Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

I use the solution primarily for software-defined networking, and there are some AI workloads present as well. We started last year, but previously, it was mostly about software-defined networking and private clouds. We mainly used OpenStack. These are the main use cases I run with PowerEdge.

It's quite good at handling diverse applications. I don't have any complaints about that. It's very smooth.

We have not experienced any security incidents or vulnerabilities with PowerEdge Servers.

Dell PowerEdge has reduced operational overheads in terms of support and operations build.

I am a fan of its ability to handle the evolving needs of high-performance workloads. It's very demanding. I mostly use it with a CPU load of nearly eighty to ninety percent, with workloads where we take the maximum output from the servers on the cloud. It has been sustainable and reliable in terms of compute.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped reduce our downtime by a lot. The production downtimes are mostly planned. My system is designed in a resilient way, but with PowerEdge Servers, I don't need a one-to-one ratio redundancy, which leads to about eighty percent downtime reduction. It has also reduced operational overheads related to support and operations.

I like that it is stable. Things become very difficult over time when you increase the security. In Dell's case, it is very stable, and I like that it's very process-oriented.

The security is on par to the global standard. We always get market standard security. Upgrades run smoothly and seemlessly.

Their biggest strength is their stability under heavy workloads and their long term reliability. I don't think they have any weaknesses. 

The solution can be improved in terms of firmware backward supportability. With the sixteenth generation servers I am using, slightly older kernels and drivers are not supported. I have to use the latest OS because the drivers and particular support are not there. 

The rack port supportability for the latest PowerEdge servers is not great. Until the fourteenth generation, I never faced this issue. From the fifteenth and sixteenth generations, this issue has started occurring. 

These servers are not very adaptive to the multiple GPU model. I can insert at most two GPUs. While the Dell server in terms of compute is capable of handling multiples, the physical design does not allow more in terms of placement space.

I have used the solution for the last six years.

The stability is quite good. I have no complaints about it as it is very smooth.

The scalability of the solution is very easy. The process is seamless.

The customer service was good in certain aspects, but I mostly had services where things became complex because of the software-defined networking applications. They use things differently, so I have to consult first and make arrangements. Designing and all those parts take time, so customer service can be improved in terms of timing.

Positive

I have used Cisco, HP, and Supermicro in the past. PowerEdge was not originally selected for stability and hardware compatibility,

We use Dell deployment services for the storage solutions, not for PowerEdge.

There is a return on investment because I have been using them for the last four or five years. ROI is there, but it's a complex assessment when considering the return on investment from the hardware. It's part of a complete solution where I would assess this aspect.

The total cost of ownership for support and operations has reduced significantly. In terms of stability, I seldom encounter support cases or operational costs. They have been stable and running for years without performance downtime or significant disc failures, providing me an edge in operational and support costs.

My advice to anybody considering Dell PowerEdge is to check the new ranges which are more adaptive towards AI. The R750 and R760 are general-purpose servers, so they need to look into AI-specific servers where more GPUs can be incorporated. On PowerEdge Servers specifically, the benefits are clear. I would rate them nine out of ten.

We use them as cluster nodes for virtualization purposes.

I find the flexibility of the build-out in Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers very valuable because we can do different things based on the use case. This flexibility is highlighted by being able to reduce CPU count, RAM count, and the number of drives depending on the site's importance. Additionally, using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers exclusively provides a single source for replacements, assistance, and support. We have a good partnership with our distributor. We've got really good support with them.

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. It'd be nice to get the volume down so that we can use these a little bit more frequently in other use cases where there's maybe a nearby office environment.

One thing that might be a little bit of an improvement is the faceplates. It can't be that expensive to have the LCD screen on all faceplates. We've gotten into this situation where we didn't have the faceplates. We like them. We buy them, but they don't come with the LCD screen. We then have to rebuy those, so it would be nice to have that standardized across the fleet because it can't cost that much more.

I personally have been using or working with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for about two years.

They have been rock solid for us; we haven't had power supply failures. The drives seem to be the area of most concern, but if we look at the MTBFs on them, they're above industry standard. We don't have a huge install base, so we're not really that good at evaluating that, but drive improvement is definitely something we could look at for the future. We talked to them about some opportunities to test some of their stuff in our lab environment.

