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Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs HPE Synergy comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 3, 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
7.0
HPE Synergy reduces operational costs by up to 50%, increases efficiency, and accelerates deployment while offering strong ROI.
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.
 

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
6.4
HPE Synergy support varies, with praised expertise and responsiveness but noted initial inconsistencies; higher-tier assistance is effective.
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.
 

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
7.6
HPE Synergy is highly scalable, simplifying expansion with OneView, but some find physical management challenging amid hardware limitations.
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.
 

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
7.8
HPE Synergy offers stable performance with minimal downtime, though initial setup and occasional update issues may arise.
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.
HPE Synergy needs better integration, user interface, stability, support, and pricing to enhance user satisfaction and broaden hardware compatibility.
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.
Currently, it supports only two drives in the blade server, which can be limiting.
 

Setup Cost

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer competitive pricing with flexible options and fair value, aligning well with industry standards.
HPE Synergy pricing is competitive but includes high initial costs, licensing fees, and varying reports on total expenses.
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.
Pricing in the blade server market is very competitive, with HPE offering a competitive price.
 

Valuable Features

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers offer scalability, reliability, and ease of use, excelling in performance, security, and management for diverse organizations.
HPE Synergy offers future-proof scalability, efficient management, robust performance, and seamless server image deployment for optimized workloads.
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.
It offers significant compute power in approximately ten rack units, making it practical for workload optimization.
 

Categories and Ranking

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers
Ranking in Blade Servers
5th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
171
Ranking in other categories
Converged Infrastructure (3rd), Data Center Networking (4th), Rack Servers (1st)
HPE Synergy
Ranking in Blade Servers
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
90
Ranking in other categories
Composable Infrastructure (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Blade Servers category, the mindshare of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is 1.2%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Synergy is 22.5%, up from 22.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Blade Servers
 

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.
CarlosArdila - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps grow horizontally or vertically within one box or chassis
The initial setup is very easy. We deployed this in two days, including installation, system setup, firmware upgrades, configuration, and network connection. By the next day, we were already deploying virtual machines. We initially began with the Blade system. As the migration to SAP HANA approached, it seemed prudent to upgrade our hardware. Consequently, we facilitated their transition from the Blade system to Synergy. Subsequently, we collaborated closely with the SAP consultancy company to oversee the migration process, ensuring seamless integration of all workloads and sub-environments. We have four people working on the deployment, including a project manager, two specialists, and one tech support.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
 

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.
How would you choose between HPE's Bladesystem and Synergy?
For me, choosing between HPE’s Bladesystem and Synergy came down to which solution was more powerful, reliable, and stable. It turns out Bladesystem was the winner. Bladesystem is excellent because...
What do you like most about HPE Synergy?
It is a good product for hypervisors.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HPE Synergy?
The pricing is relatively high compared to Cisco servers. However, due to the volume of my purchases, I get good discounts.
 

Also Known As

PowerEdge R
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

NxtGen Datacenter, Medien-Service Untermain (MSU), Exasol, IndigoVision, Dayco
HudsonAlpha, Virgin Media, EMIS, United
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers vs. HPE Synergy and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.