What is our primary use case?
PowerEdge C has a moderate pricing, which makes it come across as an optimized product for our company's clients' budget. If our clients have enough budget, then the product can be scaled up, including its performance, storage, and memory, making it a high computing type of server. If our company's clients have a low budget, we customize the tool to retain the flexibility of PowerEdge C, which is one of the use cases I recommend to others. The product's moderate pricing allows for the optimization of the solution based on our company's clients' requirements. PowerEdge C is usually deployed in the banking sector, public sector, multinationals, and telecom sector, and the product can be recommended to different institutions based on their requirements due to the flexibility to meet the requests of our company's clients.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that the product is not pricey. Dell and VMware produce the product with heavy integration capabilities, making it easy to manage the deployment while also being easy to use with other different HCI solutions, where the management part is easy. In general, I recommend it to others since it is easy to use, offers flexibility, and is easy to manage.
What needs improvement?
Nowadays, the product has started to become a bit expensive in the market, at a time when Nutanix offers virtualization software, which is even cheaper when compared to VMware. In order to penetrate into the market, the pricing of servers like PowerEdge C and other HCI solutions should be lower. Price-wise, I would want to see the product offer more flexibility. The hypervisor offered by ESXi is not compatible with different types of hypervisors. In the case of Nutanix AHV, the hypervisor is compatible with the other types of hypervisors. The aforementioned aspects need to be considered for improvement in the product to achieve high scalability.
There is some trouble with the stability part of the product, making it an area where improvements are required.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using PowerEdge C for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
There is some trouble with the product's stability.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability of the product is good since it offers high performance and capacity.
I am unsure about the number of my company's customers using the solution.
In total, there are around 200 people in my company, but to manage the server and to take care of the areas that revolve around the server, which includes increasing the server storage size or aspects related to SaaS or cloud solutions, there are around 15 members, consisting of solution engineers and deployment engineers, who take care of both, the pre-sales part and the solution's deployment part.
How are customer service and support?
As the support for the product is available on-site, we did not face any problems with the technical team.
How was the initial setup?
The product's initial setup phase is easy, especially considering the virtualization capabilities it offers.
The solution is deployed on an on-premises model. My company has also dealt with cloud-based servers, such as Dell VCS. If our company's clients want the solution deployed on the cloud, then we are able to do it for them.
The deployment process of the solution is not complex in my experience, and it is very easy to understand.
During the deployment phase, the operating system is not incorporated with the servers. The first thing we do is deploy the type of operating system our company's clients want. Our company usually deploys the servers in an environment, after which we deploy an operating system on it. If our company's clients also want a virtualization concept, we also refer to the ESXi or any kind of software for virtualization on the server.
In my company, around eight to nine teams are involved with the deployment phase of the product.
What was our ROI?
From an ROI perspective, the product is good.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
There is a need to pay towards the annual subscription-based licensing model offered by the solution. The product is moderately priced. Price is a critical issue, and it is always good to have moderately priced solutions.
What other advice do I have?
PowerEdge C is good if someone wants a high-performing product but is moderately priced.
I rate the overall tool a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
*Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