Our organization has more than 6,000 people. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale very well with the growing needs of my company. For our current use case, it's very good, and some of the improvements we've seen in storage density and power efficiency gains will only help us.

It has been good. I'd rate them at least a nine out of ten. There was a little hiccup where they sent one of our drives to a location that doesn’t exist anymore, but we don't know exactly why it went there. We might have to check with our account holders that all of our addresses have been updated and get a bit more contact on some of the things that we don't really review as often as we possibly should.

Positive

Everything worked really smoothly. They're easy to rack, and I love the rack systems as they are very easy to use and to move. We do a lot of moving of equipment, and having that ability is really good. We encourage them to continue to keep their racking systems the same and include them in the purchase. That's really big and helpful.

It was before my time, but even now, we're always looking because we have to make sure that we are not vendor locked and missing opportunities. HPE is another big example of something that we would look at. I'm not sure if we are looking at anything else, but we have been looking at the ruggedized version of Dell's product line, including both the XR and some new ones we saw at the conference, which we're going to maybe talk to our vendor about having some demos done for us.

In comparisons between HPE and Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, support really stands out; it's been a little more difficult because our enterprise side of the house is HPE primarily. I don't know if that's a function of HPE or our company's relationship, but Dell, being our sole source through our distributor, has provided us with very good support and response.

The performance metric or benchmark we use to measure success is whether it works. If it's not working, then we have bigger problems. Dell has just been very helpful. We don't have a lot of maintenance that we have to worry about. We have the occasional failure of a drive, but the response time is incredible. We're pretty happy with the product.

My advice for any other company considering Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is that the proof is in the execution: just buy them. You can either go based on a salesman's word or just buy some and use them, and you're going to be pleasantly surprised.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine out of ten. They're on the right track. They're asking the right questions, and we'll keep working with them to try and make everything as good as it can be.

We use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers to manage all of our data. We have a lot of data that comes in. We're from the insurance industry, so we've managed data for 30 plus years of claimants who need to file claims for insurance for their property and homes. That needs a system that's robust, reliable, and secure. We looked at high availability servers by getting Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

The benefits of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are its resilience, cost-effectiveness, and easy manageability. Our IT professionals are quite familiar with the technology, and we receive great customer support as well. We appreciate the resiliency because we can spread out our load of service between three hosts. That gives us redundancy if we need to do maintenance, or if we have an issue with any of the memory or hard drives in any of the servers. The storage itself is built with plenty of RAID, which means that data corruption and data loss are reduced significantly.

It has benefited us by eliminating downtime. Our servers have been resilient, and we've been able to do maintenance without any issues. We have truly not had any downtime on the infrastructure at all, whereas before we implemented this resilience, there were occasional downtimes that the organization needed to deal with.

The only challenge we have with the product is keeping it in line with VMware, knowing that VMware has now gone with a different provider. We're in this race with the software versus hardware compatibility. With Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we knew where we stood with some of the parts. 

Licensing is also an issue, as we don't know what the costs are, what licenses we have, and whether the pricing will change. There's no transparency in what's happening or how our support works with VMware. They could improve by coming back and managing, maintaining it with a periodic check. For instance, after installation, they could return a year later to verify we're still applying best practices.

We have been using this particular solution for about four years.

We have been able to do maintenance without any issues. We have truly not had any downtime on the infrastructure at all, whereas before we implemented this resilience, there were occasional downtimes that the organization needed to deal with.

The system has provided operational success by eliminating downtime. The resilience is really the key part that we focused on. If we want to enhance our services, the support has been great. We bought our product with scaling involved, and we've been scaling it up anytime we've needed more storage. The price point for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is easily configurable. You can have a small business to an enterprise level, depending on what you want to build it with. This makes it easy because we can buy something and scale it up to a larger business if we grow.

With Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, there is no one better in the industry for tech support service. I can vouch for having experiences working with other companies that have had different technologies and different support, and working with them is a completely different experience than working with Dell. That's what separates Dell from the other competitors. The Dell support is far better than anyone I've experienced.

