Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

We use this solution for data protection and for securing customer data using a solution from Veritas Technology and Dell's hardware.

The PowerEdge systems management frameworks have enabled us to progress towards full automation when it comes to managing PowerEdge. Especially on the security front, we extensively rely on the APIs provided by Dell management systems, and we do integrate it with our software.

In terms of operations, this gives a lot of flexibility. Also different customers have different choices and options, and we can enable different security modes and options for our customers using these features.

The features I've found to be most valuable are integrated management, hardware flexibility, and the latest technology that Dell brings to the table.

We deploy PowerEdge servers in a hyperconverged environment, and often, the workloads are compute- and network-intensive workloads. The PowerEdge servers are capable of taking on more workloads and offering more benefits to the customers.

We extensively rely on PowerEdge servers' security features, and we use APIs offered by Dell systems so that we can enable those security features depending on customer requirements.

iDRAC Telemetry does offer a lot of capabilities, and we expose those capabilities to our customers. We use iDRAC extensively for managing the systems, report generation, understanding firmware deviation and drift, and many other capabilities.

There needs to be more flexibility for business options.

I've been using it for the past five years.

It's a pretty stable solution; no issues have been reported. All of the customers are pretty happy with the Dell PowerEdge Rack servers.

It's scalable. The hyperconverged solution is all about scaling based on customer demand. Our software and the Dell hardware are pretty linearly scalable, which helps our customers have a predictable way of expanding to address increased demands.

We have storage and backup administrators in the data centers and enterprise world who use this product.

We definitely want to increase usage and accelerate and expand more.

Technical support is awesome. Every time we have run into some typical third party firmware issues, which may not be Dell's problem, we have always got great support from Dell. I would give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. We haven't run into any complexities when setting up Dell systems for our end-customers.

For the deployment, one person is sufficient to handle it without any hassles.

The maintenance and management are pretty simple, and an administrator can manage hundreds of these systems efficiently.

Deployment typically takes no more than 20 to 25 minutes maximum if the customer is ready with the network and has taken care of any other environments.

We definitely want to leverage the automation capabilities in terms of deployment because the deployment times will be even less. Moving forward, that's the plan.

We implemented it ourselves.

I don't see any issues with respect to licensing. It's power-efficient, so it's beneficial to the customers price-wise. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fee.

We looked at well known server vendors. The main reason we went with Dell PowerEdge servers is the stability of the product.

The predictable linear scale and the fact that most of our customers love Dell hardware were the other reasons.

Also, if we integrate and support Dell hardware, then it stands to reason that our solution will also get a wider read option.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that with modern technology the parameters are rapidly changing. So, you have to make sure to look at all the current and future growth requirements and evaluate accordingly.

I recommend Dell PowerEdge Rack servers and rate them at ten on a scale from one to ten. Go with the latest technology, the latest server, and the firmware that's offered by Dell. Leverage all the scalability features, which are built for the next generation, that is, for hyperconverged and cloud type of deployments.

We primarily use the solution for compute servers. We use them as compute servers to run our virtual machines on-load, mainly on VMware.

The R6 series has been very valuable as it's more cost-effective and it has a lot of features. Based on the requirements, we found the R6 Series would be best suited for our customers. Reliability-wise, it's also great.

PowerEdge is for handling the evolving needs of high-performance workloads, including VDI, AI, and SAP. We did run PowerEdge servers with virtual workloads, especially on VDI. We realized that SSD is necessary, especially with VMware vSphere platforms as the IO requirements are quite high.

In terms of security, there’s been no issue from our side. In terms of BIOS, it is secure and we can go and log into BIOS to change certain settings.

PowerEdge is good for energy consumption. PowerEdge Servers run on optimal voltage. Compared to other competitors or other brands, the power rating is great.

We use iDRAC for many years already. It's an item we need to buy. We’ve had no problems so far. We use it for monitoring purposes to configure SNMP and the servers.

PowerEdge analytics helped to decrease production downtime.

The data points I’d draw attention to for potential customers depend on how much the customer is going to spend. If there is a certain budget, we would plan around their budget. In terms of analytics, most of the time, our monitoring service is able to collect the data metrics already, so having PowerEdge analytics is a complement to our existing monitoring system. While it's good to have, it depends of course on the customer's budget. If their budget is small, we will take away analytics to save costs.

PowerEdge helped to reduce our customer’s data processing time. In fact, they were getting a lot of data from here, from their data processing. We also partner with some Big Data Analytics which run data points. In terms of PowerEdge, it's running fine except for certain power failures from time to time. In terms of how much they’ve reduced the data processing producing power, I don't have the metrics to comment on.

