Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

My use case includes all the production and development workloads, both prod and development workloads.

The most valuable feature, when I compare Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers with other brands available, is the price versus performance, as I get more for what I pay, and mostly, we use this for our CAD workloads. In terms of price-to-performance ratio, I can see at least a 10 to 12% difference when I choose a little cheaper option with Dell compared to others. 

The benefits to my organization are huge because we are a big company, around 100 billion, so that small amount multiplies into something significant. Every year, we buy at least 30 to 70 rack mount servers, and over three to five years, if I calculate it, we save at least 12 to 15X compared to others.

I would improve Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers by making their firmware upgrades easier. 

They do have Dell OpenManage Enterprise, which is easy, but when I am at remote sites, I have to download it locally to apply updates. From that perspective, I want an enhancement for an easier way to download and fix issues.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for almost 12 years.

When it comes to the stability and reliability of the product, we have had a couple of blackouts once or twice, but nothing significant because we operate 24/7 and have a four-hour parsing time. From that perspective, there are no issues.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale to my company's needs. Earlier, we used other blade server products, which had much higher prices and power usage. When we switched to rack mount servers, even with multiple cables and increased network connections, we reduced our power utilization. Any outages or blackouts are limited to particular servers, not affecting the whole chassis or enclosures.

I have used customer service or support for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. My impressions working with customer support are positive; whenever issues occur, we follow our company policy to fix them, but we still raise them with customer support, and they provide exactly what we need without any problems, especially for Dell servers.

Positive

Besides the price-to-performance ratio, I have not seen any other ROI metrics.

If I had to give advice to someone at another company considering implementing Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I would say go for it. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the overall Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers product as a nine.

We have VMware with 2 node servers and almost 20 virtual machines. We have in-house software and an HR and finance application running on it. It works fine for handling diverse applications.

We are using the FX2 chassis, which is a small setup. We have a small environment with very few servers.

Our environment is small, and it fits our environment. For our requirements, it is working fine.

We have protection with secure firmware of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We have not experienced any security incidents or vulnerabilities with our PowerEdge servers.

It reduces our downtime because it has been working fine. There has never been any failure. I have used HPE servers previously, and we had issues related to rebooting, power supply failure, etc. Our Dell PowerEdge Server is working fine. There is no failure.

We use OpenManage Enterprise software. It gives us an advantage in rebuilding a new server. We can build templates and use the same templates to deploy new servers. There is no manual work.

It is a stable server. I have never faced any failure with these servers.  They keep running for at least five to seven years without any issues.

They should reduce its size. Because the CPU power is more now, they can reduce the size of the servers. Currently, we have a 2U server. If possible, they can make a 1U server.

If they can provide more disk slots in one server, that would be good for the environment. Sometimes a BIOS upgrade fails, or something unexpected can happen.

I have used Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for the last 15 years.

I never faced any failure in the last four to five years. It is a reliable product. Not even one server has failed so far.

We are using the FX2 chassis with two node servers. Two slots are still free. We can add new servers at any time, so the scale-out option is there. The RAM increment option is also there. We can add a lot of RAM there. 

I encountered issues a few times, and they resolved them within the time frame.

Positive

We were HPE customers for ten years. We switched to Dell EMC products about ten years ago. We have VNX storage, xUnity, data domains, tape libraries, and PowerEdge Servers. About 90% of my existing infrastructure is from Dell EMC.

We chose Dell PowerEdge Servers because they are well-known servers. They are the core products of Dell. I love EMC products. They were acquired by Dell. It is almost a similar technology.

Due to built-in software, it is easy to deploy and easy to manage.

When we purchase new servers, partners are responsible for deployment. However, after the initial deployment, it is our responsibility to manage them.

I have tier-one partners like Condo Protego, Cloudbox, GPM, and GBM. We are working with these partners. They have the capability to design the solution, but not all partners are equal.

We did not work with Dell's Professional Services because our environment is not a very big environment. It is an expensive service and not required for our business.

It keeps running and does not create any problems. There are no hardware or power supply failures. It has been good for our business.

We are at an initial stage in our AI journey. We have not tried to run any AI workloads on our PowerEdge Servers. Our business environment is a bit different, and at the moment, we do not require much AI for our business.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers an eight out of ten.

We use Dell PowerEdge R-Series for virtualization platforms, VMware and OpenStack nowadays. 

Since I work on the Microsoft team, we utilize it for SQL Server clusters, Microsoft clusters, file shares, and other types of clusters. Dell PowerEdge R-Series plays a role in our organization's AI initiatives, though I'm not entirely aware of all the initiatives in the company. 

