Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers serve as the foundation for our compute needs, running servers, workloads, and Kubernetes clusters. Our video servers and SQL servers are all based on one of those servers running in the back end, performing compute operations and understanding. Hosting our GPUs within the R-Series is a key factor in what we do.

We have been able to use Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers to run GPU nodes for the last three to four years. They were a key part of us starting to leverage AI in our growing system, understanding how to maintain the crops, understanding what is going on, and performing backend updates to the large language models before pushing out the inferencing to the end. This is where we perform this work on Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers have really helped us reduce unplanned production downtime. It is always hard to gauge this now because our Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers are very often inside of a cluster, so we do not have one server going down that will affect us. This is where ProSupport services come in, where they will get us a part in four hours to get us back going and try to avoid that N minus 2 scenario where we lose a second device, which really can usually cause problems.

Regarding energy consumption with the new Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, it is a big topic for us. When we are running a 250-acre greenhouse with about 400,000 lights on, the power for one server does not really affect it as much. We do really monitor what we use and want to use as little as we can, but it makes it a little less of a spotlight for us as a company. We enjoy the built-in features of how it uses less energy and how it optimizes things, but it does not really hit our bottom line as quick.

One feature of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I love, and it has improved generation over generation, is the iDRAC feature. Being able to get back into the server, control it, and then with them linking up to the AI Ops, allowing me to see real-life telemetry of what is going on and understand what is going on in a single pane of glass has made it so much easier for us to understand. These features benefit us because we are a small IT team. Now with our expansion into the Dell Private Cloud, it has allowed us to not even have to interface with the iDRAC but allow the software to do the work. It is almost letting AI deploy a VxRail cluster, a vSphere cluster, ESX hosts, or Red Hat OpenShift through a click, and it goes in the back end and deploys it. Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers are such a multi-function tool for us and they have such a great API to allow us to do so many functions that it makes it easy to work with.

The features I love and I struggle with each day still is the Bluetooth feature once in a while to get it working on my phone. I still struggle with that each day. I think sometimes my team teases me that I am just a little more old school. I prefer to just plug into the iDRAC, find the IP, and get to it. But I think for me, it is just a little bit of a generational thing now.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers have been part of our operations for almost thirteen years.

The overall flexibility of our operations has always been very high with using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers. We have multiple locations and multiple server racks across these locations. There is always the right size to fit our needs, anything from a two to four unit sized server rack, Dell PowerEdge R-Series server to something very simple in the 200 range to help us do what we need to do. We do not need to rely on a one-size-fits-all approach. We go and say, 'This is what workload we want to put on it. This is how much we need.' We customize that server to work in that location. And at the end of the day, it is that commonality that we are working with the same generational server across our platform.

I would evaluate the customer service and the technical support for Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers as amazing. I have always been able to call up and ask, 'How do I do this? What do we need to fix? I have got this weird error.' The joy of when you get the ProSupport Plus for those servers is that they are there to help you.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we were using an HP ProLiant and basically even just workstations doing the work of what should be a server load. This was also part of the Nature Fresh growth pattern of growing from being a small company to being an enterprise company. We had to leave that small portfolio of thinking it was just as cheap to get a workstation to do the load of what a server should do. The benefits we started to see from the reliance and the availability of a server-grade system made it so much stronger for us.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers. I can go back in history of our Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers to one of the first ones we got almost ten years ago, an R410. We were facing SQL issues that we could not explain. We switched everything over to an R410, and we also took leverage of every bit of a 410 at the time. We went to solid state and did all those types of things and we knocked our SQL time from being three to four hours to do a backup down to minutes to the point where now it became something we did not have to shut down our production to do a backup. We could just instantaneously do it. These types of returns we see each day as we continue to grow. And even now, when we look at how we expand, we are able to condense our current structure from generation to generation where a seven-node cluster in one place is now reduced down to three nodes. This really helps the space inside the rack and helps return on investment, and that goes right back into the energy savings because we are only having to power three servers instead of seven.

My experience with the pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that the licensing is basically your ProSupport, things of that nature. It has always been easy for us. It is always a little hard to wrap your head around which processor is in there and whether to go Intel or AMD, but it all works so well. Our costing model is about the same. The new change to it again is the Dell Private Cloud because that is now an extension on each node. A Dell PowerEdge R-Series node is one license for that, but it is still a simple model.

Other solutions I considered before selecting Dell PowerEdge R-Series were HP and IBM. It came down to being one single vendor for our switches and for the core components out there. This makes that support call so much easier. It makes that support time so much easier when you know that you have got one large team working to fix your issue, instead of having two different teams trying to figure out who is at fault. It is more of now, how do we fix that problem.

