Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Reviews

We use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel as production servers. In recent years, we have also used them for backup.

• They give us peace of mind; we sleep well at night. 
• The Intel Xeon processors have helped to improve performance.
• We have also seen a very small reduction in unplanned downtime.
• In addition, they have improved backups and my options to do the things I need to do, without hassle.

The solution is reliable.

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

I've been using Dell rack servers since about 1995.

Support is very good if we need it. If we have any problem with the equipment, the Dell team works with us to fix everything. My experience has been that they want to solve all the problems, even if doing so takes time. They are on it until it's fixed.

Positive

We have only used Dell. We are comfortable working with Dell, the price is fine, and the Dell people are very cooperative.

Deployment is simple. Within one hour the server is up and working.

The pricing is fair enough.

We primarily use the solution for compute servers. We use them as compute servers to run our virtual machines on-load, mainly on VMware.

The R6 series has been very valuable as it's more cost-effective and it has a lot of features. Based on the requirements, we found the R6 Series would be best suited for our customers. Reliability-wise, it's also great.

PowerEdge is for handling the evolving needs of high-performance workloads, including VDI, AI, and SAP. We did run PowerEdge servers with virtual workloads, especially on VDI. We realized that SSD is necessary, especially with VMware vSphere platforms as the IO requirements are quite high.

In terms of security, there’s been no issue from our side. In terms of BIOS, it is secure and we can go and log into BIOS to change certain settings.

PowerEdge is good for energy consumption. PowerEdge Servers run on optimal voltage. Compared to other competitors or other brands, the power rating is great.

We use iDRAC for many years already. It's an item we need to buy. We’ve had no problems so far. We use it for monitoring purposes to configure SNMP and the servers.

PowerEdge analytics helped to decrease production downtime.

The data points I’d draw attention to for potential customers depend on how much the customer is going to spend. If there is a certain budget, we would plan around their budget. In terms of analytics, most of the time, our monitoring service is able to collect the data metrics already, so having PowerEdge analytics is a complement to our existing monitoring system. While it's good to have, it depends of course on the customer's budget. If their budget is small, we will take away analytics to save costs.

PowerEdge helped to reduce our customer’s data processing time. In fact, they were getting a lot of data from here, from their data processing. We also partner with some Big Data Analytics which run data points. In terms of PowerEdge, it's running fine except for certain power failures from time to time. In terms of how much they’ve reduced the data processing producing power, I don't have the metrics to comment on.

PowerEdge systems management frameworks enable us to progress towards full automation when it comes to managing PowerEdge. We find it very useful in terms of automation, the setup, and configuration, as it does offer setup and proper checks. With the servers, we just need to set our black bar and then push down the setup and configurations box into PowerEdge and we run after that.

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.

I've used the solution for quite a long while. Likely, it's been more than 10 years.

We've had no issues with scaling so far. We have been using PowerEdge for years and we are able to scale well. For networking, we need to build the network to scale, and it hasn't been a problem.

Dell support is responsive. They dispatch an engineer on-site to help us within their SLA plan. They are very good so far.

That said, we would appreciate it if the engineer came down with the parts beforehand so they can resolve hardware issues on the spot.

Positive

We deployed many series of PowerEdge for many years. We also used other vendors, including HP and Cisco among others. I would say that in terms of reliability, they are a bit better than Dell in terms of power supplies. 

The deployment time depends on the size of the setup. So far, we haven't had any problems with the setup.

We engage with vendors to do the setup as unboxing PowerEdge and mounting them onto racks. This is especially true if we are talking about hundreds of servers.

Dell can actually do everything in their staging environment, in their warehouse, before shipping everything to customers. We've been quite satisfied with Dell's level of service so far.

The product meets our requirements. Cost-wise, certain configurations in PowerEdge maybe cost a bit extra. Especially the SSD drives.

The cost will increase if we go with the rack-and-stack approach.

We are partners with Dell.

We use the R series, namely R620, 630, then after that 720, 730, and with the XD series as well. We deploy them in data centers. Inside the data centers, there are systems as well as cloud systems; typically the deployment is hybrid.

