Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers are used for different use cases, including now in a Dell APEX model for virtualization. The VMware environment runs on these servers. The servers are used for backup, and the Veeam backup infrastructure has been organized based on Dell servers.

Since there has not been much contact with AI yet apart from Copilot from Microsoft, the considerations regarding its use with Dell PowerEdge R-Series are only just beginning. If the organization continues to rely on Dell servers, the PowerEdge servers, or if there are other series that are supposed to be better for AI, those will come into play again.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series demonstrates tremendous robustness, which is one of the main reasons for continued use. Over many years, there have been maybe one or two minor defects. Support is great when needed. The sales consulting is top-notch, and the delivery speed from Dell with Dell PowerEdge R-Series is incredibly good.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has very good management functions and remote management functions that, with many others, first have to be purchased additionally at high cost, and this is really practical.

Basically, without Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, it is difficult to do anything for small and medium-sized companies. If the price-performance aspect is right, then they contribute something to the success of the company.

The price-performance ratio with Dell PowerEdge R-Series has always been very good. Everything needed is in the servers.

What has become really bad with Dell PowerEdge R-Series is the support in India. The people there have a very hard-to-understand accent and the technology they work with is very cheap headsets with very poor connections, and they appear to be sitting in a train station from the way it sounds. Doing support with them is not enjoyable, so if you have to rely on Indian support, it is not a success factor.

Quite often recently, support has been routed to India, but those were mostly software issues, recently with VMware topics. Over the course of the day, either the service is the best there is or the service is bad, but nothing in between. The uncertainty of which region will handle support, whether the UK, the USA, or elsewhere, is concerning. On the last call, the last update was carried out via India and went completely wrong. The start was 8 a.m. and it was supposed to last six to eight hours. The call finished the next day at approximately 9 a.m. During that time, I was transferred by phone all around the world, and only when I got out of India did solutions start to come.

One time with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, there was a defective RAM module and one or two power supplies that broke, which were probably caused more by external influences than by production faults, so nothing negative can be said about the servers.

On a scale of one to ten for support, since it is mixed and there is an American system, a seven sounds fair. In Germany, since Dell has American standards, a seven for them is already a concern that needs to be followed up on regarding what is not okay. Cheap is not always better.

Positive

Before Dell PowerEdge R-Series, the previous solutions were probably Fujitsu Siemens or self-built servers, but the organization has been with Dell for a long time because it just runs well.

The reason for switching to Dell PowerEdge R-Series was because the systems were flawless in terms of price-performance, and the support was affordable. For the organization, it always comes down to price-performance, and Dell has always scored tremendously in that respect and is still keeping that up.

Installing or commissioning Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers is especially straightforward thanks to the pre-configured images from Dell. The installation images are basically idiot-proof. If you can follow instructions, you can do it. It is a similar level to following complex assembly instructions. Halfway through, you may dismantle again and reflect once more.

Servers are basically only licensed against software, which means you have to license the software. The servers themselves rarely have their own licenses, so licensing questions specific to Dell PowerEdge R-Series compared to other servers do not quite make sense in that context. The review rating given for this product is ten out of ten.

My role in using or managing Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers involves storage, virtualization, and server support.

The features of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers that I find most valuable include the ability to have different servers and different services hosted on one server, and the ability to connect them between other storage servers or appliances. These features definitely provide additional value to the end user, customers, company, and are reliable within the time frames that customers and clients demand.

Looking at the new models, they have greatly improved the cooling system, which is a significant advantage. In my experience, there were times when components overheated, but they have improved that aspect.

One area where Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could improve is integration. The BYO feature, which allows users to bring their own license, is a particularly good aspect of the system.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for 10 years at my current company. Our company has been using PowerEdge for at least 20 years.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very stable overall. The support, components, and OS are all reliable. We have experienced occasional downtimes, crashes, or performance issues, but nothing serious. When we need hardware replacement, such as RAM or a hard drive, the support is very fast.

To expand the usage of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we simply have added more servers and equipment.

I would evaluate the support from Dell as exceptional. They have highly capable and trained personnel who are knowledgeable. We have a very good relationship with them, and they maintain transparency regarding reported issues and solutions.

Positive

We have Pure Storage, which we implemented less than two years ago, alongside Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We chose Pure Storage based on the benefits of flash storage and rapid support. As a global company, everything our corporate office decides is replicated to all locations around the globe, which is one of the key differences.

The deployment is typically very smooth. We haven't had many issues. Usually, when we deploy a server with PowerEdge, it's a very smooth transition.

We started leasing with Dell, which has provided good CapEx and budgeting return financially. We are on a 16-month lease. One of the advantages is that we don't pay the CapEx immediately, and it allows us to have the latest Dell technology after three or five years, depending on our leasing contract.