My impressions of Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers' impact on our company's sustainability goals are that one of our sustainability goals is recycled materials, reusing of components, and e-waste reduction. We use Dell's recycled services to come pick up the equipment once they are done. That is what matches a lot of our goals, as we have recycling containers and recycling packages. We make sure that we try to be friendly to our environment. We recycle our water. All of that leads into that same concept of how do you take what you have and make the most benefit of the resources available. I would rate this review overall with a score of ten out of ten.

I am working as a pre-sales solutions architect. We provide technical solutions. We review a client's requirements and objectives, then provide the appropriate solution to the client. We also review the solution to find the most appropriate option for the client to ensure a good trade-off between technology and cost.

Customers use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers to deploy their business-critical applications, and these servers are recommended for VDI solutions. Companies in the financial and retail sectors use these servers to run their business-critical applications. 

We are currently using the 660 models.

The main benefit is from a cost perspective. Comparing the cost of HCI nodes and Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, the latter are much cheaper. Clients can choose tailored servers based on CPU speed, RAM size, and disk types, with various disk options including NVMe, SATA, and SSDs. We can customize the infrastructure servers.

From a cost perspective, they are much more beneficial for clients. We also get the pro deployment support from Dell for new deployments at the client's data center or service provider's data center, along with maintenance services until the end of the term.

Regarding sustainability goals, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers can be upgraded if they have a five-year warranty, and when they reach end-of-support life, they can be replaced with newer technology. Companies focus on upgrading existing servers to reduce costs and provide savings to the client.

As far as energy consumption is concerned, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers consume less energy compared to other servers. If you go with the HCI VxRail, the energy consumption is higher. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers consume less energy compared to other servers. They also come with thermal cooling nowadays, which also reduces the cost. It reduces the power consumption, or means KWA charges in data centers.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers do not require frequent downtime and can run continuously for up to one year without a hardware reboot. However, to reduce downtime, data centers should have redundancy or resiliency. All servers come with dual power supplies, and vendors provide hardware warranty and replacement within four hours for failed components. Downtime depends on the resiliency of the environment and server configuration. If HA is configured, any faulty hardware part can automatically fail over to another server. Resiliency is maintained at the VMware layer, so if a VM running on some servers goes down, it can move to other servers. 

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers enhance the overall flexibility of the operations. Based on the client's business objective and consumption requirements of the resources of CPU, memory, disk, and storage, we can customize Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We can offer a very competitive price to the client. We get a lot of options as well because multiple models are available in the market, and these servers are robust as well as reliable, and sustainable.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are good for the VDI environment. They are also good for the manufacturing industries, the healthcare sector, the financial sector, and the insurance sector. They are being used in multiple sectors.

The best features include CPU speed, as clients typically use 2.3 GHz CPUs. It provides multiple choices for CPU use and clock speed, ranging from 2.5 to 3.2 GHz. Regarding memory, it offers the latest memory sets for very fast access. The newer technology, after NVMe technology, ensures excellent performance with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. For external storage connectivity, it also supports HVA ports with speeds of 25 Gbps and 32 Gbps, which match network bandwidth, providing great performance and reduced latency. The servers also consume less energy compared to HCI VxRail.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have higher hardware costs compared to HPE ProLiant servers, which are cheaper. From reliability, performance, and sustainability perspectives, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have no match, but the price difference with other vendors is noticeable. 

If we look at the internal storage, Dell is much more expensive as compared to other vendors such as HPE.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for more than 10 years.

There are no stability issues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, and clients have good confidence in them.

Scaling up or down with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is easy, and vertical scaling is possible. Unlike VxRail, which requires adding new nodes for horizontal scaling, we can also deactivate CPUs in current technologies if they are underutilized.

I would rate their tech support a nine out of ten, as I have never faced any challenges.

Positive

It is very smooth because of the pro deployment services that Dell provides. It also depends on the client's environment and client infrastructure. Dell deployment is smoother than other vendors, as they do the rack stacking and cabling. They also test the hardware.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers provide clients with good cost savings and resale value, making them very cost-effective. Although there are differences in CPU clock speeds compared to other vendors, the reliability makes Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers the clients' choice.

Most clients are looking for currency savings as part of technology; they want to get away from tech debt. GenAI is taking good shape, so we work on automation or orchestration that we can offer to our clients and try to propose the best-in-class blended solution with emerging technologies. We prepare PoCs based on past experience and solutions provided to different clients. I work on the server side with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and Dell storage, mainly service storage and network-related products for top aggregation switches and management switches.

AI workloads depend on the client's requirements; however, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers can host them. Generally, we allocate three or four VMs to run AI applications such as Dynatrace and Ansible. For AI development, if a client opts for GenAI, it requires a longer time and more resources, as historical data requires substantial storage. We propose PowerStore servers for GenAI due to the increased processing power and storage requirements.

