Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

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.

We currently have about 70 Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers. In almost every product today there are some AI features. We create a kind of Harbor automated container handling on the harbors, and we run simulations and testing our product. Dell PowerEdge R-Series serves as our virtualization platform.

We are using the iDRAC connection to manage those servers. The biggest benefit that I see from the product is that those are very reliable. Reliability is the most positive impact.

There are some small problems with latency. The only reason we have too slow disks for today is that when those were purchased, the situation was okay. Now we are moving to SSDs and faster disks for the new servers.

There are minor hiccups on the servers detecting USB stick, but that is rather easy to resolve using network boot.

Another issue is memory price, which makes it quite expensive to scale. Memory pricing is probably global. This is probably the only thing that could be considered as a negative part of the product.

10 years.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is a relatively stable product and very stable.

Even though the solution is on-premise, it is scalable. The current most critical reason for not upgrading is because memory price has been increasing a lot currently. Scaling is quite expensive. It is rather easy to buy new servers, but pricing may not be so good. If pricing goes too high, we can always think about using cloud services, but currently it is cheaper on-premise.

I have interacted with technical support from Dell. My experience with support is very positive, and I always get the help I need. I would rate my experience with support somewhere between eight and nine out of ten. I am very pleased.

Positive

Before Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we were using HP over ten years ago. The reason why we changed HP for Dell is because we changed our companies. In this company they were using HP before, but I have never used that one. I have been working here.

Installation is pretty much straightforward. Sometimes we have minor hiccups on the servers detecting USB stick, but that is rather easy to resolve using network boot.

When we were installing the product, it was done in-house.

We have done almost yearly comparison to use cloud on our environment, but it is much more expensive using cloud than servers on our premises.

For our cases, the pricing is very competitive compared to others. We have stayed on Dell mainly because we have a lot of those, but most comparison we have done. At some point, there was HP, but that was before I worked here, and then there was Pure Storage, which was probably the latest comparison.

I have read reports on PeerSpot about Dell PowerStore and Pure Storage, some comparison that was conducted. We just got Dell PowerStore. It is not yet in use, but it is powered up and we are configuring it. So far I have not much experience with Dell PowerStore.

I have not been working with any other storage before Dell PowerStore. This is our first purchase.

My main responsibility includes those servers. I have been working primarily with Dell servers in the past years.

I am working with rack servers. Those are Dell R-Series.

So far so good with the product itself. That is one part with AI. Dell PowerEdge R-Series has suitable solutions for small to enterprise because we have also small physical servers and big ones, and they provide what you need for a suitable solution.

We buy Dell products directly from Dell currently. We buy servers when there is a need to do more testing based on the demands on or the DevOps team internal customers.

My overall rating for this review is 9 out of 10.

We developed software for a company and deployed it using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers. The workload is not too much, with concurrent users around 400 or 500, and it is working fine for them. So far, no issues have occurred.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is overall a good, stable product that is not giving us any failures. Based upon the processing power required, it serves our purpose well. With 500 users doing CRUD operations, it is serving the purpose well.

The Intel processor in Dell PowerEdge R-Series handles our workload very well compared to what we expected. We are using a three-server cluster, and the overall computing resource being consumed is less than 5 or 10%. This is a very powerful server for our workload.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very stable and reliable, provided you do IT management such as performing regular service on the hardware every few months. It is quite stable and good, and it is recommended for the workload that is basically required within the bounds of the computing power that it offers.

The iDRAC feature is really good, especially the alarms. If any hardware failure occurs, we get an alarm and then we take the correct actions. It is a good feature.

I do not see any technical areas of improvement. Dell PowerEdge R-Series is already a very good product, but the cost is a bit on the higher side. The pricing is the only thing that concerns me today and is a bit overpriced.

We have been working with the product for four-plus years.

We have never experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues with Dell PowerEdge R-Series. Overall, we are satisfied. We do some routine service of the hardware every few months, which is the crucial part.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series scales very well with the needs of our organization. For 500 users, only 5 to 10% of the computing power is being utilized, and most of it is sitting idle. It is handling it very well.

Regarding technical support from Dell, we did not have to contact them. We are not able to comment on that at this moment.

Neutral

Before Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we have worked with other similar products, but we always try to use Dell as the main provider because of the reliability. We have used 410s and 610s as well, and these 710s were really good.

Our experience with deployment of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that it is not very complex. All we had to do was install it in racks as it was pre-built. We had to configure the system and connect the cables. That is all it required.

