Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

My main use case for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is virtualization.

What I like the most about Dell PowerEdge R-Series is the support.

Each server has a service tag number that is easy to locate and identify, and I can access chat support, so there is no need to look up contracts or deal with any of that; getting to support is very quick.

Using Dell PowerEdge servers has helped reduce my total cost of ownership because of the support, and in terms of time savings, it probably saves me at least four hours a year.

The management of Dell PowerEdge R-Series seems a little convoluted.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for four years.

Using PowerEdge servers probably has not reduced unplanned production downtime.

Flexibility has probably not changed with the use of PowerEdge servers.

I have been very happy with customer service and technical support.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I was using HPE to address similar needs.

I find that pricing was good, and we used the Flex on Demand program for the ones that we are currently running, and the pricing was aggressive.

We evaluated Dell, HPE, and Lenovo, and what stood out during the evaluation process was that the sales team at the time was very knowledgeable on Flex on Demand and was able to make that attractive.

We do not run AI workloads on PowerEdge servers.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series serves as the main solution for a large hospital environment, and it is primarily used for VMware.

I appreciate that Dell PowerEdge R-Series is quite resilient.

The support from Dell is probably the best part of it. On the Dell side, support is excellent, and we are very happy with the uptime as well.

It has helped us reduce unplanned production downtime. I would rate this benefit as a nine on a scale from one to ten.

Regarding the overall flexibility of our operations, Dell PowerEdge R-Series is flexible.

In my opinion, I would like to see Dell PowerEdge R-Series become smaller in size so it can fit more servers in our available space and allow us to take advantage of the real estate.

I understand that the licensing can be confusing, and I would prefer to see that aspect become simpler.

We have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series in the company for going on five years, long before I started.

I would evaluate the customer service and technical support as an eight or a nine. Occasionally, depending on what part of the world the support staff are from and the language they speak, there is a minor language barrier at times, but regarding their technical ability, I do not have an issue.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I was using another solution to address similar needs for the company, as I have used HP, Cisco UCS, and Dell in other places as well.

When we switched vendors in the past, it was primarily for price comparison and reputation.

I do not have specific examples regarding total cost of ownership, or TCO, but I understand what TCO is, and I would say the benefits are definitely there.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series with the AI workload, I am not certain what series they are running on, but we have our own version of ChatGPT inside, and it helps us get answers much quicker.

We have seen benefits from this implementation.

I would recommend that organizations considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series definitely compare similar types of hardware with other vendors and always do your homework. I would rate this review as a nine overall.

My main use cases for it overall are mainly for hosting servers and various applications.

The features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series I like the most are the remote access and the iDRAC, just being able to remote into the backend when something's not working.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series helps my company because it saves us having to drive to our data center. If something's down, we can just remote in from the management port. We don't have to drive there. This saves time and we can get applications up faster.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series has helped to reduce unplanned production downtime. I would say unplanned downtime has been reduced by approximately 80%. The servers themselves are already pretty stable, and when there's an issue, we can remote in immediately.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series has affected the overall flexibility of my operations positively.

I don't think there's much I can speak to regarding how Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved; I feel that they are sufficient as is.

I've been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series as long as I can. I've only been with the city for three years, so that's as far as I know.

I have experience with customer service or technical support from Dell in the past, but I haven't recently.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, my company did not use another product.

From my point of view, I don't see a return on investment when using this product because I don't manage that, and I don't do the numbers. I can say that every place I've worked at has Dell servers, and that's what you do because they're the most reliable and the warranty and support is the best. I can't speak to it numbers-wise, but from a subjective point of view, I feel that it's helped the productivity of the business and the profit by being reliable.

We don't run AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

I can't speak to how using Dell PowerEdge R-Series has helped reduce my total cost of ownership because I don't know the numbers.

I'm not privy to insights on how the new Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers affect energy consumption. I don't monitor the consumption or anything regarding that.

I don't know how Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers impact my company's sustainability goals. That's not really my field of expertise.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series as a nine out of ten.

I don't have any advice for other companies considering this product, except to just get an iDRAC if you get a Dell server.

