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Dell PowerEdge XR-Series vs HPE Apollo Systems comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 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 XR-Series
Ranking in Rack Servers
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Rugged Servers (1st)
HPE Apollo Systems
Ranking in Rack Servers
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Density Optimized Servers (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Rack Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is 2.6%, up from 0.5% 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
ProductMindshare (%)
Dell PowerEdge XR-Series2.6%
HPE Apollo Systems5.4%
Other92.0%
Rack Servers
 

Featured Reviews

Sherpard  Muzuva - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Manager at SYSTEMS INTEGRATED LTD (SYMPHONY)
Reliable servers have supported critical banking workloads and reduced downtime and costs
For improvements on Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I suggest enhancements in the support features, such as implementing a feature where the system can call home to Dell support to open a call automatically. Ideally, as a customer, I would just receive a message stating that a call has been opened, and if it's a failed hard disk, it should already be ordered automatically without much intervention for the customer. Many customers rarely check their systems in the data center, so I would love to see major improvements in health monitoring features that allow the system to automatically send alerts to Dell, open calls, and send parts automatically or implement self-healing features whereby a system can detect certain errors and try to correct itself unless it involves something permanent that it cannot correct. These are the features I expect in the new versions of Dell PowerEdge XR-Series to make the management and support of the system easier.
Gökhan  DURMAZ - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like the most about Dell PowerEdge R-Series is probably the Redfish manageability, which provides management, remote management, and remote configuration capabilities."
"The Dell teams are always knowledgeable, always great to work with, and always on top of their game."
"Dell PowerEdge servers have helped reduce unplanned production downtime by approximately 30% because we are able to handle issues immediately."
"I appreciate the management tool, iDRAC, in Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, as it is convenient for administrators to use when managing Dell PowerEdge XR-Series."
"The storage and the disc performance in terms of IOPS is great because of the RAID card which is built-in."
"Using Dell PowerEdge servers has indeed affected the overall flexibility of my customer's operations and businesses."
"The scalability of the Dell XR2 Rugged Server is good and easy to do."
"Dell PowerEdge XR-Series is a super server, so compared to HP, I see big differences from the technical side."
"The technical support from HPE has always been good in my experience."
"Stability has been extremely good."
"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."
"Taking into consideration the cost, HPE gave us the ability to actually do what we wanted to do."
"We are running Apollo with SL-series servers and the best thing about them is the density of the storage area available."
"When we moved to the Apollo and all flash drives, we gained a lot of performance on that."
"Tech support has been outstanding."
 

Cons

"My assessment of the new Dell PowerEdge servers for energy consumption is that energy consumption is on par with what I've used in the past. I can't say it's been any better or any worse."
"Dell XR2 Rugged Server could improve if there was more customization allowed."
"This can be better and could be improved."
"For improvements on Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I suggest enhancements in the support features, such as implementing a feature where the system can call home to Dell support to open a call automatically."
"There are many areas to improve in Dell PowerEdge XR-Series."
"I am not sure about return on investment with Dell PowerEdge XR-Series."
"In comparison with them, Dell hardware and services are good and fine, but they do not have any own operating systems."
"It lacks a modular option to expand to a 16-bay system."
"HPE Apollo Systems is a bit expensive, and there are some issues with scalability."
"We would like to see improved cooling because that is quite an issue. If you put that much compute power into a single rack, cooling really becomes an issue. And there is room for improvement there."
"Big stability issues with the CPU on the first generation which made them virtually unusable."
"We could, perhaps, use more GPUs in the future, go from eight to 16 GPUs per instance. That could run head-to-head against the DGX-1, the DGX-2 that NVIDIA has developed in their own chassis. That would be interesting to see."
"The solution's deployment, security, and scalability need improvement."
"If there's anything that hasn't been that stable, then it is the Lustre file system."
"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."
"We would like to see SimpliVity on top of the Apollo."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of one Dell XR2 Rugged Server is approximately $10,000."
"Obviously I would like to see the cost go down. That speaks for itself."
"Compared to other products, HPE Apollo is not an expensive solution."
"There is an annual license required to use HPE Apollo."
"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."
"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
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
14%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
I find Dell PowerEdge's pricing reasonable. The price has been reasonable until now, and we cannot blame them because any other vendor is facing the same situation. Servers and hardware components ...
What needs improvement with Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
For improvements on Dell PowerEdge XR-Series, I suggest enhancements in the support features, such as implementing a feature where the system can call home to Dell support to open a call automatica...
What is your primary use case for Dell EMC XR2 Rugged Server?
I still have experience with Dell products, particularly as I'm still working with Dell PowerEdge and others. I've been mostly dealing with Dell PowerEdge. We recently deployed Dell PowerEdge to ou...
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.
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

XR2 Rugged Server
HP Apollo Systems, HP ProLiant SL, HP Apollo
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DIGISTOR - Secure Data Storage
Weta Digital
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge XR-Series vs. HPE Apollo Systems and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.