Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

I use Dell R740 servers series as the main compute server to host IT workloads.

It's an excellent choice and it's integrated well with Dell-VMWare virtualization OS (ESXi).

Dell R series are very good engineered servers. Reliability and durability are the key to choose this product. This is a cornerstone to build a highly available IT system.

The reconstructive compatibility with VMware ESXi is the most valuable.

The only thing that could be improved is documentation. The product is highly customizable with a lot of options for each component. These options are not easily understood. It would be great to offer more user-friendly interface/Documentation to build up the system. 

I have been using this solution for four years.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. We can scale it by adding nodes, but some software and licenses are required for that. We have around 60 users using it on a daily basis

I never contacted them. We are usually able to resolve any issues within the company.

Yes, I installed and administered HP Proliant servers. It was a good product in my experience.

I switched because we got a competitive price.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have three team members for its deployment and regular maintenance.

It's easy to install and configure with suitable server administrator.

iDrac management solution is included with the server. It provides suitable zero-cost solution for monitoring and managing your hardware.

Yes we evaluate all possible alternatives like:

HP and Lenovo

I would recommend this solution for rack servers. It is perfect.

I would rate Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers an nine out of ten.

We use it for main servers, database servers, and application servers. 

Virtualization and distributed power management are good and valuable features.

It would be easier if the remote connection to the server could be done through the USB port. From the server, we should be able to connect to a laptop or a management workstation through a USB port.

I have been using Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers for around ten years.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. I have extended it using virtualization technologies. We have 5 servers and around 1000 users.

I am satisfied with their technical support.

I had a little bit of difficulty in the beginning when we used provisioning with automated tasks almost ten years ago, but after that, it was very straightforward.

Dell had authorized a vendor in my country. I took some advice and assistance from them. They were okay. 

For its maintenance, some tasks are handled by our administrator internally and some tasks are handled by the vendor.

Dell's solution was cheaper than HP's solution.

I also use similar solutions from HP. Based on my usage, I have found them quite similar. They are at the same level.

I would recommend this solution to others, but they have to see their overall system, that is, the interfaces, fabric, reports, network path, etc. They have to see the compatibility metrics between different parts. I had some difficulties in the beginning when I was supposed to change to the right certified device.

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

The user interface is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The implementation process is quite good.

The pricing of the solution is fair.

I can't think of any features that are lacking on the solution. It works well for our clients for the most part.

It would be nice if the rack servers had an HCI solution as an option.

We've been using the solution for the past two years now.

The stability is good. It also lasts a relatively long time. Our customers are typically looking for something that will hold up for about five years, and this solution does that. It's not buggy. There aren't glitches. It doesn't crash or break down.

You can easily scale the solution up and down. Our customers want a solution that can work with for half a decade at least, so they need something flexible, and this solution delivers.

We deal with customers of all sizes, from small to large organizations. This solution works well for each of them.

The technical support is okay. We have an internal team, however, they are by no means experts. We need Dell to fill in the blanks and sometimes that can't help us the way we hoped they would. It might be helpful if the Dell site had more information so that we could just go there.

We use a variety of Dell options including FX and XE, among others. Which we use is dependant on the client requirements.

The initial setup is not complex. It's quite easy to set everything up, in fact. All of the underlying technology is the same on Dell, so we don't have an issue handling the implementation on the Dell servers for our customers.

We can handle the aspects of the installation ourselves, as it's pretty straightforward.

We are a service provider and a reseller. We use various versions of the solution. The deployment models also vary as it depends on customer requirements. We deal with a lot of hyper-converged solutions.

I'd recommend the solution. We've had no issues with it at all.

Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the Dell EMC R730 Rack Server. We use it for virtualization and we have some servers and some desktop virtual machines running on it. We mostly use it for testing purposes. We also use the Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Server to do QA testing for those applications. We create temporary virtual machines for this.

Virtualization is one of our main use cases. Hosting web applications is another. We also use the Dell server for standard architecture like Microsoft Excel and Office applications,

We use Dell EMC PowerEdge R730 as a server for testing our software products. We had not benchmarked anything before we purchased this, but we went through the specs during that time and did some configuration. We purchased Dell EMC PowerEdge R730 with 256GB RAM and built-in dual CPUs. We just sought this configuration from the local Dell EMC account via our account manager.

Since we use this for testing our products, we do not use it for any business process requirements. We are not hosting on it, we are just using it for testing purposes. 