Positive

We were required by our organization to have three reviews of competitors, and Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers came out ahead. HPE was one of them, and the third may have been Cisco UCS options. It was all standard, standalone servers per solution. That led us to go into the virtual environment.

It's easy to manage Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers because Dell makes it straightforward. The interfaces from the different storage and servers that we've used haven't changed too much. The deployment services we get in the beginning mean that we are onboarded quite effectively to the point that we can self-serve.

The solution deserves a rating of 10 out of 10. It's really that good. The Dell support is far better than anyone I've experienced. 

My company's use case involves being a distributor and a reseller. 

I used to manage an IT company where we integrated servers and created multidisciplinary projects using servers, storage, networking solutions. I was mostly distributing and reselling Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers to both SMBs and enterprises. 

The specific use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series included everything from data storage to file systems. 

For AI initiatives, I sold Dell PowerEdge R-Series, yet we needed more complex solutions for AI with graphics cards.

I consider the most valuable aspect of Dell PowerEdge R-Series to be its reliability, which is the key feature; it is a good machine.

The rack servers are beneficial for small businesses and can grow with them, depending on the physical solution they need, specifically regarding the footprint they have in their offices. If they have a server room and can put a cabinet, it works perfectly. If they have a very small office, they would probably require a tower solution.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series can improve on its flexibility; having more flexible options would be beneficial. Their strength and weakness simultaneously is having built solutions, and the lack of customization in the more affordable models can be somewhat limiting.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series needs to improve its flexibility with more options. Dell is trying to find their identity, and in recent years, they seem to be searching for their company identity with their core brands, struggling to be more flexible and adapt to the changing world.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers for about ten or 15 years.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series usually does not have much downtime. We did experience downtime with them, as every electronic product has downtime. However, Dell PowerEdge R-Series is typically the better solution.

I have worked with Dell PowerEdge R-Series technical support extensively. 

My experience with them depends on the times; sometimes it was good, sometimes it was bad. Dell PowerEdge R-Series could improve by paying more to their technicians and hiring better professionals. 

I would rate the customer support from Dell PowerEdge R-Series as seven out of ten. There was a time when I would rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series support as ten; however, in the past few years, it has been around seven.

Positive

I used performance metrics to measure success based on improved performance, scalability, downtime reduction, and financial costs. Some companies saw ROI with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, while others did not, though most did. It needs to be examined in a broader spectrum, not just one to three years. After five to seven years, the ROI becomes apparent.

From my experience with pricing and licensing, Dell PowerEdge R-Series is typically more expensive than the competition, sometimes for valid reasons and sometimes without justification.

Currently, I am looking for my next role and am not actively distributing and reselling Dell PowerEdge R-Series. 

I rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series nine out of ten.

We have a production setup in a factory for some of our services. The server can be a database server, file server, or even the Active Directory. We have multiple applications running on these servers, and we are very satisfied with these servers.

We are mostly using the 600 series.

Dell is certainly innovating. With the latest servers and technologies, I believe they are well aligned with the current need for AI solutions and the market demand.

We receive regular firmware updates ensuring security. We are quite satisfied with the updates and security. Dell also offers the Dell Assist feature which automatically keeps updating to the latest version available on the Dell website.

We have not experienced any security incidents or vulnerabilities with these servers.

These servers have been robust throughout their lifespan of five years, but I have observed that they work well even beyond that. Some companies continue using models that are expired because they have no reason to replace them based on the expiry date of the hardware.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have had a positive impact on our organization's sustainability goals. We are very satisfied with these servers as well as with their service. Good service has a big impact on the product as well. If you have a good product but do not get good service, it creates a negative experience. Both need to be there.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime by about 25%.

OpenManage console has an excellent user interface to configure and use servers effectively. It is a nice tool, but we are not utilizing it much. My understanding is that it is going to be discontinued.

We are very satisfied with Dell in terms of servers and service. We are happy with Dell servers. They are aligned with our services. They are robust. So far, we have found Dell to be the best vendor. Everything works fine and upgrades are also timely. They are also always innovating.

When interacting with customer support, it defaults to Arabic because of our region. However, most of the experts here are not familiar with Arabic. We would like English as an alternative language for easy interaction. 