We don’t use Dell's cloud view for predictive analytics.

I can’t speak to PowerEdge's accelerated tuning in terms of helping to support demanding workloads. We have not used GPU yet.

I'd advise new users to go ahead and assess PowerEdge. Of course, companies need to get their representative to send some metrics, especially the MTBF or certain components on Dell products. We realize that the power supply may be a weak link when running high loads constantly. In terms of other components, there are no issues. 

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use this solution for our virtual servers.

The maintenance for this solution could be improved. 

I have been using this solution for five years. 

This is a stable solution. 

It took one hour to set up this solution. We have 20 staff members using it. 

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

This solution is very easy to use. 

For every option, there is documentation with at least two lines of explanation.

You are provided with excellent instructions. 

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

We have been working with Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers for several years. 

It's a stable solution and we plan to continue using it.

Dell EMC PowerEdge is not very scalable. This is an area that can improve.

We have 389 users in our organization.

The critical issue is when you send them an email, you will not get a reply for two or three days.

They are happy to fix your issues but they are not very responsive.

We started when we had Windows 7 in 2012, and have now upgraded to Dell EMC.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

It took two days to complete the installation.

We have one person to maintain it.

We had help from an integrator during our implementation. We have been using these integrators for five years.

It's a one-time licensing fee for the device and we pay a quota per year for the support.

We deploy both on-premises and on the cloud, but at this time we are using on-premise only because we have to get additional access to the cloud.

This is a good product. I would recommend it for small to mid-size companies, but not for large companies who manage several computers. The response time for their support could be faster.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Compared to the older versions, and those from other vendors, like HPE servers and some other brands, this one has really saved us a lot of headaches when it comes to hardware replacements. It's something it seems that Dell has improved. You quickly log your support case and get support. The turnaround time is really fast.

Also, compared to the other vendors and generations, this one tends to be more user-friendly, so you spend less time trying to get where you want to go.

The server itself has the most stable updates. The patches and the updates will take you a long way before they release another one, so you aren't constantly doing more updates and upgrades. 

• Its ease of use. The GUI is accessible and everything is pretty much upfront. You don't get lost in navigating between the tabs.
• I also like a feature they call iDRAC. It's a feature that allows you remotely power on and off the server. 
• It's got a power plug.
• It's also almost a tool-less type of server, in the sense that when you want to open it up and change a few components inside, you can do so without a screwdriver or any aid of another tool.
• It also has a nice front panel, it looks nice in front.

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.

It's a very stable product. From a software and hardware perspective, it's actually a bit more stable compared to other versions and vendors. It's definitely quite resilient, we haven't had many failures, hardware or software failures.

It is quite scalable. The other versions come with a lot of allocation or provision for you to scale more, so it is a scalable solution.

We switched because of the kind of support we'd get from the vendor itself, a quick response time. That's a very critical issue; how swiftly can they resolve an issue. That is one of the major reasons for the switch. The other reason was the resiliency of the products, which is one of the benefits we enjoy with the current choice that we made.

The initial setup is quite easy. The Dell OpenManage interface is straightforward, Obviously you have to read through the documentation a bit before you set it up, but it is quite straightforward.

It took us, I would say, a day for each site, because we set it up at three different sites and they're each about 80 kilometers apart. Each site took a day because we had to rearrange our server room, how the cooling would be done, and the power and things like that. Obviously, there were other things contributing to the setup of the server, not the server itself.

Yes, we did also consider other options but we took this option over the other ones because of the response time, support, and we feel that these guys were a leap ahead in terms of the technology itself.

I would tell colleagues to go for it. It's a great product, and as long as they can just stay on the latest and greatest versions, they shouldn't have any issues.

I would give it an eight out of 10. And the chief reasons are its simplicity and ease of use. 

The two points I held back I wouldn't necessarily blame on the product, I would blame it on the area, the part of the world that we are in. I think it tends to take a bit long, like one to two weeks, to replace a spare part. Sometimes it can take long because of the customs issues. Really it has nothing to do with the product itself but with area that I'm in. So someone who's in Europe will likely get better service because they are closer to the manufacturing plants and they can get the equipment in, whereas where we're from, the shipment of that stuff would have to hop notable distances. So if they could have a hub that's more central and closer to where we are, then maybe it would be a perfect 10.  

