Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Reviews

We won a contract, and the customer preferred Dell as the OEM manufacturer. 

PowerEdge is flexible enough to integrate the IOs we need into the server.

Dell's team supported us all the way. It's an excellent corporation, and customers here in Israel are different. They're difficult to deal with and constantly change their minds. We wouldn't have won this tender without cooperation from the CMS distributor and Dell.

We could install all the other accessories and cards the customer asked us to implement on Dell servers and integrate cards from different companies. Each requires a different OS. Dell helped us integrate all the systems.

When integrating the PowerEdge rack, we needed help from all the different companies to combine it with the servers. Each company has a system, and things must align with the server. 

It would be better if they integrated Dell and Ubuntu, for example. It would be easier to handle the mission. 

We are in our first month of working with the Dell team. 

PowerEdge's overall scalability is excellent. We've got a great technical team.

I rate Dell Professional Services 10 out of 10. They were excellent and were the reason we won the tender. They supported us. We had a whole team supporting us and providing us with answers. When we were implementing VxRail, they found the person in charge  who gave us the correct information. 

Positive

I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers nine out of 10. We're happy with it. 

We use them for everything—from infrastructure services to virtualization, as well as storage.

By implementing these servers, we wanted to meet our needs regarding office automation. I work for a national library, so it was essentially about being able to distribute digital books and being able to create applications and a digital library.

At the time, they were the only ones to offer a remote management system, and that is a very important feature for us, especially bearing in mind that we have only two people for hundreds of servers. It is indeed very important.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have the PowerEdge Cyber Resilient Architecture approach to security, but I do not believe in that. We put the security in place well in advance and early on the servers as well as the networks in order to filter everything, so we have minimal exposure to the servers. Once it is on the servers, it is too late. They must be stopped well in advance.

In terms of energy consumption, it depends on what you are doing with the machine. If it is to manage AIs or other similar things, they consume far too much energy. If it is for the purpose of heritage conservation, then it is consuming what it needs to. It depends on what you are using it for. If you leave the light on in a room and everyone has their eyes closed and nobody is doing anything, then it is excess energy consumption. Even if it is barely a fraction of any watt being used, it is already too much. However, if it is for reading and learning about things, it can be justified. The justification does not take place at the server level but at the level of how we use that server. Certain servers are very energy-consuming because there are certain projects that have no purpose at all, and there are projects, such as the digital library, that are very useful, and I do not find them very energy-consuming.

They have very good indicators on them that allow us to follow the workloads as well as consumptions. That is very good. One good thing about those servers is that we are remotely warned. There is a follow-up, and the administration is much easier for us.

In terms of their impact on our sustainability goals, we do not have much money in the public sector, so we make them last for a very long time. I have some servers that are more than ten years old, so the maintenance or support no longer exists for those models. This equipment is well-manufactured and reliable, and it works very well.

For the last 20 years, there have been far fewer breakdowns. The servers function much better and the OS too. For sure, we are getting a much better quality product than we used to about 20 or 25 years ago. That is for sure. The machines no longer stop. We now only stop them for some safety updates or something similar, but that is it.

The OpenManage console does allow us to combine everything, but we had that system well before it was a VM. At the time, it was still an application.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have affected the overall flexibility of our operations. The fact that they are easily manageable is an essential aspect.

These web servers were easily manageable from as early as 2003. We have a very large building, and it was possible to manage them remotely in a simple way from as early as 2003.

All of the marketing terminologies from Dell are very complicated as they have names that sometimes involve the same technology. It is something very complex for me as well as for many people who are not that familiar with Dell’s catalog. Apart from that, from a technical aspect, Dell is following the technical progression of the motherboards and processors from other manufacturers, and as a result, they are always up to date.

Their price could be better.

The first one was in 2003, so we have been using them for about 20 years.

They are very stable. They last a very long time.

We never make any changes. We buy the equipment. Sometimes, we even buy a lot of identical equipment, and according to the lifespan, we add server disks from an obsolete server to make another server more powerful. That is the only thing that we do. We do not make any changes to processors or anything else. We buy the servers based on necessity.

Their support is always very good. It is always a ten out of ten. They have very competent people. There is no need to negotiate something or explain it ten times when a server strip is faulty and needs to be returned. There is no problem regarding this, and it is very good.

Positive

We have some Lenovo servers, and we have some HPE servers. Dell does not always offer the best prices, and the competitors are also offering products at a good price. That is what the competitive game is about, and sometimes, it is the competitor who wins.

I was involved in the initial setup. It is extremely simple.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we had two delivered. We watched how they were cabled up, how they were built up, and we put the others. We had ordered together with a guide, and there were no problems.

We did the implementation with a guide. We always do this, but while telling him what to do. We made our own terms and conditions. We were the ones in charge.