When considering Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers over a hyperscaler for AI computing, I would recommend hyperscaler servers for clients willing to invest in high performances. For high workloads, PowerScaler offers superior performance, speed, and agility.

I would recommend Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers if you want reliability, sustainability, and greater performance. You also get good technical support and maintenance support from Dell. With pro deployment, you can also get free deployment services from Dell.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a seven out of ten.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series supports our entire virtualization environment. VMware sits on top of PowerEdge, and we use VSAN within that. We also have a few application servers that sit separately on PowerEdge as well.

The features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I prefer the most include out-of-band support, which has improved significantly. iDRAC is an amazing product that has become more full-featured over time. Full access to pre-OS configuration is a great feature. Additionally, the simplicity of the PowerEdge platform physically makes it easy to take apart. Everything is very modular and nicely designed.

The benefits of these features for my company include that Dell PowerEdge R-Series is a solid compute platform. Nothing ever fails at this point very much. Occasionally a drive will fail, but that is easily resolved. Memory will fail and is easily resolved. We really have not had any issues that we experienced previously with other devices where we hit bottlenecks. We still have not seen that. Everything works amazingly. If there are issues, they are usually at the guest OS level and not the Dell PowerEdge R-Series devices themselves.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has helped to reduce unplanned production downtime significantly. Before we went with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I was not there, but I know that we were having major issues with our primary EMR platform because the physical servers we were using previously were underpowered for that use. As soon as we went to Dell PowerEdge R-Series, those issues resolved. That was huge for us.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved by adding more lights on the front. It would be awesome to get more than just the Dell logo lit up. I would appreciate seeing everything lit up. Just keep improving CPU and RAM and SSDs, and keep improving the general performance. I think that is all we really need. Stability has already reached a point where we do not need to worry about it the way we used to.

In my current role, for the four years I have been there, we have always had Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers set up.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has affected the overall flexibility of our operations and business positively. We are not hitting those bottlenecks anymore. CPU and RAM bottlenecks are nonexistent now, and we have had the same Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers for about four or five years. We still do not see anything even with expansion and more VMs that are installed. Performance is still great. We have had some of our Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers, since storage is local, fill up to past 90 percent before and we still have not seen any degradation in performance, which is amazing.

I would evaluate the customer service and technical support specifically for Dell PowerEdge R-Series as amazing. In the past, Dell was known for not having great support, but in the past few years they have been incredibly impressive. I have told Dell this directly because I have been so impressed with how good they are and how fast they get back to you. We have also had to use them for upgrades and we have had to delay upgrades for weeks at a time and there have never been any complaints or closed tickets. They have kept the tickets open the whole time. I have been largely very impressed with Dell's support and they are near the top of my list of good vendors with good support.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we were using another solution that I believe was not Dell. I was not there for that. The fact that our EMR was constantly crashing and we saw bottlenecks in both CPU and RAM made a change necessary. We went with Dell because Dell is a trusted company and it ended up being the right decision.

I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerEdge R-Series. We used to have constantly crashing applications and servers within our previous devices. Now that Dell PowerEdge R-Series has been implemented, we do not see that same degradation in service and our EMR no longer crashes, which is the most important thing. It used to happen a lot and then it went down to nearly nothing.

My experience with the pricing, the setup cost, and the licensing with Dell has been fairly simple. There are times where we went directly through Dell, and there are times where we went through partners. Either way, it usually goes pretty smoothly. I do not know exactly what licenses we got, but the purchase process and the deployment process have always been smooth. Dell or partners always have someone to help you deploy the actual software or the actual hardware, so it has always been pretty simple.

I was not around during the evaluation process, so I do not know what other solutions were considered before selecting Dell PowerEdge R-Series. I do not have details on that.

We do not currently have any AI workloads running on Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers. Nothing yet. The plan is there. We have the GPUs ready to go. The GPUs are there and they are installed. We just have no localized AI yet.

Regarding whether using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has helped reduce our total cost of ownership or TCO, that is a management question. I cannot answer that.

I assess the new Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers for energy consumption as much better compared to previous devices that we had hypervisors on. There is much less power usage now. I can see through the UPS devices that they are connected to that there is not as much power consumption as there used to be in the past.

My impressions of Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers' impact on our company's sustainability goals are uncertain. I do not work in philanthropy, so I do not have strong opinions on that.

Downtime was reduced significantly. From what I have heard, downtime was probably at about 15 percent of total business hours, ranging from 10 percent to 15 percent of total business hours. It has dropped down to 0.05 percent. That is quite an improvement.

I would advise other companies considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series to go for it. Dell is a great company. Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers are great. They are great for hypervisors as we use them for virtualization. It is a solid product. Things do not fail, which is what you want in any business. My overall rating for this product is 9 out of 10.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is used for virtualized general infrastructure for the most part.

