Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

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.

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.

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 for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is that we sell to customers depending on the solution they need. For customers that want typical three-tier architecture, who don't want the FX or VXR rail, they just want to be able to get two, three, five, or ten nodes. Whatever is sold, we go out, install it, and configure it to get it ready for the customer.

I consider iDRAC to be the most valuable feature in Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, which is available everywhere in all Dell products. I prefer iDRAC compared to competitors' solutions, including HP solutions. 

A feature that would enhance Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the ability to get multiple servers up and running quickly versus having to do one at a time. Unless I use OpenManage, most customers don't want us to do that. It would be beneficial to have an easier way to get these updated quickly out of the box, even if that means having a tool that lets us run it on our laptops or that I can quickly spin up in a customer environment to push firmware for multiple nodes simultaneously.

When asked about improvements, I find it difficult to suggest changes since the system functions so effectively.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for three years.

The organizations that install Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers generally have anywhere between 500 to 2,000 people, so it's usually smaller companies I deal with.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale with customer needs effectively. 

They're usually used for three-tier, where customers already have either substantial storage or they have other storage platforms that they're bringing in and connecting. Whenever they need to, they can just add more nodes. 

Since it doesn't have to be in a particular rack or even on the same floor in a multi-floor customer environment, they can always place it wherever needed. The ability to put a node wherever they need it is advantageous.

Customer service response for break/fix issues and support documentation for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has been good thus far. I have concerns with other products, specifically PowerFlex. That said, in general, PowerEdge support has been excellent. My experience with customer service has been positive. When we had a power supply failure out of the box, we called support, and they delivered the replacement within four hours as promised.

Positive

The deployment time for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers varies depending on the customer environment and factors such as cabling requirements and switch proximity. 

After the equipment is racked, stacked, cabled, and powered on, I can typically get ESXi up and running with vCenter and basic operational functionality for up to ten nodes in an eight-hour day.

While I'm not on the sales side and don't necessarily follow up afterwards, I observe that customers who have had Dell products previously often return to Dell for refreshes, which indicates they are seeing return on investment.

I evaluate the price-to-performance of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as good.

They are not very expensive.

The competitors I have used include Supermicro equipment, HP equipment, and some Lenovo equipment many years ago.

At this time, we're not using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for any AI-based initiatives. 

Our partnership with Dell and what we're able to provide to the customer is valuable. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine.

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.

Currently, we have some database loads on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. I can name the database as Sequel. We are just getting into running AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

The feature I appreciate the most about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is their reliability; they are very reliable servers. In terms of customization, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very highly customizable and we appreciate that feature.My impression of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers' impact on our organization's sustainability goals is good; they are helping out. Using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has helped me to reduce unplanned production downtime by 100%. We used to use Lenovo and IBM servers, and with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I would say we have at least 20% better reliability and more uptime.In terms of stability, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very stable, with no lagging or crashing.

I don't have any dislikes about the solution. The pricing for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers would be absolutely better. Regarding energy consumption, we haven't really focused on that; it's not our primary goal, so I can't provide any information on that.

We use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for our server infrastructure, and I have been using them over the last 20 years.

Regarding scalability, it's excellent with 100% effectiveness.

The quality of support from IBM and Lenovo is good; they are helpful, easy to reach, and providing value, so it's worth getting extra support.

Positive

We used to use Lenovo and IBM servers.

The initial deployment of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers was easy from my point of view; I've been doing this for 20 years. The first time I deployed it, it took me a few hours to put it in working condition.

I handled this deployment myself; it was just me.

To be honest, we're more concerned about providing the right solution for the organization rather than controlling costs associated with technology lifecycle management, so cost isn't as important.

I have tried using alternatives to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in my career overall. I can name IBM and Lenovo as the solutions I have used.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are usually reasonably priced; they're not the cheapest, but I think it's worth a shot and worth checking out. To my colleagues considering purchasing a Dell PowerEdge Rack Server instead of a hyperscaler, I'd say that even though the hyperscaler is trendier and a lot of people go there, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers still offer a lot of work and can provide significant value to the organization. I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers nine out of ten.

My role in using and managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series is as Chief Operations Officer, or COO. My main use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series are running VMware workloads.

I appreciate Dell PowerEdge R-Series because it is a well-integrated system with everything properly aligned, including cooling, the capacity for DIMMs, and the CPUs that are supported. It represents the complete package.

Using Dell PowerEdge servers has affected the overall flexibility of my operations through standardization because we could always order more of the same unit, which accelerated our processes.

Using Dell PowerEdge servers has helped reduce my Total Cost of Ownership in that while cheaper options may exist, they always result in downtime costs. If Dell managed to save us from downtime, then the investment is worthwhile.

Using Dell PowerEdge servers has not helped reduce any unplanned production downtime, and I have no comparison available.

I have not seen any benefits from running AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge servers yet.

I believe Dell PowerEdge R-Series is excellent as it currently stands, and I do not have any suggestions because I think they are already perfect.

I have been working in this field for 22 years.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support by giving it a score of 8 out of 10.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I was using another solution where we built servers ourselves, and the maintenance part required having a lot of different parts in stock. We had a very large stock, but we were always missing the one unit we needed that was broken in the server. The maintenance process being handled by Dell was the significant advantage for us.

