Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Reviews

• OpenManage Essentials: Loading new firmware is easy, either via OpenManage Essentials, OMIVV, or the iDRAC. It’s just so easy.
• OpenManage Essentials facilitates the build of a desired template (including disk configuration) and pushing this out to multiple hosts at once. This greatly speeds up our deployment times.
• iDRAC 8: Being able to provision and manage RAID virtual disks from the iDRAC is a huge bonus. You don’t have to boot the machine via the console to do this.
• The firmware rollback is great. The iDRAC can store previous versions to make this very quick.

• iDRAC 8 allows you to configure so much of the server without having to use a console. For example, RAID configuration, disk health, and SSD wear.
• It also displays a great amount of environmental history, including temps and power usage, with up to a year of history stored in the iDRAC.
• The vFlash capability is handy, allowing multiple SD partitions to be created and mounted. Being able to load all kinds of firmware via iDRAC is great, e.g., disk, controller, BIOS.
• OpenManage Essentials is better than OneView in my opinion. While it lacks the visual finesse of OneView, it has far more functionality.

OpenManage Essentials could do with a visual “birthday” as it still requires the Silverlight plugin.

OpenManage for vCenter integration is powerful, but also a little buggy. Hardware-wise, they are great. I much prefer the iDRAC architecture over HPE iLO.

We have used the solution for about nine months.

We have not encountered any stability issues.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

So far, the technical support has been very good. The self-service portal for requesting replacement parts is extremely easy to use and it is fast.

For technical support tickets, the experience isn’t quite as good. There were some delays in communication.

We used HPE ProLiant. We switched due to significant cost savings in capex as well as operational improvements.

For example, having OpenManage Essentials is better than OneView, at least for rack servers.

The setup was extremely simple.

iDRAC is easier to configure, with the front LCD panel, on the non-XD models, being very handy.

The NFC option for the front bezel combined with the mobile app is great for on-site troubleshooting.

For a small, extra cost, you can get OpenManage Essentials with configuration management. This allows you to deploy pre-configured hardware templates making mass deployment easy.

DELL is typically much cheaper that HPE, for example. Their licensing is far more transparent and simple.

iDRAC licensing is significantly cheaper. Extended support costs are also lower.

We evaluated HPE ProLiant.

It is a great product. Just be mindful of some of the current bugs in OpenManage and OpenManage Integration for vCenter. Other than these, we’ve had a great experience.

These servers have been real work-horses. Dell has done a nice job at including more management tools, with OpenManage and the likes. The DRAC Enterprise is an amazing feature, especially when managing decentralized server farms.

One of the main factors in helping efficacy is having like-branded servers, which have compatible tools. There are are more universal management tools out there, but they are generally pretty costly. The fact that the servers have generally been quite reliable, has really decreased expenditure. I know that when I put a server in place, they will simply run. I had servers that were still from the PE2650, and PE4400 up until fairly recently when everything got replaced. There is something to be said about reliable hardware.

Unfortunately, I am now more in the space of IaaS, so I am a little bit removed from that particular area. In my experience when I was actively using Dell's servers, they were always improving their hardware, and coming up with more efficient solutions. One of the things that I had started using pretty extensively is blade servers, as they are more efficient on energy, and can provide the same computing power as racked servers, yet consume much less rack real estate.

I have used all series of Dell PowerEdge servers for about 12-14 years, through to the 12th generation.

For the most part, my experience with Dell was in conjunction with VMware vSphere, and VMware View. There were some issues that I encountered with the servers, but it is a result of having multiple server generations with different processors in place, which caused some problems with HA and DRS with VMware, but these don't necessarily quality as issues with the servers themselves. From a hardware perspective, these servers have always been rock solid.

I think the customer support at Dell is adequate, at least when it comes to their server support team. Some other areas are more lacking, but over all, and as it relates to servers, I have no complaints.

Most of my experience has been with Dell servers, so I can't comment much on different solutions.

If you're familiar with deploying servers, then it's not really complex. There is a bit of a learning curve when it comes to setting up the OpenManage server and agents, but nothing unsurmountable.