PowerEdge systems management frameworks enable us to progress towards full automation when it comes to managing PowerEdge. We find it very useful in terms of automation, the setup, and configuration, as it does offer setup and proper checks. With the servers, we just need to set our black bar and then push down the setup and configurations box into PowerEdge and we run after that.

We do encounter power supply failures from time to time, however, in terms of operations, the production uptime, the production is not affected, and the SLA is still within the stipulated time.

In the future, we hope that the noise level will be lower.

I've used the solution for quite a long while. Likely, it's been more than 10 years.

We've had no issues with scaling so far. We have been using PowerEdge for years and we are able to scale well. For networking, we need to build the network to scale, and it hasn't been a problem.

Dell support is responsive. They dispatch an engineer on-site to help us within their SLA plan. They are very good so far.

That said, we would appreciate it if the engineer came down with the parts beforehand so they can resolve hardware issues on the spot.

Positive

We deployed many series of PowerEdge for many years. We also used other vendors, including HP and Cisco among others. I would say that in terms of reliability, they are a bit better than Dell in terms of power supplies. 

The deployment time depends on the size of the setup. So far, we haven't had any problems with the setup.

We engage with vendors to do the setup as unboxing PowerEdge and mounting them onto racks. This is especially true if we are talking about hundreds of servers.

Dell can actually do everything in their staging environment, in their warehouse, before shipping everything to customers. We've been quite satisfied with Dell's level of service so far.

The product meets our requirements. Cost-wise, certain configurations in PowerEdge maybe cost a bit extra. Especially the SSD drives.

The cost will increase if we go with the rack-and-stack approach.

We are partners with Dell.

We use the R series, namely R620, 630, then after that 720, 730, and with the XD series as well. We deploy them in data centers. Inside the data centers, there are systems as well as cloud systems; typically the deployment is hybrid.

We don’t use Dell's cloud view for predictive analytics.

I can’t speak to PowerEdge's accelerated tuning in terms of helping to support demanding workloads. We have not used GPU yet.

I'd advise new users to go ahead and assess PowerEdge. Of course, companies need to get their representative to send some metrics, especially the MTBF or certain components on Dell products. We realize that the power supply may be a weak link when running high loads constantly. In terms of other components, there are no issues. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We mostly use Power Servers for our R&D lab where we deploy the labs for developers and other testers to do their high-end testing and more.

The burden on the IT team has been reduced thanks to this solution, the monitoring, and other features. The deployment and giving access to the end-users have been easy. Overall, the amount of work that the IT team has to invest in came down drastically.

There are a lot of features. To be specific, the amount of virtual memory that we can use and the scalability are something that I like much. If you ask me what is the best feature, I would say the scalability. I don't have to invest in the new servers when I can scale this one. That is something which helped us a lot.

PowerEdge is great for handling the evolving needs of high-performance workloads. I'd rate it an eight out of ten.

I would rate PowerEdge’s approach to security with its signed Firmware, drift detection, and BIOS at a ten out of ten. Everything is easy to upgrade. It's easy to maintain and easy to work with.

In terms of energy consumption, it's consuming less than the previous servers.

We use PowerEdge for artificial intelligence applications. Our developers and QA use it and our developers develop the AI feature products.

Using artificial intelligence does solve problems for us in terms of using the servers for our developers.

The PowerEdge Eye Track telemetry for monitoring system data and providing analytics helps us get the job done and makes it easier in terms of monitoring.

PowerEdge has accelerated us in order to help support our demanding workloads.

The solution should give us an option to add on new hardware features. For example, the new hardware, specifically the SoCs that come in, and the NB RAMs that are coming, should have that feature as well. The existing ones are okay, however, the older version that we currently use, which is two years old, doesn't have that feature. 

I've been in the company for the last six years, and we were using the product even before that.

The solution is very stable and serves its purpose.

Technical support is very good. We had issues with the hardware replacement that was to be done on PowerEdge. They made sure that they stood by their four spare replacements.

Positive

I was involved in the initial setup of this solution. It was easy.

I was using the Power Servers for the last 14 years and it was transferred from the day I started working on the servers. It was always easy to set up for me and easy to train my employees. However, I don't do that anymore, my staff does it for me. However, it remains easy to set up.

I can't comment much on the licensing as it is not directly from Dell. It's our partner's pricing that we have to depend on. Pricing is competitive compared to others in the market.

I'm not sure which model we use, it's been three years.

