Dell PowerEdge R-Series Reviews

My customers are currently running workloads on Dell PowerEdge R-Series that are primarily VMware for virtualization, for host application, and more on application.

The main reasons my customers haven't run AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge is that they are not using it, but they are considering it in the near future because their workload is only virtualization and applications. There is no need for AI for now, but perhaps in the near future, they will consider AI.

I find the lifecycle features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series most valuable because you can find the monitoring, the update, and upgrade. It's easy to use.

Dell PowerEdge has positively impacted my customers' organizations.

The benefits they have seen from using Dell PowerEdge R-Series are that it is more resilient and has strong security. The versatility and the capabilities and features of the device are awesome.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series can be improved on the cost if they can lower the price, and of course, more security.

If it doesn't suit the budget, I usually recommend going with the HP brand instead of Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

It would be even better for Dell PowerEdge R-Series to have integration with the lifecycle with the iDRAC so that it will be easy to use during the configuration, update, and upgrade.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge R-Series for more than three to four years.

In terms of the downtime, there is no problem with Dell PowerEdge R-Series because in our experience, there has been no downtime. In fact, over three to five years, there has been no downtime.

For stability, I would rate it as a ten.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is scalable.

From one to ten, I would rate its scalability as nine.

I would rate their technical support as awesome. There is no problem with technical support. You can go to the website for support, and then they will do the rest. You just put in the serial numbers, and if you're still within the warranty, you have no problem with it.

For technical support, I rate it as a ten.

For the initial setup or the deployment of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, there is no problem because you will use the iDRAC. If you have the monitor and keyboard, there is no problem because it is straightforward and easy to use.

To implement the basic configuration of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, it takes only ten to fifteen minutes.

Using Dell PowerEdge R-Series has affected the overall flexibility of my customers' operations and business positively, and overall, I would rate it as a ten.

For energy consumption, I think Dell is certified with the green tag or environmental compliance. There is no problem with Dell. They comply with environmental compliance and the green initiatives for global warming.

There may be a cost to running AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge R-Series, but for easy and proactive troubleshooting, the AI will solve the problem on behalf of the users. There is no need for a skilled technician to troubleshoot because there is an AI on their behalf.

I am still working with Dell PowerEdge R-Series products, but I focus more on presales.

My customers purchase Dell PowerEdge R-Series from a third party when it comes to upgrading with HCI, the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure.

My overall review rating for Dell PowerEdge R-Series is ten.

We are using these servers for our production. We are basically a distance learning university where we have a learning management system, websites, online exams, and a campus management system. All these portals are running on these clusters.

We didn't face many hardware failures. Hardware is very reliable. The performance has been good, with only one or two pieces of equipment failing during the period from 2018 to 2025. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers helped reduce unplanned production downtime significantly. We have deployed our clusters. In the case of any failure, our virtual machines migrate automatically. We didn't face any major disaster during this period. We faced downtime twice in five to six years, but it was because our cluster was under capacity. We had deployed many VMs on the cluster.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are good in terms of energy consumption.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are reliable with good hardware quality. During our 5 to 6 years of deployment, we experienced minimal hardware failures. 

In Pakistan, the vendors or the partners of Dell are not providing a good environment. They need to improve their support and hire partners that have certified support sources. Currently, we are not getting good deployment experience. However, after deployment, Dell solutions perform very well.

We have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers since 2018. We deployed the cluster of Dell and VMware in 2018, but we are going to replace this equipment with HPE and VMware.

We're using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers R730. For the backup appliance, we're using Quest. We have also used R410 servers which were replaced with R730 in 2018.

They are very reliable. One or two modules being faulty in five to six years is negligible. The warranty of that equipment expired in 2023, but we are still using it, and we are comfortable with it. The cluster is performing well.

It is scalable as we can add nodes and hard drives to increase space.

Currently, the Dell and VMware solution is in our production, and we are going to replace it with HPE. HPE is a competitor and will hopefully provide us a comfort level.

The deployment of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers was easy.

We are just running a VMware cluster. There is no cloud environment. We are going to deploy a full vCloud foundation environment in our data center on HPE equipment.

