Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Reviews

We've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for a long time, and they are really the workhorse behind the scenes for our business, whether it's documents or something else. In the past, it was our ERP system, our SQL Server, and nowadays, besides that, we also do some production technology stuff, some PLCs, some data collection, so Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers run all that technology behind our business.

Our use case for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers includes our SQL Server that runs our ERP system, as well as typical office tasks like Excel files, Word documents, and marketing materials; basically, typical file storage, and our PLC analytic systems that we run.

We've about 130 people in our organization. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have supported our growth. We've had tremendous growth, increasing probably by four times when I started, so Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have been behind the scenes, enabling us to grow the business. When we started, we were a small business, and we've now grown into the medium business range. We use a lot of enterprise features that small businesses don't. It has been great that PowerEdge was there when we were a small business, and now that we are a medium-sized business, there is still a solution for us.

My favorite features of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have been the redundancy and reliability. The redundancy built into the system allows us to replace components like a hard drive without shutting the server down, and that has always been the best feature ever. 

We've quadrupled in size since we started, which is a great story showing how PowerEdge servers have enabled that growth over the years.

To improve Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I would like to see the return of the dedicated Hyper-V cluster storage product line that was discontinued, which I found to be a really nice product. The beneficial aspect of that feature was that we could skip the PowerStore and just have the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers alone, as they also served as storage, which helped us save money.

We've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers longer than I've been with the company. I've been with the company for 20 years, and we've been a PowerEdge customer since before.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have been able to scale with our growing needs. We've grown about four times compared to when I started, and as technology has advanced, so have we, with PowerEdge always providing a solution.

I find Dell's customer service and technical support exceptional. All the support personnel have been very knowledgeable and quick to respond, making overall support great with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and the enterprise products.

Positive

Before Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I don't know what they were using.

They are easy to deploy. Deploying Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers was made easier with ProDeploy; I've deployed servers in the past, but I prefer to focus on high-level stuff now, and having ProDeploy take care of the deployment was really helpful.

It's just my team of three maintaining Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

We have seen a return on investment through the redundancy and reliability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, which keep the technology running seamlessly in the background. My managers do not have to worry about it at all. As long as it keeps running, no one else in the company knows it's there, and that is the best testament to the product.

The pricing of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has been a little problematic. It was sticker shock with our most recent purchase compared to the previous one, and there's a gap in pricing at our current level because what we do isn't very compute-intensive, resulting in a mismatch where we fit into an in-between category without an exact solution available. We don't need a lot of processor power or a lot of memory. We need a medium amount of those, but the solutions available are a little bit too large for us.

We have evaluated other solutions from time to time, but we use a lot of Dell products, so it's always made sense to go with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

With Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, right-sizing the equipment is important. I've found that many IT people overestimate their needs in terms of compute and memory, so utilizing Dell's tool to determine current usage and discussing the company's trajectory with C-level executives helps in making informed decisions for future growth. I don't know the name of that tool off the top of my head, but all the Dell reps know it and recommend running it when purchasing new equipment.

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

The use case for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is digitizing and processing of data, but I can't say more. I can't be more specific.

The benefits my company has realized from using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers range from collating information to simulating different physical objects such as antennas and radar type applications.

What I find valuable about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the adaptability to configure, based on one or multiple processors, taking advantage of the number of cores, the ease by which it works with the Tensor Cores of the GPUs, and that's the most value in terms of processing speed and large scale problems. 

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers play a role in our company's AI initiatives, however, that's a new area for us. We've been exploring the idea of collaborating, in terms of how we can leverage AI for our data processing, and more importantly to better be able to predict different scenarios. But I'm not involved in that aspect of it just yet.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could be improved in areas such as cooling. I've seen some demos of Dell working with Vertiv to manage things such as that, so a combination of air cool and liquid cool. 

That's one aspect. The other aspect is the form factor; it's pretty big, takes up a lot of space. However, as the technology of the GPUs improves, we could probably do the same workload with less add-ons, and that would simplify that problem. From what I've seen here, Dell is already working with partners to address these concerns.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in my organization for about five years.

Reliability was a big issue for me when I switched to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The previous solution had reliability issues. 

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale with the growing needs of my company. It works since we can deploy images quickly. We can hot swap things. As we scale, it's just a matter of having the vision to have enough space and physical infrastructure to do that. As far as the server resources and software resources, it's pretty easy.

I assess support from Dell as excellent; what I most appreciate is the regional support. At the enterprise level, there's always someone to talk to, to reach out to. 

The sales reps stay in the loop and they constantly stay in touch. It's fairly easy to pick up a phone and call someone and get to the right place. What I appreciate is even if they don't know or they're not immediately sure of a solution to our problems, they'll quickly point us in the right direction.