Dell’s licensing is perfect. In comparison to the competitors, it is perfect. It is simple and well done. It is working for us.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a ten out of ten. Out of all the brands that I know, they are the best together with HPE, but there is something that I do not like about HPE, and that is the licensing. I find their licensing absolutely unbearable.

Foreign Language:(French) 

Offre une gestion à distance, une administration facile et des indicateurs de charges de travail et de consommation

Depuis combien de temps utilisez-vous les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack?

Le premier était en 2003, cela fait donc environ 20 ans.
Quel est votre cas d’utilisation principal de cette solution? (Décrivez votre environnement).

On s’en sert pour tout — autant pour les services d’infrastructure que pour la virtualisation et le stockage.

En implémentant ces serveurs, on voulait répondre à nos besoins en bureautique. Je travaille pour la bibliothèque nationale. C’est donc essentiellement pour distribuer des ouvrages numérisés et d'être capable de concevoir des applications et une bibliothèque numérique.

Veuillez décrire comment les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack ont amélioré votre organisation. Si ce ne fut pas le cas, veuillez expliquer pourquoi.

C'était les seuls à l'époque qui proposaient un système de gestion à distance et ça, c’est un aspect très important pour nous, sachant que nous sommes que deux pour plusieurs centaines de serveurs. C’est vraiment très important.

Les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack ont l’approche de l’architecture PowerEdge Cyber-Résiliente mais je n’y crois pas trop. On met la sécurité bien avant et bien en amont des serveurs, ainsi que sur les réseaux afin de tout filtrer et donc, on expose un minimum les serveurs. Une fois qu’ils sont sur les serveurs, c’est trop tard. Il faut les arrêter bien avant.

En termes de consommation d'énergie, ça dépend de ce qu’on fait avec la machine. Si c’est pour gérer des IAs ou autre chose de semblable, ça consomme beaucoup trop d'énergie. Si c’est pour la conservation patrimoniale, alors ça consomme ce que cela doit consommer. Ça dépend de ce qu’on fait dessus. Si on laisse une lumière allumée dans une pièce et que tout le monde ferme les yeux et que personne ne fait rien, c’est une consommation d'énergie en trop. Même si ce n’est qu’une fraction de watt qui est utilisée, c’est déjà trop. Par contre, si c’est pour lire et apprendre des choses, ça se justifie. La justification ne se passe pas au niveau du serveur mais au niveau de l’utilisation qu’on en fait. Certains serveurs sont très énergivores parce qu’il y a des projets qui ne servent à rien et il y a des projets comme la bibliothèque numérique qui sont très utiles et je ne les trouve pas très énergivores.

Ils ont de très bons indicateurs dessus qui nous permettent de suivre les charges ainsi que les consommations. Ça, c’est très bien. Une bonne chose au sujet de ces serveurs, c’est qu’on est averti à distance. Il y a un suivi et l’administration est beaucoup plus facile pour nous.

En termes de leur impact sur nos objectifs de durabilité, on n’a pas beaucoup d’argent dans la fonction publique et on les fait donc durer très longtemps. J’ai des serveurs qui ont plus de dix ans donc, la maintenance et le support n’existent plus sur ces modèles. C’est du matériel bien conçu, fiable et qui marche très bien.

Il y a beaucoup moins de pannes depuis 20 ans. Les serveurs fonctionnent beaucoup mieux et les OS aussi. C’est sûr qu’on arrive à une meilleure qualité de produit qu'il y a environ 20 ou 25 ans. Ça, c’est sûr. Les machines ne s'arrêtent plus. On les arrête uniquement pour faire des mises à jour de sécurité ou des choses comme ça mais c’est tout.

La console OpenManage permet de tout regrouper mais on avait ce système bien avant que ce soit une VM. A l'époque c'était encore une application.

Les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack ont affecté la flexibilité globale de nos opérations. Le fait qu’ils soient faciles à gérer est un élément essentiel.

Quelles fonctionnalités avez-vous trouvé le plus utile et pourquoi?

Ces serveurs web étaient faciles à gérer dès 2003. On a un bâtiment qui est très grand et c'était possible de les gérer à distance et de manière simple et dès 2003.

Dans quels domaines les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack pourraient-ils être améliorés?

Toutes les terminologies marketing de Dell sont très compliquées car ils ont des noms qui regroupent des fois, la même technologie. C’est très complexe pour moi et pour beaucoup de personnes qui ne sont pas tout le temps sur le catalogue Dell. Sinon, techniquement, Dell suit la progression technique des processeurs, des cartes mères d’autres constructeurs et ils sont donc, toujours à la pointe de l’innovation.

Leur prix pourrait être meilleur.

Avez-vous utilisé une solution différente auparavant et le cas échéant, pourquoi avez-vous changé?

On a des serveurs Lenovo et des serveurs HPE. Dell ne fait pas tout le temps les meilleurs prix et les concurrents offrent également des produits à des prix intéressants. C’est tout le jeu de la concurrence et parfois, c’est le concurrent qui gagne.