The best features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I appreciate the most are fairly consistent performance, pretty good support, sometimes fair pricing, and generally good availability of different configurations to meet business needs.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series generally helps reduce unplanned production downtime due to their reliability.

In Dell PowerEdge R-Series, the areas with room for improvement are pricing because costs have increased significantly for what they offer. The pricing should decrease as component costs drop, especially with current issues regarding memory and sometimes CPU availability. Additionally, the supply chain should be much better for a Tier 1 OEM like Dell.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for approximately 20 years.

Regarding stability, for the most part, we do not have downtime or glitches. Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers are fairly reliable, though I have recently experienced a glitch when I rebooted a server. From 1 to 10, I would rate the stability of most of them at eight because we own 14th generations and 17th generations, with the 17th generation being very new.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is scalable as any other server for our business. From 1 to 10, I would rate scalability at seven or eight.

From 1 to 10, I would usually rate the technical support for Dell PowerEdge R-Series at least an eight or a nine.

Positive

The deployment of Dell PowerEdge R-Series was fairly straightforward.

Overall, I have seen a return on investment with Dell PowerEdge R-Series. They are reliable, so I am getting good use out of them.

When comparing Dell PowerEdge R-Series with other solutions or vendors such as HPE, Cisco, Huawei, and IBM, I have HPs as well, but Dell's portfolio is perhaps a little more broad and easier to understand. Even Dell has many options, which is probably too many and confuses people, making the process much more complex than it needs to be.

The workloads I currently run on Dell PowerEdge servers are almost all virtualized with VMware.

I use AI daily with Dell PowerEdge R-Series in a special Google DoD FedRAMP environment.

Approximately 200 humans and 1,000 IPs, meaning 1,000 devices, use the solution.

The solution requires maintenance through updates and patching. I perform firmware and BIOS updates and housekeeping tasks once every 12 to 24 months, which means the machine has some downtime. Another concern is support, which typically comes in one, two, or three-year contracts that must be renewed, and the costs are sometimes much higher than they should be.

Regarding energy consumption assessment for Dell PowerEdge R-Series, they used to not be great, but in the last few years, they have become much more efficient. I believe they run the fans at different speeds at different times, maximizing power usage for efficiency in 2026.

I do not know if the solution has helped reduce my total cost of ownership, as I do not have anything to compare it against.

My advice for others looking to implement Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to work with a good reseller that understands all the different configurations and options so that you are well-informed. I rate this solution an 8 overall.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for as long as they have existed, in my opinion, so approximately 20 years. I am involved in working with Dell PowerEdge R-Series by doing system designs for our customers, choosing the systems, and since we also operate the systems in the data center for our customers, I also handle the operations.

My use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series are completely mixed, since we come from the publishing sector. Some are publishing systems, image editing systems, image systems, image archiving systems, web servers, and database servers, so really across the entire landscape.

I could not really say offhand which application I find the most valuable. As I said, I have been working with them for a very long time, and system management works very well.

System management works well for us in operations, and that is of course a key point for us. Otherwise, I would not know a single point that I could highlight.

It works so well due to our fairly long experience with it, and even when a new version comes out, we are integrated into it relatively quickly. Integration into third-party systems, monitoring, and other systems is also quite good.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series improves our company by supporting our work and our operations. The company itself does not become better or worse just because I would use another manufacturer. However, I have had very good experiences with Dell systems, and the price-performance ratio has always been great. In that respect, we have been quite satisfied over the years.

I cannot really say how Dell PowerEdge R-Series could be improved. The range of systems is quite large, from small to large, from one socket to two sockets and four sockets. There has always been a suitable system for us for each use case. The choice of CPUs, RAM configuration, and modifications is very large, partly even a bit too large, because I sometimes get lost in the configuration options, but nothing negative really stands out to me at this point.

In the server environment, it is probably more secondary, but what might actually be a small added value for Dell PowerEdge R-Series would be if there were also a server line that had higher graphics performance out of the box. For topics regarding terminal services, Citrix, and similar applications, I can install appropriate GPU accelerators, but sometimes that is already oversized. If the server itself had more graphics performance and GPU onboard, that would be an absolute added value, as I would have many use cases where I could use that, because the next step, an extra GPU with the licensing that comes with it, is a completely different cost level.

I have been working in this field for 33 years.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has always grown well with my company's needs in the past. We also have customer additions and departures, of course, whereby for the additions, relatively quickly relatively large quantities of systems must be procured. That has always worked well so far, and the delivery and the whole handling with Dell was always top-notch. There were no problems.

I would rate the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series as very good, with few defects. There is sometimes a defect in a system, especially since we have a large number, but that is really marginal.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series products grow with my needs.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is scalable for the company's long-term plans.