We do not use the cloud and new predictive analytics.

I'd advise other potential users to go for it and evaluate it with the other vendors. However, in my experience, PowerEdge stands out.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

We used PowerEdge as our main servers for all things virtual and as our file servers as well. We had a lot of VPN users as most of the company is remote. There wasn't as much lag time when dealing with file transfer, specifically in the office. Using the PowerEdge Servers and the Dell switch stack interchangeably skyrocketed the firm in the office.

The monitoring system is really helpful. I'm a one-man team, and I run systems and IT for a pretty big company. The ease of use of being able to flip through a browser tab was the most valuable feature for me.

As for handling the evolving needs of high-performance workloads, PowerEdge has a lot more flexibility for scaling. It has everything that you would want for a business that's growing.

In terms of PowerEdge's approach to security with its firmware and drift detection, there have been no issues with any updates or security breaches.

The company had to move to a new building, and one of the main concerns was energy consumption. As far as I know, there were a lot of eco settings present to make sure that the PowerEdge Rack Servers used the proper amount of energy.

I've had zero downtime in the three and a half years I've been in the company. Prior to my time, I do know that the uptimes of the systems were very long. From all the records and logs of the previous IT administrator, I can see that there were no issues with the servers.

The servers get slower at the end of their life cycle. The technology needs to evolve.

Also, when you have separate servers and have to add connections between them, they slow down.

I used this solution for about a year and a half since I joined the company. The company was using it at least since 2015.

There hasn't been a whole lot of downtime and zero issues with stability.

There's expandability, and you can scale with PowerEdge Rack Servers.

About 80% to 85% of our workforce is remote, and they all use laptops. About half of that comes back to the server through a VPN. There are only about 60 people in the office using the solution on-premises.

I've had no issues with technical support, and they've been very quick and responsive. I've had to call them, maybe three times in the last three years. I would give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

PowerEdge Rack Servers are pretty standard servers. You put them on the rack, you plug them in, and you set up the settings.

We weren't paying very much, but it was at the end of the lifecycle. We're now using the VxRail hyper-converged infrastructure, and the pricing was very similar for the same amount of power but with easier automation.

Make sure that it fits your company now and your company in the future because if you don't build for scalability, you will get caught by a foot and have to buy more stuff.

I would recommend PowerEdge Rack servers to smaller organizations and not to larger ones like ours.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate PowerEdge Rack servers at nine.

We are a solution provider and this is one of the products that we implement for our customers. Their use cases can be everything from storage to simple computing to network traffic analysis. We have a lot of customers that just do everything with these servers, and it's difficult to keep track of.

We will architect and help the customer identify the best solution for their software, and then essentially modify whatever they need. This might include adding cards, deploying their software onto the server, and then managing their inventory.

PowerEdge is good when it comes to dealing with the evolving needs of high-performance workloads that our customers have. Whatever software they're developing seems to be able to take advantage of it.

The system's management frameworks have enabled at least one of our customers to progress toward full automation. Their internal scripting works with automation, which means that they can leverage the tools that Dell has created and merge them with their own software. This is something that's benefited them.

iDRAC is one of the most valuable features, as well as having BMC.

The real advantage to Dell when I look at some of the other competitors is the support. The support is better than Lenovo and HP. For example, it's much easier to get replacement components, and we can get service out to customers as quickly as possible. There aren't as many hoops to jump through. It's just not as challenging. This is one of the big reasons we stick with Dell.

The iDRAC telemetry for monitoring PowerEdge system data and providing analytics is a good feature. We have a lot of the sensor data that we capture, and it's very useful to our customers. Being able to pull that out and tell them the consistency of their product is a good value-add to sell.

The big problem that we have at the moment is with the supply chain. If it were more realistic then we'd probably be able to expand some of these systems a little bit more. This might be more CPU options, different memory, or overall consistency.

Certain customers have requirements that they prefer. I've had some trouble where the customers are not happy with the Toshiba drives, and it's a challenge when it comes to specific requests for Dell to a non-deviate, and only use Seagate drives.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for approximately 14 years.

This product seems stable to me. Compared to products from other vendors, I don't have as many problems with them.

From a scalability standpoint, getting more systems or expanding capacity has never really been an issue.

I would rate Dell's technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

Compared to other solutions, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very good.

In general, the user interface on Dell's products, including iDRAC, is a little bit easier and more intuitive than those of competing solutions from vendors such as Lenovo and Supermicro. 

Our customers have seen a return on their investment with this solution.