I have always deployed my own servers. If you are operating in an SMB, I would recommend that you get your hands dirty, and learn how these servers are setup, connected, etc., as it is going to be a matter of when, not if, that the server is going to have some failed component, that you're going to want to know how to deal with. Typically, if you have your Dell support, even the basic one, I believe you are able to get a technician to come help with hardware repair/replacement.

Well, since this is a discussion about hardware, one would argue that ROI isn't really much of a relevant argument in this case, as the factors for it would depend more than just the actual server purchased. This is really a CAPEX expense, and given today's technology, and the business need and requirements, I personally would much rather start moving my computing resources to the cloud, (i.e: AWS, Azure, Rackspace, etc...), and shift that CAPEX into an OPEX and free up some funds for more fluid cashflow.

I have worked very minimally with HP servers as well, which were also pretty good servers.

Reliability and manageability are valuable because since we run two separate sites, we can perform our maintenance and monitoring remotely (iDRAC), saving us travel time.

It allowed us to run more VMs than we had originally planned. We've had no failures in six years, and can perform remote management and maintenance.

This product has been superseded by newer model (R730) so any suggestions would be irrelevant. However, I am having a memory speed issue that I would like to be fixed.

I've been using it for six years, and are currently using the 2011 model..

We have had no issues with the deployment.

In the six years we have been using it, we have never had a fault/failure/malfunction hardware-wise.

Memory scalability and reduced memory speed when memory channels are fully populated. Then again, the model we have is six years old and our workloads/VMs have doubled.

We get great local support, and have always had positive experiences when speaking to Dell and using their products.

It was straightforward.

It was implemented by a systems integrator.

You should upgrade to, or get, Pro Support Plus. It is especially useful if your internal server/infrastructure team is small.

• Remote Management IDRAC
• Allows us to deploy & manage a server remotely
• It's very quiet

We have been using this server as a software license and a small file server for 10 users.

It would be nice to see an improvement in the performance.

We've used it for five years.

There were no issues with the deployment.

There have been no issues with the stability.

We haven't needed to scale it as we're only using it for 10 people.

We have not used Dell customer service.

We only used Dell support to download driver updates which is very flexible and very good.

We used other products, but Dell support offered more. We have less issues have a better understanding of the hardware design.

It was straightforward.

We did it in-house.

The Xeon variants and large amount of RAM the server board supports is to our liking. Also the ease of which the machine can be upgraded. We had no difficulty with any hardware additions. Lastly, we enjoy the great warranty and quality of the product.

The ease of working with our suppliers and the availibility of the product.

I can't think of anything, as it is a good product.

We did not run into any problems.

We did not run into any problems.

We did not run into any problems.

It is a pricey server in comparison to its competitors, but it doesn’t lack in any of its capability. It still is great value for money and the product has great after sales support.

We chose Dell because it is a well-known brand and this was one of the buying factors for us. We find that trusted brands benefit not only our clients, but us as a reseller as well.

One valuable feature is the scalability to deploy thousands of desktops. 

Ideal for database applications, large virtual infrastructures and other data intensive workloads.

Dell PowerEdge R920 4U Rack Server

Here are more specs when considering scalability:

The R920 12G Server is a four socket, 4U rack server that offers increased performance and expandability, boasting a 100% increase in IOPS performance (Input/Output Operations Per Second) over the previous-generation PowerEdge servers. Enhanced storage and compute density enables the R920 to run intensive mission critical applications for any midsized to large enterprise environment effortlessly.

The PowerEdge 12G family of servers introduces the new Intel Xeon E7-2800, 4800, and 8800 v2 family of processors to the 4U form factor. Delivering more cores, additional cache, and better power efficiency over the previous generation of Xeon Sandy Bridge processors.

The system supports up to two E7-2800 V2 processors, or for more performance choose up to (4) E7-4800 or (4) 8800 V2 series, 15 core processors, for a total of 120 threads with Intel’s QuickPath Interconnect clock rates of up to 8GT/s (Giga Transfers per second).

The Intel C602J chipset supports DDR3 memory, providing faster speeds, higher compute density, and lower power consumption than the previous generation.

When used with a 4 CPU configuration, a maximum of 96 DDR3 DIMMs can support an impressive 6TBs of LRDIMMs of 64GB modules.

