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Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs ExtremeSwitching comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.7
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer reliability, cost efficiency, excellent performance, and long-term financial benefits with effective workload handling.
Sentiment score
6.4
ExtremeSwitching offers cost-effective solutions with varied returns, often realized within one to three years, despite high licensing costs.
It is hard to measure the total cost of ownership because we have a distributed environment.
ROI is there, but it's a complex assessment when considering the return on investment from the hardware.
The return on investment is high.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers' support is praised for responsiveness, efficiency, but occasionally faces communication delays, offering premium options.
Sentiment score
6.6
ExtremeSwitching support is generally helpful and knowledgeable but experiences delays, needing improvement compared to competitors like Cisco.
Dell’s technical support is rated between eight and nine.
Customer service provides very good support, with an SLA of about one business day to respond to our tickets.
When we do use Dell's support, they have never ignored an issue.
Requiring improvement in the technical support provided to customers.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers provide scalable solutions for various business sizes, enabling flexible and predictable growth despite some limitations.
Sentiment score
7.8
ExtremeSwitching excels in scalability, flexibility, and expansion, favored for handling large connections and users across environments.
The scalability of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is excellent.
We can add new servers at any time, so the scale-out option is there.
Customers looking for higher densities are starting to lean towards AMD to achieve more cores, higher density, lower wattage, and ultimately a smaller footprint with fewer servers.
ExtremeSwitching is highly scalable, and I would rate it as nine out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are celebrated for their stability, reliability, and ability to support critical applications without major disruptions.
Sentiment score
7.9
ExtremeSwitching is reliable for small-medium firms, rated 7-9, with good support, but may struggle in large deployments.
Over four years, we've had less than 1 percent downtime.
There is a feature to update the server while it is running, so there is no need to restart.
It is stable.
 

Room For Improvement

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers need improved memory, management, and support to address concerns about performance, security, and efficiency.
ExtremeSwitching needs user-friendly enhancements, competitive pricing, improved hardware, expanded products, and better cybersecurity and latency solutions.
We need to know about any upcoming updates so that we can plan accordingly.
PowerEdge could have more configuration options, such as the ability to combine different CPUs, memory volumes, data storage, and memory.
After the expiration of support, it is sometimes challenging to find parts like hard drives, especially for obsolete models.
ExtremeSwitching's software stability could be improved, as it sometimes crashes.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer competitive pricing with flexible options and fair value, aligning well with industry standards.
ExtremeSwitching offers competitive pricing with flexible models, appealing to budget-conscious enterprises appreciating no strict licensing.
They have been stable and running for years without performance downtime or significant disc failures.
Some customers find it cheaper due to contractual agreements, while others find it expensive, especially when scaling up.
The software associated with servers, like VMware subscription licenses, drives costs.
ExtremeSwitching is priced in the mid-range, not too expensive nor too cheap.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer scalability, reliability, and ease of use, excelling in performance, security, and management for diverse organizations.
ExtremeSwitching provides robust performance, scalability, security, cloud management, and competitive pricing, enhancing network visibility, reliability, and integration.
They keep running for at least five to seven years without any issues.
With PowerEdge Servers, I don't need a one-to-one ratio redundancy, which leads to about eighty percent downtime reduction.
One of the valuable features is Active Directory, which helps in managing the network.
The most valuable feature of ExtremeSwitching is the Extreme Fabric, specifically the switching fabric.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
Ranking in Data Center Networking
4th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Blade Servers (5th), Rack Servers (1st)
ExtremeSwitching
Ranking in Data Center Networking
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
LAN Switching (7th), AV Over IP Switching (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Data Center Networking category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 0.2%. The mindshare of ExtremeSwitching is 5.7%, up from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Data Center Networking
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Masuood - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles workloads and diverse applications efficiently
We have a lot of VMs on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. On a single server, we have probably hosted 14 or 15 VMs. Out of these, 8 to 10 are continuously running, and four of them are backup VMs, so it can handle a good workload. For cybersecurity, it is only accessible on the intranet; it is not accessible through the web. We use it for local development purposes, and it is behind our firewall. Its security is strong. We handle a lot of test data for government and confidential customers. It is safe and strong locally. We have not experienced any security issues. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to reduce unplanned production downtime if we need to replace a hard disk, instead of completely shutting a server, there is a hot swap feature. It is quite good in that aspect. Usually, for any activity, there is a downtime of about 30 minutes. It has saved a lot of time. We have tried AI workloads for a development environment for a government customer in Singapore. The servers are hosted in Singapore. It is an ML-based engine with AI. It is a government project where data is processed, and we run it on Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. The benefit of running AI workloads on PowerEdge Servers is that it is easy to allocate memory. The application we are running is memory intensive. It is pretty easy to scale memory and storage.
MURALI NIDAMANURI - PeerSpot reviewer
Outstanding performance with minimal maintenance and intuitive configuration
Our primary use case for ExtremeSwitching is for costing, access networking, routing, and meeting network requirements. We have sold it in defense, government, and IT industries ExtremeSwitching significantly adds value to customers because maintenance is minimal. Once the network is set up,…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
6%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

When shopping for a rack server, would you go with Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Dell EMC Poweredge or Lenovo Thinksystem rack servers were the better fit for us. We ultimately decided to go with Dell EMC Poweredge....
What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
It has helped us reduce unplanned downtime by 20% to 30%.
What needs improvement with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers?
The price of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is competitive. There's always room for support improvements, and the AI features could continue to be enhanced as the relationship with Nvidia grows.
What do you like most about ExtremeSwitching?
The product offers a single management platform for multiple models of switches. The tool also allows users to manage multiple sites from a single dashboard.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ExtremeSwitching?
ExtremeSwitching is priced in the mid-range, not too expensive nor too cheap.
What needs improvement with ExtremeSwitching?
ExtremeSwitching's software stability could be improved, as it sometimes crashes.
 

Also Known As

PowerEdge R
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
Blue Waters
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs. ExtremeSwitching and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.