Before selecting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I considered using Supermicro and Tyan at the time, which I believe no longer exist. Dell stood out to me in the evaluation process because of the best support, maintenance, hardware, and firmware.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series an 8 out of 10 overall, not a perfect 10 because sometimes things go wrong, such as when an engineer makes a mistake. We had one instance where we shut one server down, and the engineer sent by Dell targeted the wrong machine, powered it down, and then we had two servers in an outage. I would definitely advise to purchase them.

I assess the new Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers for energy consumption as being approximately 40 percent more effective with power, but we cannot purchase them at the moment because of hardware shortages.

My impressions of Dell PowerEdge services impacting my organization's sustainability goals are mainly about power efficiency in our business, which represents that 40 percent improvement. However, we cannot purchase them, and that is unfortunate.

My overall review rating for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is 8 out of 10.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for more than a year, and I also have one for personal use. I use it with Hyper-V as a server to make virtual machines. Beyond that, I use it with Active Directory, print server, and backup server functionality. It is mainly used for everything related to virtualization.

The iDRAC is a feature I find very useful because every time I needed to do certain things, by using iDRAC everything was gathered together. I am on my own site, so I have not really had the opportunity to test it remotely, but on-site, I have everything at my fingertips. In terms of usefulness, that is where I struggled the least when I needed more information. I always found everything I needed when I went through iDRAC. As long as it works, I stick with it.

It mainly improves organization when there is a failure because I need it in terms of speed. On the server side, most of the time I have to start the application and search. On iDRAC, I find things much more easily. As I use it more and more, I go faster over time. It is not necessarily me who configures everything at the various clients. The difference is that each server, each client, will set up their own favorites and taskbar icons. Whereas with iDRAC, I do not modify it, everything is in its original state, so we know where to find things, and it is not arranged according to each client's preferences.

I do not know what could be improved in general for Dell PowerEdge R-Series right now. I may not have enough hindsight to know the features I am missing or that I would like to have in future versions. That is also why I do not have any ideas at the moment. Later on, I might get back with suggestions next year when I need it.

Otherwise, I have not had any negative points so far. I was trying to find an option in iDRAC and re-downloaded it from the Dell site. The option still was not there. I felt as though I had not changed the version. Maybe it is on the website itself where it shows that there is this or that option, or maybe it was a plugin I was missing, but I do not remember the name.

For example, I have an old R230, and I have a problem with a fan. I cannot determine that the fan needs attention without putting the alarm on this fan. This puts the whole server in an error state, even though the problem does not come from the fan because it has been replaced. It is really on the motherboard side, and investing in a motherboard on a server that is a bit old is a bit wasteful. If I could have directly in iDRAC, in the options where the alarms are, really disabled everything that was alarms, that would have prevented the fans from running at full speed. From an admin point of view, I could have disabled it and said that the others were working, or even at a pinch, if three are needed at minimum, it is not a big deal to move it to four. You would still have the same cooling system. That is the only flaw I have to this day.

There was a leased PC product, unfortunately. However, when I called support, I know that for the warranty, the technician came very quickly. I think that if that had been for a server, it would be the same because I do not think they have different services with different field technicians. When I needed to go through support, it was quite fast and the appointment was kept.

Positive

I wanted to start up my local language model locally and I am waiting to solve my server problem so I can deploy it. I wanted to try running my local language model with retrieval-augmented generation, and unfortunately, I have to wait. I will try it on it, even if it is on old hardware that will respond much more slowly. I am still going to test this solution, even if it is on old hardware.

Because it is modular, depending on what is needed, I can scale up more or less depending on the various companies. There is quite a wide range. For all Dell products, having worked with all three brands—HPE, Lenovo, and Dell—at the business level, the leasing solutions they offer allow companies to adapt according to what they can do and invest in a fleet where about 25% of PCs are replaced each year. That is still a budget to put out. On the server side, each time they are replaced, we always manage to find solutions that are modular according to their needs.

In my case, where companies do not necessarily have an IT team present every day, having tools Dell Support installed keeps everything up-to-date. Once all the tools, for example Dell Support, are installed, the support for everything related to updates, once it is installed, when Windows Update runs automatically, you are going to get the updates when Dell releases them. This keeps everything up each time, and if I am not there, it will run. There are some things that are critical where Microsoft automatically triggers their reboot, and that sometimes causes some yelling, but it still allows updates to be done. That is a tool that is pretty good for a company that does not necessarily have an on-site IT department.

Based on what I see in the field, it is where I have the fewest problems, so that already was major. My preference goes that way. For other hardware, when I need to reimage workstations, with Dell I go directly with the Dell-made PXE via the download. I really start again from scratch. It is still easier to reimage back to factory state than to go through the other two. With Dell, it just goes by itself.

For me, it is more for my clients because the less time I spend fixing problems that should not exist, the more I can sit down and really focus on real, concrete problems. When it is really user problems that normally we should not have, that matters.

Depending on how you order your server, you do not keep the server for ten years, although some will keep it for ten years. Mainly I try to keep it for about five years, and that is a good average. I try to see over five years whether the company will need to replace it. Mine must be ten or fifteen years old. That is why, for small and medium enterprises, if I aim for five years when ordering it, I will try to get one that is a bit more powerful so that if they grow, they still have something in reserve. I did not change it because something was lacking. Each time it has changed, it is really based on the number of years.

I gave it a nine because I have not had any issues as such. That is because, with the download, they said there was the option in the package that was not there anymore. Maybe it was because they had not updated the website. My overall rating for this product is 9.

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.