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Cisco UCS X-Series vs Dell PowerEdge XR-Series comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 UCS X-Series
Ranking in Rack Servers
23rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Blade Servers (23rd)
Dell PowerEdge XR-Series
Ranking in Rack Servers
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Rugged Servers (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2847909 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Administrator at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Centralized profiles have simplified host deployments and have reduced configuration errors
I would say a form factor could improve Cisco UCS X-Series. We are in a life cycle replacement phase, and we face a situation where we have to upgrade the hardware, but to get to the next series, you have to upgrade all of it. The chassis, the backbone components, including fabric interconnect components that provide the networking, all have to be replaced at the same time. You cannot mix and match things. So you get to a situation in your life cycle replacement that you need to upgrade, but it does not make sense economically to just buy a newer blade when the whole life cycle replacement is on the horizon, and you are forced to just replace it all top-down. I would say a form factor that is more universal and is not going to require an overall hardware refresh would be beneficial.
Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Reliable servers have supported critical banking workloads and reduced downtime and costs
For improvements on Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I suggest enhancements in the support features, such as implementing a feature where the system can call home to Dell support to open a call automatically. Ideally, as a customer, I would just receive a message stating that a call has been opened, and if it's a failed hard disk, it should already be ordered automatically without much intervention for the customer. Many customers rarely check their systems in the data center, so I would love to see major improvements in health monitoring features that allow the system to automatically send alerts to Dell, open calls, and send parts automatically or implement self-healing features whereby a system can detect certain errors and try to correct itself unless it involves something permanent that it cannot correct. These are the features I expect in the new versions of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series to make the management and support of the system easier.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features I appreciate most with Cisco UCS X-Series are profile, profile deployment, and the ability to orchestrate configurations across all of the compute."
"Cisco UCS X-Series scales with the growing needs of my organization very well, as much as you need it to with no issues whatsoever, and it scales whenever we need it to."
"Dell PowerEdge servers have helped reduce unplanned production downtime by approximately 30% because we are able to handle issues immediately."
"The most positive aspect of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is the availability, which is very high, and the support and services are very good."
"Using these servers has helped to reduce unplanned production downtime."
"I appreciate the management tool, iDRAC, in Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, as it is convenient for administrators to use when managing Dell PowerEdge XR-Series."
"Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is better compared to other servers and runs more efficiently, with stability and reliability that have been good so far."
"The best features in Dell PowerEdge XR-Series are all-flash storage, which is easy to implement and install, and it was also easy to upgrade."
"Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is a super server, so compared to HP, I see big differences from the technical side."
"The performance of the product in extreme conditions is good; it can run in critical workloads with not much hardware issue."
 

Cons

"We are in a life cycle replacement phase, and we face a situation where we have to upgrade the hardware, but to get to the next series, you have to upgrade all of it."
"Cisco UCS X-Series can be improved with a longer lifespan. The products go end-of-support and end-of-life quicker than I would prefer."
"One of our issues is that we currently have an eight-bay system. I'd like to migrate to a 16-bay system, but there isn't a modular option available."
"I think Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved in appearance. I would say that the improvement opportunity is probably on the monitoring side, the overall monitoring side."
"I am not sure about return on investment with Dell PowerEdge XR-Series."
"The support could work faster, but that is the only small thing that could be better."
"This can be better and could be improved."
"Dell XR2 Rugged Server could improve if there was more customization allowed."
"Regarding the weakness of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I think the main drawback is that it is more expensive than other servers."
"I see areas for improvement in Dell PowerEdge XR-Series as sometimes there is some delay during the boot time; we occasionally need to disable some ROM options to prevent a boot delay or a network boot loop."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of one Dell XR2 Rugged Server is approximately $10,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Outsourcing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
From a price perspective, Dell is much more flexible compared to other vendors based on my experience.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
RAID is very important to protect the data by creating a redundant copy or protection for your storage. When writing data, you need to ensure that if one disk fails, you can restore your data. This...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
This is mainly for the edge. For example, if you have a customer with a requirement to process data on the edge rather than on-site data center, that can be at a contracting site, on a ship in the ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
XR2 Rugged Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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DIGISTOR - Secure Data Storage
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