Additionally, after the expiration of support, it is sometimes challenging to find parts like hard drives, especially for obsolete models. 

They are moving from OMSA to iDRAC, but iDRAC is complex, requiring additional plugin tools. These requirements make it a bit complicated. Other vendors are better in this aspect. They should provide a better way of access.

I have been with my company for nine years, and we have been using Dell PowerEdge Servers since then.

It is robust and flexible. It continues to work with the same performance even after the end of support.

It works well and does not need much downtime for maintenance. There is a feature to update the server while it is running, so there is no need to restart. It improves production performance.

It is quite easy to scale. It has impacted the flexibility of our operations in a good way.

We are very satisfied with the professional support. The language support can be better. Other than that, it is good. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have been using Dell for more than 15 years. We initially used IBM and then HP for a short period. HP had some service issues, which led us to move back to Dell. We chose Dell because of the service and robustness of the server.

Deployment is quite easy with Dell because it has a life cycle feature. This single module helps in configuration from the initial phase. That is one of the best features.

We have an in-house team for deployment. We mainly rely on partners for purchases, but we have technical experts within our organization.

The ROI of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is quite good. If rated out of five, I would say four.

It is hard to measure the total cost of ownership because we have a distributed environment. We have multiple offices and the budget is split.

We are at an entry level in terms of using AI. We are looking into automating things and making our process more efficient. We have not run any AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge servers. Data security is our main concern when it comes to AI. For implementing AI, we need to consider the security and auditing aspects. 

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

My company is a reseller and integrator. We function as a system integrator. 

We resell services to SMB mostly, covering different use cases from financial to IT, and we have several clients in the crypto markets as well. 

The SMBs that I'm installing this for a range from 50 employees to 200. They need the server specifically for an on-premise setup of infrastructure.

In Dell PowerEdge R-Series, the most valuable feature is the management. It began with Dell OpenManage, and today it's the cloud-managed service. This is the most value of Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers. 

Mostly, organizations get Dell PowerEdge R-Series for the very strong maintenance and support contracts Dell has in Israel. And of course, the OpenManage platform. 

The benefits of the OpenManage platform include integration to SIEM, to RMM tools that our clients are using. 

It provides a very visible point of view on the whole infrastructure, not only for servers but also for storage, servers, and all the add-ons.

If I could improve Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, I would definitely focus on integration to third-party products such as HP and others. Many of our clients not only rely on both Dell and on other services as well, including cloud services such as AWS and Azure. More integration to third-party services would be a great upgrade. I don't have something specific that I remember regarding the interoperability that isn't working right now, but I believe more integration equals more value.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for about 20 years.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series product is overall very stable, very mature, and support is excellent. This is the main reason we continually choose Dell over the competition.

We find that the product can scale with their workloads. Scalability with Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very easy because Dell has a wide range of services, both hardware and software. We can easily scale with hardware by adding more racks or more capacity to a single platform. With software, it's also very scalable with OpenManage. We can add more servers to one platform.

I have worked with customer support. In my opinion, customer support is very good. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate it a nine. I rate it a nine as, from time to time, there are downs. Mostly they are okay.

Positive

The pricing and licensing of Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers are market competitive. They're okay. There are ups and downs when it comes to comparing them to the competition. Overall, they're okay. I've been in the business for a long time.

There's always room to improve. On a scale of one to 10, I would rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series a nine, which is very good.

We've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for a long time, and they are really the workhorse behind the scenes for our business, whether it's documents or something else. In the past, it was our ERP system, our SQL Server, and nowadays, besides that, we also do some production technology stuff, some PLCs, some data collection, so Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers run all that technology behind our business.

Our use case for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers includes our SQL Server that runs our ERP system, as well as typical office tasks like Excel files, Word documents, and marketing materials; basically, typical file storage, and our PLC analytic systems that we run.

We've about 130 people in our organization. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have supported our growth. We've had tremendous growth, increasing probably by four times when I started, so Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have been behind the scenes, enabling us to grow the business. When we started, we were a small business, and we've now grown into the medium business range. We use a lot of enterprise features that small businesses don't. It has been great that PowerEdge was there when we were a small business, and now that we are a medium-sized business, there is still a solution for us.

