Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the Rack Servers category. Dell Technologies is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.1, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5. Dell Technologies holds a 22.1% mindshare in Rack Servers, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 5.4% mindshare. Additionally, 99% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Read 307 Dell PowerEdge R-Series reviews

22,476 Views
19,329 Comparison Views

99% willing to recommend

HPE Apollo Systems

Read 25 HPE Apollo Systems reviews

2,852 Views
2,481 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

HPE Apollo Systems

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Dell PowerEdge R-Series and HPE Apollo Systems compete in the enterprise server category. Dell seems to have an edge in pricing and ROI due to its competitive and transparent pricing structure.

Features: Dell PowerEdge R-Series offers scalability, reliability, and intuitive management through iDRAC, with lifecycle management via OpenManage and robust security. HPE Apollo Systems excel in high-density storage and compute capacity for data-heavy applications and AI workloads, providing an adaptable environment with enhanced support for parallel processing.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerEdge R-Series could benefit from better pricing strategies, cleaner interfaces, and improved compatibility with external products. HPE Apollo Systems encounter high pricing challenges and limited scalability, which could improve with more flexible infrastructure integration and enhanced performance analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerEdge R-Series is versatile in deployment options, spanning private and hybrid clouds, with consistently high-rated technical support. HPE Apollo Systems benefit from strong on-premises deployments but have slightly lower customer support ratings and sometimes require improved communication in technical setups.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerEdge R-Series is recognized for its competitive pricing structure and clear licensing, resulting in cost savings and extended ROI. In contrast, HPE Apollo Systems are perceived as more expensive while still delivering solid investment returns in specific configurations like high-density storage.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems

June 2026

Download the complete report

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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

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Ranking in Rack Servers

1st

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

307

Ranking in other categories

Converged Infrastructure (1st), Data Center Networking (3rd), Blade Servers (2nd)

HPE Apollo Systems

Ranking in Rack Servers

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Density Optimized Servers (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is 22.1%, down from 27.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Apollo Systems is 5.4%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Rack Servers Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series	22.1%
HPE Apollo Systems	5.4%
Other	72.5%

Rack Servers

Featured Reviews

Tom van Mil

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.

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Gökhan DURMAZ

Account Manager at TD SYNNEX

High-quality integration and strong support have optimized our rack server operations

HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity. When I speak about integrity, I speak about GPU integration or other integrations such as GPU integration, backup software integration, and hypervisor integration. Regarding the integration of high-speed interconnectors in HPE Apollo Systems, they impact computational tasks because the high-speed interconnect affects performance. I don't remember the specifics. Regarding the cooling technologies, they help to reduce operational costs. The positive impact I see from HPE Apollo Systems is that support is good and quality is good. In general, HPE Apollo Systems appears to be for rack servers with some optimization capabilities.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our overall experience with their product and support has been consistently excellent."

"Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series has helped reduce unplanned production downtime, as I find their stability and reliability comparable to HP."

"The solution has always had very good performance."

"Dell PowerEdge R-Series usually does not have much downtime."

"The iDRAC helps us monitor and manage our systems."

"We have about 80 servers and have only lost maybe two power supplies. They just run forever."

"The features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I appreciate the most are the central management and the surrounding software as they're integrated and easy to use."

"Any necessary adjustments can be made seamlessly without the need to unplug cables, as everything is contained within the rack itself."

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series pros

"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."

"Apollo Systems provide stuff that standard services do not. More HTDs, more compute power, at very reasonable pricing."

"HPE Apollo Systems is a good product because it has better support and best quality with integrity."

"I find HPE Apollo Systems to be scalable and efficient for AI initiatives, and the environmental efficiency has a significant impact on operational costs."

"It's pretty flexible."

"HPE Apollo's pricing is low, and implementation is very easy compared to other products."

"we can use the same platform for several use cases: Hadoop, Ceph, and we are considering the server for another use case right now. It's a single solution, we only have to integrate it once and we can use it for several technologies."

"It's going to meet our needs moving forward, it is scalable."

More HPE Apollo Systems pros

Cons

"The only aspect that could be improved is the price. The product is extremely good, so it is always priced high."

"The choice of CPUs, RAM configuration, and modifications is very large, partly even a bit too large, because I sometimes get lost in the configuration options, but nothing negative really stands out to me at this point."

"We use PowerEdge servers in conjunction with VMware, a VCF Rack, and VxRail. That has worked out well. We are using it for firmware upgrades and other similar tasks. It's a one-stop shop, but it could be better when the servers aren't on a VCF stack. Profile handling and upgrading standalone servers could improve, but they have gotten better over the years."

"I would like to change the physical rails to be more like how HPE rails are formatted and organized."

"It is hard to make a comparison without any technical factsheets for the other servers to compare with but like everyone else, it is about the pricing."

"I don't know much about the new Intel CPUs, but they need to put more than two CPUs in the servers. It may be an Intel limitation, but I'm not sure."

"One area where PowerEdge could improve is the challenge of keeping technology consistent over the years."

"Dell PowerEdge R-Series could improve by focusing the servers to optimize their performance for Kubernetes clusters or something similar might be beneficial."

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series cons

"We have tried to used standardization using Ubuntu Linux and it's been hard. They had some difficulties getting the RAID configuration up and running because there are no drivers for it. It's not supported by HPE."

"Our first batch of Apollo servers that we got were so new that it was just hard to know kind of what to expect from HPE and what they wanted to deliver to us."

"The licensing could be greatly improved, I think."

"The predictive analysis feature could be improved."

"If there could be some training for our team, we would be better equipped to promote and support HPE Apollo."

"If there's anything that hasn't been that stable, then it is the Lustre file system."

