Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Reviews

We specifically used the VMware and ESX host.

The system integration details are our favourite feature and the fact that we can maintain and control the systems remotely.

The iDRAC Telemetry for monitoring the PowerEdge system is useful. Some of our servers are not in our data centers so we are able to manage them remotely, in case of an outage or any other problem.

This solution is really reliable. The storage functionality is our favourite feature. I would rate this solution a ten out of ten when it comes to running the latest high-demand applications. It is easy to work with, maintain and deploy. 

Lastly, this solution has helped decrease production down time by 25%. The system management capabilities of PowerEdge have helped increase staff productivity by 25% and helped to reduce data processing time in our organization by 10%. 

The data analytics for this solution could be improved. 

I have been using this solution for 15 years. 

This is a stable solution. It offers reliability and we have not had any outages. It improves with every generation. 

This is a scalable solution. We have 200 employees making use of a full stack of applications supported by this solution. 

I would rate the support for this solution a seven out of ten. This is due to the fact that there is sometimes a shortage of parts. 

Neutral

The initial setup is straightforward. Deployment took two days. We implemented new power servers in a cluster one by one. 

This solution is reasonably priced and licenses are easy to acquire. 

The PowerEdge system management frameworks have enabled our business to progress towards full automation. This has freed up time to focus on different parts of the business, rather than constantly monitoring issues.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We use them for general Windows deployments for domain controllers, file print servers, and database servers.

PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime. They have been resilient.

The iDRAC for remote access is the most useful feature because it's built into the machine. I can reboot them without having to be there physically. We do a lot of what we do remotely, and it handles that fine.

Also, the signed firmware, drift detection, and BIOS recovery are useful features in the current security climate. Physically, they're reasonably secure, with locking mechanisms on the physical hardware, and the update processes for firmware fall within the parameters we require for our security.

The OpenManage console for lifecycle management provides an intuitive user experience. The interface is easy to understand. In terms of our IT staff's productivity, it makes things quicker. It's a lot quicker to access OpenManage remotely than actually having to go and look at the server. It depends on where the server is and where most of our staff are. It could save five minutes or it could save two hours. It has also decreased the time it takes to deploy new data centers.

Perhaps they could make it more power efficient. They're pretty good, but there's always room for improvement.

Also, they could try to reduce heat generation.

I've been using Dell PowerEdge Servers for about 20 years.

They're pretty reliable, so we don't have to replace them that often; we just have to maintain them.

We've not had to scale them up from what we've deployed, generally.

But when it comes to handling the evolving needs of high-performance workloads, they seem to be keeping up to date and providing the latest hardware to keep up with the requirements.

Dell's technical support is generally pretty good.

Neutral

We used HPE previously. We switched to Dell PowerEdge because they were more cost-effective.

The servers that we've deployed have all been in place for long enough to give us a full return on their value.

The pricing is usually in line with what we expect from Microsoft.

To protect our systems from malware and other firmware attacks we use third-party tools.

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.

Our primary use case includes running workloads such as on-premises Active Directory, with a managed hybrid approach on Microsoft Azure and on-premises.

The solution has helped by ensuring no major security incidents or vulnerabilities, and has supported our sustainability goals through energy consumption management. It has also provided reliable uptime with planned downtimes for updates.

Its approach to user security measures is valuable. We haven't experienced any major issues, and the solution has been working really well.

I've been in this company for the last three years, and the solution has been used since before my arrival.

We do not have many issues with downtime; there are windows for planned updates or upgrades.

Dell's customer support is very good, especially since we have premium support for next-day hardware service.

Positive

The return on investment is notable as we've been using the same servers without incurring ongoing operational expenses often associated with the cloud.

The cost of ownership is differentiated by the absence of operational expenses typical with cloud services.