I have also received a demo on VxRail, which is an excellent product of Dell. When we deploy VMware on VxRail, those two products are really excellent, and I hope HPE will provide us with the same environment.

These deployments are provided by local partners.

They are affordable. Even during our recent procurement, the cost of Dell servers was lower than that of HPE. However, there were some certificates and vendor issues. We have a partner in Pakistan. The partner didn't have the certifications to meet our requirements. That's why they are out of this tender. Otherwise, the price quoted by Dell was lower than the price quoted by HPE.

It deserves a rating of ten out of ten. It's an excellent product. We are hoping to get a similar experience from our HPE servers.

My use case includes all the production and development workloads, both prod and development workloads.

The most valuable feature, when I compare Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers with other brands available, is the price versus performance, as I get more for what I pay, and mostly, we use this for our CAD workloads. In terms of price-to-performance ratio, I can see at least a 10 to 12% difference when I choose a little cheaper option with Dell compared to others. 

The benefits to my organization are huge because we are a big company, around 100 billion, so that small amount multiplies into something significant. Every year, we buy at least 30 to 70 rack mount servers, and over three to five years, if I calculate it, we save at least 12 to 15X compared to others.

I would improve Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers by making their firmware upgrades easier. 

They do have Dell OpenManage Enterprise, which is easy, but when I am at remote sites, I have to download it locally to apply updates. From that perspective, I want an enhancement for an easier way to download and fix issues.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for almost 12 years.

When it comes to the stability and reliability of the product, we have had a couple of blackouts once or twice, but nothing significant because we operate 24/7 and have a four-hour parsing time. From that perspective, there are no issues.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale to my company's needs. Earlier, we used other blade server products, which had much higher prices and power usage. When we switched to rack mount servers, even with multiple cables and increased network connections, we reduced our power utilization. Any outages or blackouts are limited to particular servers, not affecting the whole chassis or enclosures.

I have used customer service or support for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. My impressions working with customer support are positive; whenever issues occur, we follow our company policy to fix them, but we still raise them with customer support, and they provide exactly what we need without any problems, especially for Dell servers.

Positive

Besides the price-to-performance ratio, I have not seen any other ROI metrics.

If I had to give advice to someone at another company considering implementing Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, I would say go for it. 

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the overall Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers product as a nine.

Our primary use cases for this solution include having our ESXi installed on the system on Dell PowerEdge R-Series, and we have VMs, Windows VMs, and Linux VMs.

We have a lot of Dell-oriented products. The company uses it extensively.

It's a very popular platform and everything is publicly available. 

From using Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I've seen benefits in that it's a very popular platform, so we have a lot of information online. If we have something, we don't need to wait for support; we can just Google everything and it's online.

The response from our end-users give us feedback that is positive. 

The upside of Dell solutions over its competitors lie in their support; they are spread across multiple vendors in Israel, and we are really pleased with the support we're getting from the Dell provider we're working with. The Dell provider that we work with is One Teldor.

To make it a better solution, we need more automation. I might be lacking knowledge, and there may be automation solutions available for regular day-to-day usage, such as running the VMs on Dell PowerEdge R-Series. If there were an automation solution for things such as cleanups, automatic reviewing of the data source and storage data, and providing more insights on what's needed, that would be necessary. I'm referring to automation scanning of the system and providing insights on how to improve the system.

Over the years, we've needed more RAM storage, requiring us to purchase more solutions. We need them to allow for more extension of RAM.

I am working in the company for eight years and since I've been there, Dell PowerEdge R-Series solutions have been there for a very long time. The company has used it for maybe 15 years.

I find the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series to be high; on a scale of one to ten, I'd say a nine.

An example where Dell PowerEdge R-Series made a noticeable improvement is that we have a problem with the system being limited in storage and RAM. 

Over the years, we are developing stuff that requires more RAM usage or storage, and we cannot expand the current VMs on the current Dell PowerEdge R-Series, so we need to purchase additional solutions aside from it. For instance, we've purchased the Storage MD recently to expand the storage size, and regarding RAM, we're just limiting the people on what they can do on the local VMs.

