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Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs ExtremeSwitching comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.6
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer reliability, cost savings, easy management, and high performance, with flexibility and excellent support enhancing satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.4
ExtremeSwitching offers cost-effective solutions with varied returns, often realized within one to three years, despite high licensing costs.
By not having to worry about it, I would estimate we save two to four hours a week, depending on what's happening, such as if we need to spin up a new server, which would contribute to more time if done the old way.
In my immediate case for antenna analysis, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer a reduction from days of computing to half a day or hours.
The value of uptime to us is critical.
The return on investment is high.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers support is praised for expertise and resolution speed but sometimes faces delays and communication issues.
Sentiment score
6.8
ExtremeSwitching support is generally helpful and knowledgeable but experiences delays, needing improvement compared to competitors like Cisco.
It has always been scheduled maintenance, which says a lot for a production environment, as we haven't had to call in a trouble ticket for the actual hardware during its entire run.
Typically, the contacts we have on-site are very knowledgeable, they come in within a day and usually have it fixed and taken care of if there are issues.
When we had a power supply failure out of the box, we called support, and they delivered the replacement within four hours as promised.
Requiring improvement in the technical support provided to customers.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer scalable solutions for various sectors, facilitating flexibility and efficient growth despite configuration challenges.
Sentiment score
7.7
ExtremeSwitching excels in scalability, flexibility, and expansion, favored for handling large connections and users across environments.
The scalability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is excellent.
Any outages or blackouts are limited to particular servers, not affecting the whole chassis or enclosures.
We bought our product with scaling involved, and we've been scaling it up anytime we've needed more storage.
ExtremeSwitching is highly scalable, and I would rate it as nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer exceptional reliability and uptime, outpacing alternatives with minimal hardware failures and robust redundancy.
Sentiment score
7.9
ExtremeSwitching is reliable for small-medium firms, rated 7-9, with good support, but may struggle in large deployments.
Over four years, we've had less than 1 percent downtime.
There is a feature to update the server while it is running, so there is no need to restart.
We have truly not had any downtime on the infrastructure at all.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers need improvements in performance, scalability, support, security, pricing, efficiency, and integration with virtualization platforms.
ExtremeSwitching needs user-friendly enhancements, competitive pricing, improved hardware, expanded products, and better cybersecurity and latency solutions.
We need to know about any upcoming updates so that we can plan accordingly.
The beneficial aspect of that feature was that we could skip the PowerStore and just have the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers alone, as they also served as storage, which helped us save money.
This forces you to go up to a larger server to get the desired processor, which increases the cost.
ExtremeSwitching's software stability could be improved, as it sometimes crashes.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerEdge Rack Server pricing is competitive yet varies, praised for performance and reliability, with bulk purchase discounts available.
ExtremeSwitching offers competitive pricing with flexible models, appealing to budget-conscious enterprises appreciating no strict licensing.
They have been stable and running for years without performance downtime or significant disc failures.
Some customers find it cheaper due to contractual agreements, while others find it expensive, especially when scaling up.
The software associated with servers, like VMware subscription licenses, drives costs.
ExtremeSwitching is priced in the mid-range, not too expensive nor too cheap.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are valued for their performance, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and management tools, ideal for diverse applications.
ExtremeSwitching provides robust performance, scalability, security, cloud management, and competitive pricing, enhancing network visibility, reliability, and integration.
They keep running for at least five to seven years without any issues.
With PowerEdge Servers, I don't need a one-to-one ratio redundancy, which leads to about eighty percent downtime reduction.
One of the valuable features is Active Directory, which helps in managing the network.
The most valuable feature of ExtremeSwitching is the Extreme Fabric, specifically the switching fabric.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
Ranking in Data Center Networking
3rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
207
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Blade Servers (5th), Rack Servers (1st)
ExtremeSwitching
Ranking in Data Center Networking
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
LAN Switching (7th), AV Over IP Switching (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Data Center Networking category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 0.3%. The mindshare of ExtremeSwitching is 5.7%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Networking
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Masuood - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles workloads and diverse applications efficiently
We have a lot of VMs on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. On a single server, we have probably hosted 14 or 15 VMs. Out of these, 8 to 10 are continuously running, and four of them are backup VMs, so it can handle a good workload. For cybersecurity, it is only accessible on the intranet; it is not accessible through the web. We use it for local development purposes, and it is behind our firewall. Its security is strong. We handle a lot of test data for government and confidential customers. It is safe and strong locally. We have not experienced any security issues. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime if we need to replace a hard disk, instead of completely shutting a server, there is a hot swap feature. It is quite good in that aspect. Usually, for any activity, there is a downtime of about 30 minutes. It has saved a lot of time. We have tried AI workloads for a development environment for a government customer in Singapore. The servers are hosted in Singapore. It is an ML-based engine with AI. It is a government project where data is processed, and we run it on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The benefit of running AI workloads on PowerEdge Servers is that it is easy to allocate memory. The application we are running is memory intensive. It is pretty easy to scale memory and storage.
MURALI NIDAMANURI - PeerSpot reviewer
Outstanding performance with minimal maintenance and intuitive configuration
Our primary use case for ExtremeSwitching is for costing, access networking, routing, and meeting network requirements. We have sold it in defense, government, and IT industries ExtremeSwitching significantly adds value to customers because maintenance is minimal. Once the network is set up,…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
6%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
8%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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?
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could be improved in areas such as cooling. I've seen some demos of Dell working with Vertiv to manage things such as that, so a combination of air cool and liquid cool....
What do you like most about ExtremeSwitching?
The product offers a single management platform for multiple models of switches. The tool also allows users to manage multiple sites from a single dashboard.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExtremeSwitching?
ExtremeSwitching is priced in the mid-range, not too expensive nor too cheap.
What needs improvement with ExtremeSwitching?
ExtremeSwitching's software stability could be improved, as it sometimes crashes.
 

Also Known As

PowerEdge R
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Blue Waters
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs. ExtremeSwitching and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.