Que conseillez-vous à d'autres au sujet des coûts d’installation, des tarifs et/ou du licensing?

Le licensing Dell est parfait. Par rapport aux concurrents, c’est parfait. C’est simple et bien fait. Ça fonctionne pour nous.

Quelles sont vos impressions sur la scalabilité de cette solution?

On ne fait jamais de changements. On achète le matériel. Parfois, on achète plusieurs matériels identiques et en fonction de la durée de vie, on ajoute du disque de vieux serveurs qu’on a de-commissionné pour en faire un serveur plus puissant. C’est uniquement ce que l’on fait. On ne fait pas de changements de processeurs ni d’autre chose. On achète des serveurs pour un besoin.

Quelles sont vos impressions sur la stabilité de cette solution?

Ils sont très stables. Ils durent très longtemps.

Le déploiement initial était-il simple ou complexe et de quelle manière?

J'étais impliqué dans le déploiement initial. C’est extrêmement simple.

En termes de stratégie d'implémentation, on en a fait livrer deux. On a regardé comment ça se câblait, comment ça se montait et on a fait les autres. On avait commandé un guide et il n’y a pas eu de soucis.

Avez-vous fait l'implémentation avec l'équipe d’un revendeur ou en interne? Si avec l'équipe d’un revendeur, comment évalueriez-vous leur niveau d’expertise?

On l’a fait avec un guide. On fait toujours comme ça mais en lui indiquant ce qu’il faut faire. Nous faisons le cahier des charges nous-mêmes. Nous menons la tâche.

Décrivez-nous votre expérience avec le service client et le support.

Leur support est toujours très bien. C’est toujours dix sur dix. Ils ont des gens compétents. Il n’y a pas besoin de négocier pour quelque chose ou expliquer dix fois lorsqu’une barrette de serveur tombe en panne et qu’il faut la renvoyer. Il n'y a pas de soucis là-dessus. C’est très bien.

Comment évalueriez-vous cette solution sur une échelle de 1 à 10 pour le service et le support?

10

Sur une échelle de 1 a10 (1=le pire, 10=le meilleur), les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack? Veuillez expliquer pourquoi.

Je donnerais un dix sur dix aux serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack. Parmi toutes les marques que je connais, ce sont les meilleurs avec HPE, mais il y a des choses que je n’aime pas chez HPE, comme leur licensing. Je trouve leur licensing absolument insupportable.

We are currently using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers to run about ten virtual machines. Within these virtual machines, we have our ERP systems, remote access systems, and more. It is primarily used as a Hyper-V server for virtualization purposes.

The performance and scalability are the most valuable features of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The servers perform excellently, and they are adaptable to the evolving needs of high-performance workloads. They provide the reliability needed to manage the consumption of RAM efficiently without needing to expand the rack.

I do not have anything specific in mind for improvements. The support provided is very good when we need it, and the identification of the server is excellent. Overall, there are no areas of significant improvement that I can suggest.

We have had experience with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for about two years.

The servers are reliable. We do not experience significant downtime, and they continue running effectively.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are highly scalable. We were able to resolve performance issues by managing RAM consumption without needing to physically expand the rack.

Customer service provides very good support, with an SLA of about one business day to respond to our tickets.

Neutral

We have always used Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. We had evaluated Lenovo solutions previously but chose to stick with Dell because of its reliability and support.

The initial setup is easy with the support of iDRAC services.

Our implementation team typically includes a system administrator or a support engineer.

The pricing can vary. Some customers find it cheaper due to contractual agreements, while others find it expensive, especially when scaling up. In Brazil, the parts for servers are particularly expensive.

Before choosing Dell, we evaluated Lenovo solutions. However, we preferred Dell due to its superior reliability and support.

I would recommend Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for their reliability and support. Overall, I rate the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers ten out of ten. They are excellent.

We deploy PowerEdge to meet our customer's requirements.

Brand recognition is a big reason we went with this. The customer wanted to use Dell's product. Dell integrates with other cards and boards inside a system. The iDRAC is a selling point. It gives you an easy way to manage the system, services, and installation. 

PowerEdge is not that flexible. For example, it's difficult if I need something that is not in Dell's portfolio. We offer the flexibility to the customer. We can implement different things Dell doesn't have. If you have preconfigured systems, it's hard to transition them to what you need.

We have used PowerEdge servers for two or three months. It's new for us. 

I rate Dell customer service 10 out of 10. We had a problem implementing the RAID system on a rack. The Dell RAID specialist helped us a lot and provided more internal information to install RAID on the system successfully. I have experience with many companies, and it was very fast. The guys in Dell support don't waste your time. They find a way to provide a solution. 

Positive

We used industrial systems, so PowerEdge rack servers are more flexible than our previous industrial systems. If we compare them, they're ahead of the industrial systems, so I can say they're better.