The pricing for PowerEdge servers is reasonable. Our customers continue to purchase them from us. When it comes to pricing, often our customers are doing the work for us. They compare pricing and costs against other hardware vendors to see who is going to come out on top. More often than not, they choose Dell.

We do a little bit of support for our customers, depending on the contract that we have with them. When there is a problem with a sever, some people just want to replace it immediately. They don't really care about trying to replace single components. They just want to get their server up and running, so they swap it out. It's very much done on a case-by-case basis.

My advice for anybody who is considering this solution is that it's the support from Dell that really makes things easier for us. There is always a little bit of movement when it comes to the costs and getting the numbers where they need to be. But, at the end of the day, dealing with Dell means it's easier to support a customer, especially with critical response times. This is something that's been really beneficial for us.

Overall, this is a good product, and judging by the feedback from my customers, there are very few additional features that they want or need. Dell seems to have done a pretty good job with what is currently released.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.

We use this solution for our on-premises infrastructure to mainly provide office support and data storage.

We use it for data storage and it allows for easy access to the data on-premises. It has helped increase staff productivity.

PowerEdge is one of the top solutions when it comes to the security features that it provides including firmware, drift protection, and systems management.

It's a pretty nice system. You can log in to iDRAC, you can look at the logs, the temperature, etc. Essentially, all of the metrics of the server are there, so you can get a complete view and immediately know what's going on.

One of the things that I've noticed is that over time, the system degrades, meaning that little things don't work. For example, the hard drive would need to be replaced or iDRAC would not be functioning properly. We may have to flash the firmware. It is not like some other hardware where it just runs without issues for four or five years. With Dell, generally, there are little hiccups here and there.

I've used PowerEdge Rack Servers on and off for about 20 years.

It's very stable. I would give it a ten out of ten. The system is pretty redundant, so we never really have any downtime.

We have about 250 users. It's used 90% in the company, in terms of our infrastructure. We do not plan to increase usage because we're moving more things to the cloud. We're trying to reduce our server footprint on-premises.

Dell's technical support is pretty good. I'd give them a ten out of ten.

Positive

We've always switched between Dell and HP, depending on the current state and the cost. The reason for switching is primarily the cost involved.

The initial setup is not intuitive. The first one took a while, but after that, we were done within an hour.

When deploying the PowerEdge solution, we were able to use the automated server and OS deployment features, but I had to talk to Dell support. They had to walk me through it. However, once you do it once, it becomes very easy.

We implemented it ourselves with help from Dell's technical support.

For deployment and maintenance, we need one person.

When you compare public cloud solutions to PowerEdge in terms of cost, initially the cost of Dell servers or Dell technology was really high. However, right now it's on par and maybe even cheaper when we use Dell hardware. If we don't swap it out in three years and stretch it to four or five years, then we can get even more of an ROI versus cloud cost.

We've always chosen HP or Dell depending on the year, the product, and any promotions offered by the respective companies. We generally use Dell laptops, so by default we often go with Dell servers as part of the ecosystem.

I highly recommend Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers; they are solid. If you do your due diligence and do your homework or your janitorial work, they'll never break.

I would give this solution a ten on a scale from one to ten.

I use a mixture of versions of this solution including R440 and R430.  I also use FX2S for the blade chassis and FC630 and 640 for the actual blade servers.

We use the blade solution as a host cluster environment for virtualization of multiple servers and the standalone R440 and 430 for best practice when we don't want to necessarily complete virtualization. We use physical servers in different locations in order to have different firewall contexts, so we can push data across. We use the physical servers as simulated distant ends in a test environment out at the actual sites.

This solution has helped us reduce our rack footprint. It reduced our power consumption including size and weight. For example, we could increase the number of systems we were deploying in Iraq if we needed to. 

The solution decreased the time it takes to deploy systems due to needing less hardware. When we started to manage all of our servers in a cluster, it increased our oversight management. Ease of management with a smaller hardware footprint has equaled faster deployment.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the fact that it is a reliable server and does the job we implemented it to do. 

We are leaning away from this particular product because Dell's VxRail solution makes us buy four nodes at a time which is not scalable. Other solutions such as Cisco offer more innovation on this front. 

The switching for this solution is lagging behind other products. Cisco has built the best iOS that other solutions need to match. Dell has recently done an overhaul to allow networking switches but it still can't scale the way we need it to. 

I have been using this solution for seven years. 

This is a stable solution. 

Blade servers are not scalable anymore.

The initial setup is not complex but it is counterintuitive, specifically the chassis. The FX2S chassis holds up to four half widths blades and has a pre-built two-module network card and eight ports that mirror each other.  