Regarding ROI for Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we are satisfied with the ROI.

Our experience with pricing for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that it is a little on the expensive side. That comes with the Intel side of things, but overall, we think it justifies the price because it is durable and it is working well. We have no issues.

We have a practice of using hardware from reliable sources and reliable vendors, which is the reason we prefer Dell. They do provide good customer support, which is what we have heard. That is the reason behind using Dell.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is mostly deployed on-premise.

Our company is a medium-size one with about 500 to 800 users, and the client's company was roughly 500 users.

Dell PowerEdge has features for SMB customers. For small and medium businesses, it is a good fit.

We did not have to use any specific features, just some computing power with the network and the IO from the IoT devices. It serves the purpose, and Dell PowerEdge already has good features. This review has been given a rating of 9.

We often use Dell PowerEdge R-Series in virtualization, which means we install Hyper-V clusters on them. Sometimes we also use them standalone if it's just a small domain controller or SQL server, so there is a wide variety of areas where Dell PowerEdge R-Series are used, but virtualization is the most common application.

When customers want to set up fail-safe infrastructures with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we usually use two or three at once, which may also be located in different parts of the building and protected in terms of fire protection. However, any other server would do the same.

I see reliability as the most valuable function with Dell PowerEdge R-Series because they are truly durable. Our virtualization projects run for at least five years before they are replaced. There are very few defects and the support from Dell is excellent, which is one of the most important things about Dell since the support works great.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has improved our company through its reliability and scalability. These servers can be easily expanded upwards after two or three years and can grow with the company.

Generally, the scalability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is outstanding. There is everything from very small to very large models, so we can select the model that our company needs. We can size exactly the right model based on our customer's budget and requirements.

Not much distinguishes Dell PowerEdge R-Series from other servers.

Something can always go wrong somewhere with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, so there will never be a 100% perfect product; product defects are completely normal.

Support could be escalated upwards a bit faster for Dell PowerEdge R-Series. It stays too long at the lower support levels before it is passed on to real specialists. If our partner opens a call for Dell PowerEdge R-Series, they have already checked a lot, and we could actually start at a higher support level more quickly.

We have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for four to five years.

I would have to think about it longer to see if there were any real breakdowns, but the servers just run. Either they have an issue right from the start that has to be fixed in the firmware, but once they are running, a Dell PowerEdge R-Series server that runs for a year usually runs for five years as well.

This has happened with Dell PowerEdge R-Series where we experienced some hardware issues right from the start, where something did not fit or firmware versions were incompatible, but then that is a delivery error that gets corrected and after that the machine runs.

Crashes and outages always happen, but whether the hardware of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is responsible or Windows running on it needs to be determined. In case of defects, we have very good support that quickly ensures the machine runs again.

We do not have to buy a new server just because our company has grown. Usually in the existing chassis of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, there is still room to retrofit things.

Even if it is just new disk space or more RAM for Dell PowerEdge R-Series, the CPUs are usually oversized anyway and have more performance than the company needs, so we can get along very well, even with fast-growing companies.

I would rate Dell support for Dell PowerEdge R-Series around nine. There is always room for improvement.

The support for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is excellent. We always have the comparison with other manufacturers. There is no longer the classic German support you might prefer, but most of the time it is just a hard drive that is broken or a firmware that needs to be updated. These are quite simple support cases in 99% of all cases. Very rarely do we have really difficult support where it really goes into the details and real expertise is required on the other side.

Positive

They all just cook with water, whether we have Dell or HP. We used to be an HP partner, but in the storage area Dell made the big difference, and that is why the servers are now also from Dell.

We used HP earlier, which was our standard in-house supplier, but through the storage track we switched completely to Dell. Gradually, the HP logo has disappeared everywhere in our customers' racks and now they all have Dell logos on the servers.

I was involved in the deployment and initial setup of Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

I am involved in working with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, so we select them and we also install them for customers.

We do not do a big evaluation, but I think Dell PowerEdge R-Series contributes to customer retention and customer growth, so it helps us in our general business. If our customer is using Dell and is satisfied with the servers, then they automatically take other products from us as well.

I think there is a return on investment with Dell PowerEdge R-Series; we just cannot really measure it very well, but we definitely perceive it.

It can always be cheaper, but at some point we have to keep our feet on the ground. Customers always want to pay less, but at some point it just costs a certain amount and Dell also has to pay its employees, so those are fair prices for Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

We did not compare any other servers before adding Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series are rack servers that are part of the R-Series of Dell PowerEdge R-Series product line.