We were not able to scale up the server to the number of reels that we were looking for, so our plan got stalled there. Now we are once again revisiting our plan for that after two years.

There are better processors available with multiple cores than the Dell EMC PowerEdge. Our current requirement is that we should be able to generate a load of five hundred or one thousand Windows 10 desktop VMs on a single server. We prefer to use an optimal sizing on the RAM, the storage disc, and the CPUs. That's our current requirement. Virtualization is the biggest benefit for our organization. 

We are able to virtualize a lot of applications and user desktops with the Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Server.

The main criteria I look for in all vendors are:

1. On-site service for the hardware. 
2. The warranty period, i.e. how long the warranty is. 
3. The ability of the product itself, i.e. the specs and the lifecycle of the product.
4. The hardware should be cutting edge.

I would like to see the lifecycle at seven to ten years. I want to work on the latest CPUs as much as possible, i.e. maintaining cutting edge standards, but still optimally priced.

We needed a benchmarking HP server, but since we are a small company, we went to hardware resellers. Dell EMC had some programs for SMBs and we were able to have direct interaction with them in India. We were able to get a very reasonable price for the same product which otherwise through the reseller network was extremely costly.

We found that arrangement from Dell EMC to be slightly better than compared to other vendors and why we did not choose them.

I would like to see better IOPS, i.e. the disc speed. That is the main limitation for scaling up the number of users.

Nowadays, there are web servers that have greater endurance in the lifecycle than the Dell EMC PowerEdge, so that's what I would like to see improved most.

If Dell EMC can provide us with more IOPS, a higher disc size using the SSDs, and better battery endurance in terms of the lifecycle, i.e. three to seven years, I would be satisfied. With the Dell EMC PowerEdge Server, there is a limitation on the hardware life cycles.

Another place Dell EMC could improve is with GPUs. If we can get more benchmarking done, some optimization, and more scalability for certain apps, it would be better. 

Dell EMC could improve the sizing and scaling performance that we can get with the server, including some better optimization that we can scale up. Another need for improvement is to consider the implementation of other forms of desktop virtualization.

It is quite stable. We didn't have a single downtime of failure. Nor have we ever experienced any downtime in electrical components or the hardware. In this way, the server is reliable.

The Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Server did not scale to our expectations.

I do not recall if we needed to use Dell EMC technical support often. We did when we wanted to expand the memory and it was satisfactory.

We were already familiar with the hardware so it was straightforward to set up the web server for our requirements.

I would rate the Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers an eight out of ten. It was satisfactory, but we were not able to scale it to the level that we expected.

Maybe we should have contacted their support or put in greater effort to find out about sizing guidelines, or maybe there is a limitation regarding the kind of scale that we are looking for.

I would advise someone considering this solution to search for the use case that is the closest match to your business. We should have referred to that before making a purchase.

We use the server as a database server. We use it to import Microsoft SQL 2014 and some IIS application servers.

I like the Dell EMC management. We have a great management interface. They are very reliable and we can trust the server. It's very reliable and easy to manage.

They should improve the centralized management interface. When you are going to deploy something, for example, VMware or RedHat, it should be easier to deploy a lot of servers. Now you have to do one at a time.

The way that they condense the information on the Dell EMC website is not so good. They should improve the website. When you need to find a download or documentation it's very hard. The information on the website is very distributed. It's hard to find the information we need.

Stability is quite good, I haven't had any problems so far.

Scalability is good. 

Technical support is great. I keep hearing reviews that it's very good. When you're opening a request or a ticket they respond very quickly. 

When the new technology doesn't run in your environment it's time to plan and make a change. That's why we're trying to change the technology with the servers. Now, people are talking about different softwares and containment technology but our environment has not adapted for these kinds of technology.

The most important criteria that we consider when looking at a solution is the reliability. We look at  the feedback from the community about the product. I always try to seek information in forums just like this one. We also look at accredited reports about the products and the vendors. I always try to find a good report about the new features and product. Lastly, we also consider whether the solution is budget friendly. 

We also looked at HP, IBM, and Huawei. We chose Dell EMC because HP wanted to charge us for the iLO management and with Dell EMC we don't have to pay for management like the iLO.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten because the product is quite reliable, quite good. We haven't had many problems with. I did not give a ten because of the website. The information isn't so well organized on the website.

