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Dell PowerEdge R-Series vs IBM PureSystems comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 1, 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

Dell PowerEdge R-Series
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
309
Ranking in other categories
Data Center Networking (4th), Blade Servers (2nd), Rack Servers (1st)
IBM PureSystems
Ranking in Converged Infrastructure
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure for SAP HANA (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Converged Infrastructure category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is 4.6%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM PureSystems is 5.6%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Converged Infrastructure Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerEdge R-Series4.6%
IBM PureSystems5.6%
Other89.8%
Converged Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user6186 - PeerSpot reviewer
Independent Analyst and Advisory Consultant at Server StorageIO - www.storageio.com
PureSystems, something old, something new, something from big blue
PART I For a certain generation of IBM faithful or followers the recently announced PureFlex and PureApplication systems might give a sense of DejaVu perhaps even causing some to wonder if they just woke up from a long Rip Van Winkle type nap. Yet for another generation who may not yet be future…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features are remote management and iDRAC."
"The solution is reliable."
"Their management tools are the most valuable. Our customers like the flexibility of being able to scale up and out. It is very easy for them to scale and add additional nodes and servers to their storage solutions, such as the ATI solution. It has very good quality and a great deployment model. Its warranty is also very good, and it is very stable. Their fixes have been quick if they have those."
"The Dell platform works very well, we are very happy with it, and if price isn't a concern, I would recommend Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers."
"The solutions from Dell PowerEdge R-Series are quite quick and targeted in the sense that they are more precise to the problem we're facing."
"The pricing was extremely competitive, and it's one of the big reasons why we went with Dell."
"Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers are both scalable and stable."
"We receive Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vSAN-ready, making it quite easy to install the ESXi software and get a VMware cluster up and running."
"The strengths of the system is how the Flex scales from a very powerful, next generation BladeCenter all the way up to an IaaS platform."
 

Cons

"In Dell PowerEdge R-Series, the areas with room for improvement are pricing because costs have increased significantly for what they offer."
"If there are areas where Dell PowerEdge R-Series could still be improved, I find it a bit cumbersome because we have a contact in sales through whom we can order Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, but storage is only available via certain partners."
"The cost can be improved. For other use cases, we use Hitachi servers, which are a little cheaper but have similar functionality."
"Customer support for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very costly."
"The only growth complexity with Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that the cost of adding memory after the first purchase is always high."
"The only aspect that could be improved is the price. The product is extremely good, so it is always priced high."
"The customer support is average; I would rate it seven out of ten."
"I would like them to be more flexible when implementing more capabilities."
"The FSM does not quite deliver in the areas it plays too. A fairly sluggish interface that is more complex and less streamlined than it perhaps could be, holds it back and deployment of certain functionality from the switches requires more user intervention than feels necessary."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"They are affordable. Even during our recent procurement, the cost of Dell servers was lower than that of HPE."
"Compared to other vendors, the prices are much lower."
"The overall pricing and licensing are fair according to the market."
"I am satisfied with the pricing of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and would rate the cost as seven out of ten, with ten being the best."
"Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers are very expensive."
"The pricing is very good because there are a lot of types of PowerEdge Rack Servers. You have the R540, R640, and R740. The prices are very scalable through the specific server, e.g., small businesses can take the R640 while large businesses can take the R740 or R840. Thus, Dell technologies touch on every organization."
"Pricing appears to be comparatively favorable, particularly within the project's scope."
"Dell is priced better than alternative solutions."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

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

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....
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...
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Also Known As

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
PureSystems
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
ABT Online, Ascent Solutions Inc., Desert Research Institute (DRI), Reflexis, Esri, Avcilar Municipality, ValeCard, Computer Gross Italia S.p.A., DynaFront, Silvermoon Business Systems, Diasoft, BPTP, Temenos, Innovation Group, OneTree Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, NetApp, Rackspace Technology and others in Converged Infrastructure. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.