When trying to quote devices and servers for our Mexico City offices directly with Dell instead of through a partner, we encountered some challenges. It took several months to negotiate appropriate pricing, requiring escalation to the director of Dell Mexico and communication with Dell US. Eventually, we reached an agreement with satisfactory pricing.

We are currently at the early stage of AI usage. However, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers will definitely play a part in our AI-driven initiatives in the future. Currently, we haven't applied AI on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as it's still in development. It will be part of our future development of AI. We are planning to focus on automation.

For companies considering Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I recommend relying on Dell technology and their expertise. The innovation that Dell offers is crucial.

I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as nine out of ten.

My use case for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is running virtual machines mostly. We have one that I just deployed that is running Hyper-V and this is the first time we have had to deal with Hyper-V. 

It is going to be more or less the same thing, running virtual machines.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is pretty much the same thing that I mentioned with PowerStore: the simplicity, the resiliency, and the fact that it just works. 

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers benefit me because if I'm not having to use my time to troubleshoot something, I can use that time to implement new technologies for the company and similar tasks. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have been one of those things where I can set it and forget it. It just does its job and rarely ever has issues. Time saved equals new technologies for the company to use.

If I could improve Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in any way, it would be something with OpenManage itself. I need more transparency on how OpenManage can help me with our company being an SMB. I want more documentation for SMBs regarding Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

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

I haven't had any downtime, crashes or performance issues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We've had downtime but it's usually when we're upgrading something. It's never been downtime because the servers themselves need to be troubleshooted or anything similar.

For a small-medium business, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have supported our growth probably because of how easy it is to scale with them, as we have grown exponentially. We went from a company of just 200 users to a company of over 600 in just five years. Just increasing the amount of servers that we got has been easy.

I may have used the customer service or support for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers maybe nine years ago. I honestly can't even remember what it was about, but I think I've only really had to use it once. We still pay for support all the time, but it's nice to not have to use it.

Positive

I believe we've always used Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Even when I came on board, my previous experience with my previous company was with Dell PowerEdge and when I came on board it was all Dell PowerEdge also.

I was part of the deployment of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

I have seen some return on investment, but since I'm not a finance person, that's not something I'm able to answer beyond peace of mind.

For servers, I have not evaluated any other vendors and have no interest in doing so.

I feel Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers specifically caters to the needs of SMBs. There's a reason why I don't have any experience with any other vendors in terms of servers, just because I don't want to not use Dell PowerEdge. 

On a scale of one to ten, with one being worst and ten being best, I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a ten.

My main use case for everything that is Nutanix is VDI, and we also have the database server afterwards and RDS servers, with multiple use cases.

The standout feature for me is Dell's iDRAC management interface. It is significantly better than what some competitors offer. Since our data centers are located off-site, iDRAC provides us with full remote access to the entire system configuration, which is an essential advantage for our operations.

We have access to everything remotely at the iDRAC level, which is really good.

What I think could be improved about Dell PowerEdge R-Series is lower prices; otherwise, in terms of functionality, with the configuration we order, we have what we want, so I don't really have any improvement that quickly comes to mind.

I have been working in my current field since 2013, so it's been 12 years.

What distinguishes Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers compared to others is their reliability, as we have very few failures; apart from a disk from time to time or a memory stick from time to time, we never have failures on the servers.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series does help with the growth of my organization, as it's easy to order again and integrate into the existing cluster.

I have used technical support at some point.

My experience with technical support was very good, rated 9 out of 10.

They helped me with some hardware problems, specifically on hardware support.

Positive

The deployment of the servers involves several data centers, and with the XC series range, we deploy them according to our needs for Nutanix clusters, which are specific to the workload we're going to put on them, and we do the deployments with Nutanix tools to deploy the solutions on Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

In terms of the return on investment since we've had the system, it has not been particularly significant.

Before Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we considered adopting HPE, we conducted a side-by-side comparison before ultimately choosing Dell.

In the company, I work with the CNAF, which is the Family Allowance Funds, providing benefits to residents.

I didn't mention AI, but it is important for us to consider our AI initiatives.

At the moment, we are in testing for AI, similar to how we do tests on the cloud part, as we start defining the use cases a bit, and then, of course, there will be a study to switch to the on-premises part.

The company has about 1000 people.

Dell was chosen because it's historical, and on price and features too; they were the first on the XC series side, it was Dell, and we've stayed with them for 10 years.

We have performance metrics or indicators with Grafana and Prometheus behind our monitoring, which help us know if the system is working well.

In terms of time and ease, the servers are racked by the people who manage the data center, and then we access the iDRAC and do all the system configuration.

In the long term, I see that it can work for us; it's a good solution.

I would give this product an overall rating of 9 out of 10.

My role in using and managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series is focused on Veeam backup for local storage. The Veeam application is installed on this server, which is the primary use case where I utilize it as a backup server. 