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is used for everything in our company. We have some AI use cases and are currently using GPT in-house, however, I'm not on the team that has deployed that. I'm just on the end-user end of the spectrum.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has given us a stable platform to build on. That is significant for us because we do high-frequency trading, so stability and performance are crucial. We have had some specific use cases that Dell has helped us develop and deliver.

I would say the pain points are better power usage and consumption; that's not up to Dell, that's up to the CPU manufacturers.

I've been working in my current field for about 20 years.

I see Dell products growing with our future needs. The Dell PowerEdge R-Series is as scalable as they can be, as they have consistently demonstrated their ability to support us in specific use cases. They will go out of their way to support us and create new products that they will sell to everybody else, making it a win-win for both of us.

I wouldn't personally evaluate Dell customer support. I don't interact with customer support directly, but people in my company work extensively with Dell's customer support, and I can see the results. I would rate them 9.5 out of ten for customer support, and also in terms of having the technology to meet demand.

Positive

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I used other solutions such as HP and IBM to address similar needs, howver, that was many years ago. If I had to draw a comparison against Dell, HP would be as close to Dell as it can get, but not as supportive as Dell is.

In using and managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we don't rack them since that's handled by the particular team that manages it. However, we build them from the ground up. After they've been racked, cabled, and everything else, another team manages to scout them and have all the line of work, drivers, firmwares, and everything installed. Then it comes to our hands, and we have the OS installed and built from there.

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, we have VMware, so license costs went through the roof in the past couple of years. Now we're moving away from VMware onto competitors or other players. We are still using the Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

My advice to someone who is considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to go for it. I rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series solutions as a ten out of ten based on the stability, robustness, maintainability, troubleshootability, and the speed of the throughput of the servers.

Our primary use cases for this solution include having our ESXi installed on the system on Dell PowerEdge R-Series, and we have VMs, Windows VMs, and Linux VMs.

We have a lot of Dell-oriented products. The company uses it extensively.

It's a very popular platform and everything is publicly available. 

From using Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I've seen benefits in that it's a very popular platform, so we have a lot of information online. If we have something, we don't need to wait for support; we can just Google everything and it's online.

The response from our end-users give us feedback that is positive. 

The upside of Dell solutions over its competitors lie in their support; they are spread across multiple vendors in Israel, and we are really pleased with the support we're getting from the Dell provider we're working with. The Dell provider that we work with is One Teldor.

To make it a better solution, we need more automation. I might be lacking knowledge, and there may be automation solutions available for regular day-to-day usage, such as running the VMs on Dell PowerEdge R-Series. If there were an automation solution for things such as cleanups, automatic reviewing of the data source and storage data, and providing more insights on what's needed, that would be necessary. I'm referring to automation scanning of the system and providing insights on how to improve the system.

Over the years, we've needed more RAM storage, requiring us to purchase more solutions. We need them to allow for more extension of RAM.

I am working in the company for eight years and since I've been there, Dell PowerEdge R-Series solutions have been there for a very long time. The company has used it for maybe 15 years.

I find the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series to be high; on a scale of one to ten, I'd say a nine.

An example where Dell PowerEdge R-Series made a noticeable improvement is that we have a problem with the system being limited in storage and RAM. 

Over the years, we are developing stuff that requires more RAM usage or storage, and we cannot expand the current VMs on the current Dell PowerEdge R-Series, so we need to purchase additional solutions aside from it. For instance, we've purchased the Storage MD recently to expand the storage size, and regarding RAM, we're just limiting the people on what they can do on the local VMs.

We're a global company. In Tel Aviv, we have 34 employees, and globally, we have almost 300 employees. 

If I would give the customer support a rating on a scale of one to ten, I'd give them an 8.5 as there's always room for improvement. They should improve on pricing with better discounts.

Positive

Since I've been in the company, we've only used Dell PowerEdge R-Series and their products.

Usually, we replace the old Dell PowerEdge R-Series with a new one. We have a VMware solution for three ESXi; we're not expanding for more ESXi, we're just replacing older machines with new versions of Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that they are average to the market. They're not too cheap, however, also not too expensive compared to other solutions.

When I mention other solutions, I refer to those offered by other companies. We have offers from HPE, but the vendor wasn't available too much, and we were afraid to switch because of the service we got from HPE, so we stayed with Dell. Besides HPE servers, we considered migrating everything to the cloud, but because of the prices for having the developer systems on cloud, we decided to stay for the development stage on-prem while migrating the production to the Azure environment.

We used to work with the Tower, however, now we have the Rack. The Rack servers we're using are R740 and R7 something.