I just heard that from February on some automation from Dell is coming for Dell PowerEdge R-Series so that the servers install everything automatically via a Dell tool. Something is coming, something is in the pipeline for Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

Everything is great about Dell PowerEdge R-Series in terms of price-performance ratio. We can talk to Dell about anything and can submit project requests, and basically with Dell as a partner we can get a project through the door. Unless our customer has very difficult expectations regarding the price, then at some point we have to end the negotiation if they are not willing to pay what they want to have, and then they should go elsewhere.

We are not that far yet with metrics for Dell PowerEdge R-Series. The Dell servers just came along with the storage; we and our customers were very satisfied with the storage, so we also added the servers. In servers the manufacturers are all quite interchangeable. No one stands out from the other, but in the storage and backup area, that is where we make the difference and where we can really score and just take the servers along with it.

I have expanded Dell PowerEdge R-Series in the past, and it worked well. I have bought new servers or just expanded. Everything is good with Dell PowerEdge R-Series. There is very good stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series with no complaints.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series as a nine for overall product rating. I think that is good. There is always room for improvement, so we will leave one point open for Dell PowerEdge R-Series. We are satisfied with Dell PowerEdge R-Series and definitely happy to be surprised by Dell in the future. Our overall review rating for this product is 9.

Functionality-wise, all of our servers, all of our data storage, and SANs are all Dell products, PowerEdge R-Series. Our whole data center is built with Dell products, and it has been for as long as I can remember.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is basically our data center. All of our data rests within it, everything from domain controllers down to how we store data. That's what we use it for.

From what I've heard from our network engineer, he points out that reliability is key about Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers. I think it's the comfort that he knows them. He knows them inside out. Great support from Dell, never an issue there. The support and reliability are the number one reasons that we keep coming back to the product.

Reliability is number one for Dell PowerEdge R-Series. I think the level of support that we get is also crucial. Those are the two reasons that we come back to it. At the end of the day, it goes back to relationships. A lot of it is knowing that if there's an issue, you can reach out and have a team that's going to back you up, which is very important. When things go wrong, people are calling and expressing frustration. To have that support to guide you through situations is the most important part for us.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has improved our company overall by providing the ability to maintain uptime. We have reliable products that we can manage easily. We store data for decades because of the industry we're in, so being able to expand and know that the product will last and retrieve things that we need from 25 to 30 years ago is still available.

I don't have recommendations for how Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved specifically. A lot of it goes back to our network engineer, who plays with it day-to-day.

Our network engineer doesn't say that there should be improvements for Dell PowerEdge R-Series. He always says to stick with Dell products.

We have had Dell PowerEdge R-Series products for at least 15 years.

Regarding the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I have not experienced any downtime or crashes. We've had some hard drive issues, but nothing unusual.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very scalable with the growing needs of our company. We just finished a big expansion, and it proved to be very scalable.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series customer service and technical support is excellent. We had a very good project management team that laid out the scope before implementation. Getting the preliminary data through our third party was excellent. They really ran our network numbers, equipment, and needs assessments and developed a good plan to understand what we were about to purchase to get our installation completed. They got our plot set up, scheduled the installation, and everything was excellent.

Positive

We had other brands before Dell PowerEdge R-Series, but we've gone completely Dell-based.

The reason we switched to Dell PowerEdge R-Series is reliability. It comes down to that and support. Those are the two things that matter the most to us. With technology, there are always going to be things that go wrong, and it's never going to be 100%, but it's more important to be able to handle the issues in a timely manner than anything else. An issue is going to happen, but as long as issues are not happening on a regular basis, the reliability is there. When something does go wrong, being able to address it quickly, get a product shipped to you and installed, and have the technical expertise that is needed are vital.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has handled our workloads very well compared to what I expected. We've had no issues and have been very happy customers. It met expectations.

The deployment of the expansion went very good with Dell PowerEdge R-Series. We went through a third-party vendor to buy the product. We had a Dell specialist with us that helped us with the launch, and it went smoothly.

The deployment of Dell PowerEdge R-Series has been pretty smooth. Our latest expansion went so smoothly that I have no complaints.

We evaluate other system providers as our procurement process requires us to go out to get bids. We assess other companies, get pricing, and go through demos, and we've always come back to Dell.

The biggest return on investment when using Dell PowerEdge R-Series in my company is the longevity. You can't beat it because the products are very solid. The return on investment is the uptime and longevity, which is a cost savings in itself.