It fits because the portfolio of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is quite large. Even if we now got a relatively small customer who does not have the financial background to run large systems, I would still find something suitable in the Dell portfolio. That is different with some other manufacturers, but here the range is very broad, so that I can actually find the right thing for every use case and every budget.

For a company like mine, smaller in size, Dell PowerEdge R-Series contributes to growth and operational success through customers using more services or new customers joining. It supports our operations, and due to the reliability and good price-performance ratio, it helps, of course, but the company does not grow solely because of that.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate customer service as a nine. The support is good, and of course, we have little contact because we have few problems, but I have only heard positive things from my employees.

Positive

Compared to previous servers from HP, I would say it had a better price-performance ratio back then. However, today I no longer make the comparisons. The manufacturers all use similar components from similar suppliers. For CPUs, it is Intel and AMD, and there are not many alternatives, so the prices overall are probably similar. However, I have always had good experiences with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, so there is no reason to benchmark other manufacturers again and make a general switch, because we also have a large stock of Dell systems.

I used another solution for similar needs many years ago when we had HP systems in parallel with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, which are similar in their series to the Dell systems. However, that was so long ago that I cannot really verify or reference it anymore.

I no longer use those systems simply due to a strategic decision. We also had a small share of Fujitsu systems, and managing three system managements and three patch managements becomes too big for a small or medium-sized company. That means we decided to focus on one manufacturer, and in this case, it was Dell because my experience with the systems and the hardware was better than with the others, and the price-performance ratio was also somewhat better.

I was not involved in the deployment or initial setup of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, but I was involved in the sizing and procurement.

I have not seen a return on investment through Dell PowerEdge R-Series that can be measured in any way with data. We have a return on investment, otherwise our business model would not be profitable, but I could not give any exact figures. It can certainly be quantified, but it is not measured in detail. However, I am more the technical part of the whole story. That may be measured in other areas by our controlling, but I actually cannot prove it.

When I think about the pricing of Dell PowerEdge R-Series licensing, I see that the systems have certainly gone up quite a bit in price compared to about ten years ago. The technology behind it justifies the price accordingly. Purchasing a server nowadays is already different, purely financially, than a few years ago, but that may be similar in other areas. Software is also not exactly cheap.

At the moment, there are no AI initiatives in my company, and Dell PowerEdge R-Series does not support AI initiatives in any way. That may come in the future, though, as AI is certainly a topic at our company as well. However, it is purely in the application area and not actively operated by us ourselves. We are still waiting to see in which direction it goes and where use cases arise for our customers.

My company is not very big in terms of employees, as we have 60 employees. Customer base wise, we are at three to four thousand workplaces now.

I would not necessarily say that Dell PowerEdge R-Series has features specifically tailored to the needs of small or medium-sized businesses, but due to the modularity and different series, depending on company size, there is actually something for every need. If only high-end systems were on offer, then I would certainly look for another supplier, because we are more in the mid-range, such as R760 and R770 in various expansion stages. That is our bread-and-butter system. High-end systems, four sockets, or larger configurations are rather rare in our use cases.

I do not use performance indicators or benchmarks to measure Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

I cannot name a specific example where the product has improved my business outcome, as nothing comes to mind right now.

I would rate this review with a rating of nine.

My main use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series are virtualization, database, and web applications.

Dell PowerEdge plays a role in my company's AI initiatives as we have started the initiative. We are not fully there yet, but we are learning as we go with all the PowerEdge series. We are still trying to start getting more AI platform for next year.

In my AI initiative, I see Dell PowerEdge R-Series playing a role in the more exploratory phases. Once the data is fed into it, it evolves and learns the data and then tells us how to behave from a scientist point of view and from the user perspective.

The feature of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I appreciate the most is the flexibility, the expansions, and the resiliency. These features benefit my company because fewer hardware problems result in more uptime for the users. It helps everyone in a 24/7 operational environment.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series could be improved by expanding the slots and local disks. This is the main area for improvement because I have many environments where I need local space, and the slots limit how much I can accomplish.

In my role with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I have been using it for approximately 15 years.

I would assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series as decent, although we did experience some downtime, crashes, or performance issues. The 740 model had some problems, but as we worked with back engineering, they understood the issue. This made it better when we got the 760s and new series, which performed very well.

The problem was mainly CPU related, involving Intel and Dell firmware.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series scales well with the growing needs of my company. We have hundreds, probably close to 500 or 600 Dell PowerEdge R-Series 760 units, and we can perform vertical and horizontal scaling without issue. It fits right in with our infrastructure.

I would rate customer service and technical support a 10 out of 10 because the technical support is fantastic. When I call them, they are always responsive. They conduct working sessions with me, which is very helpful. Additionally, I have a local presence of Dell representatives on-site, which facilitates things for me.