The PCIe slots on the back of the chassis are hardwired and challenging to set up.

We did not use the automated server of OS deployment features. We installed the hardware and then installed the software manually. We are a dark site. Dell could be a little bit more friendly to dark site management. There's a huge customer base out there that just cannot utilize a lot of their solutions in a classified environment.

The pricing for this solution is reasonable. We pay a basic premium with a military premium on top of that. 

This solution has met my needs. We have not run with the latest versions of this solution due to security concerns. 

This solution has helped me to view the health and status of our environment in a user-friendly way. The TPM features have helped us a lot because, from a configuration management standpoint, there are trusted platform modules that operate consistently.

For anyone considering this solution, I would recommend looking into all the finer details to understand how it could be integrated. Ensure every facet of the solution is going to meet your needs.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten. 

We primarily used the solution for the servers. It's a node among many in a multiprocessor, supercomputer environment. It's a very verified application. The customer uses a lesser file system, which means that one file system is shared among the entire installation. You're not going to see that very often in your career unless you're in that business. It's a multi-node, high-performance computing file system. It's Linux based.

It fit the requirements of the client, that's really all that it was for us. It could deliver the IOPS and the local storage that was required. It could have been anybody else, Lenovo, IBM, HP, etc. We were Dell's number one reseller in Canada and probably worldwide. We got very favorable terms and that also helped with the decision.

The only way you could improve it is, for the purpose of HPC installations, is IOPS and the only way to improve it is to get a more powerful machine to deliver more IOPS. Basically, you need more CPUs and you need more RAM and you need a faster backbone. We were running on 100 gigabits Infiniband.

Until they get new technology and density, it would be nice to see four nodes in a one-year package instead of a three-year package.

I'm recently retired, however, I did work with the solution on one of my last projects which lasted a few months.

The solution delivers what it promises. You look at the specs and it delivers them. If it doesn't deliver you move onto another model.

There's really nothing special about it, and Dell doesn't make servers that are any better than anybody else's. The prime reason we chose it is that it delivers what it promises to deliver in terms of IOPS and the price right for us because when you're a platinum level reseller for a server company, they will give you very favorable terms especially in this time of a pandemic, hardware sales are down across the board for the entire industry.

It's very scalable. That's the whole idea. When you want to add more computation power to the platform you just throw in another act of compute nodes and storage.

I've never used technical support. Out-of-the-box it works, and if it doesn't, then the client deals with it directly. The equipment is sold to them so they own the serial numbers and they own the service contracts, so if anything went wrong during the installation the client would take care of them, not us.

We've worked with HP, Cisco, Lenovo, and IBM in the past. We always choose the solution that makes the most sense for our clients.

We handed over the complete installation in September. We started in August. It takes time. You're coming into an empty room. You have to have power, you need the AC for the equipment there that has to be moved out. It takes time. The racks were pre-populated in Toronto and shipped to Montreal, and then in Montreal, they were set up and powered. We had liquid cooling and radiators on the rear of the cabinet for the heat.

We've done many of these installations, and it's pretty routine. There's nothing complex about it. The complexity is mostly that there are so many key parts in terms of getting it delivered on-site. There are so many parts from so many different vendors and there are penalties if you don't deliver on time. Nobody wants to pay penalties.

I didn't deal with the pricing, and therefore don't know the exact costs. 

However, they would compete with pricing on the market. Even if HP made an equivalent platform, and they do, we wouldn't get good terms. They're all pretty well in the ballpark range in cost and the variation. The list price might be 10%. They know what the competition is doing so they don't want to price themselves, the values, off the list of potential. If I'm looking at servers that deliver so much IOPS and they price themselves out, HP knows what Dell is doing and Dell knows what HP is doing.

My company partners with Dell.

I'm recently retired, however, I did most of the infrastructure, backup storage, and high-performance computing. I was in pre-sales. I was a solution architect. Therefore, I'm not an end-user.

We only used Dell for the servers. We used Seagate for storage. They have hard drives. They've been in the hard drive business for 40 years.

My biggest piece of advice for those considering the solution is to make sure they are delivered on time. When clients are spending $50 million for an installation and you say it's going to be ready September 15th, it better be ready September 15th. One of the main reasons stuff's not ready is because parts are missing. That means you can't deliver a complete solution. If you're missing a box of spare hard drives, they're just spares, they're not preventing the installation, however, they're missing, and therefore you haven't delivered the product.

Overall, I'd rate the product ten out of ten.