We purchase the systems from a reseller and integrate them for our customers. PowerEdge Rack. Servers are easier than other systems we have integrated, but I can't say how easy it is for customers to do it themselves. 

I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers nine out of 10. 

We started full-scale deployment in 2013 exclusively with Dell PowerEdge. We have the fourth generation of servers. We went from 720, 730, 740, and now 760. I have all the models.

We use PowerEdge to connect directly to electronics and readout systems so it is all deployed on-prem, on a private network with no connection to the outside.

I work in a research environment. We use these 400 huge clusters to connect to the electronics of readout detectors to read the data out of the homemade front-end electronics and then assemble the data files to be analyzed. It's moving data between electronics and the IT world of storage grid analysis, etcetera. I'm the service manager only for the readout part and that is already enough of a job.

Our servers are on the private network completely disconnected from the outside world. It's less of an issue than it would be for a front-end server to the Wild West. The whole firmware handling what Dell is doing through OAK Management Enterprise or other tools from the iDRAC is also important so that we get signed from the packages we can trust that were tested and don't render our server into a brick. When I get a maintenance window, it's once every four, or five months for four hours. I don't have time to do something, figure out if it doesn't work, and undo it. It has to work with the first job. Resilience in total globally is also important. I can install firmware and updates and have trust that it will work.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are good for power consumption compared to other brands. When we buy our Servers, we always take platinum, it's the best quality power supply. Maybe the others consume more power but I can certainly compare them to other platforms or vendors, and they are absolutely on the low side. Now with the 16th generation that came out, there's another huge step in the positive direction compared to the previous generations. In general, every time there's a new generation, I see that we get the same computing power for less electrical power. It moves in a good direction. We cut our energy consumption by half. This has saved us costs because we are running 300 days a year 24/7 on a full load. Thanks to PowerEdge we can lower our energy consumption lower than the competitors.

In our case, we figured out how much computing power we needed and bought more from the start. However, I'm spending my days buying memory and plugging additional memory. The change increases network bandwidth by changing onboarding functions. The memory capacity you can plug in is absolutely impressive for the bigger form factor. We can go through terabytes of memory without a problem. This is something impressive for me as we can open the chassis, and see how it's engineered inside so that we can easily access all the components, and change components without hours and hours of dismantling it. It is a bottom-up engineered product.

PowerEdge Rack Servers' impact on our sustainability goals is important but hidden. Based in Switzerland, we have to abide by the Swiss sustainability laws, which now forbid heat waste. If we build a data center now, we have to recuperate the heating and do something with it. We're no longer allowed to blow out the energy. 

For example, we are building new data centers now that are collecting it, and there's a residential area around it, and we heat the houses through hot water heating. We are legally obliged to do that. The times when we put a chiller outside and blow energy out are gone. That's the core context. If, when we started with the PowerEdge already at the time, we were 100 kilowatts for one room, we moved the junk out and put the first PowerEdge Servers in, and the power consumption went down to 80. So we recovered 20 percent for more computing. That was already more than ten years ago. by now, we have gone down to less than 50 with the latest generation of PowerEdge. So we are going down in power consumption while at the same time providing more computing power to the users. This is very important because the infrastructure to recuperate the heat costs money as well. The less I consume, the less I have to pay to recuperate it afterward.

There are two valuable features for me. Number one, we are always at the edge of technology, Dell is a great partner, so going to Austin to the HBC Lab, so we can test machines and platforms before they go commercial so we can adapt our developments because we plug homemade cards into the Servers. We have to make sure they're compatible. That's the development side. 

On the operations side, the value of service is always underestimated in terms of debugging, availability of spare parts, and the fact that they don't explode weekly. The quality of the products, the monitoring, the managed enterprise, pro support, TechDirect, self-dispatch of spare parts, etcetera, all of this allows us to run in the order of 500 servers if you take other clusters together. It is a tenth of a human host of a full-time equivalent. This means that if you would scale up linearly, one person could take care of 3000 Servers. That's quite impactful. Google published three people for 1000. We are doing one person for 3000. That allows us to free human resources for other tasks. The last time somebody had to go to the data center for support was five months ago. We could do many functions remotely, so there was no hardware fault. We could do daily maintenance remotely through iDRAC. Its remote management capabilities are one in a lifetime. I don't know any other platforms that offer the same level of manageability.

The world market for CPUs is excited. We have new ideas popping up left and right like new accelerator cards because there are GPUs. Dell is already working with Kalray, for example, that builds accelerator cards. There are new FPGA cards available on the market that are not in the portfolio. The last time I looked was when buying the new 760 Servers because it changes every couple of months, and not all Intel CPUs were certified. The adoption speed of new CPU and GPU technologies has room for improvement. 

