Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

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.

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.

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.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series serves as a platform to house research studies and enable researchers to conduct clinical research. There are AI tools that the researchers run. For example, R is an AI-enabled statistical analysis tool. There are several AI-enabled products being run on Dell PowerEdge R-Series platform device.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is scalable. We have around a few terabytes of storage, however. it can be expanded as it has the capacity to accept more storage. This makes us comfortable knowing we can add more storage internally without having to use external cloud solutions. 

The system effectively meets our workload requirements. We currently have about 60 to 70 users, and we can accommodate more users without performance issues. The data storage and retrieval capabilities are perfect. It is essentially a decent, high-speed performing device.

The physical design could be improved as it is heavy and quite large when racked. They could improve by making it less heavy while adding more external features, monitoring mechanisms, and indicators. 

Regarding the inbuilt storage, there are some constraints as we can only use certain models of storage. The storage capacity range could be expanded to help us configure data storage more broadly. These improvements might be addressed in future models.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge R-Series in my current role for just over three years. I have been in the industry for over 20 years.

The workload varies depending on the day, however, it never reaches the full capacity of Dell PowerEdge R-Series device. While we always consider future scalability, we have never utilized the device to its full potential. Currently, the workload is around half of what the machine can handle.

The pricing is a little bit higher, however, for the support you get, it's worth it.

Positive

Dell has been our preferred technical partner for years, and their support infrastructure is superior with a five-year warranty.

The previous system went out of warranty, and we received funding. This allows us the option to upgrade the servers. We will continue to use the old machine for alternative purposes while upgrading the existing system.

We have already seen returns with Dell PowerEdge R-Series. The number of users, entrepreneurs, and influencers who use the product to store data, conduct analysis, utilize the machine's power, present studies, and produce results in the public domain creates a cascading effect. Our previous Dell PowerEdge R-Series computer was about six to seven years old, and we saw its full benefit before getting a new one. There has definitely been a positive return on investment.

The pricing is slightly higher compared to other vendors and providers. However, it is worth it because of the support received from Dell. The peripheral spares and parts are reliable, and I can put complete trust in Dell PowerEdge R-Series rather than buying a similar product for less money. The pricing is slightly higher yet worthwhile, particularly for running industrial applications on an industrial-grade platform.

We considered HP, Lenovo, and another provider. One competitor was very competitive in pricing, but their specifications were not as convincing. Dell has been our preferred technical partner for years, and their support infrastructure is superior with a five-year warranty, which other vendors did not offer.

As an IT officer, I maintain both hardware and software. I install software, set up hardware interface, and manage storage in the server. 

My responsibilities include everything from installation and configuration to maintaining data security. We use rack servers, and three months ago, I received a new Dell PowerEdge R-Series 7625 rack server to replace the old 7250 model. 

We found the right model with the appropriate configuration for our workload requirements. The system handles statistical analysis workload for 50-60 users effectively. The newer device has improved monitoring capabilities and fault indication panels that alert us about potential storage issues. I am still exploring additional features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution an eight.

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.

We're using the Dell PowerEdge R-Series R640 model.

My role in using or managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to make the decision on which hardware gets used depending on the use case. So if a customer says they need a physical server, I look to see what's out there depending on CPU specs or memory specs.

Our main use case for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is anything not virtualization. So if there's an application that needs to be standalone, Dell PowerEdge R-Series is usually our standard hardware that we use.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has supported growth and operational success in that it met our needs. We chose Dell PowerEdge R-Series because it's pretty reliable, we like the specs, and the price point was just right.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has good backup, supports a lot of good Intel chips that we use for our applications, and provides a good balance for memory requirements.

In terms of Dell PowerEdge R-Series features, support is really good because it's Dell. It's a big, known brand, and Dell has a good support model, making it very easy to replace parts. Support is the standout feature.

The support from Dell benefits my company because whenever we have an issue, such as a part failing, the faster we're able to replace it, the less downtime for an application, which is critical to our company.

As of right now, we don't see Dell PowerEdge R-Series growing with our future needs; it's our standard. We evaluate different technologies all the time, and so far we don't have any plans to switch to a different solution.

The scalability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is a little tricky because it's a standalone server. If we needed to scale it, it's easy to add more CPU or memory if we could max out the number of slots. But if we needed to scale, we would just get another unit and use both.

I honestly don't see any improvements for Dell PowerEdge R-Series because it's pretty standard with the number of drives that are available. The memory and CPU performance is not below average compared to what other competitors use.

Maybe just better support for more microprocessors would be an enhancement. When looking at what Intel chips are available for Dell PowerEdge R-Series, it's not everything out there, so I wish there was more availability for that.

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

I assess the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series as pretty reliable. We haven't had any issues; we've been using it for years, and we're still using it, so that tells us we never had any major issues or concerns with it.

The scalability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is a little tricky because it's a standalone server. If we needed to scale it, it's easy to add more CPU or memory if we could max out the number of slots. But if we needed to scale, we would just get another unit and use both.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has features that specifically cater to the needs of medium companies.

I would rate Dell's customer service as good. We have an account manager, and if anything escalates, we usually know who to reach out to.