We have both the XE line servers in our data center that we're using for large language model. 

We also have, with our new fresh deployment going into stores, deploying four Nvidia L4 cards. We're doing inferencing at the edge for our Dell apps, for security stuff, for loss prevention. So a lot of AI work is going into that on those Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

Our partnership with Dell provides a consistent platform across our 1800 locations.

Dell is a critical partner for our company. We have a great partnership. They have excellent sales and technical teams, and their long-term support teams. They are very engaged with us. They help us work through things and they're also very competitive on pricing. It has been at or above industry grade for the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

I would increase the life cycle management and those life cycle management tools. I know that's a big focus of Dell now with their private cloud experience. And then also with the enhancements to OME that are coming down the line.

Speaking on the XE series specifically, the internal service to the system, if you need to get to a DIMM or anything similar, requires that you remove all three risers and the storage controller. It's not very internally service friendly.

We've been deploying Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers since 2021.

It has been at or above industry grade for the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

Everything from our original VX Rail stuff scaling out in our data center to just our edge platforms, which is a much smaller, four-node cluster, hasn't been an issue scaling.

We have dedicated support. We have a great representative, LaShonda, who helps us navigate that. We also have a TAM, a full-time TAM, Brandon, who does a great job of working with us to meet and talk about our concerns and issues that we see. 

It deserves a rating of ten out of ten. We have a great sales team. If we have questions, they're available 24/7. If we need escalations, they're there, they make it happen. We definitely enjoy that aspect of it.

Positive

It went through RFP and that gets cycled through. All the big players, HP, Dell, Lenovo, all those vendors get sorted through.

We've had no problem with the deployment of Dell. After deployment, we have joined Dell's managed services as well. 

We're getting a lot of efficiencies and increasing our density, especially as the product line matures. We've been able to shrink down our core counts to reduce our licensing at the edge. We are definitely seeing ROI on our investment.

The pricing in our case is very competitive and very good.

I can't think of anything specific to add regarding alternate solutions.

Rack is the model we're using and the kind of functionality we're employing. 

I would give Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers an overall rating of eight out of ten.

As the Head of IT, I am involved in working with Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

My hands-on experience with Dell PowerEdge R-Series is complemented by my team that works with it, and I purchase and design the whole infrastructure.

Our entire infrastructure runs on Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

Since I have not known anything else for nine years, I do not know if Dell PowerEdge R-Series has features that are specifically tailored to the needs of small or medium-sized enterprises.

The feature I find particularly valuable in Dell PowerEdge R-Series is the service.

What differentiates Dell PowerEdge R-Series from other servers is the service.

In areas where Dell PowerEdge R-Series could be improved, it is difficult to say, but for the most part, this is always a five out of five, especially regarding service and response times, which are already quite high.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series in the data center for about nine years, and this model is now in its third year.

Regarding failures, performance, and downtime, I experience no issues.

Speaking of stability and reliability, there have been no crashes, outages, or performance issues.

For my company's long-term plans, I switched to the APEX model, and that is very scalable.

On a scale from one to ten, I rate the support a ten.

For that, I have four-hour mission critical service, and that works, although I must say it is a pity, as I would have liked a bit more negative feedback to provide.

Positive

I had other solutions before, specifically IBM and Lenovo.

I removed IBM and Lenovo because they were bad in comparison.

There were specific reasons for switching, namely the licensing policy; in the end, for every tiny thing, I still had to buy an extra license.

With Dell PowerEdge R-Series, everything is simpler, much simpler.

I was involved in the deployment and initial setup of Dell PowerEdge R-Series the whole time.

Everything went smoothly during the setup; it was actually relatively easy.

Regarding return on investment, that was nine years ago, and it was definitely positive, otherwise I would not have done it.

The model I am using is Dell PowerEdge R-Series, specifically the PowerEdge 650 AX.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series plays a role in my future plans as well, but that is still coming.

What is still coming is my consideration of offering local AI as well, but for that, I still have to negotiate with Dell Sales to see if I can get a proof of concept beforehand.

The size of my company is hard to define; I am an internal IT service provider for affiliated companies, so we are a larger group and mid-sized.

