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Arista Networks Platform vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
Arista Networks Platform delivers good ROI, justifies higher costs with long-term savings, especially compared to Cisco and Juniper.
Sentiment score
7.3
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers deliver reliability, cost savings, and efficient management, enhancing performance and financial outcomes for organizations.
By not having to worry about it, I would estimate we save two to four hours a week, depending on what's happening, such as if we need to spin up a new server, which would contribute to more time if done the old way.
In my immediate case for antenna analysis, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer a reduction from days of computing to half a day or hours.
The value of uptime to us is critical.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Arista Networks Platform offers fast, proficient support, praised for direct engineer access and high customer satisfaction globally.
Sentiment score
7.5
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers' support is responsive and reliable, with effective solutions and generally positive user satisfaction.
They provide instant support and maintain commitments regarding replacement products.
According to my team’s feedback, we receive extended support from the Arista team.
It has always been scheduled maintenance, which says a lot for a production environment, as we haven't had to call in a trouble ticket for the actual hardware during its entire run.
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.
When we had a power supply failure out of the box, we called support, and they delivered the replacement within four hours as promised.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Arista Networks Platform offers scalable, reliable networking for data centers, praised for network capacity, low latency, and intuitive management.
Sentiment score
7.6
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers provide scalable configurations, supporting growth with expansion capabilities despite some concerns about advanced scalability limitations.
Scalability is a key feature of Arista, owing to the possibilities to manage the entire data center network from a single console.
The scalability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is excellent.
Any outages or blackouts are limited to particular servers, not affecting the whole chassis or enclosures.
We bought our product with scaling involved, and we've been scaling it up anytime we've needed more storage.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Arista Networks Platform is highly stable with minimal downtime, praised for reliability when following best practice configurations.
Sentiment score
8.1
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are praised for their stability, reliability, robust construction, and efficient uptime, enhancing user confidence.
Over four years, we've had less than 1 percent downtime.
There is a feature to update the server while it is running, so there is no need to restart.
We have truly not had any downtime on the infrastructure at all.
 

Room For Improvement

Arista Networks needs better documentation, integration, pricing, security, stability, management, community support, and network feature expansion.
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers users seek performance, management, design improvements, better support, pricing adjustments, and flexible configurations.
Feature-wise, it addresses most customer requirements.
Arista Networks is currently less popular as they were initially more focused on data centers than campus networks.
We need to know about any upcoming updates so that we can plan accordingly.
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.
This forces you to go up to a larger server to get the desired processor, which increases the cost.
 

Setup Cost

Arista Networks is costly, with high hardware and licensing expenses, especially compared to Huawei and NETGEAR, affecting affordability.
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer competitive pricing with perceived value and reliability, often providing better deals than rivals like HPE.
Compared to Cisco, Arista routers are significantly cheaper.
Arista products are perceived as costly, especially compared to competitors like Cisco.
They have been stable and running for years without performance downtime or significant disc failures.
Some customers find it cheaper due to contractual agreements, while others find it expensive, especially when scaling up.
The software associated with servers, like VMware subscription licenses, drives costs.
 

Valuable Features

Arista Networks Platform is praised for its reliability, scalability, Linux shell, efficient management, automation, and unmatched monitoring capabilities.
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer scalable, reliable performance and ease of management with powerful Xeon CPUs and integrated tools.
Features include plug-and-play auto-discovery, allowing centralized configuration and management.
The most valuable features of Arista include low latency, scalability, and sustainability of the products.
They keep running for at least five to seven years without any issues.
With PowerEdge Servers, I don't need a one-to-one ratio redundancy, which leads to about eighty percent downtime reduction.
One of the valuable features is Active Directory, which helps in managing the network.
 

Categories and Ranking

Arista Networks Platform
Ranking in Data Center Networking
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (10th)
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
Ranking in Data Center Networking
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Blade Servers (5th), Rack Servers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Data Center Networking category, the mindshare of Arista Networks Platform is 16.4%, down from 20.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 0.9%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Networking
 

Featured Reviews

MarekSzafrański - PeerSpot reviewer
Affordable for enterprise-sized companies
Speaking about whether the product enhanced our company's data center scalability, I would say that it was a solution that was used in a banking company, where it served as a replacement for Cisco. Though Arista Networks Platform is similar to Cisco IOS CLI, I feel that the former product offers better prices compared to the latter tool. Arista Networks Platform office is more efficient at a lower cost. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. The tool is stable and cheaper than Cisco. I would say that Arista Networks Platform is 100 percent compatible with the existing infrastructure in my company. The impact of the tool's network telemetry on our company's troubleshooting practices was just good for the scope for which I need the product. I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.
Syed Masuood - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles workloads and diverse applications efficiently
We have a lot of VMs on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. On a single server, we have probably hosted 14 or 15 VMs. Out of these, 8 to 10 are continuously running, and four of them are backup VMs, so it can handle a good workload. For cybersecurity, it is only accessible on the intranet; it is not accessible through the web. We use it for local development purposes, and it is behind our firewall. Its security is strong. We handle a lot of test data for government and confidential customers. It is safe and strong locally. We have not experienced any security issues. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime if we need to replace a hard disk, instead of completely shutting a server, there is a hot swap feature. It is quite good in that aspect. Usually, for any activity, there is a downtime of about 30 minutes. It has saved a lot of time. We have tried AI workloads for a development environment for a government customer in Singapore. The servers are hosted in Singapore. It is an ML-based engine with AI. It is a government project where data is processed, and we run it on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The benefit of running AI workloads on PowerEdge Servers is that it is easy to allocate memory. The application we are running is memory intensive. It is pretty easy to scale memory and storage.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Arista Networks Platform?
Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arista Networks Platform?
Arista products are perceived as costly, especially compared to competitors like Cisco.
What needs improvement with Arista Networks Platform?
Currently, Arista is too costly for its customers. Feature-wise, it addresses most customer requirements. However, we sometimes face challenges when integrating with proprietary protocols and solut...
When shopping for a rack server, would you go with Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem rack servers were the better fit for us. We ultimately decided to go with Dell EMC Poweredge....
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
It has helped us reduce unplanned downtime by 20% to 30%.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
Mainly, I would like to improve the speed of storage response. We would like to improve our performance by using disks without rotation. The price is better now, and I think it will be better in th...
 

Also Known As

7000 Series
PowerEdge R
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

American Internet Services
NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Find out what your peers are saying about Arista Networks Platform vs. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.