However, I know coming from the technical side this is a lot of work, and it's difficult. I know they are working on it and it's not something you do in five minutes. We have to stay fair. It would be nice but I know that now Intel and AMD come up with new CPUs twice a year. In the past, there was a new CPU generation every two years and now it's every six months. So the developers of servers and all the devices and programs are running to keep up with the speed itself.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for 11 years.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are stable.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are scalable.

The support is efficient. We have access to the spare parts catalog, We can diagnose a file and send it to them, and within two hours we have somebody on the phone. They are reactive and the problems were solved in the first attempt. This allows us to pay a little bit more for the initial investment but over the lifetime of the equipment, we have zero manpower costs to keep them running. The total cost over the lifetime of the equipment, we are largely positive compared to other brands where we have to pay a team of ten people to manage the equipment.

During the deployment, the amount of rails turned out to be a disaster. We asked for two fewer rails and I had the whole team come over and install the rails for PowerEdge. I had a colleague, who did the Rack all by himself, he was so fascinated with it. From the mechanical aspect, it's extremely easy and solid. 

There is also the engineering of the chassis down to the rail and how to put it in was well thought out. It was not some rails that were purchased out of a catalog from Taiwan. 

I use OAK Management Enterprise to control the whole cluster. Once we plug in the cable, the service tag is realized, and the server is deployed by itself. From plugging in a new machine to installation ready if there are not too many firmware updates, it's ten minutes. It's easy, requires little manpower, and is fast. 

When we had to install five hundred servers in the rack, there was a discussion about whether we should call on the professional deployment services from Dell to do that, and then we decided not to. Because we are two people, we could install 25 servers in two hours. It was done in two weeks.

We do the implementation in-house.

We have the equipment itself, but Dell also provides the full software framework infrastructure around it. That is crucial in monitoring in terms of what's going on and also that one allows for example one person to have a view over thousands of machines. I have CloudIQ on my phone so I can see what my servers are doing. I can predict its failure so we can react before something explodes. We can react before things fail. That, of course, reduces downtime, and increases happiness, on the customer side. 

As scientists, we want as much data as possible. In the experiment equipment running, there are no official numbers, but we are in millions per hour. Therefore, half an hour of downtime is costly. Not everything will be down, but if the data is unusable because there's one piece missing, it's as if everything will be lost.

I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers ten out of ten. We never have problems and if there is an issue we get help, and the issue is resolved quickly. I never found myself sitting around, not knowing what to do or not getting help. With other full-brand vendors, I couldn't get a support person to look at an issue. These vendors always underestimated support and the follow-up with the customer afterward. In my experience, Dell is the best.

I also spend a lot of time on the advisory board for the Dell HPC Community. I spent time with the developers in most of the service. Ten years ago, the Servers had two power supplies and they were both on the same side. Now on the new ones, one of the power supplies has moved to the other side. That was something we injected seven years ago into the development process because it makes installations in the Rack much more efficient.

Our primary use case is for computing. We use PowerEdge for all of the laboratories for all of the computer science labs. 

We implemented PowerEdge to improve our flexibility and power. 

We need a lot of computing power, and PowerEdge provides a balance between price, power, and storage. It improved our flexibility by enabling us to add more servers to the clusters. When you replace servers, there is no downtime. The most important aspect is that there is almost zero downtime. 

I reconfigure servers and explain them to the IT office as code when I handle them. The ability to manage all the servers from one console is beneficial because I'm managing hundreds of them from one place. It saves us hundreds of hours a year in time. 

PowerEdge Dell to reduce unplanned production downtime to almost zero.

Hyperscale is the most valuable feature. I like how I can stack many servers on top of each other, and they work like a cloud.

I would like for there to be more disc space.

We have used PowerEdge for 10 years.

PowerEdge servers are highly stable. 

It's easy to add more servers to the cluster. 

I rate Dell support 10 out of 10. They give me the answers I need, not just what I want. 

Positive

We used to work with some very old HP machines. We got quotes from various vendors, but Dell gave us the best performance for a good price. 

Deploying PowerEdge servers is straightforward. It takes about 15 minutes, including installation and reconfiguration. We use Unix and Linux, so it's quick. 

Although PowerEdge's price is high, it's easier to handle, and there's no downtime. In my opinion, it's worth the price.

I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers 10 out of 10.

We do media transcoding. We mainly use servers with quite a lot of CPUs to be able to do transcoding. We need servers that provide us with a lot of power.

By implementing Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we wanted to transcode media in a fairly quick way. We can have media for only about a quarter of an hour. From the moment the media gets to us to the moment it is gone, we only have about a quarter of an hour, so we need a lot of power to be able to achieve something in a minimum amount of time.

Overall, we are very happy with the fact that we managed to get servers with last-generation CPUs. Besides that, like everyone else, we are trying a bit to reduce our energy bills. There is a big effort to be made on that front.

In terms of resiliency, our servers tend to be fairly far in our infrastructure. We have a couple of layers of firewall upfront. We also have proxy and reverse proxy, so the range of attack is fairly weak, and behind that, we have Linux. We shield with firewalls and other safety measures.