Regarding whether I have over five hundred employees, I actually have under five hundred.

I am currently interested in smaller and medium-sized companies and would like to know whether Dell PowerEdge R-Series can or has significantly contributed to growth or business success, and it has, of course.

A concrete example where Dell PowerEdge R-Series has noticeably improved my business operations would be more in the client segment, so fewer servers and more on the user side, which means the rollout via Autopilot and Dell is a bit easier, but for Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I would not really know of a specific example.

Pricing is reasonable, as I already stated, and I did have other solutions before, specifically IBM and Lenovo.

Regarding product purchase via the AWS Marketplace, that is a good question; I do not even know how it was with APEX, as that was a bit more effort because Dell Financials was also involved, but I did all of that through Sales.

I am still considering whether to become a Dell customer or an MSP, but at the moment I prefer to be a customer.

I would give this review an overall rating of ten out of ten.

The use cases can vary significantly from one customer to another. Additionally, a single customer may have different sets of requirements for different applications. Consequently, one server can serve multiple applications. Our approach is to design and provide the customer with a solution tailored to their specific needs. We offer a range of servers, from entry-level to mid-range to high-end, depending on the customer's requirements.

We are running virtualized workloads, and some of our workloads are running on SAP HANA. We have other workloads running core ERP systems for other corporates. It varies, and some people use the servers for different applications such as data archiving, virtualization, and more. Dell PowerEdge R-Series is a very good fit there.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is very flexible. We can customize the server entirely to meet the customer's specific needs. This includes tailoring options such as the processor, memory, storage, and networking configurations. Additionally, we offer various types of drives, whether SSDs or traditional hard disks, and we have options for large form factor or small form factor drives, as well as different chassis types. Overall, PowerEdge offers significant flexibility in these areas.

For workload management, we can customize the PowerEdge servers to include GPUs that are specifically designed to handle your AI workloads. When equipped with the right resources, our edge solutions can comfortably manage these demands. The new generation of PowerEdge servers is not only efficient but also performs exceptionally well.

The newer models have incorporated enhanced security features. They have added more robust security measures to the servers themselves. Additionally, Dell excels in the management aspect, which is very beneficial for users.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series industry standard servers have robust options and offer intense security and management features including NVMe support, streamlined remote management, RAID support, and flexible customization from processor to network options. They are robust, tested, and offer scalability options from entry-level to high-end servers.

For the most part, there’s no need for improvement in areas like manageability and security; they’ve covered those quite well. The storage controllers are also very well designed, and the support for NVMe is excellent. Regarding customization, the chassis can be tailored to meet specific user needs. They have addressed many aspects thoroughly. For instance, remote management is well taken care of; I even have an app on my phone that allows me to check the health status of the hardware. Overall, we can monitor and manage servers remotely without any issues. I would say that while Dell keeps up with industry innovations, they’ve addressed nearly all areas effectively.

Dell could improve its coverage a bit. Sometimes, there are firmware updates that need to be addressed. When we log into the iDRAC interface on the server for management, we currently have to manually upload the images for the new firmware upgrade. While the upgrade process itself is straightforward, many customers are often unaware that a firmware upgrade is even necessary. If this process could be automated so that the server can check for available firmware updates on its own, it would be really helpful. The server could send out an alert email indicating that a new firmware upgrade is available, allowing the administrator to decide when to perform the upgrade.

I have been using this solution for more than 20 years.

I would rate it an eight out of ten for stability.

When it comes to reducing unplanned downtime, it ultimately boils down to hardware. Dell PowerEdge servers are not fail-proof; from that perspective, hardware remains a potential point of failure. Any hardware can fail, and that’s a reality we have to acknowledge. There's no such thing as a completely fail-proof system. When addressing customer requirements, we design solutions tailored to their needs. If a customer wants to eliminate any single points of failure, our design must incorporate that by using multiple servers instead of relying on just one.

The Dell PowerEdge R-Series is scalable depending on the model picked—whether entry-level, high-end, or with single to eight socket servers. The offering is tested and secure.