Positive

Before using Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we had an IBM solution, but it was very limited at one percent adoption.

I considered other solutions in my journey to switch. We used to be an HP shop, and then we switched to HP for the V-series and other solutions.

The deployment experience of Dell PowerEdge R-Series was very smooth with no issues. I run it out of the box with a few clicks and it is done.

The biggest return on investment when using Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that we use them longer. Normally, our lifecycle is five years, but sometimes we have extended it up to seven years on the same hardware with no issues. This allows us to take a more long-term approach rather than having to replace hardware every three to five years.

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, I would say it is industry standard. I would not call it super expensive, and Dell is generous with discounting. They help us accommodate what we need, and they are very good about it.

I have evaluated other CPU vendor systems, and AMD was pushing harder in the earlier phases, but it never went anywhere. We pretty much stick with Intel.

The selling point for Intel is that we were accustomed to it. Bringing new solutions into the environment meant migrating everything, including application reliability and performance, which was too much effort. We had to stay with it, and AMD lagged behind in certain aspects.

I manage a team of solution architects, and we design Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers for end user customers. My main use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series are virtualization hosts and basic compute.

The features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I appreciate most are reliability, support, and iDRAC.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has helped reduce unplanned production downtime when designed appropriately. Although all hardware experiences failures occasionally, Dell's 4-hour support enables us to minimize downtime, and with proper design, we can essentially eliminate downtime.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has affected the overall flexibility of our operations and business. With appropriately designed servers, there is flexibility to meet the needs of the business. We design for both planned and unplanned growth, and IT departments are often asked to support new initiatives from other lines of business within the organization. Appropriately designed solutions help deliver whatever the business requires.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has helped reduce my total cost of ownership by eliminating downtime and being able to support the evolving needs of the business. As workloads evolve to containers or AI, the flexibility in servers to add GPUs or other components has been fantastic.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved in several areas. Moving from 16th generation to 17th generation, there was a drop in some flexibility. When 17th generation Dell PowerEdge first launched, I liked the idea of having two OCP cards available, but we could not mix and match what we needed to fit various designs. At launch, not many PCI Express card options were available. It is fantastic that servers are moving to 100 and 400 Gig Ethernet. However, many small customers do not need 400 Gig Ethernet, and I was unable to add more 25 Gig ports at launch, though I believe this is now possible.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for 20 years.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support as fantastic. The 4-hour part dispatch is excellent compared to some competitors that offer next business day support.

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, my customers worked with Supermicro, which is very easy to displace because of reliability and support issues. We have customers with Lenovo servers, which I consider one of our biggest competitors, primarily based on cost.

I have seen ROI with Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

One example of ROI is our work with AMD, where we are refreshing many older 14th generation Intel servers with 17th generation AMD servers. We are able to fit the same workload on fewer hosts. This reduces footprint, which reduces power and cooling, and it reduces licensing costs. AMD is delivering fantastic improvements in terms of core count and clock speed compared to Intel, so being able to do more with less has been valuable.

My experience with pricing, setup, cost, and licensing over the last six to nine months has been challenging because of AI data centers consuming significant resources. Component availability has been a real challenge. A server today costs probably two to three times the price of the exact same build a year ago. I work with many SLED customers, including city, county, school districts, and universities, and they must submit budgets a year in advance. We submit and work on proposals in September so they can plan for their July 1 budget. Quotes are only good for 14 days, and we are trying to predict costs nine months in advance, which has been a challenge.

The other solutions I considered before Dell PowerEdge R-Series include HPE and Cisco, though Cisco seems to be moving away from servers. Lenovo is moving into the space that Cisco may be evacuating. I consider Lenovo the biggest competitor at this time.

Some of our customers have competitive solutions that are not as reliable or have poor support, making them very easy to replace with a superior Dell PowerEdge R-Series solution.

The benefits I have seen from running AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers include cost advantages compared to running those same workloads in the public cloud.

I assess Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers for energy consumption by noting that Dell has power calculators, which allow us to know power requirements before servers ship. We are able to appropriately plan power and cooling requirements for the data center whenever there is a new deployment.

Regarding Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers' impacts on my organization's sustainability goals, this question is probably more applicable in the EU and other places where carbon footprint measurements are being tracked, and I am uncertain if it applies to the customer segment that I primarily focus in.

I give this review a rating of 10.

My company's use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series include virtualization, backup, and administrative tasks, such as management and patch management.