Positive

Before selecting Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I didn't have such good luck with HP. HP Enterprise doesn't work for me. I've had some successes with custom-built servers, but in terms of price, eventually at scale, they become cost-prohibitive. That's one of the reasons why we moved towards the Dell solution over the years. In terms of cost, reliability, the ability to work directly with them to spec different systems and get them supplied on a decent lead time works. The other vendors don't work so effectively.

The deployment is easy. I can I can dump images on the server and just send it off and install it. It's hot swappable in a sense, the way we had it configured. It's very easy.

The speed of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is valuable to me. The benefit for higher speed and more accurate results is less development time and faster time to market in some aspects, and better return on the investment overall. 

In my immediate case for antenna analysis, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer a reduction from days of computing to half a day or hours. It's ten-times improvement when combining processor cores and Tensor Cores in the same form factor. In terms of radar analysis, we can process more objects; it's four-times improvement in the number of objects we can keep track of at the same time.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is somewhat skewed. In the beginning, we used a lot of resources, in terms of dollars, to try to do everything ourselves. What we're finding over the years is Dell works with other partners to make that easier, so we can actually save a lot of time by having other people with the right expertise do things. That's not so much an issue anymore because we've figured out how to keep our costs moderate by working with Dell directly and their partners.

I did have another solution addressing the same needs before Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, and that's where the competition comes in. 

My role in using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is to figure out what the system needs for the work, or for the processing that we need and assist with purchasing of that stuff. On a technical level, I'm also collecting the data from our instruments and making sure that data is processed to provide usable, actionable information.

My advice to other companies who are considering Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is definitely to get directly with Dell. Get direct contact with the support group and that will get you to the engineering level. Dell will work with you to develop and spec a system. Once you spec it, if your ambition is to scale and grow, that can always be part of it. That initial, direct working relationship with Dell is my best recommendation of where to start. Trying to do it on your own, you won't necessarily understand. You may understand the current technology, yet you may not understand where that technology is going or the vision of Dell. Dell can show you that vision, and you can now architect a system that takes advantage of that in the future to minimize your replacement costs down the road. So before you do anything, pick up the phone and start working with one of the engineers or application engineers; that works best.

I'd give Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a rating of ten out of ten. Those guys are easy to talk to and easy to work with.

Our use cases for the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers involve reselling the servers to our customers as a Dell VAR reseller, and internally, we use them for our own lab environments, testing, and evaluating the servers for our customers in advance to see how they're doing.

The most valuable feature we find in the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the iDRAC. We value the iDRAC for its out-of-band management for the servers; servers are servers for the most part, but the iDRAC is the bread and butter of the PowerEdge server series. The ability to do everything through that iDRAC interface is a key for us, allowing us to perform tasks remotely without needing to physically touch anything. Everything can be done through APIs via the iDRAC, making it a very powerful tool we rely on regularly. Its integration into other products, such as OpenManage Enterprise, drives us to use the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as a whole.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have benefited our organization greatly since we sell numerous units for our customers. We are working with HPC systems for our customers, and it really is the bread and butter product. Everything starts with compute, and that's the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for you.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are doing a pretty good job; they're moving towards liquid cooling and making it more accessible. The form factor is nice, and they're easy to work on as far as tools and everything.

The licensing of the different formats of the iDRAC is somewhat annoying; I understand why they do it, but if you have the iDRAC license, you should have access to everything. I don't understand why it needs to be sliced into levels such as essential for the bare bones; everyone's going to use Enterprise anyway, so in my opinion, we don't need that many levels of licensing for iDRAC.

I've used the solution for five years now. 

I have not experienced any performance issues with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers; however, we have experienced downtime. It's usually due to environmental issues in a lab, not due to of the server itself. 

We have had crashes due to hardware failure. The causes for that have been memory DIMMs and hard drives that needed to be replaced. I should note that they've never caused any outages or crashes; they went bad and had to be replaced. Thanks to the redundancy, they didn't cause any crashes that I can think of. 

We've had operating system crashes yet not hardware-based ones. I would assess the overall stability and reliability of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as very good; it directly relates to no crashes.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale for our company absolutely, as we are a small company.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers don't necessarily cater to small businesses and small-medium businesses; it's usable yet not really catered to. It caters more to enterprises.

I have worked with customer support before. My impressions of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers support specifically are that they are usually fine. I don't need to engage technical support as much as some of the other products because it's straightforward. Usually, it's break-fix type of situations, and that's always pretty easy and responsive.

Positive

I have evaluated other server solutions. We have reviewed HP, Supermicro, and Penguin Computing servers in the past. We go with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers because we are a Dell Titanium partner. We have a long-standing relationship that allows us better pricing and discounts.

The Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very easy to deploy; it goes right back to the iDRAC, which makes it super easy.

The iDRAC is really the only thing you license on a Dell PowerEdge Rack Server.