We're a global company. In Tel Aviv, we have 34 employees, and globally, we have almost 300 employees. 

If I would give the customer support a rating on a scale of one to ten, I'd give them an 8.5 as there's always room for improvement. They should improve on pricing with better discounts.

Positive

Since I've been in the company, we've only used Dell PowerEdge R-Series and their products.

Usually, we replace the old Dell PowerEdge R-Series with a new one. We have a VMware solution for three ESXi; we're not expanding for more ESXi, we're just replacing older machines with new versions of Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing of Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that they are average to the market. They're not too cheap, however, also not too expensive compared to other solutions.

When I mention other solutions, I refer to those offered by other companies. We have offers from HPE, but the vendor wasn't available too much, and we were afraid to switch because of the service we got from HPE, so we stayed with Dell. Besides HPE servers, we considered migrating everything to the cloud, but because of the prices for having the developer systems on cloud, we decided to stay for the development stage on-prem while migrating the production to the Azure environment.

We used to work with the Tower, however, now we have the Rack. The Rack servers we're using are R740 and R7 something.

There's no special feature I particularly prefer about Dell PowerEdge R-Series; we're just very oriented with Dell devices. We have the servers, laptops, screens, everything Dell oriented. I'm just going with what was before I came to the company. I'm guessing the previous person in my position worked with Dell, probably because he had a connection, got good prices, and the vendor was very helpful, so we continue working with Dell.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate this solution a nine.

My role in using or managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series is that I'm basically the HPC administrator, so my role is installing and taking care of applications on the HPC platform. We basically do rack maintenance and handle the software and application installations and maintenance on Dell PowerEdge R-Series servers.

While I'm not exactly clear about the features of Dell PowerEdge R-Series that are most valuable since it has been quite recent since I've used it, the Dell solutions have been helpful. The solutions from Dell PowerEdge R-Series are quite quick and targeted in the sense that they are more precise to the problem we're facing. The response times are also quite quick. In our organization, the team which is actually taking care of the HPC solutions consists of around six of us. The company as a whole is quite huge; it's a university with around 2,000 plus employees.

The solutions from Dell PowerEdge R-Series were targeted and quite quick, which was helpful. However, I think the approach towards the solutions could be improved. I realized during the session that we had a lot of back and forth before we finally arrived at the solutions. If this could have been made quicker or if there was a more convenient platform for discussions, it would have been much easier for us. I know another solution could be having a Dell engineer visit to look at the equipment, but if there was a quicker method, such as a video call to scan through the equipment and see what's happening, that might have worked better.

From my one instance with Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I find it targeted and quick, which makes me happy with its approach. For cases concerning applications or network arrangements, those can be solved quickly by sharing error reports. However, if it's something related to hardware, it could be improved; if there was a platform or solution that hastened that process, it would have been better.

I have been working in the current field for about a year and six months.

Regarding the stability and reliability of Dell PowerEdge R-Series, they have been quite reliable based on my experience and the support has been pretty good.

Currently, as we are expanding our resources, I think this will also include more customers and large scale resource utilization. Therefore, I would say that Dell PowerEdge R-Series will scale with our increasing hardware needs as with software support. I expect that when we scale this to a larger platform, it will be more helpful, especially since we will encounter more frequent cases, and based on the response time we experienced, I believe it will be equally helpful.

We haven't had many of these issues lately. I would rate Dell support around eight because they have been quite quick in their response and providing solutions. One of the cases was when one of the servers had a fault in it, and we couldn't figure out what the issue was. It was a GPU machine generating a lot of noise and heat. We tried everything that we could do from our side, but it really didn't work out. Later, we asked for Dell support, and then we figured it out. It took some back and forth discussions, but it ultimately turned out that one of the fans was at fault.

Positive

Before we used Dell solutions, I think we had been using HP machines, but this was in a different workplace and a different country altogether. I wouldn't be able to comment on the pros and cons of the previous HP solution because I had a different role there and wasn't closely involved with the hardware.

The team which is taking care of the HPC solutions consists of around six people.