There's no special feature I particularly prefer about Dell PowerEdge R-Series; we're just very oriented with Dell devices. We have the servers, laptops, screens, everything Dell oriented. I'm just going with what was before I came to the company. I'm guessing the previous person in my position worked with Dell, probably because he had a connection, got good prices, and the vendor was very helpful, so we continue working with Dell.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this solution a nine.

My role in using or managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that I'm basically the HPC administrator, so my role is installing and taking care of applications on the HPC platform. We basically do rack maintenance and handle the software and application installations and maintenance on Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers.

While I'm not exactly clear about the features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that are most valuable since it has been quite recent since I've used it, the Dell solutions have been helpful. The solutions from Dell PowerEdge R-Series are quite quick and targeted in the sense that they are more precise to the problem we're facing. The response times are also quite quick. In our organization, the team which is actually taking care of the HPC solutions consists of around six of us. The company as a whole is quite huge; it's a university with around 2,000 plus employees.

The solutions from Dell PowerEdge R-Series were targeted and quite quick, which was helpful. However, I think the approach towards the solutions could be improved. I realized during the session that we had a lot of back and forth before we finally arrived at the solutions. If this could have been made quicker or if there was a more convenient platform for discussions, it would have been much easier for us. I know another solution could be having a Dell engineer visit to look at the equipment, but if there was a quicker method, such as a video call to scan through the equipment and see what's happening, that might have worked better.

From my one instance with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I find it targeted and quick, which makes me happy with its approach. For cases concerning applications or network arrangements, those can be solved quickly by sharing error reports. However, if it's something related to hardware, it could be improved; if there was a platform or solution that hastened that process, it would have been better.

I have been working in the current field for about a year and six months.

Regarding the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, they have been quite reliable based on my experience and the support has been pretty good.

Currently, as we are expanding our resources, I think this will also include more customers and large scale resource utilization. Therefore, I would say that Dell PowerEdge R-Series will scale with our increasing hardware needs as with software support. I expect that when we scale this to a larger platform, it will be more helpful, especially since we will encounter more frequent cases, and based on the response time we experienced, I believe it will be equally helpful.

We haven't had many of these issues lately. I would rate Dell support around eight because they have been quite quick in their response and providing solutions. One of the cases was when one of the servers had a fault in it, and we couldn't figure out what the issue was. It was a GPU machine generating a lot of noise and heat. We tried everything that we could do from our side, but it really didn't work out. Later, we asked for Dell support, and then we figured it out. It took some back and forth discussions, but it ultimately turned out that one of the fans was at fault.

Positive

Before we used Dell solutions, I think we had been using HP machines, but this was in a different workplace and a different country altogether. I wouldn't be able to comment on the pros and cons of the previous HP solution because I had a different role there and wasn't closely involved with the hardware.

The team which is taking care of the HPC solutions consists of around six people.

With just this one instance, it was quite helpful, so I would say we have seen a return on our investment into Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

For the prices we offered for Dell PowerEdge R-Series support, I find the kind of response and assistance provided by Dell solutions to be quite excellent. I don't know if Dell PowerEdge R-Series plays a role in our AI initiatives because it's usually the customers who work with AI platforms and they have their own specific needs. Currently, we haven't heard any issues or requests from the AI team. I received feedback from Dell solutions once they reached out to us with an online feedback report. I have rated Dell PowerEdge R-Series an eight out of ten.

The main use case for the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is SAP hosting, as we are using it for SAP under Linux. This is specifically within the pharmacy sector, as we work in the pharma industry.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned downtimes, as our downtime is nearly zero, with approximately 99.5% availability in a five-year period.

The best features of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are the service, the availability of the equipment, and the relational price quality. 

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very useful for our organization's sustainability goals, as the system is running flawlessly. We have experienced trouble with the memory unit and a hard disk, but this occurs in all servers at the end of their useful life. In the five years, we had a few minor problems, but they were always addressed by Dell in Argentina.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer good flexibility and expandability to our business. The migration was very easy since the SAP consultants handled the migration of the databases and the ERP, SAP. We contracted them, and it was flawless, managing to conduct the migration of the two servers over a weekend.

They need improvement in spare part availability in Argentina, but the servers are very good from a hardware point of view.

I have overall eight to ten years of experience with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. I have used the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers within the last 12 months.

We have experienced trouble with the memory unit and a hard disk, but this occurs in all servers at the end of their useful life. 

It offers good flexibility and expandability.

We do not utilize cloud solutions. We run everything on-premise and work with specific software for the pharma industry. We operate only client-server within our facilities.