Currently, I am using a Dell PowerEdge R-Series server solely as a backup server to manage growing data, including a large amount of metadata that we also back up and transfer to the cloud for another repository.

I appreciate the iDRAC management for Dell PowerEdge R-Series, as it is a nice management tool that I'm using frequently. 

Everyone in my organization believes Dell PowerEdge R-Series will play some role in AI initiatives in the future. Currently, we are discussing the potential of Dell PowerEdge R-Series for AI initiatives step by step. 

In my company, we have a developer department that develops programs for our products. The management and CRM systems we are developing will be supported by AI.

For storage, I find that Dell PowerEdge R-Series is not useful. Regarding improvements, due to the cloud area and cloud platform, the on-premises server, Dell PowerEdge R-Series, might become less prominent. However, it won't disappear, as the cloud platform will remain the primary concern.

I have utilized Dell PowerEdge R-Series for about five to six years now.

The services of Dell are good, and the performance of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is also good. I didn't face any problems, and the issues I did encounter were resolved by their excellent support services, even though they're based overseas.

I may plan to scale the usage of Dell PowerEdge R-Series in the future.

If I were to rate Dell support on a scale of one to ten, I would give it an eight. 

I would not rate it a ten as I sometimes struggle with communication while speaking with support representatives in English. I believe it would be beneficial if Dell opened a support branch in Israel to support Hebrew language.

Positive

I didn't face any challenges with deployment. 

I've seen a return on my investment into Dell PowerEdge R-Series as it's still working.

This server was priced more cheaply than other options such as IBM and HP, making it quite cost-effective. 

I have looked at IBM and HP and understand the pricing differences. Although price was not the primary reason I chose Dell PowerEdge R-Series over competitors, a recommendation from a colleague influenced my decision.

For anyone looking at Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I recommend ensuring to have lots of memory and high-speed SSD disks when purchasing their server. 

I rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series an eight out of ten. I didn't face any main problems with my server, and the few issues I encountered were resolved through support.

We currently use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers to run Microsoft Hyper-V and Red Hat VCI. 

In addition to that, AX nodes that are adjacent to the regular PowerEdge servers are highly customized. The test cases we are running mainly involve internal processing on data that we have, and also for company-wide cases. 

We host a portal for everyone to interact with for internal lookups and trying to steer everyone away from going public with OpenAI ChatGPT. We have our own internal search now, and it's also able to ingest our internal documentation sites, in addition to our other data sets that we have.

My current organization really wouldn't be anywhere without the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. All we've been buying have been PowerEdge servers. It's pretty mission-critical for us. The vast majority of our regular PowerEdges we've got from that, and we also have FCs and some older tech as well, however, those are being replaced by our Red Hat VCI ones, which are the AX nodes.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is their integrated iDRAC and the way that the servers are built; it's pretty space optimized, so users can get a lot of functionality in there for whatever they're working on. 

The monitoring for the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is great; we get all the alerts, we get everything about it, and we avoid outages thanks to the features of the iDRAC.

We got all the alerts we needed in time, so we knew we could get parts dispatched and everything else, and it's gotten better. They've got AI monitoring for the stuff, so now they're telling us about drives that are failing before we notice them ourselves.

There's not really much to be done that hasn't already happened; they've shifted over now, and users can plug in on the latest models as they have USBC ports if they need to console in. 

There isn't really much in need of improvement; it's really up to whatever you decide to buy. You can buy all the right options and get what you need, however, you have to be careful and make sure you buy what makes sense.

I'd appreciate seeing more options in terms of expandability for certain Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers models. The expandability issues I've experienced are mainly with the 700 series of the R series chassis, primarily around what can fit in for PCI expansion cards. It's fair, however, there might be some room for more flexibility around it.

I have personal experience with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for the last three and a half years at my current organization, and at a prior work, I had experience with PowerEdge servers for another five years.

The reliability and skills of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are pretty reliable; I haven't had to worry about it too much. Even if something does go wrong, the monitoring is pretty good, and we get good alerts on whatever needs to be replaced. 

We haven't really had an outage due to hardware failure, definitely not on the PowerEdge servers themselves. Sometimes we might have something fail, a fan or power supply - things happen, however, it hasn't really caused an outage.

I evaluate the customer service support for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as pretty rock solid and top-notch, especially if you get the right people in the right areas. Particularly around PowerEdges, you can almost depend on getting the right person you want.

Positive

We've looked at other solutions. Folks I used to work with, some of them moved on now. We've had experience working with many IBMs and HPs in the past. We're still getting the best value right now sticking with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers platform.

I've helped deploy Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. I've done everything with them; I've racked them myself personally and been through that experience, so it's not bad.

The pricing and licensing of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very competitive. 