With just this one instance, it was quite helpful, so I would say we have seen a return on our investment into Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

For the prices we offered for Dell PowerEdge R-Series support, I find the kind of response and assistance provided by Dell solutions to be quite excellent. I don't know if Dell PowerEdge R-Series plays a role in our AI initiatives because it's usually the customers who work with AI platforms and they have their own specific needs. Currently, we haven't heard any issues or requests from the AI team. I received feedback from Dell solutions once they reached out to us with an online feedback report. I have rated Dell PowerEdge R-Series an eight out of ten.

We use Dell PowerEdge R-Series for virtualization platforms, VMware and OpenStack nowadays. 

Since I work on the Microsoft team, we utilize it for SQL Server clusters, Microsoft clusters, file shares, and other types of clusters. Dell PowerEdge R-Series plays a role in our organization's AI initiatives, though I'm not entirely aware of all the initiatives in the company. 

Dell PowerEdge R-Series is used for everything in our company. We have some AI use cases and are currently using GPT in-house, however, I'm not on the team that has deployed that. I'm just on the end-user end of the spectrum.

Dell PowerEdge R-Series has given us a stable platform to build on. That is significant for us because we do high-frequency trading, so stability and performance are crucial. We have had some specific use cases that Dell has helped us develop and deliver.

I would say the pain points are better power usage and consumption; that's not up to Dell, that's up to the CPU manufacturers.

I've been working in my current field for about 20 years.

I see Dell products growing with our future needs. The Dell PowerEdge R-Series is as scalable as they can be, as they have consistently demonstrated their ability to support us in specific use cases. They will go out of their way to support us and create new products that they will sell to everybody else, making it a win-win for both of us.

I wouldn't personally evaluate Dell customer support. I don't interact with customer support directly, but people in my company work extensively with Dell's customer support, and I can see the results. I would rate them 9.5 out of ten for customer support, and also in terms of having the technology to meet demand.

Positive

Prior to adopting Dell PowerEdge R-Series, I used other solutions such as HP and IBM to address similar needs, howver, that was many years ago. If I had to draw a comparison against Dell, HP would be as close to Dell as it can get, but not as supportive as Dell is.

In using and managing Dell PowerEdge R-Series, we don't rack them since that's handled by the particular team that manages it. However, we build them from the ground up. After they've been racked, cabled, and everything else, another team manages to scout them and have all the line of work, drivers, firmwares, and everything installed. Then it comes to our hands, and we have the OS installed and built from there.

Regarding pricing, setup costs, and licensing, we have VMware, so license costs went through the roof in the past couple of years. Now we're moving away from VMware onto competitors or other players. We are still using the Dell PowerEdge R-Series.

My advice to someone who is considering Dell PowerEdge R-Series is to go for it. I rate Dell PowerEdge R-Series solutions as a ten out of ten based on the stability, robustness, maintainability, troubleshootability, and the speed of the throughput of the servers.

The main use case for the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is SAP hosting, as we are using it for SAP under Linux. This is specifically within the pharmacy sector, as we work in the pharma industry.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned downtimes, as our downtime is nearly zero, with approximately 99.5% availability in a five-year period.

The best features of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are the service, the availability of the equipment, and the relational price quality. 

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are very useful for our organization's sustainability goals, as the system is running flawlessly. We have experienced trouble with the memory unit and a hard disk, but this occurs in all servers at the end of their useful life. In the five years, we had a few minor problems, but they were always addressed by Dell in Argentina.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer good flexibility and expandability to our business. The migration was very easy since the SAP consultants handled the migration of the databases and the ERP, SAP. We contracted them, and it was flawless, managing to conduct the migration of the two servers over a weekend.

They need improvement in spare part availability in Argentina, but the servers are very good from a hardware point of view.

I have overall eight to ten years of experience with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. I have used the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers within the last 12 months.

We have experienced trouble with the memory unit and a hard disk, but this occurs in all servers at the end of their useful life. 

It offers good flexibility and expandability.

We do not utilize cloud solutions. We run everything on-premise and work with specific software for the pharma industry. We operate only client-server within our facilities.

We have a support contract with a Dell distributor in Cordoba. I would rate them a seven out of ten due to the unavailability of spare parts readily in Argentina.