Dell's PowerEdge line has several models, but the one we mostly interact with is the R700 series. This includes models like the R750, R760, R770, and so on. When considering options, if we need to go for higher-end services, we can select models that allow for the addition of more GPUs. Ultimately, our choice depends on the customer's requirements. Some clients are looking for AI workhorses, so we tailor our selection to find the right model that fits their needs.

It's really good. Especially once you subscribe to the pro support, their support is excellent. If they have parts available in the country, they have a very good response time as well. From a technical support perspective, we rarely need assistance, but when we do, it's pretty reliable.

Positive

The deployment is very easy. The deployment is currently on-premises and not in the cloud.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is fairly priced compared to competitors

In my opinion, the biggest competitor is HPE, particularly the DL380. It's one of the best-selling options when it comes to HPE hardware, and I truly love that server. The DL380 from HPE is amazing. In terms of functionality and performance, I would give both HPE and Dell a thumbs up. However, when we compare them, I would argue that HPE is much better than Dell in terms of functionality. The DL380 from HPE is the best-seller, and it competes closely with Dell’s R760 or R770, depending on which generation we are looking at. The R700 series and the DL380 are very strong competitors.

I highly recommend both brands, and I enjoy working with their servers. They offer a lot of flexibility in various aspects, including CPU, memory, storage, and networking. This flexibility is a significant benefit of these servers. I'm not just limiting this to the DL380 or the R700 series; even the R600 series and any PowerEdge or ProLiant server from HPE provide excellent flexibility and reliability. From an uptime perspective, these servers are very robust. We can rely on them, and they truly serve as great workhorses.

Energy consumption in servers is indeed an important factor to consider. However, it is primarily influenced by the processor. One of the key determining factors for energy consumption is the type of processor used in the server. When purchasing a server, the customer's specific requirements dictate which processor model is needed, as well as the specifications of that processor. Furthermore, when we conduct power supply sizing, it is crucial to calculate the appropriate power supply capacity required to support all the devices within the server. This ensures that the server operates efficiently and meets the customer's needs.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

All of our server infrastructure is PowerEdge, and it's all HCI PowerEdge.

By having Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we wanted density. We wanted to have a small power and cooling footprint. That's why we have PowerEdge and VxRail.

The most valuable feature is OpenManage. We get a lot out of OpenManage because we have a sprawling infrastructure with around 100 data centers, and managing all of those separately is challenging. The automation built into OpenManage for firmware upgrades and life cycle management really helps us out.

I recommend not locking the GPU behind a different license for iDRAC. We've talked to the product team, and it hasn't changed yet. I don't understand why they do that because you can't get very many metrics out of iDRAC Enterprise, as you have to go to the Data Center for a GPU, which seems pointless.

I wouldn't change anything else since I haven't had any other headaches with the platform. I find the pricing and licensing on par with the market.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers at my current company for six years, and beyond that, probably 20.

The stability and reliability are extremely high. We rarely have failures even in places that aren't necessarily maintained. It's a workhorse.

Scalability is a big factor for us, along with time to deployment and ROI, which are all pretty significant.

We have 26,000 people in our organization, with about 400 people per venue.

I work with customer service and tech support all the time. My impressions from working with them on the PowerEdge side are very high. We've had some challenges around VxRail after the Broadcom stuff, but I have nothing bad to say about PowerEdge. 

I would rate their support an eight overall because it's still kind of a challenge for us. We're not tech direct currently, so it's challenging to call in and deal with the script response of 'have you tried turning it off and on again?' rather than getting escalated quickly. Better escalation would be nice, and quicker escalation would be appreciated.

Positive

Deploying the product is super easy. It's going to get easier, but for us, it's simply dropping it in a rack, powering it, networking it, and everything gets provisioned for what we need pretty quickly.

We have seen ROI. While I can't share metrics at scale, we have replaced a couple of venues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and replaced our VxRail. We project to save somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 million over the next three years when we get the rest of them done.

It's pretty much on par.

We evaluated Lenovo and Supermicro. Lenovo didn't have their eggs in the basket for any way to manage at scale, and Supermicro is kind of the same, plus there's just a big relationship with Dell that we can't ignore.