We have a support contract with a Dell distributor in Cordoba. I would rate them a seven out of ten due to the unavailability of spare parts readily in Argentina.

We conducted internal research on servers within the company. We evaluate offers in Argentina and consider Dell a good option due to the price and availability of the equipment.

The initial setup of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers was contracted to an external company for the migration of data from the old servers to the new servers. We needed to install SAP on the new servers. This was flawless due to the fact that we bought the servers with pre-installed Linux.

We have not formally calculated the ROI with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. A new manager has indicated we need to calculate it. We performed a crude calculation of ROI comparing IBM and Dell and found that the cost of support and extended warranty of IBM is too costly compared to Dell. Thus, in this instance, our crude ROI calculation shows that Dell is the better option.

We have a contract with the OEM of the equipment for licenses, so we possess all OEM licenses for the Dell software. We have licenses for Linux and VMware software, with a special price and an annual contract for updates of Linux and VMware. Additionally, we have an Oracle database on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

We have received an offer from IBM to replace the servers with new IBM servers. We received a very good offer from IBM for some amount of money for the servers, but we prefer to stay with Dell. IBM's service contract is very costly.

We have not run any AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers locally. We have a test drive in the cloud. The principal reason we haven't run AI workloads yet is that we are trying to find the right direction to incorporate AI into our business model. Currently, we focus on the distribution of medical and pharma products to pharmacies, meaning the only way to incorporate AI is possibly in the management of the warehouse. I believe the demand for medicine is inelastic, making forecasting sales very difficult in the market. This reflects the market in Argentina, not other global markets. However, I personally see the only way to incorporate AI in our business is through warehouse management, considering the market's seasonality. Medicine deliveries vary in summer versus winter, as more medications are needed for influenza in winter, while summer requires more medication for sun exposure complications.

I would rate the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers an eight out of ten.

Our use case includes internal workloads, as we do have a virtual infrastructure based on VMware.

Dell does not yet play a role in our organization's AI initiatives; this is the first time I heard about AI-driven workloads on-premise, something we had not thought about before.

For supporting our growth or operations, Dell PowerEdge R-Series helps us to have our virtual workloads on them, which is the same question as with HP.

The most valuable feature, which is part of the decision to go with Dell, was a cost decision; we could have gone with Cisco or HP as well, but Dell has a very good product portfolio and a very broad product environment.

I think now there are no pros and cons versus HP because all systems are very similar; they provide computing power, resilience, and security features. The pro now is having a Dell ecosystem, as we use Dell clients, Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, and Dell support, which is why we are married to Dell.

The benefits my organization sees from having these Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers are the same as we would have seen with HP servers, as we have computing power and storage.

If there is something I would like to see fixed, even if it's small, it seems that the orchestration of many Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers is very complicated; using Dell Server Administration software could be easier for managing many Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers for about 25 years, which includes 20 years of direct experience with them.

When it comes to evaluating the stability of the solution, I think about reliability and that kind of aspect.

Reliability is a very good point at Dell; in my experience, the durability and reliability of the products are very good, as we still have systems that are 10 years or older and are still running.

I feel the solution is very easy, scalable, and very good for our organization's long-term plans.

I do see Dell products growing with our future needs.

I evaluate the support overall as good.

The reasons are that it is responsive, fast, and problems are solved in time.

I would rate the support around an eight or a nine; everything works as expected, so the integer I would give is 10.

Positive

From Dell, we previously used Compaq.

I have been around for a while in the business and can share that we used Compaq before switching to Dell.

I am responsible for the deployment of Dell PowerEdge R-Series rack servers.

Regarding pricing and licensing, I think it's fair and similar to the competitors; you have to negotiate with partners and vendors, so I believe the pricing is fair.

The most valuable feature, which is part of the decision to go with Dell, was a cost decision; we could have gone with Cisco or HP as well, but Dell has a very good product portfolio and a very broad product environment.

My advice for others evaluating the product would be that if you are looking for a stable system, good support, and performance, then going with Dell ensures you are safe.

Overall, I would rate the product as a very good product, giving it a 10, as I do not have any complaints about it.

When integrating Dell PowerEdge R-Series into our monitoring system, we measure the performance of the systems, including the CPU, using PRTG as our benchmark. I have given this review an overall rating of 10.

I have used Dell PowerEdge R-Series R730s for builders in the past, primarily for game-related machines, and we also use them for Perforce. As a game company that makes games, we primarily use them to run automated processes, build worlds, and similar tasks. Perforce is software that stores the entire game in a database.