Overall, we are quite happy with it in terms of energy consumption. We have a fairly low consumption.

We hardly upgrade our servers to handle the evolving needs of high-performance workloads. As a matter of fact, when we build a platform, it is for a very specific need, and it is made to last three to five years. After that, the platform disappears, and the servers also leave with that. We buy new servers according to the new platform. We have less upgrading on the servers because they are already adapted to our needs.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime. The servers that we have rarely break down, so, overall, we can change quite a lot of components on the run. We can manage to have a production that is running almost 99.99% of the time.

The OpenManage console has affected our IT staff’s productivity quite a bit. When new equipment arrives, we only have to put it in racks at the data center and all of the installation and management is done remotely, so we no longer need to spend a certain amount of time in the data center.

Using PowerEdge Rack Servers has affected the overall flexibility of our operations or business. We do have the ability to intervene on them, which is important. It is obviously easier than having a server where when we have a problem, we must go to the data center, or we must call someone to come and help. We might even have to stop the server, and that is quite annoying.

The calculation potential with modern CPUs is valuable. We have the capacity to increase the number of CPUs per machine, and there are also energy savings.

We have not had or come across any major problems. With regards to prices and support, they have always been very responsive, but we know that when we need more storage, we can easily find something much cheaper elsewhere. The equipment is very good, but the price is a bit too high. In addition, their support for parts can be better.

In our organization, it must have been a good 20 years. They have been using Dell pretty much from the start of the company. I have been with the company for six years, but we still unearth some old servers from time to time.

They are stable.

We don't scale a lot, we buy as and when needed.

Their support is very good. I would rate them an eight out of ten. They can be more reactive when sending parts. The support service is very reactive when answering us, but they need a bit of time to send us the parts. We tend to only ask for the parts. We replace them ourselves. We do not request a technician as well. We have also had a case where a part arrived at the wrong address.

Positive

Like many people, we do not only use Dell products. We also use a bit of HPE. I have a preference for Dell, but we still have some old servers from other manufacturers lying around. We have some old equipment, but everything that is recent is either Dell or HPE. We changed the old servers simply because they were at the end of their life.

I am involved in the implementation of these servers. The implementation is simple.

We know that we need half a day in the data center to do everything regarding the racks. Once that is done, we can also split the tasks because, although the servers are in the same bay, we do not want to be on top of each other when working. So, we can work in parallel during the installation of a certain number of servers without any difficulty. If you do not have a console, it is quite limiting because, with a screen at the back of a server, you are limited to working on only one server at a time.

We generally do everything related to PowerEdge ourselves.

Overall, we have seen an ROI. The ROI is in terms of productivity at the infrastructure service level. We do not have to regularly change parts, and by being able to do all of the administration remotely, we gain quite a substantial amount of time.

As far as licenses are concerned, we have very few servers. We no longer need the licenses. It depends directly on the manufacturers or the people who develop the software. Instead of taking them with the servers, because we are not always sure of the specific use for a specific server, we get the licenses afterward.

With regards to the rates, there are times when Dell is not able to match the prices of other manufacturers who offer us something cheaper. For storage, it can vary, and the cost can be twice as much.

We mainly work with Dell and HPE. To evaluate the options, we take into account how easy it is to operate the server. In my opinion, Dell is unrivaled on that front. We are not a very big company, so we are very careful with the costs of our servers.

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

Foreign Language:(French)

Offre vitesse, économies d'énergie et 99.9% de durée de fonctionnement

Depuis combien de temps utilisez-vous les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack?

Dans notre société, cela doit faire plus de 20 ans. Ils utilisent du Dell depuis quasiment la création de la société. Je suis dans la société depuis six ans mais on déterre des vieux serveurs de temps en temps.

Quel est votre principal cas d’utilisation de cette solution? (Décrivez votre environnement).

Nous faisons du transcodage de média. On utilise principalement des serveurs avec beaucoup de CPUs pour pouvoir faire le transcodage. On a besoin de serveurs qui nous apportent beaucoup de puissance.

Décrivez comment les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack ont amélioré votre organisation. Si ce ne fut pas le cas, veuillez expliquer pourquoi.

En implémentant les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack, on voulait pouvoir transcoder de façon assez rapide. On peut avoir des médias pendant seulement un quart d’heure. Entre le moment où le média rentre chez nous et le moment où il doit sortir de chez nous, nous avons seulement un quart d’heure et donc, on a besoin de grosse puissance pour pouvoir le sortir en un temps minimum.

Globalement, nous sommes très contents du fait que nous arrivions à avoir des serveurs avec des CPUs de dernière génération. En plus, on essaye, comme tout le monde, de réduire notre facture énergétique. Il y a un gros effort de fait là-dessus.

En termes de résilience, nos serveurs ont plutôt tendance à être relativement loin dans notre infrastructure. On a deux couches de firewall devant. On a aussi du proxy et du reverse proxy donc, la couverture d’attaque est relativement faible et derrière, on va être sur du Linux. On blinde au maximum avec des firewalls et d’autres mesures de sécurité.

Globalement, on est plutôt contents en ce qui concerne la consommation d'énergie. On a une consommation qui est relativement faible.

Pour gérer les besoins évolutifs des charges de travail à haute performance, on ne fait quasiment pas évoluer nos serveurs. En fait, quand on monte une plateforme, c’est pour un besoin spécifique et c’est fait pour durer de 3 à 5 ans. Après ce temps-là, la plateforme disparaît et les serveurs partent avec. On achète de nouveaux serveurs en fonction des nouvelles plateformes. On n’a plus d'évolutivité sur les serveurs parce qu’ils sont déjà adaptés à notre besoin.

L’utilisation des serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack nous a aidés à réduire les temps d'arrêt de production imprévus. Les serveurs sont très rarement en panne donc, globalement, on peut changer pas mal de composants à chaud. On arrive à maintenir une production qui est en fonctionnement à 99.99% du temps ou presque.

La console OpenManage a pas mal affecté la productivité de notre personnel informatique. Quand on a du matériel qui arrive, on se contente de le mettre en racks dans le centre de données et derrière, toute l’installation et tout le management se fait à distance et donc, on n’a plus besoin de passer un certain nombre d’heures dans le centre de données.

L’utilisation des serveurs PowerEdge Rack a affecté la flexibilité globale de nos opérations ou de notre entreprise. Nous avons la capacité de pouvoir intervenir dessus, ce qui est important. C’est forcément plus facile que d’avoir un serveur sur lequel, dès qu’on a un problème, on doit se rendre au centre de données ou on doit appeler quelqu’un pour venir nous aider. Il nous arrive même de devoir arrêter un serveur et ça, c’est assez ennuyeux.

Quelles fonctionnalités avez-vous trouvé les plus utiles et pourquoi?

Le potentiel de calcul avec des CPUs modernes est très utile. Nous avons la capacité d’augmenter le nombre de CPUs par machine et de faire des économies d'énergie.

Dans quels domaines les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack pourraient-ils être améliorés?

On n’a pas eu ni vraiment rencontré de gros problèmes. Au niveau des prix et du support, ils ont toujours été très réactifs mais on sait que lorsqu’on a besoin de plus de stockage, on a tendance à trouver beaucoup moins cher ailleurs. Le matériel est très bien mais le prix est un peu trop élevé et en plus, le support pour les pièces pourrait être meilleur.

Avez-vous utilisé une solution différente auparavant et le cas échéant, pourquoi avoir changé?

Comme beaucoup de monde, on n’utilise pas que des produits Dell. On utilise un peu de HPE. J’ai une préférence pour Dell mais on a encore quelques vieux serveurs encore d’autres constructeurs qui trainent. On a du vieux matériel mais tout ce qui est récent est soit du Dell, soit du HPE. On a changé les vieux serveurs tout simplement parce qu’ils étaient en fin de vie.

Avant de faire votre choix, avez-vous évalué d’autres options? Le cas échéant, lesquelles?

On travaille principalement avec Dell et HPE. Pour évaluer les options, on prend en compte la facilité d'exploitation du serveur. Pour moi, Dell est imbattable là-dessus. On n’est pas une très grosse entreprise et donc, on fait très attention au coût de nos serveurs.

Que conseillez-vous aux autres en ce qui concerne les coûts d’installation, les tarifs et/ou les licences?

En ce qui concerne les licences, on a peu de serveurs. On n’a plus besoin des licences. On les prend directement chez les constructeurs ou les personnes qui conçoivent les logiciels plutôt que de les prendre avec les serveurs parce qu'on n'est pas forcément sûr de l’usage spécifique de chaque serveur. On prend donc les licences après.

Au niveau tarifaire, il y a des moments ou Dell ne sait pas forcément s’aligner avec d’autres constructeurs qui nous proposent quelque chose de moins cher. Sur du stockage, ça varie mais le prix peut aller du simple au double.

Quelles sont vos impressions sur la scalabilité de cette solution?

Nous faisons peu de scalabilité car nous achetons selon nos besoins.

Quelles sont vos impressions sur la stabilité de cette solution?

Ils sont stables.

Avez-vous constaté un RSI (Retour Sur Investissement)? Si oui, de quelle manière (p. ex. mesures/points de données)?

Globalement, on a constaté un RSI. Le RSI est en termes de productivité au niveau du service infrastructure. On n’a pas besoin de changer régulièrement les pièces et on peut faire toute la partie administrative à distance, c’est un gain de temps qui est assez important.

La configuration initiale était-elle simple ou complexe et de quelle manière?

Je suis impliqué dans l'implémentation de ces serveurs. L'implémentation est simple.

On sait qu’on va avoir une demi-journée dans le centre de données pour faire tout ce qui est partie rackage. Une fois cela fait, on peut se répartir les tâches parce que bien que les serveurs soient dans la même baie, on ne se marche pas tous sur les pieds pendant la tâche. On peut travailler en parallèle pendant l’installation d’un certain nombre de serveurs sans difficulté. Dès qu’on n’a pas de console et avec un écran à l'arrière du serveur, on est bien limité sur le nombre de serveurs sur lesquels on peut agir à la fois.

Avez-vous utilisé un revendeur ou une de vos équipes pour ce déploiement? Si à travers un revendeur, comment évalueriez-vous leur niveau d’expertise?

Nous faisons généralement tout nous-mêmes, en ce qui concerne les PowerEdge.

Décrivez votre expérience avec le service client et le support de Dell.

Leur support est très bon. Je leur donne une note de huit sur dix. Ils pourraient être plus réactifs sur leur envoi de pièces. Le service support est très réactif pour nous répondre mais ils ont besoin d’un peu de temps pour nous envoyer la pièce. Nous, on a plutôt tendance à demander les pièces. C’est nous qui faisons les remplacements. On ne demande pas le technicien avec. Et il nous est arrivé que la pièce soit délivrée à la mauvaise adresse.

Comment évalueriez-vous cette solution sur une échelle de 1à10 pour le service et le support?

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Sur une échelle de 1 à 10 (1=le pire, 10=le meilleur), comment évalueriez-vous les serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack? Veuillez expliquer pourquoi.

Je donnerais une note de neuf sur 10 aux serveurs Dell PowerEdge Rack.

Our internal infrastructure for multiple networks on our large site uses Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in VxRail clusters to support over 2,000 users, numerous labs, and development environments. These Dell servers function as the primary compute nodes within the VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure solution.

We implemented Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers because we were looking for a complete solution, and Dell was a strong contender. Their VxRail solution for SimpliVity offered implementation, upgrades, and support as a bundle, making it the ideal choice for us, and it has worked perfectly.

I put aside the monetary value. I'm seeking a more stable solution and fewer headaches for our IT professionals. Now that this solution is implemented, upgrades, additional solutions, and system stability are much easier to achieve. It's difficult to put a price on that, but it's an IT professional's dream come true.

To date, we have not encountered any issues with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers' ability to handle the evolving needs of high-performance workloads. Our data center has been primarily based on HP solutions for a considerable time, and we have only started incorporating Dell solutions into our infrastructure in the last three years. We are pleased with their performance, consider them a good product, and recommend them.

SimpliVity's most valuable features are its unified management and operational capabilities. It is amazing to have a single pane of glass to view, manage, and operate the entire environment without switching between Windows, software, or web environments.

The pricing always has room for improvement.

The support experience has room for improvement. As a secure site, we require personnel with specific clearances, and sometimes, the language barrier poses a challenge. English-to-Hebrew translation can impact various processes, particularly when troubleshooting errors necessitates collaboration with US or European teams across different time zones. Moreover, vendors occasionally request logs, which we cannot provide due to security protocols. The language barrier can make it difficult to clearly communicate our needs and issues to support personnel overseas. Therefore, we require more Dell technical support staff based in Israel.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for three and a half years.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer excellent stability. I implemented the Stretch Cluster as an active-active solution to handle scenarios such as a complete data center loss. To test the solution's robustness, I pulled the power cables from the server, simulating a potential real-world failure. Other vendors' solutions couldn't handle this, but Dell's appropriately performed, prompting immediate implementation. Now, I can confidently attest to its effectiveness. We've undergone data center and rack maintenance without any issues. Even during a complete networking loss over a weekend, the solution continued to operate seamlessly.

Dell's Professional Services are fantastic. I saw some people at the convention who helped us implement our environment because we faced some initial challenges as it was a new product. They were all amazing. The professional services team I speak to on the phone when I have a crisis, an upgrade, or even just a random error message is incredibly professional and helpful. I have nothing but positive things to say about them—they're amazing.

Positive

We use HP blade centers and rack servers as the foundation of our main data center. However, we are now transitioning to Dell Solutions, which offers comparable products from a different vendor, and we are happy with this change.

The deployment was moderately complex. Despite the installation manual provided by Dell to their professional services team, there were always additional tips and tricks not mentioned in the manual. However, the Dell Deployment Services team was highly skilled and experienced, allowing them to anticipate and address any issues that arose, resulting in a successful deployment.

Choosing an active solution that I implemented cost considerably more money. However, the return on investment was evident when something occurred on the weekend while we were off-site. No one experienced any disruption beyond a simple virtual machine reboot, which was remarkable. The work continued seamlessly. Even if someone worked over the weekend, they could still come to the office on Monday. I wasn't bothered with any calls about malfunctions or outages.

I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers ten out of ten.