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Cisco Nexus 9000 Series vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 30, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Cisco Nexus 9000 Series
Ranking in Data Center Networking
9th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (23rd)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series
Ranking in Data Center Networking
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
265
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (2nd), Blade Servers (4th), Rack Servers (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Fakhar Mahmood - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Network Administrator at i2c
Has consistently supported high availability with reliable performance and minimal disruption
Cisco Nexus 9000 Series and the routers are good, but the FMC or FTDs still need some improvement. We have Palo Alto firewalls and Next-Generation Firewalls in our environment. In comparison to the main firewall, we moved from Cisco FTDs to Palo Alto. We still have FTDs in our environment, but the majority of the firewalls have been moved to Palo Alto. They are more user-friendly, give more visibility, and are more efficient. The performance is better than Cisco. With the new features, Cisco is having some improvement for the FTD. I am currently evaluating the FTDs. The new version has better features like the encrypted visibility engine and user-based changes in FMCs, and other things are quite useful for us. FTDs do have limitations and other issues. We communicated that limitation and feature support to the Cisco account manager. We do have support for the devices. We currently have a weekly call with Cisco and they are making progress regarding new versions of the FMCs and introducing new features. The performance of deployment has improved quite a bit compared to four or five years ago.
Tom van Mil - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Administrator at Lico Innovations B.v.
Supports flexible hosting needs through seamless upgradability and strong monitoring capabilities
The most valuable features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series for me are the feature richness and the upgradability. I really love the way that it is so dynamically applicable for every situation, and they manage to have an all-in-one solution for every single situation. Dell PowerEdge has supported the growth and operational success of my company through its great compute power and price-to-performance ratio. Every time Dell is at the top of its game for us, and there is just no other brand for us that is able to reach that kind of price-to-performance ratio. Dell PowerEdge R-Series has features that specifically cater to the needs of my small company, such as iDRAC. The iDRAC system is a complete feature set for managing servers and hardware technically and monitoring-wise. It really fits in our system and our ecosystem, and monitoring-wise, it is excellent. They have all these sensors available via different protocols and end points, which I love, and the ability to manage and control everything via the iDRAC interface is just a welcome bonus. In our use case, Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very flexible. It is another computer which helps a lot because of the durability over time. They keep running, making scalability for getting more of those resources in our environment so easy.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco Nexus 9000 Series is quite a complex machine, but we are using a very simple configuration with basic Nexus switching, and we don't have many issues with Cisco Nexus 9000 Series at the moment in our present infrastructure."
"Performance has been great with no abnormal behaviors detected, and the network remains stable even in failover scenarios, supporting vast environments with high availability."
"Cisco Nexus 9000 Series is very durable and very reliable, and there has never been any issue with it."
"RealPresence works effectively."
"It helps in growing our needs in the organization by doing what it is supposed to be doing."
"The specific features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I find most valuable are stability and performance."
"The resiliency and stability of the products are fantastic."
"The main benefits we receive from Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are stability and reliability."
"SimpliVity's most valuable features are its unified management and operational capabilities."
"The pricing and licensing of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very competitive."
"They help us work through things and they're also very competitive on pricing."
"I would describe my experience with Dell's support for PowerEdge solutions as great, as we had to get a motherboard replaced, and the replacement part arrived the next business day, which was impressive."
 

Cons

"The SFP modules we are using have had issues. We have Cisco modules, but they frequently heat up or there are packet error issues."
"Cost-wise, Cisco Nexus 9000 Series is very expensive."
"We find that Cisco has been left behind by the other vendors. The other vendors have adopted new technology, and we find Cisco lagging behind."
"Currently, we are facing issues with updates, particularly on the driver side. We did not receive proper communication about upcoming driver upgrades and other aspects. We are lagging in that area. We need to know about any upcoming updates so that we can plan accordingly. It could be that our emails are not registered properly."
"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."
"The pricing could be better, as budget is always a huge thing for us."
"Dell hardware is not as stable as HP. I have not seen any issues with HP in five years, but with Dell, I am getting multiple issues. It's not stable. They need to verify why it has multiple issues and why Dell hardware is not as stable as HP hardware."
"I haven't seen ROI from Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers."
"I would like to see a virtual view of the solution after creating and configuring it."
"The easiest thing to improve the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is to have a better road map for us."
"They could improve on the processor and security for the next release of the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers are very expensive."
"We do use Dell's OpenManage console. It is easy to use this console for lifecycle management or PowerEdge servers."
"Dell is pretty good. good. I had a conversation with Dell a while ago due to a vendor. We got much better pricing from a competitor. When I looked at another company, Dell called me and asked why am I looking at someone else when they have a distributor. I told them that their pricing was not good, so Dell went back to the distributor, and we got much better pricing"
"The high cost of Dell PowerEdge Rack Server licenses is attributed to the pre-installed Windows Server operating system from Microsoft."
"The pricing could always be better."
"I'd like them to be cheaper, but that's not the world we live in and that's not where the pound is at."
"The pricing is great; very competitive. That's the reason we bought hundreds of them."
"You can't have computed performance without using more power. That said, when I consider the power consumption and performance of the MX740c, depending on how much memory you install on each blade, you get the best bang for your buck."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business94
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise111
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus 9000 Series?
After the initial integration, the focus has been on support rather than further development. Cost-wise, Cisco Nexus 9000 Series is very expensive. The pricing could absolutely be improved. So far,...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series?
Cisco Nexus 9000 Series serves as a core router and core switch for users, and provides interconnectivity between the core switch and the access switch, as well as remote access switch for smaller ...
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Nexus 9000 Series?
I am a customer of this solution and also a distributor. Cisco Nexus 9000 Series is usually integrated with other Cisco tools or third-party tools, including 3750, 3850, 3650, and 3750 as access sw...
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?
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 so...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco Nexus 9000 Series vs. Dell PowerEdge R-Series and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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