The feature I appreciate most about Dell PowerEdge R-Series is iDRAC, which allows me to connect to the server without having to attach a screen to it. I can connect to the server from almost anywhere as long as I have an IP address, which is absolutely amazing because I don't have to go to the server room to physically work on the server unless it's completely dead and I need to restart it or something else is wrong with it. That's definitely my favorite part of Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

The stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series have always been good with minimum downtime. There might have been one or two cases per year where it doesn't go as expected, but that barely happens.

At my current company, I have not yet needed to use their customer service, but at my previous company, I did a few times and that was acceptable.

I would say at the time, speaking from three or four years ago, I would rate the customer service as a seven because they solved the problem.

I only started working on the server side three or four years ago, and we usually used Windows 10 on those machines at the time because of a specific use case, but it was always good. We installed them within an hour easily, especially with imaging ready so we could image whenever we wanted, and it would take approximately an hour or so. Later on when we changed to virtualization servers, it was basically instant because we had the snapshot, and it got so good that at a specific point, I wasn't involved in installing anymore. We just let our tech team install it because they could kill it, make a new one, put it in their build farm, and that was great because it saved me so much time.

The stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series have always been good with minimum downtime. There might have been one or two cases per year where it doesn't go as expected, but that barely happens.

For my current company, we still need to address scalability, but in my previous company, we went from Dell PowerEdge servers to a combination of Dell PowerEdge with NVIDIA's new video card for virtualization. Together with that, we were able to remove approximately 30 or 40 old Dell servers and replace them with three or four extremely fast, strong virtualization servers instead. That was definitely a great change because it saved us a lot of space, a lot of power, and provided flexibility for future expansion. In my current company, I haven't had the situation yet, so I can't really comment on that because we made sure we built the machines in a way where we wouldn't run into those issues. It is always possible to grow.

At my current company, I have not yet needed to use their customer service, but at my previous company, I did a few times and that was acceptable.

I would say at the time, speaking from three or four years ago, I would rate the customer service as a seven because they solved the problem.

Positive

I only started working on the server side three or four years ago, and we usually used Windows 10 on those machines at the time because of a specific use case, but it was always good. We installed them within an hour easily, especially with imaging ready so we could image whenever we wanted, and it would take approximately an hour or so. Later on when we changed to virtualization servers, it was basically instant because we had the snapshot, and it got so good that at a specific point, I wasn't involved in installing anymore. We just let our tech team install it because they could kill it, make a new one, put it in their build farm, and that was great because it saved me so much time.

I unfortunately don't know about the pricing because I'm not always involved with that; my current lead is involved with that more.

For my current company, we still need to address scalability, but in my previous company, we went from Dell PowerEdge servers to a combination of Dell PowerEdge with NVIDIA's new video card for virtualization. Together with that, we were able to remove approximately 30 or 40 old Dell servers and replace them with three or four extremely fast, strong virtualization servers instead. That was definitely a great change because it saved us a lot of space, a lot of power, and provided flexibility for future expansion. In my current company, I haven't had the situation yet, so I can't really comment on that because we made sure we built the machines in a way where we wouldn't run into those issues. It is always possible to grow.

I unfortunately don't know about the pricing because I'm not always involved with that; my current lead is involved with that more.

I know there are other solutions, but every company I've worked at has always used Dell, so I'm accustomed to using Dell machines in a general sense. That's also why I love iDRAC and the functionality I mentioned earlier, because it's very accessible with Dell machines. I don't know any better alternatives.

We're using the Dell PowerEdge R-Series R730 or the R740.

The current company I'm working at is approximately 150 people in our local office, but we are a global entity, so we must be above 10,000 employees.

I have used both Intel and AMD processors in Dell PowerEdge R-Series, and in my previous company, we used some Threadrippers for some of the machines, but it was mostly Intel, and the specific models I don't fully remember.

It depends on what you're looking for because if you're looking for AMD Threadripper, it's going to beat the Intel ones because AMD Threadrippers are usually super fast. In that case, I definitely prefer the Threadrippers.

The current company doesn't have many Dell machines, only a few, but we use Intel in them.

I've grown in positions; I used to be a support person, and now I'm more of a server person, so I try to fix issues myself because it's usually easier and you learn a lot from it. Sometimes you are stuck and do need support. In my current company, I haven't done much with the servers yet because they're running and doing their job, so I haven't had many opportunities to fix things when something is broken because it hasn't happened much.

We're happy with Dell, and we are in talks with Dell, as my lead is in talks with Dell to get more machines or something similar.

I gave this review a rating of eight overall.