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Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs IBM Power Systems comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 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
7.3
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers deliver reliability, cost savings, and efficient management, enhancing performance and financial outcomes for organizations.
Sentiment score
4.1
Upgrading to IBM POWER8 enhances performance, reduces costs, and offers superior scalability and reliability over x86 platforms.
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.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers' support is responsive and reliable, with effective solutions and generally positive user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
1.0
IBM Power Systems support is praised for expertise and responsiveness, though areas like response times and outsourcing need improvement.
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.
I try to get my support calls pre-routed to the US; I'd rather wait a couple of hours for support becoming available there than going to support somewhere in the Philippines or Indonesia.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers provide scalable configurations, supporting growth with expansion capabilities despite some concerns about advanced scalability limitations.
Sentiment score
5.1
IBM Power Systems offers high adaptability and scalability, supporting seamless upgrades and effective resource management for diverse industries.
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.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are praised for their stability, reliability, robust construction, and efficient uptime, enhancing user confidence.
Sentiment score
1.0
IBM Power Systems is renowned for stability, minimal downtime, and unmatched reliability, ideal for mission-critical applications.
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 users seek performance, management, design improvements, better support, pricing adjustments, and flexible configurations.
IBM Power Systems face challenges with cost, complexity, performance, cloud integration, marketing, and skilled professional attraction.
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.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer competitive pricing with perceived value and reliability, often providing better deals than rivals like HPE.
IBM Power Systems offer superior performance but are costly, with high setup fees and complexity, best for large enterprises.
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.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer scalable, reliable performance and ease of management with powerful Xeon CPUs and integrated tools.
IBM Power Systems is praised for reliability, performance, security, scalability, flexibility, and advanced features like virtualization and seamless 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.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
Ranking in Rack Servers
1st
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
211
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Data Center Networking (4th), Blade Servers (5th)
IBM Power Systems
Ranking in Rack Servers
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
3.9
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 27.5%, down from 28.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Power Systems is 9.0%, up from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Rack 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.
Rohintan-Karanjia - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers security features, including HIPs, Postgres, intrusion prevention systems, and AI for specific tasks
We've found that sometimes, certain setups require better servers. Ideally, the next level of model that IBM offers would be perfect for those situations. Sometimes, the availability of additional services can be a challenge for some software. Certain IBM software takes time to deliver to the client. It can be slow. So deployment is an area for improvement.
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Answers from the Community

LS
Jan 16, 2022
Jan 16, 2022
IBM Power Systems vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Server IBM Power Systems is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) system that contains 8 threads or over per core. This processor performs super-fast due to the RISC algorithm technology than any other Intel-based hardware (e.g., Dell, HPE, Cisco). In Intel, there are only 2 or 4 threads per core and it performs according to CISC (Complex Instructi...
2 out of 3 answers
SR
Aug 16, 2021
IBM Power Systems vs Dell PowerEdge Rack Server IBM Power Systems is a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) system that contains 8 threads or over per core. This processor performs super-fast due to the RISC algorithm technology than any other Intel-based hardware (e.g., Dell, HPE, Cisco).  In Intel, there are only 2 or 4 threads per core and it performs according to CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer). IBM Power system is a sustainable, reliable and obviously costly solution compared to any other Intel-based solution.  Generally, IBM Power system is used in mission-critical systems. 
Nicolae - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 3, 2022
IBM Power comes with virtualization integrated (PowerVM), highly optimized (practically with no performance impact) - no need for VMWare, HyperV etc.  For database it is the recomended platform - even is Hana, Oracle (best combination with AIX) or DB2 (DB2 for me is the most autonomous database that you can have).  The downside of IBM Power could be the lack of support for Windows and the initial cost. 
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Educational Organization
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
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?
Mainly, I would like to improve the speed of storage response. We would like to improve our performance by using disks without rotation. The price is better now, and I think it will be better in th...
What do you like most about IBM Power Systems?
IBM Power Systems provides very good performance and stability compared to other brands or processors.
What needs improvement with IBM Power Systems?
There are definitely areas for improvement, but that's not really from the technological side of things. I rarely find any people with Power skills on the market. When I get young people from unive...
What is your primary use case for IBM Power Systems?
I use IBM Power Systems for online transactional processing, and in parts, also for online analytical processing. We mainly use IBM Power Systems' IBMI, which is an operating system with an integra...
 

Also Known As

PowerEdge R
IBM OpenPOWER LC
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Cipher
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs. IBM Power Systems and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.