We've gotten some pretty good deals along the way; you can find anything to fit any budget. We've even gone the other route of actually buying some things for non-production; they've got some pretty good pricing on their Dell used product marketplace as well, though the name is slipping my mind right now. You can get what you need for a good price.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers platform has improved over the years; I've seen the evolution with it. I wasn't too fond originally of some of the older PowerEdges, to be honest, however, as time moved on, the current generations are providing what I am looking for. 

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

The use case for having Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in our university is that they are sources and resources for our infrastructure. We use it for our VMware infrastructure and VDI.

The feature I appreciate the most about the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the iDRAC, as we were able to remove our KVMs from the data center and use iDRAC as a management platform. 

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers help my organization overall since they are very reliable and very scalable.

I actually love the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers the way they are right now.

I would improve the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers by enhancing the GUI and providing a better hands-on experience for quick fixes on the servers, as most of the work is done by a vendor coming in to fix the systems. Having some videos online on the disassembly of the servers would be helpful.

My name is Pedro Lopez, and I've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for 10 years while working at my university for over 15 years.

Regarding downtime with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, they're very reliable, so we hardly have any downtime, and we have quick turnaround on repairs.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers support the growing needs of my university, as the scalability allows us to add more resources fast. We have good turnaround with our vendor partners and getting the new equipment in as soon as possible.

I would rate the customer service and technical support a ten out of ten. I love support from Dell; they have always been able to help us throughout any issues we have.

Positive

Before putting in the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we evaluated solutions from other vendors, including HP and Cisco.

My experience deploying the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers includes purchasing the Dell equipment, where we get professional services.

Dell's professional services as great, as they're very helpful and also do cross-training with us. We're able to learn from the experience of the setup.

I see a return on investment with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. They're very cost-effective and reliable, and we were able to downsize.

The pricing for the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is reasonable since we are part of higher ed, making the prices very competitive with other vendors we have approached.

We chose the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers based on our history with Dell and the cost.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers do not play a role in my organization's AI initiatives at the moment, as we're barely hitting that, striving towards AI.

I'm currently a server administrator, system administrator, and we remotely manage most of the servers using iDRAC.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very reliable, very cost-effective, and the services that Dell provides are very useful and helpful in deploying infrastructures. I really love the solutions that iDRAC gives you for quick updates and firmware, ensuring that they're reliable for our systems.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as a ten; I definitely really love them and would not change that for anything at the moment.

My main use case is virtualization servers running VMware. I use it to host all the business applications and the servers needed to run the group's ERPs.

My favorite feature is the iDRAC features, particularly iDRAC administration for everything related to updating the server's internal firmware. I prefer iDRAC because after that, I mainly install VMware ESXi, so I have access to all the useful information about the server in there. For now, I'm not using a centralized PowerEdge console server, but I know it exists. I don't need it at my level.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers could be improved in certain aspects. Lately, I really appreciated the tools that explain how to replace parts inside the servers, the detailed server documentation, the upgrade aids, and the auto-upgrade of the server. 

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

I confirm significant stability, reliability, and durability.

We had just one problem a few years ago, due to a type of Dell PowerEdge R-Series we bought with integrated SD cards that were no longer compatible with how VMware works. I don't think it was a Dell PowerEdge R-Series issue, but a VMware-on-SD-card issue.

The only growth complexity with Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that the cost of adding memory after the first purchase is always high. It's better to size properly from the start than to add memory afterwards.

I have had to use technical support. On a scale of one to ten I would rate it an eight, it went well. They stepped in when needed and provided great service.

Positive

I considered another solution fifteen years ago.

I can describe the system deployment experience as very simple since we always deploy the same types of servers with the same types of virtualization environments. Once we've configured iDRAC, we just have to install the VMware operating system and then we can quickly use the server in the existing cluster.

I can say that I have seen a return on investment from having Dell PowerEdge R-Series since the administration is always the same and therefore simple. It saves us the time employees would spend learning new machines.

My impressions of the price and the cost of licenses are that the price is good, but I don't challenge them much with other solutions because I'm happy with the solution and therefore they're not being challenged at the moment.
The only growth complexity with Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that the cost of adding memory after the first purchase is always high. It's better to size properly from the start than to add memory afterwards.

I chose Dell PowerEdge R-Series because of the ease of administration, the simplicity, and the continuity of administration over the years. My teams master the subject and there's no need to relearn something new.

I have been working in my field for twenty years. I have integrated them and might need them if something breaks. I don't have performance metrics that tell me and allow me to measure the success of Dell PowerEdge R-Series for me because I'm fully on Dell PowerEdge R-Series, so I don't have a comparison with other hardware. It hasn't been necessary to put metrics in place. The measure of success with Dell PowerEdge R-Series for me is the uptime of the servers, the fact that they don't go down. My overall rating for this product is eight.