Positive

We have used HP servers prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

One selling point that made us switch from HP to Dell is that we were a very big Dell shop. All of our laptops were Dell, and we also used Dell EMC storage arrays. This made purchasing and getting discounts easier when buying in bulk, which I think was the partnership.

The biggest return on investment for me when using Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that the use cases for those servers for us is anything that is not virtual goes on there. In terms of ROI, when we have done it in the past, we consider cooling costs, power costs of the unit, and the overall cost compared to other competitors. Dell fell within a sweet spot for us, so that's the only cost analysis we've done.

We have evaluated other systems powered by other CPU vendors, such as AMD, but we typically don't go that route. We have done it in the past, but we're usually going with Intel.

I am always considering other solutions; my role and responsibility is to see what's out there and learn about new technologies. We always explore in terms of knowledge of what's out there, but we don't plan on leaving Dell for now.

I would advise other companies considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series to look into what other customers are using. Dell is a big player when it comes to servers, so you want something that's reputable with efficient power, cooling, and technology. After doing research and looking even at the Gartner Magic Quadrant, you'll see that Dell is up there, so try it and compare it to other hardware to see if it fits your company. I would rate this product a ten out of ten.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Besides reliability, the other benefit of using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the good customer service we receive when we need something done, which is mostly for planned upgrades. Reflecting on it, the last stack we're about to decommission has been a solid piece of equipment. We've never had to call and say, "This is messed up," or, "There's an issue with this." It has always been scheduled maintenance, which says a lot for a production environment, as we haven't had to call in a trouble ticket for the actual hardware during its entire run. The level of support from Dell has been good; we buy ProSupport Plus for every piece of equipment we have, and Dell provides excellent service through ProSupport Plus to meet our needs.

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

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

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

The ROI of using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is more on the administration side. It's hard for me to quantify because after we bought it and started using it, it has just been great. There's not a lot of time spent on the day-to-day care and feeding of the appliance, so it has become an afterthought to say, "Oh, you need to check the hardware," which isn't even part of our daily checks since we just trust it to work. By not having to worry about it, I would estimate we save two to four hours a week, depending on what's happening, such as if we need to spin up a new server, which would contribute to more time if done the old way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Positive

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

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

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

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

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

The use cases for implementing Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are mainly in warehouses and manufacturing sites to ensure they can effectively utilize IoT devices. 

For instance, a customer has livestock that they brand with barcodes to maintain their health and monitor their consumption, and all these IoT devices are rolling throughout their facilities, gathering data in real-time for assessments. This technology at the edge is very helpful for them.

The features of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers support AI initiatives by providing compute and storage at the edge, enabling the creation of a lot of real-time information and making that information available to AI capabilities, which helps drive outcomes more quickly. 

From a VAR perspective, the most valuable features of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are our ability to implement the infrastructure and make it readily available for our customers. 

Customers share with us their experiences, highlighting reliability, ease of use, maintenance, and lifecycle management. They frequently mention that this equipment doesn't break, stating it works and functions reliably.

The ways Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could improve relate more to the educational aspects of how customers can continue to leverage technology, which presents challenges. I do not have a specific set of examples where I think Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could be better or more efficient; it really comes down to ensuring the end customer has a better grasp of what the technology can do for them.

My company is a reseller, so we provide solutions for our customers.

When it comes to scalability with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I find it interesting that, in manufacturing, scalability often doesn't apply much as these are typically small but numerous sites. Thus, scalability means ensuring the collective information derived from all these edge sites can funnel through their main data center rather than within individual sites.

We work with Dell support, and I have a highly competent, certified engineering team that works closely with them, making it a very mutually beneficial situation as we do a lot of hands-on work and code deliveries with our Dell partners. 

I would rate Dell support honestly as having improved; however, there's significant change within the Dell organization that we have felt, impacting the relationships we've built to escalate and address problem scenarios. 

If I rated the support two years ago, it would have been a high eight or maybe a nine; in the last six months, it has likely dropped to a six or seven out of ten due to a lot of churn in Dell, particularly with their sales force and engineering teams.

Neutral

I honestly do not prefer any other competitors of Dell. Having been a customer for 25 years before joining the vendor side, I have experience with HP and Supermicro yet did not prefer those products. My prior issues with Dell equipment were manageable because I knew I could rely on support. Whereas with HP, I did not have that confidence, and Supermicro may seem cheaper but has atrocious lifecycle management and upkeep, which I prefer to avoid.

They do have AI in these cases, and we are actually trying to interject ourselves more into those conversations. A lot of these manufacturers have a conservative mindset regarding technology, focusing on product, shipping, and logistics, which means IT sometimes becomes an afterthought. As a VAR, we try to influence them on leveraging their current data sets to ask how they can use their data to enable business outcomes, and this conversation is now progressing in their understanding of the power of that. AI plays a significant role in predictability concerning their stock, product sets, and inventory shortcomings, particularly in the manufacturing of livestock, regarding health and the ability to harvest that product.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers overall about a nine out of ten as nothing is truly perfect, leaving opportunities for improvement. It's a great solution for my customers, and it's the one we continue to sell.