My favorite features of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have been the redundancy and reliability. The redundancy built into the system allows us to replace components like a hard drive without shutting the server down, and that has always been the best feature ever. 

We've quadrupled in size since we started, which is a great story showing how PowerEdge servers have enabled that growth over the years.

To improve Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I would like to see the return of the dedicated Hyper-V cluster storage product line that was discontinued, which I found to be a really nice product. The beneficial aspect of that feature was that we could skip the PowerStore and just have the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers alone, as they also served as storage, which helped us save money.

We've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers longer than I've been with the company. I've been with the company for 20 years, and we've been a PowerEdge customer since before.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have been able to scale with our growing needs. We've grown about four times compared to when I started, and as technology has advanced, so have we, with PowerEdge always providing a solution.

I find Dell's customer service and technical support exceptional. All the support personnel have been very knowledgeable and quick to respond, making overall support great with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and the enterprise products.

Positive

Before Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I don't know what they were using.

They are easy to deploy. Deploying Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers was made easier with ProDeploy; I've deployed servers in the past, but I prefer to focus on high-level stuff now, and having ProDeploy take care of the deployment was really helpful.

It's just my team of three maintaining Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

We have seen a return on investment through the redundancy and reliability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, which keep the technology running seamlessly in the background. My managers do not have to worry about it at all. As long as it keeps running, no one else in the company knows it's there, and that is the best testament to the product.

The pricing of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has been a little problematic. It was sticker shock with our most recent purchase compared to the previous one, and there's a gap in pricing at our current level because what we do isn't very compute-intensive, resulting in a mismatch where we fit into an in-between category without an exact solution available. We don't need a lot of processor power or a lot of memory. We need a medium amount of those, but the solutions available are a little bit too large for us.

We have evaluated other solutions from time to time, but we use a lot of Dell products, so it's always made sense to go with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

With Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, right-sizing the equipment is important. I've found that many IT people overestimate their needs in terms of compute and memory, so utilizing Dell's tool to determine current usage and discussing the company's trajectory with C-level executives helps in making informed decisions for future growth. I don't know the name of that tool off the top of my head, but all the Dell reps know it and recommend running it when purchasing new equipment.

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

My primary use case for Dell PowerEdge R-Series rack servers in my company is as a hypervisor.

The iDRAC interface of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very convenient and easy to use. It provides a GUI to manage the server, check the status of health, make RAID, etc.

Besides ease of use, I appreciate all these other features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series as they are intuitive and ready to go. I don't need to configure for hours; I just plug it in, configure two or three things, power cycle it, and that's it. I'm good to go. It's fast. I don't spend a lot of time configuring the product. I'm using my time to evolve the business.

With many Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, my company realizes the benefit of seeing all of them in one interface, and they integrate greatly with Dell storage, so everything works harmoniously. It's one panel for managing all of them, so I don't need to log into every one of them.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series could improve by focusing the servers to optimize their performance for Kubernetes clusters or something similar might be beneficial.

I've been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series rack servers for around five to six years.

We will be expanding usage. 

I would assess the customer service for Dell PowerEdge R-Series as excellent. In Israel, it's with the Yael group, and they're all great. I had laptops when I started as a help desk engineer, and I had many laptops that needed replacements, and their service was pretty easy; they came on-site and switched the parts. I once needed a RAID card for a server, and it was pretty straightforward and fast. Great service overall.

Positive

Before switching to Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I used HP.

I didn't have a lot of challenges at all with the deployment. I worked with Dell and iDrac for six years already. It's retty straightforward. It's pretty easy.

I approximate that our performance has improved by between 20 to 30%.

I don't have experience with pricing.

I didn't consider other vendors before selecting Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

My advice to someone considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series depends on their needs first of all. If it's going to be a web server or something general-purpose, then they can go for the low tiers such as R400, or possibly now R500, or R340 and 50 and 60 it's fine. 

If they want to leverage for more AI usage, they should go for the more robust servers that integrate; they do have two or four card GPUs of Nvidia Tesla, which work really well, for example, for rendering live cameras for intrusion detection and things similar to this. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series a nine out of ten.