We are using blades, multi-use chassis, and rack servers from the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers; no towers. We do use the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for AI initiatives. In terms of AI usage, we have developed our own AI, such as a large language model chatbot for internal use to import documents and perform tasks. Anything beyond that, we are unable to discuss.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the product overall a ten.

Our use cases for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers involve using it as our host for our virtualized environment.

The main benefit is reliability when I think about how a server has been running quietly for four years without even a fan failure or anything like that. Nobody's touched it for half a decade, and it's still running great.

The feature I appreciate the most about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the reliability. I have tried other manufacturers and servers both personally and in my job, and it's clear that the Dell PowerEdge offers the best price, performance, and reliability; there's really no contest.

We use a monitoring system, specifically Zabbix, to measure performance metrics with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, which alerts us to high usage and provides metrics on running out of RAM and high CPU usage.

I wish that Dell had a competitive product to the HPE MicroServer because if they did, I would buy them, not in their hundreds, but certainly in their tens, especially in my capacity as an MSP. I sell more HPE MicroServers than any other type of server, and while they're solid, I dislike the external power supplies and the previous generation with soldered and integrated CPUs. I wish there were a Dell solution for $1,000 to $1,500 for small spaces and clients that don't have dedicated server rooms.

I don't have any other points of improvement, but I have a gripe about the way Dell has broken down their storage offerings, making it quite confusing, even for us technical folks, though that falls outside of PowerEdge.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for what feels like my entire career, and it's more than a decade.

I have not seen any instability with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, as they have been absolutely solid. I can only recall one hardware failure over a number of years.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are as scalable as any other server, and when we talk about scalability, it essentially means right-sizing at the time of conception.

I believe Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have features that cater to the needs of SMB organizations, but I wish they had a more SME-oriented small server product that competes with the HPE MicroServer.

We contacted technical support due to a network device failure we had probably four months ago, and even though it was the small hours of the morning, the resolution was quick, and tech support was pretty great, so I have no complaints there. I would rate them a nine out of ten.

Positive

We have used alternatives to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, including the HP Enterprise products, and have used all kinds of alternatives. The HPE ProLiant is probably the closest alternative to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, but the purchase channels and after-sales support aren't quite as easy. There are not many HPE VARs. I prefer the experience of working with Dell partners, as the whole purchasing process with Dell is less time out of my day.

The initial deployment of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is no more difficult than deploying anything else.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers do not require any more maintenance on my end than any other server. 

The pricing for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is on par with everything else at the moment.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers do not play a role in our company's AI initiatives, as anything we're doing AI-wise is all in the cloud, and we're not doing any AI on-premises at the moment. 

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine 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.

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.

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.

Everything from bare metal to ESXi host, any kind of hypervisor is what I've used Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for. 

Currently, we are using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for AI initiatives; one of our projects I cannot discuss, however, it has been really good. Everything about it, including the Redfish hooks and the automation, is very easy and streamlined for the AIs regarding Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

The iDRAC is the most valuable feature of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers; the out-of-band management is absolutely fantastic, especially when you institute roles that prevent access to the data center, and being able to do it remotely is fantastic. 

Initial setup, troubleshooting, repair, and maintenance have benefited the organizations I work with since everything has been more streamlined, especially when you add OME into it. Whether it's connected to the internet or not, the on-prem versions still function fantastically.

For the internal SD card of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I would add driver packs so that when you're trying to image bare metal, you don't have to worry about trying to find all the drivers you need to install whatever OS it could be, specifically in our environments in the fed space, since trying to use USB devices is difficult, so adding things on the USB stick and plugging them in for drivers is most of the time not possible.

I've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for probably eight years now.

The resiliency and stability of the products are fantastic. We have devices that have been around until end-of-life, but we're still using them for things, so stability has been great with very minimal issues. When issues occur, it's usually a hard drive failure, which is expected, so I think it's excellent.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very flexible, whether you're doing a vSAN ready node or whatever may be your hyperscale of choice, because they scale easily, and adding them into whatever environment you have is straightforward.

Customer support is usually really good for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. My only complaint would be if you're calling the specific fed line, sometimes they don't transfer you, and they want to get information that you can't give them before they do, even if you call the dedicated fed line, which is not always consistent, depending on the time of day.

The support is actually a big part of it when evaluating other solutions. The warranty support and keeping your hard drive for the fed space is key. Typically, the contacts we have on-site are very knowledgeable, they come in within a day and usually have it fixed and taken care of if there are issues. Even when they don't need something replaced, they usually suggest helpful troubleshooting steps, and it's usually really good support.

Positive

It's really easy to deploy. It's pretty straightforward. Whether you're having it automated through OME and it's pushing your configs or you're doing it just directly connecting into your iDRAC. Out of all the devices I've used in the industry, it's probably the easiest I've used. 

I actually work for a value-added reseller, and I support many federal customers, which means my organization is a giant. On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine out of ten.