They have different types of licensing of management so make sure to check their licensing because they can differentiate.

Compared to the older versions, and those from other vendors, like HPE servers and some other brands, this one has really saved us a lot of headaches when it comes to hardware replacements. It's something it seems that Dell has improved. You quickly log your support case and get support. The turnaround time is really fast.

Also, compared to the other vendors and generations, this one tends to be more user-friendly, so you spend less time trying to get where you want to go.

The server itself has the most stable updates. The patches and the updates will take you a long way before they release another one, so you aren't constantly doing more updates and upgrades. 

• Its ease of use. The GUI is accessible and everything is pretty much upfront. You don't get lost in navigating between the tabs.
• I also like a feature they call iDRAC. It's a feature that allows you remotely power on and off the server. 
• It's got a power plug.
• It's also almost a tool-less type of server, in the sense that when you want to open it up and change a few components inside, you can do so without a screwdriver or any aid of another tool.
• It also has a nice front panel, it looks nice in front.

Of course, the new generation of servers, I've yet to really use them, the 13th and the 14th generations of the Dell rack servers. I haven't gotten my hands on those yet. But as for the versions that I work with, they used to max out on memory, on RAM, quickly, so I'd want to think in the newer versions, they actually allocate more  processing power and more RAM to them. I'd want to think that's what they did with the newer versions.

It's a very stable product. From a software and hardware perspective, it's actually a bit more stable compared to other versions and vendors. It's definitely quite resilient, we haven't had many failures, hardware or software failures.

It is quite scalable. The other versions come with a lot of allocation or provision for you to scale more, so it is a scalable solution.

We switched because of the kind of support we'd get from the vendor itself, a quick response time. That's a very critical issue; how swiftly can they resolve an issue. That is one of the major reasons for the switch. The other reason was the resiliency of the products, which is one of the benefits we enjoy with the current choice that we made.

The initial setup is quite easy. The Dell OpenManage interface is straightforward, Obviously you have to read through the documentation a bit before you set it up, but it is quite straightforward.

It took us, I would say, a day for each site, because we set it up at three different sites and they're each about 80 kilometers apart. Each site took a day because we had to rearrange our server room, how the cooling would be done, and the power and things like that. Obviously, there were other things contributing to the setup of the server, not the server itself.

Yes, we did also consider other options but we took this option over the other ones because of the response time, support, and we feel that these guys were a leap ahead in terms of the technology itself.

I would tell colleagues to go for it. It's a great product, and as long as they can just stay on the latest and greatest versions, they shouldn't have any issues.

I would give it an eight out of 10. And the chief reasons are its simplicity and ease of use. 

The two points I held back I wouldn't necessarily blame on the product, I would blame it on the area, the part of the world that we are in. I think it tends to take a bit long, like one to two weeks, to replace a spare part. Sometimes it can take long because of the customs issues. Really it has nothing to do with the product itself but with area that I'm in. So someone who's in Europe will likely get better service because they are closer to the manufacturing plants and they can get the equipment in, whereas where we're from, the shipment of that stuff would have to hop notable distances. So if they could have a hub that's more central and closer to where we are, then maybe it would be a perfect 10.  

Ease of use.

Our requirement is 99.9999% uptime. That is what we have experienced from these servers.

With the technology advancements, both the OEMs improve their products for best performance. I would also prefer additional improvements in the thermal design and the management of servers.

I have used Dell servers for nine years.

No issues.

No issues.

The technical support is the best.

We have used SGI, Sun, IBM, and now Fujitsu. The procurement is through open or limited tender only.

The initial setup is mixed between being straightforward and complex.

We have well-defined process for the technical evaluation of pricing.

We evaluate all the responses to our requirements. After the selection is made for two to three products, then commercials are checked and the best price solution is selected.

Check the literature and reviews available for the product. Ask and clarify all the queries before freezing on the requirements.

The convenience, because we can swap very easily swap hard drives when one goes down.

I can't think of anything right now. It's not the perfect solution but it is reasonable.

In the past it has been very stable, but not recently.

I don't have experience with its scalability.

We have used it in the past. When we had problems, we had to contact or put a ticket with them, they would get back to us, they were very reasonable.

Before we had HPE, now we use Dell. We went with Dell because the school has a contract with them.

It was straightforward.

The important criteria when selecting a vendor are, really, everything. Number one though is customer support.

I think their price is reasonable.