For small or medium-sized companies, VX-Rail, which is based on Dell PowerEdge R-Series, has definitely contributed to growth and business success. We have been able to use significantly more storage, the systems became much faster, and thanks to redundancies, downtimes have dropped to zero. We haven't had any major IT outages for six years now thanks to Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series definitely has features specifically tailored to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses. iDRAC helps the local administrator monitor the system, temperatures, system status, and similar metrics. It reports to different systems, and the adaptability of the system and its manageability is very good.

The feature I consider the most valuable about Dell PowerEdge R-Series is iDRAC, which is a very important system for remote management, allowing me to control, monitor, and manage the server. Apart from that, the product quality is enormous, and failures are virtually non-existent. Support services from Dell are very good, and it's consistently positive. It's basically always a well-rounded package.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has improved my company, even though it's difficult to measure whether there was an improvement since we define our workloads ourselves. Downtimes are minimized, even though none have occurred so far, but when they do, they are very short thanks to the appropriate support services. I can always rely on the systems; they're always available, and in terms of support, I always quickly reach someone who can help me further without any problems.

Nothing comes to mind spontaneously about what could be improved with Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

I actually find nothing currently missing in this area because you can configure the servers accordingly when ordering, and you get everything you need in that sense.

There's not much about the support that I could still improve; there was this one isolated case where I had an issue and they couldn't really help me, but otherwise, I think overall, I'm very satisfied. The nine is just to ensure they don't forget to keep making an effort; I couldn't name anything specific.

I find nothing specific that needs to be improved, but I agree there is still room for improvement.

I have been working in this field for twenty-two years, regardless of the position I currently have.

Regarding reliability and stability, I can confirm that I don't experience crashes, outages, or performance issues. Sure, things can fail, and anything can break. That's why, as an IT administrator, I build in redundancies. Hardware failures have not led to any work stoppage, so I have full satisfaction in this area.

Dell products grow with the needs of the company and are scalable for our long-term plans. The projects we've done with Dell so far are always set up to provide scalability. In those projects, they look at the current workload to size the products sensibly and ensure there are options available for further growth, whether that's through adding more hard drives, expanding network cards, or adding graphics cards for other workloads—all are possible.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series grows with the needs of the company, and I have expanded it at some point.

The expansion works perfectly, and it was problem-free.

Support services from Dell are very good, and it's consistently positive.

I always quickly reach someone who can help me further without any problems.

Compared to the previous servers, the support services were worse back then. Dell servers are naturally more expensive because the support is included in the price, but you know what you're getting for it.

I would rate Dell's support in general as a nine or ten.

That's also the rating for Dell PowerEdge R-Series support in this case.

Positive

What distinguishes Dell PowerEdge R-Series from other servers is my previous experience with servers from a small German distributor called ICO, which were more or less self-built and couldn't really compete with Dell in terms of quality and support services. I haven't really had servers from other major players like HP or Lenovo in my hands so far.

I had another solution before from the German manufacturer ICO, somewhere in southern Germany, who supplied us with servers.

I switched because it was a project to move into virtualization; we hadn't used that before. That was around 2010 or 2012, and the existing provider couldn't offer us anything good there, so together with Dell, we set up a good project to create a virtualization environment.

Our system infrastructure used to be set up on individual servers, referred to as terminal servers for our employees. Thanks to the VX-Rail series, we were able to make that fully redundant. It was at least as performant, if not faster, and we have gained 100% fail-safety. Before, outages were factored in—if there had been a failure, we would have had a full day of downtime, which we no longer need to plan for.

I was involved in the deployment and setup as well.

I find it very difficult to quantify whether I have seen a return on investment by using the new Dell servers compared to before.

However, from my gut feeling, I can definitely say it has been worth it financially to switch. Through process optimization, faster workloads, functions, and scalability, we have definitely gained, and we didn't have to buy additional individual servers—we could simply scale up within the infrastructure without having to throw a lot more money at it.

It's difficult to estimate how long it took until that return on investment, time to value, was reached. For what we bought last year, it will definitely still take some time; I think it will take about two to three years until the full ROI should be reached.

I am very satisfied with the pricing since I order directly from Dell itself and not through a system integrator, placing me in a very attractive price range for the servers. Of course, a lower price is nice, but it's not something I really need to focus on.

I would say the pricing of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is fair; you're not being ripped off. Licensing is always a bit of an issue when it comes to third-party vendors. For example, VMware at Broadcom was a big topic in IT last year due to the enormous price increases, and we paid four times the price for licenses at the end of last year. Otherwise, Microsoft is priced normally, where you usually still get a special offer to save another 100 euros, but in a complete project, that usually doesn't make a big difference.

I did consider other solutions before deciding on Dell and obtained other quotes.

What stood out to me with the others is that all the big manufacturers are comparable in that sense; they may differ in software or support services. From my experience in the small-business space, I can say that Dell is actually the best in terms of support, followed by HP, and only behind that comes Lenovo. I've had support cases with all of them in the small-business segment.