We used this solution in HPCs and other workloads. It works well for some of our large customers. We plan to use this solution for artificial intelligence applications in the future. 

This solution allowed us to have all of our applications and data in one place with good agility. The solution's analytics helped to decrease production downtime by more than 60%. PowerEdge has also helped to reduce data processing and has reduced the timing for any workload.

Remote management has been one of the most valuable features. This is because it can be remotely accessed from any place.

The flexibility of card use could be improved.

I have used this solution for ten years. 

This is a stable solution. We have been using it for many years. New versions are sturdy and easy to deploy.

This is a very scalable solution. 

The support for this solution is good. 

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We only required one or two staff members for deployment and maintenance. 

This is a good solution that always provides a return on investment. 

This solution is very affordable. 

We evaluated IBM and a few other solutions. We use Dell for other solutions so we decided to stay with the same company.

This is a good and reliable product that can be used for all kinds of application loads.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We primarily use the solution for computing.

The solution has proven to be very stable over the years. It's quite reliable in terms of performance.

The product has always been very easy to use. 

The maintenance of the product is easy to do. It doesn't need too much.

The local service on offer from Dell is quite good. They are very helpful.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward.

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.

I've been using the solution for ten years or so. It's been a while.

The solution is quite stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. The performance has been very good.

We have 15 to 20 customers that use Dell.

We do plan to continue to use Dell and offer it to clients going forward.

The technical support isn't the best. They are slow to respond. It's a problem for us. We feel they could be a lot better at getting back to their customers when they have queries. We're not completely satisfied with the level of support provided.

It used to be better. We've really noticed a drop-off in service this year.

It is possible that Dell put their support service to a third-party company. I don't know. I assume this due to the fact that his year, we found that Dell's technical support team is not as professional as before. Perhaps they are trying to lower costs. If that's the case, they need to provide more training to the people who are handling support now.

As we work with other customers, sometimes they don't want to use Dell or already use something else.

We recommend Dell however, we also might choose or work with HPE, Lenovo, or even IBM.

The initial setup is very easy. It's not overly complex at all.

The deployment is also very quick and easy. It takes maybe 10 minutes to just install one rack mount server. Our engineers can actually take less than 10 minutes to install one server. We have eight engineers that handle deployment and maintenance.

We are implementors and therefore we can help clients with the installation process. We have engineers on hand to assist.

We're both users of the product, as well as integrators.

We've used many versions of the solution over the ten years we've used Dell. We may be on version 13 or 14 at this tie. I can't recall the exact version number.

We've been quite happy with the solution overall. From our point of view, Dell is the best choice for servers, even though we have worked with other brands and products. I'd rate the product at a nine out of ten.

We are a Dell partner, and we're kind of like a hybrid type of partner that sells new products and also maintains a large stock of inventory. We build servers, storage, and solutions for clients and data centers. In terms of a specific use case, we build a lot of VMware vSAN in this solution. 

Their management tools are the most valuable. Our customers like the flexibility of being able to scale up and out. It is very easy for them to scale and add additional nodes and servers to their storage solutions, such as the ATI solution.

It has very good quality and a great deployment model. Its warranty is also very good, and it is very stable. Their fixes have been quick if they have those.

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.

We've been selling these servers for 19 years.

These units are very robust. They're rock solid.

There is absolutely no problem with scalability. These machines are built to be able to scale up.

They've been dynamite. I would rate them a ten out of ten.

It has a great deployment model.

I would advise to just do your homework and make sure that you get the warranty and support levels that you're going to need. Understand what you will get and whether you need software support along with it. 

We do a cost analysis for our clients based upon the total cost of ownership. We do that for every deal. That's a very smart process to follow for any tech solution because some people think that if they just put a solution, it will solve all of their problems, which is not necessarily the case.

I would rate PowerEdge Rack Servers a ten out of ten. We love these servers. These are quality products, and I would personally purchase them for my own business.