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Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs HPE BladeSystem comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 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
7.7
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers enhance productivity with reliable performance, reduced downtime, and cost-effective, efficient management and maintenance.
Sentiment score
7.7
Users achieve substantial ROI and efficiency from HPE BladeSystem, with reduced costs, increased capacity, and high long-term benefits.
It is hard to measure the total cost of ownership because we have a distributed environment.
ROI is there, but it's a complex assessment when considering the return on investment from the hardware.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers' support is generally praised for responsiveness, though some users report delays and communication issues.
Sentiment score
6.7
Customer service is highly rated, but technical support quality varies by contract level, location, and initial response adequacy.
Dell’s technical support is rated between eight and nine.
Customer service provides very good support, with an SLA of about one business day to respond to our tickets.
When we do use Dell's support, they have never ignored an issue.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers provide scalable, adaptable solutions for various business needs, suitable for small to large deployments.
Sentiment score
7.8
HPE BladeSystem offers excellent scalability, flexibility, and modularity, efficiently supporting large enterprise growth with minimal performance issues.
The scalability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is excellent.
We can add new servers at any time, so the scale-out option is there.
Customers looking for higher densities are starting to lean towards AMD to achieve more cores, higher density, lower wattage, and ultimately a smaller footprint with fewer servers.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer exceptional stability, minimal downtime, and reliability, with consistent performance over three to five years.
Sentiment score
7.9
HPE BladeSystem is highly stable and reliable, with rare issues typically resolved quickly through updates or maintenance.
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.
It is stable.
I do not have to call HP support frequently, which indicates its reliability.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers need enhancements in configuration, support, delivery, and management to improve integration and competitiveness.
HPE BladeSystem users seek improved manageability, scalability, integration, simpler updates, enhanced UI, better support, and cost efficiency.
We need to know about any upcoming updates so that we can plan accordingly.
PowerEdge could have more configuration options, such as the ability to combine different CPUs, memory volumes, data storage, and memory.
After the expiration of support, it is sometimes challenging to find parts like hard drives, especially for obsolete models.
In general, there is a 10% to 15% price gap compared to competitors.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers provide reasonable pricing, good value, and reliable support, despite some configurations increasing costs.
HPE BladeSystem is costly but valued for reliability, with potential discounts and cost-effectiveness through proper sizing and features.
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.
In general, there is a 10% to 15% price gap compared to competitors.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer remote management, reliability, scalability, strong performance, energy efficiency, customization, and excellent management tools.
HPE BladeSystem offers reliability, modularity, and scalability with centralized management and seamless integration, optimizing space and enhancing resource efficiency.
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 feature I find most valuable is the ease of use.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
Ranking in Blade Servers
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Data Center Networking (4th), Rack Servers (1st)
HPE BladeSystem
Ranking in Blade Servers
3rd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
138
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 1.5%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE BladeSystem is 13.8%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers
 

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.
JuanDuque - PeerSpot reviewer
Very reliable, expands well, and is pretty simple to set up
It is very straightforward to set up. It's not complex. The length of deployment depends on the way that you configure the Blades. For example, if you're going to work with VMware, the time could be at least 25 to 30 minutes. It is not going to depend on the BladeSystem; it is going to depend on the time of the operate system deployed. The number of people you need for maintenance depends on the monitoring system that you have. For example, if you have a good monitoring system for this platform you're going to need less than ten specialists, but if you don't have a monitoring system to check the platform, probably you're going to need more than ten people.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
 

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 have pretty much progressed a lot if we look at what features are on them now. I don't know what more could be asked for, perhaps just faster performance. Every ( /produ...
How would you choose between HPE's Bladesystem and Synergy?
For me, choosing between HPE’s Bladesystem and Synergy came down to which solution was more powerful, reliable, and stable. It turns out Bladesystem was the winner. Bladesystem is excellent because...
What do you like most about HPE BladeSystem?
The solution is scalable, offering flexibility and expansion options to meet changing business needs.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE BladeSystem?
In general, there is a 10% to 15% price gap compared to competitors.
 

Also Known As

PowerEdge R
HP ProLiant BL Series Servers, HP ProLiant BladeSystem
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
EMIS Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs. HPE BladeSystem and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.