In terms of AI initiatives, a lot of our potential use cases revolve around players, as we're trying to figure out how we can leverage AI to better their experience, such as checking into the bay and giving them advice as they're going through their bay journey. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers can help with that because it is the platform our whole business runs on - it's the foundation. 

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine out of ten, as I never give a ten.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is primarily used for storage in my organization, mostly for web application data and databases.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has positively impacted my organization by helping us solve the business cases for our business requirements. It has addressed our complex business requirements that arose because applications were distributed amongst different data centers.

This solution has helped us centralize and manage everything properly and effectively.

The best features that Dell PowerEdge R-Series offers are that it provides a very stable environment and requires a much smaller number of people to support it.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series meets all our requirements, so I don't have a wish list for improvement. I chose a rating of nine instead of ten because there is always room for improvements in technology.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for three years.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is stable in my experience.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series meets our growth requirements in terms of scalability.

The customer support for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is excellent, and we have no problems with it. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer support a ten.

Positive

We did not use any other solution before Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has definitely simplified the deployment process and has been a great implementation, making a noticeable impact on my business operations.

I oversee the deployment of Dell PowerEdge R-Series and also design the monitoring solutions for Dell products.

We have not calculated a return on investment for this solution.

The experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Dell PowerEdge R-Series was very positive and great, and it worked out very well.

We did not evaluate any other option before choosing Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series does not play a role in my organization's AI initiatives. We don't have any specific metrics to measure success with Dell PowerEdge R-Series. I am using standard R-Series rack servers.

I would highly recommend Dell PowerEdge R-Series as it is a basic but an excellent solution for anyone looking into this product. I provided this review a rating of nine out of ten.

Our specific use case for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers involves it being the production and DR equipment we utilize for all of our company's VMs.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is its reliability. Once we transitioned to an all-flash storage solution within the servers and the hyper-converged setup, we haven't had a disk failure in six years. Being able to not worry about hardware on a day-to-day basis is a really big thing for me. By using this reliable system, the combination of the servers and the hyper-converged setup saves us a ton of time on the management side. I remember managing a separate SAN for storage that involved creating LUNs and provisioning virtual disks for VMs. Now, it's just all combined, and we don't have to worry about it in our day-to-day.

There have been no complaints among my team regarding Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The accessibility when opening up the chassis could be improved, but since we haven't had to do that since installation, it's not a big deal for us. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way they run as is.

I've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers at this company for years, and personally, overall, it's been twenty plus years through previous jobs.

It hasn't failed us at all, which is a testament to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

For a company of our size, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have supported growth and operational success because they are scalable. We have fluctuations in how many VMs we're running, requiring us to scale up some years and not as much in others. When we needed to scale up in the past, we've been able to add RAM to the chassis to accommodate our needs without issues, and the flexibility for upgrades is nice.

Besides reliability, the other benefit of using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the good customer service we receive when we need something done, which is mostly for planned upgrades. Reflecting on it, the last stack we're about to decommission has been a solid piece of equipment. We've never had to call and say, "This is messed up," or, "There's an issue with this." 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. The level of support from Dell has been good; we buy ProSupport Plus for every piece of equipment we have, and Dell provides excellent service through ProSupport Plus to meet our needs.

I didn't consider any other solutions because I've always had a good experience with Dell in my previous companies. When I came to this company, my task was to replace the existing servers with new equipment, which made it pretty much default to go with Dell. I considered a change from HP to Dell because I was familiar with Dell and I appreciated how their servers ran in previous data centers. I thought, if it isn't broken, don't fix it, so I continued using equipment that I liked and was familiar with.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has been fair, and I have no complaints; it's pretty standard lifecycle stuff.

My deployment experience of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has always been good. Whether we do it ourselves or have a managed service come in, deployment is always quick and straightforward with no issues.

The ROI of using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is more on the administration side. It's hard for me to quantify because after we bought it and started using it, it has just been great. There's not a lot of time spent on the day-to-day care and feeding of the appliance, so it has become an afterthought to say, "Oh, you need to check the hardware," which isn't even part of our daily checks since we just trust it to work. 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.