"What's coming out in Gen 10 is very strong in terms of additional security."

"One drawback which I had: When I needed to expand storage on the Apollo, I had significant problems getting disks for it. It was a very long wait-time. So, if I were to give any advice in regards to improving this product, I would say make more of the 8TB disks available quicker."

More HPE Apollo Systems cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have not compared them with others. The price is okay, but they can always be a little bit cheaper."

"Pricing appears to be comparatively favorable, particularly within the project's scope."

"The price of Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers is reasonable compared to other solutions."

"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 cost structure associated with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers presents itself as a potential point of contention for budget-conscious consumers, as it could be more strategically positioned to compete within the broader marketplace."

"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."

"Dell's solution was cheaper than HP's solution."

"One of the clients has been offered a price of $18,000 instead of the regular price of around $25,000."

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series pricing and cost advice

"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."

"It is an expensive solution but it is worth the money. The standard licensing cost is for the GPU and the features that someone is using. There are additional charges but they depend on the solution."

"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."

"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."

"The price of the solution is more expensive than Dell which is their main competitor. However, there are times we have managed to receive a comparable price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	110
Midsize Enterprise	66
Large Enterprise	128

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	15

Questions from the Community

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....

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?

I think Dell PowerEdge R-Series can support more storage capacity, which would be great. Most other OEMs are trying to ensure you have a one-stop shop for just one server where you could get a whol...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?

My main use case for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to use it as standalone servers but also as part of some clusters. I have some OpenStack private cloud deployed on them and some Ceph software-define...

See all answers

What needs improvement with HPE Apollo?

It is too early to say what improvements HPE Apollo Systems could implement because the report still needs to come out and the customer needs to properly evaluate the solution.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HPE Apollo?

My main use case for HPE Apollo Systems is replacing many of the servers and storage boxes at one of the customer's sites to achieve workload optimization and optimized solutions. Additionally, whe...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering HPE Apollo?

My advice for someone considering HPE Apollo Systems is that if they are looking for consolidation and their workload involves high availability requirements, or if they want to utilize GPUs, then ...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 33% of the time

Lenovo ThinkSystem Rack Servers vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 10% of the time

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 4% of the time

HPE Synergy vs Dell PowerEdge R-Series

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerEdge R-Series Competitors

HPE ProLiant DL Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 14% of the time

HPE Moonshot vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 8% of the time

Dell PowerEdge XE-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 7% of the time

Lenovo High-Density Servers vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Power Systems vs HPE Apollo Systems

Compared 5% of the time

More HPE Apollo Systems Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge R-Series

June 2026

Download Dell PowerEdge R-Series product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Apollo Systems

June 2026

Download HPE Apollo Systems product report

Also Known As

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers

HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo

Overview

PowerEdge R-Series delivers high performance, flexibility, and scalability for data centers. It supports demanding tasks with robust management tools and advanced cooling, providing reliability and efficiency across various workloads.

Engineered for large deployments, PowerEdge R-Series supports extensive configurations optimizing performance in data centers. With features like advanced cooling and energy-efficient architecture, it empowers organizations to manage heavy workloads while facilitating seamless scalability. It offers remote management, robust security, and integration with VMware ensuring operational excellence and high availability for business-critical applications.

What are the key features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series?

Scalability: Supports flexible configurations for diverse workloads.
Remote Management: iDRAC and OpenManage facilitate easy oversight.
Energy Efficiency: Architecture helps reduce energy consumption.
Security: Robust features ensure protected performance.
VMware Integration: Enhances manageability and productivity.

What benefits and ROI should you look for?

Performance: Handles high-performance and demanding tasks.
Flexibility: Offers easily upgradable configurations.
Reliability: Provides consistent performance with long-term support.
Efficiency: Reduces energy use and operational costs.
Ease of Use: Simplifies management and maintenance.

PowerEdge R-Series is deployed across industries for virtualization, database hosting, and application servers. It supports environments like VMware and Hyper-V for AI, cloud infrastructure, and computing tasks. Widely used by finance, healthcare, and academia, it enhances reliability and efficiency of IT infrastructure.

Dell Technologies

HPE Apollo Systems deliver high compute and storage density, scalability, and environmental efficiency with exceptional performance for AI initiatives and data capturing across diverse applications.

HPE Apollo Systems are characterized by their dense compute and storage capabilities, offering flexibility in configurations to meet the demands of AI, deep learning, and high-performance computing. Their management software simplifies deployment, ensuring effective performance across tasks that require significant storage. While Apollo Systems are designed for efficiency and scalability, improvements can be made in security, tech support, and integration with hypervisors and backup solutions. Enhancing cooling and licensing processes, connectivity, and faster drive writing capabilities are also areas for growth.

What are the key features of HPE Apollo Systems?

High Compute Density: Supports intense processing needs efficiently.
Scalability: Easily adaptable to growing data demands.
Environmental Efficiency: Minimizes energy consumption, enhancing sustainability.
Flexible Configurations: Caters to a range of applications from AI to data storage.
Reliable Performance: Consistently delivers under various workloads.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Cost Effectiveness: Reduces expenditure with its efficient design.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly fits into diverse IT environments.
Performance Enhancement: Boosts operational efficiency and output.
Easy Deployment: Streamlines the setup process for quick operation.

HPE Apollo Systems find extensive use in sectors such as telecom, supporting high-performance computing and AI workloads. They optimize Linux servers, replace legacy systems, and serve as storage solutions across industries. Their applications span from big data management in Splunk clusters to backup solutions in medical faculties, enhancing compute power and storage within compact racks.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco

Weta Digital

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems

June 2026

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