We conducted internal research on servers within the company. We evaluate offers in Argentina and consider Dell a good option due to the price and availability of the equipment.

The initial setup of the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers was contracted to an external company for the migration of data from the old servers to the new servers. We needed to install SAP on the new servers. This was flawless due to the fact that we bought the servers with pre-installed Linux.

We have not formally calculated the ROI with the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. A new manager has indicated we need to calculate it. We performed a crude calculation of ROI comparing IBM and Dell and found that the cost of support and extended warranty of IBM is too costly compared to Dell. Thus, in this instance, our crude ROI calculation shows that Dell is the better option.

We have a contract with the OEM of the equipment for licenses, so we possess all OEM licenses for the Dell software. We have licenses for Linux and VMware software, with a special price and an annual contract for updates of Linux and VMware. Additionally, we have an Oracle database on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

We have received an offer from IBM to replace the servers with new IBM servers. We received a very good offer from IBM for some amount of money for the servers, but we prefer to stay with Dell. IBM's service contract is very costly.

We have not run any AI workloads on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers locally. We have a test drive in the cloud. The principal reason we haven't run AI workloads yet is that we are trying to find the right direction to incorporate AI into our business model. Currently, we focus on the distribution of medical and pharma products to pharmacies, meaning the only way to incorporate AI is possibly in the management of the warehouse. I believe the demand for medicine is inelastic, making forecasting sales very difficult in the market. This reflects the market in Argentina, not other global markets. However, I personally see the only way to incorporate AI in our business is through warehouse management, considering the market's seasonality. Medicine deliveries vary in summer versus winter, as more medications are needed for influenza in winter, while summer requires more medication for sun exposure complications.

I would rate the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers an eight out of ten.

Our use case for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is that we sell to customers depending on the solution they need. For customers that want typical three-tier architecture, who don't want the FX or VXR rail, they just want to be able to get two, three, five, or ten nodes. Whatever is sold, we go out, install it, and configure it to get it ready for the customer.

I consider iDRAC to be the most valuable feature in Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, which is available everywhere in all Dell products. I prefer iDRAC compared to competitors' solutions, including HP solutions. 

A feature that would enhance Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is the ability to get multiple servers up and running quickly versus having to do one at a time. Unless I use OpenManage, most customers don't want us to do that. It would be beneficial to have an easier way to get these updated quickly out of the box, even if that means having a tool that lets us run it on our laptops or that I can quickly spin up in a customer environment to push firmware for multiple nodes simultaneously.

When asked about improvements, I find it difficult to suggest changes since the system functions so effectively.

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

The organizations that install Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers generally have anywhere between 500 to 2,000 people, so it's usually smaller companies I deal with.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers scale with customer needs effectively. 

They're usually used for three-tier, where customers already have either substantial storage or they have other storage platforms that they're bringing in and connecting. Whenever they need to, they can just add more nodes. 

Since it doesn't have to be in a particular rack or even on the same floor in a multi-floor customer environment, they can always place it wherever needed. The ability to put a node wherever they need it is advantageous.

Customer service response for break/fix issues and support documentation for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers has been good thus far. I have concerns with other products, specifically PowerFlex. That said, in general, PowerEdge support has been excellent. My experience with customer service has been positive. When we had a power supply failure out of the box, we called support, and they delivered the replacement within four hours as promised.

Positive

The deployment time for Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers varies depending on the customer environment and factors such as cabling requirements and switch proximity. 

After the equipment is racked, stacked, cabled, and powered on, I can typically get ESXi up and running with vCenter and basic operational functionality for up to ten nodes in an eight-hour day.

While I'm not on the sales side and don't necessarily follow up afterwards, I observe that customers who have had Dell products previously often return to Dell for refreshes, which indicates they are seeing return on investment.

I evaluate the price-to-performance of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as good.

They are not very expensive.

The competitors I have used include Supermicro equipment, HP equipment, and some Lenovo equipment many years ago.

At this time, we're not using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for any AI-based initiatives. 

Our partnership with Dell and what we're able to provide to the customer is valuable. 

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine.