Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Room for Improvement

Sekou Knox - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

The iDRAC Telemetry that monitors PowerEdge system data and provides analytics could be a little bit more in-depth. Someone wanted more information on the RAM and the hard drives and we couldn't retrieve this information.

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Hassen Trabelsi - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Messer France

Its price could be better.

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KS
Director at a computer software company with 1-10 employees

The T150 is a little bit bulky for what it is. I think if they created a T150 version with small form-factor drives, that would be an ideal solution. Currently, it is a tower box and it has quite a big footprint, and I have a couple of drives in it—a RAID 1 with a couple of terabytes, SSDs. The footprint of the box is pretty enormous. It has eight large form-factor drives. Gone are the days of people having large spinning disks.

A smaller, all-flash T150 model with 2.5-inch drives would certainly make it a little bit smaller with the potential for power supplies to not be so big. A general shrinkage of the footprint and noise would be good. That's not to say that it's a problem, but that could make it better.

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Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Javier Domingo - PeerSpot reviewer
Responsable it at Fresenius Medical Care Holdings Inc

They gave us a satisfaction survey, and we did not go below nine, so we are very happy with the solution. We are loyal customers. Obviously, the price could be lower.

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SE
Service Owner Basic Infrastructure at Goldfish IT solutions

Enriching the operational efficiency of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could be achieved through the strategic implementation of a central management console hosted in the cloud. Such a cloud-resident platform would empower administrators with enhanced visibility and granular control over the entire server fleet, fostering agility and optimizing performance.

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GG
Owner at WijZijnDe.IT

You select the server based on the product. It could be an option to remove discs and just have a virtual option. If you remove the room you need for discs, you could make it smaller. It would take up less room that way.

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Mickael Marimbert - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The scalability has room for improvement.

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DE
Group IT Manager at a mining and metals company

OEM licensing does not allow you to transfer from one server to another. You need to replace hardware and software together. 

It would be nice if they could make the solution cheaper and faster. 

At the moment, our SAN is very complicated to understand. I'd like there to be more simplicity around it. More integration between the SAN and the OS would be useful.

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Moshe Tzarfati - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Backup Admin Lead at Motorola Solutions

I would like them to add more NVMe slots. That would be good. That way, it would have better performance, e.g., enough storage for better performance than a spinning disk.

There is some improvement needed in the site (with its arrangement) when trying to find some configuration or troubleshooting matches.

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JS
Senior Systems Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

We'd want the solution to be faster, and of course, for them to bring down the price. 

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JEAN Quesada - PeerSpot reviewer
CIO at Grupo Monge

They could improve the time between new versions of the product. They could move faster, or maybe offer a little bit more support from the partners.

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TE
Systems Engineer at Air France KLM

The pricing can be better. These are expensive machines. Especially since COVID-19, many organizations are trying to reduce costs in various directions, and they often end up challenging the IT services and IT teams to reduce the costs. As a result, the choice made today for IT machines is very much based on the price, especially for the hardware. We are currently working with Dell because when we do an RFP, we put several resellers in competition, and at the moment, Dell is able to produce competitive and interesting prices for our needs. So, the final decision is often based on the price. It is essentially the price that will influence the choice of the hardware.

We order vSAN Ready Nodes, but it can happen that between the moment we order our machines and the moment they get delivered, there are some updates or new versions that may have come out. As a result, when we receive our machines and switch them on, even though they are vSAN Ready Nodes, we still have to patch them and build them with a version to be able to integrate them in a cluster so that they are uniform and with the same version as the others servers. So, there is room for improvement with regard to getting the target version.

There can be a long time gap between the order, the manufacturing, and the delivery or receipt of the machines. After receiving them, we have a process of hardwiring. We still have tasks left, such as racking the machine and hardwiring, before using the machines. It can sometimes take several weeks before we are able to use them, and that is when we notice a difference between the production machines and the new machines. Although the new machines are vSAN Ready Nodes, they are not actually ready.

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EM
IT Manager at Teledyne Technologies Incorporated

We are generally very satisfied with Dell, but there is a suggestion to potentially revisit pricing, although this is a common consideration with most products.

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Sakthivel Achuthan - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Dell hardware is not as stable as HP. I have not seen any issues with HP in five years, but with Dell, I am getting multiple issues. It's not stable. They need to verify why it has multiple issues and why Dell hardware is not as stable as HP hardware.

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Sebastien LeClere - PeerSpot reviewer
Resp. Infrastructure & Production at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

In terms of energy consumption, these servers are not bad. However, ecological responsibility is a world issue. All servers can be better in terms of energy consumption and heat dissipation. They can optimize energy consumption as well as heat dissipation to avoid the need to cool off the data centers so much. At this level, some actions need to be taken. Nowadays, we do not have many challenges regarding the need for power, but there are issues concerning sustainability with a better eco-friendly rationale. It is our responsibility, and of everyone involved in IT, to focus on savings regarding resource consumption, and this could either be energy or temperature, and temperature dissipation. It is, therefore, our role and responsibility to ensure that we are using equipment that is as energy-efficient as possible.

The support teams speaking French would mean more comfort for us. We cannot demand it, but it is always appreciated when we can get it.

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TE
Systems Engineer at BnF

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.

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SH
Director/technischner it- leiter at Wagner it-consulting

I would advocate for Dell to incorporate by default a greater number of network interface cards that boast enhanced network connectivity within their PowerEdge Rack Servers. In older models, for instance, Melanox adapters remain a necessity, and they have sporadically caused complications. It would be fantastic if Dell could incorporate them by default, precluding the requirement for supplementary adapters.

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JM
Head of Backup at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

The cost can be improved. For other use cases, we use Hitachi servers, which are a little cheaper but have similar functionality.

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JP
Team Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

The product must improve its integration with VMware. It is really important to us. They should make the management more out of the box so we have less maintenance.

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PB
Administrator Systems de Reseaux at Renater

The problem that we have had is not a technical one but an economic one. In other words, we are working with national markets, and HP Enterprise is cheaper. Dell could have made an effort there.

For example, two or three years ago, we spoke to a salesperson or a presales engineer about replacing our infrastructure with file servers, but the price that we were offered was very high.

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CR
Coordinador de IT at Varian Medical Systems, Inc.

I would like them to be more flexible when implementing more capabilities.

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HH
Director at mindIT

Different types of applications that are now trendy in the market, like AI, are still big topics that are not mapped correctly in the server and storage environment. Knowing those kinds of activities and definitions will help us more to position these kinds of servers for the client.

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EL
Platform Engineer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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.

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AV
Web Design, IT & Organization of Art Events at Fluor Corporation

The long lead times in receiving hardware could be improved. 

We have experienced issues with memory. We received help from the Dell team and this has been resolved. 

The security of this solution could be improved. We have very specific needs as an engineering company and require multiple layers of security. This is not offered when implementing the Dell hardware.

Dell's OpenManage console is easy to use but could be better by offering additional features. The console has not decreased the time it takes to deploy new data centers.

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JD
Network Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

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. 

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FV
Adj Directeur at Boursorama

Their support can be better. The speed of their support is not always great because the access to the data centers is sometimes complicated, so there is back and forth. This is where there is room for improvement.

We have a lot of issues with OpenManage. We are currently in talks with Dell to be able to roll it out within the company, but we are struggling because we are a bank, and there are many things that are out of bounds. It seems that the people working on it are not familiar with this type of business, and it is struggling to function properly. We would definitely like to have something better integrated. There is definitely some improvement needed in this software.

One area for improvement could be the capacity to evaluate all of our servers with one console. They might already have it, and I might not be aware of it, but it would be great to have one console that could tell us what, for example, the overall consumption from our servers is. I should be able to know about every rack too. That would help me with my choice related to the new generation and the model I should go for. Because of the rack configuration, I must be careful with each rack’s consumption. I must be careful that it is not too stretched. 

Currently, I use one of their suppliers for PCs to get this kind of information. If I could obtain the information directly from the server itself, it would be more interesting.

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DC
IT Manager at One Answer Insurance

What annoys me about every server is just how loud they are when they're turned on, but that's just a function of the server. It's protecting itself. I can't complain that it's noisy when I turn it on, because it's not in its rack yet. It's sitting on a desk near me. That's just how servers work.

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OG
Product Manager - Cyber app Security at Amdocs

It is not good in terms of its energy consumption for a large-scale deployment. I probably would go for something more dense, like blades or any type of small scale hardware service solutions, to lower the heat and power consumption. However, for small environments, this solution is okay and easy to maintain.

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IM
Professional Services Architect at Matrix

Some customers took the machine to the extreme, which makes it a bit slower and delays the system. Since the customer can put a lot of VMs with a lot of data, it can use up the CPU memory to 20% to 25%, which slows down the system. However, if we reduce the CPU memory or split it to another, then it works very well.

I would like to change the physical rails to be more like how HPE rails are formatted and organized.

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Tim Villa - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Jones-Hamilton Co.

Dell needs to focus more on SMBs, helping us get the most out of our products. For example, at events, there should be very specific SMB sessions where there are Dell technicians, engineers, and Dell executives meeting with us and finding out what we need. Dell is big on promoting the fact that they're part of our team and that they want to be our partners, and I would like to see them actually partner with us. Do it less with the big Fortune 500 companies and do a little bit more with us SMBs.

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ED
Consultant at ACES BV

There have been certain environmental concerns, but they don't pose a significant issue for me as my focus is on maximizing performance, especially in providing a fast API environment for both my customers and myself. Larger customers might benefit from servers that strike a better balance between performance and environmental considerations.

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MD
Responsable Infrastructure at a media company with 201-500 employees

Historically, servers required a large number of processors, with a maximum of four being accessible at a time. While processor capabilities have improved, some brands still offer servers with eight processors. Nowadays, with more powerful processors, the need for multiple processors has diminished. We've recently encountered more issues with graphics processing units. Access to specific card models can be limited, and sometimes we require smaller cards than those offered by Dell.

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LD
IT at Seitt r3r5

The price is the only thing that can be improved.

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DJ
System Administrator at a construction company with 10,001+ employees

Overall, the solution is excellent, though Dell could improve the monitoring.

The solution could be more friendly in terms of cost. 

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MR
Professor at a university with 1-10 employees

Capacity and performance can always be improved. 

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Raanan - PeerSpot reviewer
Lab Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

I would like to see more information about server health and the server's state, on the front. HP has a little screen that shows server utilization, how many disks there are inside, and the power consumption. HP also shows an alert if there is a malfunction of any device inside. Those kinds of features would be useful for Dell customers.

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YS
Field Solution Architect at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

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.

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KV
VMware Specialist at Haaglanden Medisch Centrum

I am generally very satisfied with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. However, there is room for improvement in technical support.

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GH
Engineering Manager at a retailer with 1,001-5,000 employees

We wanted to have two storage cards during the onboarding process of the solution, which were available only on the more expensive version of the boxes that we usually use for work in our company. It would have been easier for my company to deal with the product if the two storage cards provided during the solution's onboarding process of the expensive versions of the solution were available for the slightly simpler versions of the tool.

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Ronald Stoffels - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at Parkstad IT

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could improve the bezels in front of it. Because they always change the bezels, it's strange when you come with the customer into your cell room and see ten different bezels hanging.

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AB
Programmer Sysadmin at a university with 10,001+ employees

Unfortunately, PowerEdge Rack Servers do not support NVMe storage.

OpenManage Console is slightly confusing, especially after upgrade releases. There isn't a manual for what to do with lifecycle management and in what sequence. I have to rely on user forums instead of Dell in these cases.

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RW
Analytics at Israel InterUniversity Computation Center

The specs for the benchmarks are very good, but the firmware and software are lacking. There are some issues with the Linux kernel and the long-term support (LTS) for some of the firmware's dependencies. It is causing the kernel to dump. The support for the Linux brands isn't optimal. We would like them to optimize the kernel drivers for benchmarks.

There are some issues that need to be solved with our model in regards to UEFI and firmware. 

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Yaroslav Shehtman - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration Engineer at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

I don't really know where PowerEdge could be improved. I really like these servers. Even VxRail works great with them. Maybe they could change the logo to something more beautiful.

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Brian Moreno - PeerSpot reviewer
Computer Services Manager at Child Parent Centers

It's more from the pandemic, however, the logistics part of it could be better. Getting an actual bare-bones server was a little difficult when we ordered it in beginning. I'm still waiting on the printers that I ordered last year as well. That's the only thing I would really say and I'm sure it has to do with the pandemic.

The latency of it is what we're running into, as our teachers do a lot of video captures, video teaching, Zoom, and Teams video conferencing, and their latency is getting worse with the public domain.

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Gateri Hafid Bonfoh - PeerSpot reviewer
Chef de project IT at Messer France

The solution’s sales policies must be changed. Sometimes, we need the tool for a small use case. The vendor must provide cheaper versions of the tool for smaller use cases.

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TB
DSI at Mediactive SAS

We use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in the data center. We put the racks in bays. They can improve the compactness so that we can put more of them.

We do not have much of a problem with the noise, but they are still as noisy as before, even after they have improved them.

The customer service on certain parts can be better, but nowadays, we do not get many issues. As far as we are concerned, it is a clean environment. It is a data center environment, so it has air conditioning. The servers do not face many restrictions. They do not have any dust.

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WH
Administrateur system at Ministère

There can be more visibility on the equipment remotely. It will help us to provide a better response in case of a breakdown because we are not always monitoring them. It will enable us to be more reactive when there is a breakdown at the level of the ventilation disk or the temperature. We are currently using another software that connects us to the server. It is called Grafana. It allows us to be connected to the servers and gather information, but it is not always that straightforward to get these two connected.

It would be great to have one general console to manage all of the servers. I do not know if Dell has one, but there should be one general console to obtain the temperature or detect if a disk is malfunctioning. We should be able to get information about disks, extractor fans, and other things related to the equipment because we do not enter the bays all the time. A centralized system would mean greater visibility into the equipment and maybe the capability to manage several servers, just like a console.

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Brian Mijnals - PeerSpot reviewer
System Administrator at Elde College

The solution must increase the space provided. It is still an issue. The terabytes are never enough.

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KV
Lead Engineer with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'm currently not running into specific cases that I'd say we could improve. Of course, the most important features are security and sustainability. Those are subjects that Dell does a lot of work on. The whole industry works a lot on it, but everyone also sets goals of being sustainable. Working together on those subjects, I'd say could help us achieve those goals together. Sustainability and the data center is a hot topic. I work for the airport and we want to be the most sustainable airport in the world. So starting with our IT stack could benefit.

The most important for us is once someone gets access to a system that we don't want them to have access to, it probably won't be physical access. What will a system do to detect besides all the software we have in place? And right now, I'm not really aware of what the PowerEdge stack does for us in those scenarios, but that's an interesting use case. I would like more resilience because, for all companies, cybersecurity is important. Once something goes wrong, then we'll see the whole business go along. Within the IT department, we have to be ahead of that.

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DS
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at a retailer with 501-1,000 employees

I would appreciate the capability to carry out live updates without the need to take the system offline.

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Mohamed-Mousa - PeerSpot reviewer
IT manager at CNE

The BIOS interface could be improved; it is very poor. PowerEdge is very good overall, but if you compare the BIOS interface with HPE, it is not very good. HPE's is very advanced but Dell's is very simple.

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Danno Johnson - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Network System Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

On the MX7000 platform, they should continue to release better and faster blades.

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ME
Ingénieur système at a media company with 51-200 employees

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.

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SC
Cloud Solutions Architect at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Currently, the solution does not have the in-process memory encryption technology. All Intel and AMD processors are now integrating with their CPUs. Dell can add that to the processor so that whenever it does any processing, it will just encrypt those into the memory. That is a new technology most cloud providers are following through with right now.

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SJ
IT Engineer

There is room for improvement in making it more cost-effective. Another area for improvement could be the delivery process. Occasionally, there might be extended wait times between placing an order and receiving the delivery.

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OL
Architecte Cloud/Storage at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

It is hard to make a comparison without any technical factsheets for the other servers to compare with but like everyone else, it is about the pricing. They already upgrade regularly, so I do not have any improvement areas. We rely on the required standalone configuration.

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HS
Leiter interne IT und Rechenzentrum at a media company

I would like enhanced latitude in the machine assembly process. The current constraints, limiting configurations to a select few, often lack inherent rationality. This rigidity makes it challenging to construct servers that are meticulously calibrated to specific requirements. Ideally, we should strive for a system that allows for the bespoke tailoring of servers, ensuring perfect alignment with each unique need.

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ZD
Infrastructure and Operations Manager at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees

Its pricing could be better. In terms of features, I've got nothing to improve.

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TS
IT Director at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees

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.

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AA
IT-administrator at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

In general, our long-term goal is to have everything in Azure. We also work with Office 365, and we want to have everything essentially in one place. Above all, the hardware we have on-site does not need to be maintained anymore because it takes time and money. We want to simply move away from this aspect. I am not a decision-maker, but if it were up to me, I would probably prefer to have these servers rather than somewhere in the cloud.

They can consider making them smaller in physical size but retain the same quality and the same security. That can be an option. They do not necessarily need such a large cabinet. 

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OB
Data Center Manager at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

One area where PowerEdge could improve, and it might not be unique to Dell, is the challenge of keeping technology consistent over the years. Due to the natural growth of IT, there are differences in processors, memory, and technology advancements each year. When expanding our environment, it becomes a challenge to match the technology of the same line. A more seamless bridge between old and new hardware could simplify administration and enhance the overall user experience.

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Kiran Rasukachula - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager IT - APAC at Genesys

The solution should give us an option to add on new hardware features. For example, the new hardware, specifically the SoCs that come in, and the NB RAMs that are coming, should have that feature as well. The existing ones are okay, however, the older version that we currently use, which is two years old, doesn't have that feature. 

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Philip Mac Kay - PeerSpot reviewer
Gerente general at Infostore Ltda

The Industrial and healthcare areas both need improvement.

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ES
Sr IT Specialist at a manufacturing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

There is room for improvement in certain aspects of the deployment process as it is a bit complex.

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TV
IT Manager at a engineering company with 51-200 employees

The product must provide more options to add GPUs to the machines. It's always a challenge. If we don't think about it when buying the machine, we cannot do it afterward.

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MF
System Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

I'd need to research the product more. Maybe it needs a little bit more support. We have storage and would like to manage more backups without adding extra storage devices. Maybe it's already there. I need to look at it more. Some hypervisors don't seem to have any extra storage. However, it may already be there, and I haven't found it yet.

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SC
Technology & Digital Product Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Training needs to be improved. I feel we are not getting the best benefit out of the PowerEdge servers at the moment because we do not have in-depth knowledge on how to fully configure them. The PowerEdge servers are fine. It is our training that needs to be improved.

Their support can be better. Getting to the right person for support is a challenge.

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BS
IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

The rate controller interface is difficult to get to without installing additional software. It would be helpful if they had preinstalled software to make that easily accessible.

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Dragan Lazic - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Manager at a construction company with 201-500 employees

The data analytics for this solution could be improved. 

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MR
Team leader operations connectivity at a tech consulting company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Dell can optimize the size of its rack servers, offering a minimized physical footprint without compromising performance or security. This focus on space-efficient design will enable us to achieve greater efficiency and agility in our IT infrastructure.

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VG
Administrador sistema at a maritime company with 51-200 employees

Lately, we feel that we need an improvement in our servers. Surprisingly, we have seen some servers here that do meet these characteristics. They are slightly smaller servers.

On ships, we have racks to be able to mount devices, and both the servers and the communication devices have to be small. They have to be small in depth. We need servers with the same power and the same characteristics as in the office or on land, but we would like them to be smaller. They will be more practical when it comes to being able to handle them and place them at locations where we have space restrictions.

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DG
Responsable de sistemas at a transportation company with 1,001-5,000 employees

At the moment, I do not have an area for improvement. We have a cloud-first strategy, and hardware is starting to become more and more secondary, so we are not betting on it.

My expectations for it are that it will work while we migrate to the cloud, and it will remain as reliable as it is now so that in the future, we continue using it for the uploads that we need to have locally.

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TW
It system engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

Considering from a hardware perspective, some areas of concern were network cards on the models we had in our organization, which were fairly inaccessible, so we had to remove the whole motherboard and, basically, the whole system to get rid of or swap a network card. The aforementioned aspect can be considered for improvement. Everything else in the solution seems to be completely fine.

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RC
Senior System Engineer at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

I don't know much about the new Intel CPUs, but they need to put more than two CPUs in the servers. It may be an Intel limitation, but I'm not sure.

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MC
Director at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

We use older-generation servers. We are two generations behind. There can be remote access management and iDRAC improvements, but I do not have many complaints about that.

From the licensing model perspective, it might be useful for enterprises to get an overall enterprise license, rather than licensing each server. That is one option because we tend to buy the service with the licenses, but some of our older equipment does not have them.

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Louie Clarke - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Business Manager (Europe) at a tech consulting company with 10,001+ employees

I do not have any input as such. There can be a bit more expansive AI portfolio, but I have not worked on any AI projects with Dell, so I might not be up to date in knowledge.

There is probably room to expand the lower-end range.

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MK
Manager, Information Technology at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Using SD cards for installing the hypervisor is not particularly reliable. Its customer support should be improved.

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TR
Teamleiter IT at a retailer with 11-50 employees

The price could possibly use improvement. Dell servers are not the most affordable, and pricing is always a consideration. Otherwise, I don't see any specific areas for improvement.

In a future release, having a ten-gigabit LAN onboard from the start would be a significant advantage. It would eliminate the need for aftermarket upgrades.

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SS
Sr. Principal Product Manager at a tech services company with 5,001-10,000 employees

There needs to be more flexibility for business options.

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SR
Manager at Mutural Trust Bank

When it comes to battery and memory DIMM errors, it seems there is a bug. Also, the number of disks should be expandable. Many medium and large companies are using cloud-based rack servers. There should be a greater amount of CPU, memory, and hard disks. As the disks and memory should be expandable, I would highlight scalability as an issue.

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MB
Senior Manager at Express Systems Limited (ESL)

The design, in terms of power efficiency, can be improved.

Improvements should be made in terms of field expandability. Scalability, in general, has room for improvement.

Support for virtualization support can be better.

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MG
Head of Alliance at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees

The price is very high.

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ML
IT Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

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.

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DL
Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

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.

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MG
Works at a construction company with 5,001-10,000 employees

We have experienced some challenges with iDRAC when upgrading firmware.

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RS
ITAdministrator at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees

For the next release, I would like for PowerEdge Rack Servers to be a bit more compact.

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AP
Systems Administrator at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

In terms of the iDRAC software, when selecting systems, especially multiple systems to upgrade, there's really no way to confirm specific systems that are selected. It'll just tell you a number and it's very vague. It says, "Hey, you're about to perform this action on X amount of systems." If it had more visibility, then that would provide more peace of mind for our team and everyone else who uses the iDRAC software as well.

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JH
Associate Director, Health Information Technologies at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'd like to take the complexities out of all the different tools that surround it, like OpenManage. There's some different licensing and it gets a little wonky at times. Other than that, the product itself works fine. Rather, it's some of the management issues.

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CS
SRE at a government with 51-200 employees

There might be room for improvement, especially in the software aspect, such as firmware updates. While it's relatively straightforward now, it would be beneficial to have a solution that allows updating the server firmware without taking it offline.

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Jorge Soto - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect of solutions at Trendit

It takes a long time to deliver the hardware. The riser cards can be better. The riser cards are where the PCI cards connect. They need to have more than two riser cards in the server because it can be difficult to connect sometimes. 

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FG
Global Infrastructure Architect at a manufacturing company with 501-1,000 employees

The way we can manage the environment through the solution's GUI could be improved. You need different management tools at the moment for doing different things, and it would be helpful if there were one global tool you could use to monitor and manage updates.

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KM
Director of IT at Sigal

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

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RB
IT-Systems Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

The server itself is good, but sometimes, the salesperson forgets to sell us the right controller. It is related to sales. It is not related to the technical part. There is nothing that can be improved in these servers technically.

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HC
IT Infrastructure Manager at a real estate/law firm with 1-10 employees

The time it takes the machine to boot up, when I turn it off and on, could be quicker.

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FA
Automation Service Engineer (DCS) at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

The performance could be a bit better.

If they want to coordinate between the different fast CPUs with the memory or maybe if they put some polling systems that are a bit better it could possibly increase the performance of the servers. 

It would be great if the product had some wireless capabilities.

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JR
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch

All of the servers are in cluster mode and when PowerEdge Server is down, others are affected.

It doesn't automatically upgrade the firmware. We have to manually process it because we have forgotten about the firmware and virus updates.

We would like to see the upgrades done automatically. In future releases, automation would be required.

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IA
Group IT Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The company needs to invest in more marketing exposure. Users need to know that Dell servers compete with HP Servers. in the region, the Middle East, many more companies work with HP. They could change this.

The solution could still use some more analytics.

It would be helpful if we had the power of an open managed application. It should be more hands-on in terms of how are you going to manage your server. In order to do that, you need more visibility into the health of the server itself.

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it_user388956 - PeerSpot reviewer
Systems Architect at a non-tech company with 10,001+ employees

OpenManage Essentials could do with a visual “birthday” as it still requires the Silverlight plugin.

OpenManage for vCenter integration is powerful, but also a little buggy. Hardware-wise, they are great. I much prefer the iDRAC architecture over HPE iLO.

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RK
M. I. S. Manager at Ruby Mills Ltd

There are certain aspects, features, and functionality on the motherboard that need improvement. 

If they had some software components that would have helped because I don't like creating electronic waste. We don't like upgrading for the sake of upgrading.

With that process, we tend to lose the newer features which would have come in during that time.

If they could have done something during that time where the new features could have been included, or improved upon the existing ones then it would have been brilliant.

In the next release, I would like to see some means by which they could improve the functionality on the motherboard. It would be a very large help and increase the life of these products.

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AK
Sr. Technology Consultant at a engineering company with 1,001-5,000 employees

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

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

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it_user194427 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Unfortunately, I am now more in the space of IaaS, so I am a little bit removed from that particular area. In my experience when I was actively using Dell's servers, they were always improving their hardware, and coming up with more efficient solutions. One of the things that I had started using pretty extensively is blade servers, as they are more efficient on energy, and can provide the same computing power as racked servers, yet consume much less rack real estate.

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FA
IT Assistant at Hotel 2 Fevrier

They need to improve the support, as they are not very responsive, and they don't get back to you right away.

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TH
Business Continuity and Data Center Manager at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees

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

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RM
Director at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The flexibility of card use could be improved.

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MW
Project Manager at Realnux

The solution needs to offer better service feedback, their response rate is slow when we have questions. They need to be faster and get back to us much quicker to help us when we require assistance.

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BS
Head of Infrastructure at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

My biggest grievance is related to getting a caddy. We have decommissioned our old servers that we used for development or testing. You cannot buy hard drives for old servers from Dell. It is very annoying.

We tried the OpenManage console. We ran it up on a server with about 50 tracks going to it, and it kept crashing.

Another room for improvement is better OpenBMC implementation. I know Dell is getting into it now, but we do run multiple vendors for various reasons. Being able to have everyone in one would be great. Dell was the one who was missing from the party, and I do believe they have signed to implement it now. 

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EO
CTO at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

I do not have any qualms or problems with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. However, when it comes to the software, some of their competitors are already feeding a lot of performance and availability data to an online platform. We have not seen that with PowerEdge. If it is there, we have not used it, but it would be nice if all this information is included as a part of PowerEdge. We can then see server performance and availability online. 

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YN
Architect with 51-200 employees

We do encounter power supply failures from time to time, however, in terms of operations, the production uptime, the production is not affected, and the SLA is still within the stipulated time.

In the future, we hope that the noise level will be lower.

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KT
System Specialist at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

The maintenance for this solution could be improved. 

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SR
Pre-sale and Post-sale Engineer at a reseller with 201-500 employees
The shipment or delivery times could be improved. Sometimes we have to wait six Weeks before we get the server. It could even be longer. Sometimes it is many days for my customers View full review »
OH
Telecommunication Department Head at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'd like to see improvement with the analytics reports, they could be more useful than they currently are. 

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DK
System Engineer at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

There is potential for enhancement in terms of its overall upgradeability.

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KK
Manager at a pharma/biotech company with 201-500 employees

I would like to see the pricing improved.

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it_user333387 - PeerSpot reviewer
Pre-Sales Engineer at a tech services company

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

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TP
Vice President Product Management & Strategy at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

After purchasing the product, customers have not been getting the support that they need in the early stages of getting set up. They can provide customers a little bit more education as to what they get with certain warranty levels. The data is there if the customers dig, but a lot of times, the customers don't dig. 

Some of the other server models come out a little bit quicker than Dell. It would be good if Dell is quicker to market on new, larger drives when they become available. Sometimes, we do get hit on that against a couple of competitors. Dell vets them a little bit longer than like the super micros to keep their stability and quality level up, but they lose a little bit of ground to a super micro. It would be good if they can release features and models as soon and as fast as they can. It would help them to stay more competitive.

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DL
Technical Sales Engineer at Carbon

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

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

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RF
Senior Presales Engineer at MST

I would like to see a virtual view of the solution after creating and configuring it.

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MK
Deputy Manager of IT Security Infrastructure at leads

The solution could improve by making the warranty policy better, which is a little bit complex because our local service partner Smart Technologies has long delays. Whenever we open any case for any customer, it takes more than five days. If we could handle it by ourselves, we could have the issue solved in one day. They should work on a way to fix these delays.

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SG
CEO at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

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

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

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

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

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

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RB
Scientist/Engineer 'F' with 1,001-5,000 employees

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

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it_user402060 - PeerSpot reviewer
Data network Supervisor at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees

It would be nice to see an improvement in the performance.

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it_user1440213 - PeerSpot reviewer
System Engineer at ITVision

System security can be improved. They can add more power and security for ESXi version 7.

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it_user522153 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT C at San Francisco state university

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

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it_user131052 - PeerSpot reviewer
Support Technician with 51-200 employees

I can't think of anything, as it is a good product.

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PV
Director at CMC CSI saigon

They could improve on the processor and security for the next release of the solution.

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it_user417420 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Infrastructure and Operations Manager at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

This product has been superseded by newer model (R730) so any suggestions would be irrelevant. However, I am having a memory speed issue that I would like to be fixed.

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Buyer's Guide
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
765,386 professionals have used our research since 2012.