We do have AI initiatives in our company, but they are outsourced; we don't have any AI developers or similar in-house, so nothing is running locally on Dell PowerEdge R-Series either.

Everything related to AI is outsourced for us, and we are only end users in that sense.

My company has around one hundred employees.

I can provide a specific example where Dell PowerEdge R-Series has noticeably improved business operations. My overall rating for this review is nine 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.

In my role of using and managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we design solutions for customers based on their applications. We also conduct field deployment and, in some cases, provide managed services on top of it.

The main use cases for Dell PowerEdge R-Series include application consolidation, where we move from physical to virtualized environments or refresh virtualized environments.

The functionality of the models I am using is mostly the R servers, R-Series, the 760, the 770 range. These are retrofits for HCI-type stacks and VDI architecture.

The features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that I appreciate the most are management, implementation features, and iDRAC. The simplicity it brings in terms of starting a server from scratch through monitoring and beyond is valuable. The interface is simple to use.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has helped me reduce unplanned production downtime by 100%. From a typical customer use case perspective, we see a reduction in data center floor space, consolidation of workload, and reduction of power and cooling. We observe this almost every consolidation exercise we conduct.

The benefits I have seen from running AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers show that the ROI for any customer is not achieved within a year or two. What I have observed, over a period from implementation to production and over three to six months, is significant cost reduction specifically from a data center perspective regarding power and cooling, and then on the application side, faster uptime in terms of servicing information back to the application.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has definitely affected the overall flexibility of my operations and business.

Implementation is much simpler, which from an execution perspective, allows us to almost determine the start and end date to complete. The simplicity and functions we have, along with the ability to rack, stack, and implement in less time than before, are significant advantages.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers has definitely helped reduce my cost of ownership and total cost of ownership.

To improve Dell PowerEdge R-Series, the biggest concern for us is not actually the server itself but the internals of the server. We have many customers still running legacy networking, and with the newer range, you do not get the flexibility to cater for an N-2-type scenario where a customer is running probably a 10 Gig network and has not transitioned to 25 or 100. The newer range poses a bit of a problem because you are limited to what type of cards are available for connectivity.

I have been working in my current field for 10 years.

I have worked in my main area of expertise for 30 years, regardless of the job or company.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series for probably more than 10 years. It includes all the different models that we have basically upgraded through.

My impressions of Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers' impact on my organization's stability goals are very positive. There is much more available with the newer range of servers. Everything has been geared up for AI workload. Whether you want AI built-in or not, it is there. We are using it quite efficiently specifically on the management of that server.

I would evaluate customer service and technical support as a seven out of ten for now. Cases are typically handled well, but we do have situations on the extreme side where cases breach SLAs, which becomes a problem for us, especially regarding parts allocation. Parts allocation is a huge issue right now.

Before adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we were predominantly a Dell house from a partner perspective, transitioning competitor products into Dell. We did transition from HPE to a newer Dell architecture or alternatively, the Lenovo range or Supermicro. The transition from a third-party brand into Dell is seamless. It is a good talking point, and the product quality is excellent.

From an older to a new generation, I would say there is at least a 20% cost saving, specifically on consolidation. You can deliver more with less in terms of server capabilities. More CPU cores are available than what was available on the previous generation, and the entire AI facilities within the server make management much easier.

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing, prior to the Ukraine-Russia war or more recently the Iran-US war, the availability for components was quite good, and lead times and pricing were right for the market. Specifically, I was getting the power of two in one in terms of server performance capability, which made it easier to convince clients to move to a new architecture. After the war, unfortunately, everything has tripled in pricing. Main components, being drives, SSDs, flash, and CPUs, have severe lead times that mean project lead times for implementation have gone up by more than three to six months. Accurately gauging costs is now difficult, especially when we take a project to do a consolidation or tech refresh in terms of estimation from order placed to delivery. While the system may say six to eight weeks on order, in actuality, it is more than eight, nine, or ten weeks, which creates a bit of an issue for our project delivery.

Before selecting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I normally conduct a competitive analysis prior to presenting anything to the customer, especially since they could be very brand conscious. If they are not brand conscious, I lead with the best architecture based on the architecture of choice. If they are brand sensitive, we understand, but we also present the use case of why we are presenting Dell, including the quality of the product, the maturity of the range, and certainly the technical capabilities that sit within us to manage the customer.

The advice I would give to other organizations considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to not buy a brand based on marketing. That is the big thing for all customers. Pick the right solution to fit the selection of your server. Often enough, I get clients who are looking at a specific model but not understanding the fit for what the application is. This is where you will find the costs are quite high based on what the application is. I would say a thorough understanding of the application first, and then model and choose the server range that fits. My overall rating for this review is seven out of ten.