Depending on the processor, the R920 can achieve memory speeds of up to 1600MT/s (Mega Transfers per second).

A choice of storage configurations supports up to 24 2.5 inch SFF drives allowing you to choose between SATA, SSD, or SAS drive options to best suit your needs. For maximum performance, the R920 can be configured to support 8 PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe SSD’s, optimizing input/output operations per second (IOPS), reducing mechanical latency and leveraging enterprise class reliability in NAND SSD’s, which offer a significant increase in performance and durability over standard hard drives.

The PERC H730P storage controller offers 12Gb/s on a PCIe 3 interface and supports RAID configurations 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, 6, 60 with 2GB non-volatile flash backed write cache.

For external storage, the optional PERC H810 6Gb/s adapter provides 1GB non-volatile write cache and supports RAID modes of 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, 6, and 60.

And, depending on the chassis configuration, the front of the PowerEdge R920 allows access to the power ON button, Non-Maskable Interrupt and system ID buttons, an LCD information panel, 2 USB 2.0 ports, optical drive, VGA connection, and an iDRAC vFlash SD card slot, which requires an iDRAC enterprise license.

The back of the server provides access to redundant power supplies, 2 USB 2.0 connections, VGA port, dedicated iDRAC Enterprise connection, serial port, a choice of quad port LAN or dual port LAN with dual 10Gbe port, and PCIe slots.

Choose between the platinum or titanium rated 750W power supply or the platinum rated 1100W power supply. Up to 4 hot plug redundant PSU’s can be configured with the system.

The R920 comes with 8 PCIe 3.0 slots standard and two more can be added so there’s plenty of room for expansion.

CPU 1

Slot 1: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x24 connector), baseboard

Slot 2: NDC riser slot (Network Daughter Card)

Slot 3: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x16 connector), baseboard

(optional riser)

Slot 1/1: full-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x4 (x8 connector), left riser

Slot 2/2: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x4 (x8 connector), left riser

Slot 4: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 5: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

4 CPU systems

Slot 6: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 7: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 8: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 9: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x24 connector), baseboard

(optional riser)

Slot 1/9: full-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x16 connector), right riser

Slot 2/10: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x16 connector), right riser

Various PCie cards can be installed including additional NIC’s, Infiniband cards, and Fusion IO drives.

Dell’s iDRAC 7 Express Level Management Technology comes standard offering remote management and monitoring without the need to install additional software. Upgrading to Enterprise allows you to maintain complete server control and access your server from any remote location using a browser, in addition to enabling the dedicated management port and vFlash SD slot.

The R920 can weigh up to 130 lbs. and is 6.8” tall…….18.99” wide…..and 29.65” deep (31.59” with PSU and bezel).

Supported operating systems include Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server, Oracle Solaris, VMware, and Citrix XenServer.

A brief upbeat and informative video overview of the Dell R920 4U rack server:

We implement Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for our clients. Their use cases differ depending on their needs. Some use them for storage, others for data protection, etc.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers help speed up our client's production time to market.

I would rate the power consumption of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine out of ten. The performance is great for our clients.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers help improve our client's unplanned downtime fivefold.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are resilient and provide great flexibility.

The most valuable feature is the storage, which is offered in different varieties with many options depending on the use cases, including unstructured data. 

The price has room for improvement. Given the market size, it isn't easy to compete with all the other vendors if the pricing is high.

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

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are stable.

The scalability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is amazing.

The deployment is straightforward.

We implement Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for our clients, and if required, we consult with Dell.

The return on investment depends on each client's use case. The most common reason for a return comes from the time savings they get from using the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers ten out of ten.

We use VMware hypervisor on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We use the PowerEdge storage with iSCSI.

We use these servers for the hypervisor, and we have many Windows servers on them. They work very well, and they have a very good performance.

The performance of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is very good. 

They are easy to configure. It is simple to work with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

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

They are very stable.

We use Dell support for notebooks, servers, and storage. Overall, I would rate their support an eight out of ten.

Positive

We only use Dell servers. We build the hypervisor servers for the company, and these are the only servers we use.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a ten out of ten. They are very good. I am happy with them.