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Cisco Nexus 9000 Series vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Ethernet Switches (16th)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series
Ranking in Data Center Networking
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
309
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (1st), Blade Servers (2nd), 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

"RealPresence works effectively."
"The stability and reliability of Cisco Nexus 9000 Series are robust, and once you put it on, it does not just fail; that takes a long time, maybe even years."
"We are using the core capabilities of Cisco Nexus 9000 Series Ethernet switches, and it is performing well."
"Cisco Nexus 9000 Series is very durable and very reliable, and there has never been any issue with it."
"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 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."
"The server itself is valuable. It does what we ask it to do."
"The maintenance and remote monitoring are valuable."
"I have never faced any failure with these servers."
"I'd give Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a rating of ten out of ten."
"Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are pretty good at handling diverse applications."
"It's required for our business. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers benefit our organization as we build satellites and use images from Earth to check the planet's health and constellation for telecommunication purposes."
"When it comes to energy consumption they're also very good. They don't use power because they're power-hungry, but because we use them very hard."
"From a hardware perspective, these servers have always been rock solid."
 

Cons

"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."
"I would rate the technical support for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series an eight out of ten. This rating is not because of their lack of expertise, but just the assignment period."
"For Cisco Nexus 9000 Series switches, I think we need to work on the HSRP. Whenever it flaps or something happens, it creates an issue."
"The SFP modules we are using have had issues. We have Cisco modules, but they frequently heat up or there are packet error issues."
"The pricing could be better, as budget is always a huge thing for us. Anytime we can get better pricing, it helps convince the business to adopt it."
"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."
"My biggest grievance is related to getting a caddy. We have decommissioned our old servers that we used for development or testing. You cannot buy hard drives for old servers from Dell. It is very annoying."
"System security can be improved. They can add more power and security for ESXi version 7."
"I would like for PowerEdge Rack Servers could be a bit more compact."
"I found pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerEdge servers to have some challenges."
"They could make the service tags larger as I get older."
"If I rated the support two years ago, it would have been a high eight or maybe a nine; in the last six months, it has likely dropped to a six or seven out of ten due to a lot of churn in Dell, particularly with their sales force and engineering teams."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing and licensing are fair."
"The pricing is good compared to other products."
"This is an expensive solution."
"I have no issues with the pricing and licensing costs. They are fine."
"I don't know about the product's licensing part. Price-wise, it is an okay product. I believe that the cheaper the better, but I think that the product's price is okay."
"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 the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers."
"The cost structure associated with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers aligns closely with the prevailing norms established within the information technology hardware sector."
"It has generally been very competitive. It is not the best, but it is very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
25%
Construction Company
16%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business112
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise129
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Cisco Nexus 9000 Series?
At this point, not much could be improved about Cisco Nexus 9000 Series. Automation GUI based is not the core of the 9000, so this is a different device or a different solution. I do not find anyth...
What is your primary use case for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series?
My usual use cases for Cisco Nexus 9000 Series involve various companies, particularly when they are in need of a new automation solution or just an upgrade of the data center.
What advice do you have for others considering Cisco Nexus 9000 Series?
I am very satisfied with this solution. However, it is more about whether it is actually possible to do the solutions, and normally people already know what they want. They only need to have the ri...
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 needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
Unplanned production downtime is a concern. According to our experience, when we run a high workload to a certain level, for example, more than 80% or up to 90%, the system does not perform well. T...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
We run multiple workloads on Dell PowerEdge R-Series, including database and virtual machine workloads. Some of our multi-purpose VM workloads are running databases such as Mongo or Oracle. We serv...
 

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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.