.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series grows with the needs of the company, and I have expanded it at some point.

The expansion works perfectly, and it was problem-free.

Support services from Dell are very good, and it's consistently positive.

I always quickly reach someone who can help me further without any problems.

Compared to the previous servers, the support services were worse back then. Dell servers are naturally more expensive because the support is included in the price, but you know what you're getting for it.

I would rate Dell's support in general as a nine or ten.

That's also the rating for Dell PowerEdge R-Series support in this case.

Positive

What distinguishes Dell PowerEdge R-Series from other servers is my previous experience with servers from a small German distributor called ICO, which were more or less self-built and couldn't really compete with Dell in terms of quality and support services. I haven't really had servers from other major players like HP or Lenovo in my hands so far.

I had another solution before from the German manufacturer ICO, somewhere in southern Germany, who supplied us with servers.

I switched because it was a project to move into virtualization; we hadn't used that before. That was around 2010 or 2012, and the existing provider couldn't offer us anything good there, so together with Dell, we set up a good project to create a virtualization environment.

Our system infrastructure used to be set up on individual servers, referred to as terminal servers for our employees. Thanks to the VX-Rail series, we were able to make that fully redundant. It was at least as performant, if not faster, and we have gained 100% fail-safety. Before, outages were factored in—if there had been a failure, we would have had a full day of downtime, which we no longer need to plan for.

I was involved in the deployment and setup as well.

I find it very difficult to quantify whether I have seen a return on investment by using the new Dell servers compared to before.

However, from my gut feeling, I can definitely say it has been worth it financially to switch. Through process optimization, faster workloads, functions, and scalability, we have definitely gained, and we didn't have to buy additional individual servers—we could simply scale up within the infrastructure without having to throw a lot more money at it.

It's difficult to estimate how long it took until that return on investment, time to value, was reached. For what we bought last year, it will definitely still take some time; I think it will take about two to three years until the full ROI should be reached.

I am very satisfied with the pricing since I order directly from Dell itself and not through a system integrator, placing me in a very attractive price range for the servers. Of course, a lower price is nice, but it's not something I really need to focus on.

I would say the pricing of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is fair; you're not being ripped off. Licensing is always a bit of an issue when it comes to third-party vendors. For example, VMware at Broadcom was a big topic in IT last year due to the enormous price increases, and we paid four times the price for licenses at the end of last year. Otherwise, Microsoft is priced normally, where you usually still get a special offer to save another 100 euros, but in a complete project, that usually doesn't make a big difference.

I did consider other solutions before deciding on Dell and obtained other quotes.

What stood out to me with the others is that all the big manufacturers are comparable in that sense; they may differ in software or support services. From my experience in the small-business space, I can say that Dell is actually the best in terms of support, followed by HP, and only behind that comes Lenovo. I've had support cases with all of them in the small-business segment.

We do have AI initiatives in our company, but they are outsourced; we don't have any AI developers or similar in-house, so nothing is running locally on Dell PowerEdge R-Series either.

Everything related to AI is outsourced for us, and we are only end users in that sense.

My company has around one hundred employees.

I can provide a specific example where Dell PowerEdge R-Series has noticeably improved business operations. My overall rating for this review is nine out of ten.

My main use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series are virtualization, database, and web applications.

Dell PowerEdge plays a role in my company's AI initiatives as we have started the initiative. We are not fully there yet, but we are learning as we go with all the PowerEdge series. We are still trying to start getting more AI platform for next year.

In my AI initiative, I see Dell PowerEdge R-Series playing a role in the more exploratory phases. Once the data is fed into it, it evolves and learns the data and then tells us how to behave from a scientist point of view and from the user perspective.

The feature of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I appreciate the most is the flexibility, the expansions, and the resiliency. These features benefit my company because fewer hardware problems result in more uptime for the users. It helps everyone in a 24/7 operational environment.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series could be improved by expanding the slots and local disks. This is the main area for improvement because I have many environments where I need local space, and the slots limit how much I can accomplish.

In my role with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I have been using it for approximately 15 years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series as decent, although we did experience some downtime, crashes, or performance issues. The 740 model had some problems, but as we worked with back engineering, they understood the issue. This made it better when we got the 760s and new series, which performed very well.

The problem was mainly CPU related, involving Intel and Dell firmware.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series scales well with the growing needs of my company. We have hundreds, probably close to 500 or 600 Dell PowerEdge R-Series 760 units, and we can perform vertical and horizontal scaling without issue. It fits right in with our infrastructure.

I would rate customer service and technical support a 10 out of 10 because the technical support is fantastic. When I call them, they are always responsive. They conduct working sessions with me, which is very helpful. Additionally, I have a local presence of Dell representatives on-site, which facilitates things for me.

Positive

Before using Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we had an IBM solution, but it was very limited at one percent adoption.

I considered other solutions in my journey to switch. We used to be an HP shop, and then we switched to HP for the V-series and other solutions.

The deployment experience of Dell PowerEdge R-Series was very smooth with no issues. I run it out of the box with a few clicks and it is done.

The biggest return on investment when using Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that we use them longer. Normally, our lifecycle is five years, but sometimes we have extended it up to seven years on the same hardware with no issues. This allows us to take a more long-term approach rather than having to replace hardware every three to five years.

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I would say it is industry standard. I would not call it super expensive, and Dell is generous with discounting. They help us accommodate what we need, and they are very good about it.

I have evaluated other CPU vendor systems, and AMD was pushing harder in the earlier phases, but it never went anywhere. We pretty much stick with Intel.

The selling point for Intel is that we were accustomed to it. Bringing new solutions into the environment meant migrating everything, including application reliability and performance, which was too much effort. We had to stay with it, and AMD lagged behind in certain aspects.