Currently, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers don't play a role in our company's AI initiatives since they were purchased before AI became significant, but our next iteration of servers will probably have either software or hardware ready for AI. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers do have features that cater to organizations similar to mine, especially the managed services that come with it, which helps since we are limited in resources in-house. It has been helpful to lean on Dell for some managed services when we need outside help. Regarding the hardware equipment itself, it remains a solid piece of equipment that I can rely on. In terms of performance metrics or benchmarks to measure success with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, in the IT world, they often say, "No news is good news." When we upgraded from old HP ProLiant servers to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, a crucial year-end process that used to take two weeks now runs on the PowerEdge stack in just two days, representing a significant performance improvement. On a scale of 1-10, I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a 10.

We normally do rack for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, and we started buying the VX rails, which is based on the same platform too. 

Most of the time, we're doing this for more compute with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We have a standard workload and usually run mostly bare metal on most of our platform, except when we do the VX rail, which then we use the ESXi VMware for that one. It is all Linux based. 

The nice benefit with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers was that we moved from an Intel platform, started buying more 7525s, more of the AMD-based processors because we can get higher four counts, more dense memory, so that's been our transition.

The most valuable feature of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is that it's very common. 

We've seen a lot of reliability with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. I just turned off a server that's been on for 11 years. That was a 410 that ran forever. From our point of view, they get good value in what they bought, and it continues to run, so we continue to buy them. It's a very stable, reliable product. The biggest benefit compared to HP is the iDRAC feature. HP has an iLO, but we've had more issues with that and its configuration than we have with the iDRAC and its configuration of the Dell server itself.

We've been impacted by data center issues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, however, typically not from the server side. We have only lost maybe two power supplies out of about 80 servers. They just run forever.

The easiest thing to improve the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is to have a better road map for us. The challenges we have, because of the two-socket processor, are that there's a refresh cycle about every three years to move to the next product line. 

For us, this gets difficult based on how we do our procurement cycles, as sometimes it's a little too short. We'd prefer to have similar equipment, yet sometimes we end up having multi-generations of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers only due to the fact that we buy in year one and a half to two during the production cycle, and it just gets more complicated for us.

We've been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers since approximately 2000. I've used many different versions going back to 1750s, R900s. We have been using this platform for at least almost 20 years.

We've seen excellent reliability with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. I recently turned off a server that had been running for 11 years. We run the platform, and that was a 410 that ran forever. From our point of view, they get good value in what they bought, and it continues to keep running. We have about 80 servers and have only lost maybe two power supplies. They just run forever. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers definitely fit our needs. 

The only issue with the VX rail was the confusion about the strategy going forward, but that was more related to Broadcom confusing the customers. We run a hyper-converged platform inside our system stack. We weren't really sure what would be supported going forward, but now that we can continue to purchase the rails, they seem to fit our model going forward. It's an easy scalable solution. We can also buy Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and deploy our own ESX and do whatever we want to do.

The customer service for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is great. I'd give them a ten out of ten on that.

Positive

Due to budget constraints in the last couple years when considering Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, the customer we work with specifically brought us some HP equipment, so I ended up with some DL380s. Eventually, they will be replaced when we buy more Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers to get them out of our ecosystem.

We do work with other vendors too; however, predominantly, most of our equipment is Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We have Dell on-site support for whatever we need. We haven't had many failures with the platform. We are still running some R930s that are about 10 years old, and we've had zero problems with them. They're 13th generation, while they're currently at 18th generation.

Since we have such a history of deploying these, it's simple for us with intuitive setup. The iDRACs are very simple for us to get things up and running fast, and it fits into how we've built the architecture. The servers have been very standardized for so long. We have both single U and multi U servers based on what the requirement was or what the workload was.

We are not using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for AI initiatives at the moment. We initially looked at doing that, so we bought GPU-ready nodes and used them in a different way. We use those for inference for VDI, however, we've moved away from that based on the way we do compute, and AI doesn't play a factor in what we do. We do more computational-type things.

I'd give Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a rating of ten out of ten. We haven't had any issues with it.