We were very happy with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerEdge R-Series. Our third-party reseller was excellent. We got great pricing.

We have considered other solutions while on our Dell PowerEdge R-Series journey. We've looked at HP because we have a competitive bid process, and we always have to scope everybody. We've always come back to Dell.

The advice that I would give to other companies that are considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to understand what your true needs are and what you're going to use it for, scale correctly, and you'll have a great product team to support you. I would rate this product an 8 out of 10.

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.

Our main use case right now for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is hypervisor usage for virtualization.

One of the great things about Dell PowerEdge R-Series is the racking system, specifically the actual rapid rails for easy installation. After that, it's the reliability and support that stand out. 

The rapid rail system is valuable. We have staff working at night to perform installations, and the nature of our business involves real-time transactions with changes made outside of regular hours. 

Having the rapid rail system is invaluable. Good support is also crucial due to the nature of our business, which requires timely assistance to maintain system uptime and redundancy.

The only aspect that might raise it to a ten is the response time for quote turnaround; it used to be one day, however, it now seems to take longer since the merger of Dell and EMC.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for 25 years.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series scales with my company's growing needs, and we have definitely expanded usage over the years. While our server environment has grown, there has also been some consolidation, which has been due to the success of the technology allowing for vertical scaling. 

Key considerations include the impact on our data center, so we focus on increasing compute power and supporting more applications with reduced density.

The support from Dell has always been very good, and the performance and reliability of the systems have been excellent over the 25 years I've been working with all the different generations of PowerEdge. 

I would rate Dell support an average of eight to nine out of ten. My assessment extends beyond just PowerEdge, yet particularly for PowerEdge, the support has always been excellent. 

As a long-standing customer, we have established a relationship that allows us primarily to skip level one and go straight to level two support, which makes a significant difference.

Positive

We have evaluated other server vendors during large technology refreshes, yet we've consistently returned to Dell. The primary reasons we stick with Dell include cost—both upfront and over five years—and comprehensive support that covers both hardware and hypervisor needs, offering a valuable one-stop shop, especially since we have a smaller team.

I have definitely seen a return on my investment in Dell PowerEdge R-Series. Typically, we run most systems on a five-year life cycle; however, we often run our Dell PowerEdge R-Series into years six and seven, which suggests strong financial returns beyond five years.

Pricing has been positive. In the early days, we would have had our own local agreements at discount levels. And now with our parent US bank, we're accessing global discounts. So it's been pretty good in that space. They have been transparent and have been working with us to make sure we're getting good value.

My advice for others considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series would be to look beyond just the hardware and system reliability or support to its manageability, as Dell OpenManage has seen various enhancements and is typically provided for free, which adds great value. 

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

We specifically outline our use cases of Dell PowerEdge R-Series as using it for VMware virtualization and databases running bare metal.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series benefits my company. It provides superior price performance compared to other vendors. 

The features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I appreciate the most are the central management and the surrounding software as they're integrated and easy to use. 

It's supporting growth and operational success. We're buying more and more PowerEdge R-Series instead of other vendors like Cisco and HP, and we're growing with additional hardware.

Dell PowerEdge has features that specifically cater to the needs of small or medium companies. It's the cost-effectiveness and good quality of the product that make the difference.

I would recommend Dell PowerEdge R-Series enhance more features such as AI. We're not there yet. 

Additionally, reduced cabling and improved power consumption management would be beneficial improvements.

I've been working in my current field for 25 years and I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for four years.

Regarding stability and reliability, the software performs excellently and the hardware has proven robust. We haven't needed to replace any hardware components in four years of operation.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series scales with the growing needs of my company as we add more servers and expand the clusters, making the process straightforward.

Our company has 7,000 people.

The customer service and technical support are exceptional, with fast response times and prompt solution delivery. 

I would rate the customer service and technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Before choosing Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I used Cisco UCS and HP servers, however, we have now moved exclusively to Dell.

The deployment is very easy. 

The biggest return on investment when using Dell PowerEdge R-Series is the relatively low initial investment and maintenance contract renewal costs compared to other vendors, making it more economical overall.

The pricing, setup cost, and licensing have been very competitive compared to other vendors, which influenced our decision to choose Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

The main difference between Dell PowerEdge R-Series and Cisco is that Cisco offers better management perspective due to its concentrated nature. 

We use Dell PowerEdge R-Series, where we can utilize standalone servers rather than blades or a managed solution.

My advice to other companies considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to try the proof of concept and experience its excellent performance. 

I rate this solution a nine out of ten.