Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Reviews

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.

On-premises

I use Dell R740 servers series as the main compute server to host IT workloads.

It's an excellent choice and it's integrated well with Dell-VMWare virtualization OS (ESXi).

Dell R series are very good engineered servers. Reliability and durability are the key to choose this product. This is a cornerstone to build a highly available IT system.

The reconstructive compatibility with VMware ESXi is the most valuable.

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. 

I have been using this solution for four years.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. We can scale it by adding nodes, but some software and licenses are required for that. We have around 60 users using it on a daily basis

I never contacted them. We are usually able to resolve any issues within the company.

Yes, I installed and administered HP Proliant servers. It was a good product in my experience.

I switched because we got a competitive price.

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have three team members for its deployment and regular maintenance.

It's easy to install and configure with suitable server administrator.

iDrac management solution is included with the server. It provides suitable zero-cost solution for monitoring and managing your hardware.

Yes we evaluate all possible alternatives like:

HP and Lenovo

I would recommend this solution for rack servers. It is perfect.

I would rate Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers an nine out of ten.

On-premises

One valuable feature is the scalability to deploy thousands of desktops. 

Ideal for database applications, large virtual infrastructures and other data intensive workloads.

Dell PowerEdge R920 4U Rack Server

Here are more specs when considering scalability:

The R920 12G Server is a four socket, 4U rack server that offers increased performance and expandability, boasting a 100% increase in IOPS performance (Input/Output Operations Per Second) over the previous-generation PowerEdge servers. Enhanced storage and compute density enables the R920 to run intensive mission critical applications for any midsized to large enterprise environment effortlessly.

The PowerEdge 12G family of servers introduces the new Intel Xeon E7-2800, 4800, and 8800 v2 family of processors to the 4U form factor. Delivering more cores, additional cache, and better power efficiency over the previous generation of Xeon Sandy Bridge processors.

The system supports up to two E7-2800 V2 processors, or for more performance choose up to (4) E7-4800 or (4) 8800 V2 series, 15 core processors, for a total of 120 threads with Intel’s QuickPath Interconnect clock rates of up to 8GT/s (Giga Transfers per second).

The Intel C602J chipset supports DDR3 memory, providing faster speeds, higher compute density, and lower power consumption than the previous generation.

When used with a 4 CPU configuration, a maximum of 96 DDR3 DIMMs can support an impressive 6TBs of LRDIMMs of 64GB modules.

Depending on the processor, the R920 can achieve memory speeds of up to 1600MT/s (Mega Transfers per second).

A choice of storage configurations supports up to 24 2.5 inch SFF drives allowing you to choose between SATA, SSD, or SAS drive options to best suit your needs. For maximum performance, the R920 can be configured to support 8 PowerEdge Express Flash PCIe SSD’s, optimizing input/output operations per second (IOPS), reducing mechanical latency and leveraging enterprise class reliability in NAND SSD’s, which offer a significant increase in performance and durability over standard hard drives.

The PERC H730P storage controller offers 12Gb/s on a PCIe 3 interface and supports RAID configurations 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, 6, 60 with 2GB non-volatile flash backed write cache.

For external storage, the optional PERC H810 6Gb/s adapter provides 1GB non-volatile write cache and supports RAID modes of 0, 1, 10, 5, 50, 6, and 60.

And, depending on the chassis configuration, the front of the PowerEdge R920 allows access to the power ON button, Non-Maskable Interrupt and system ID buttons, an LCD information panel, 2 USB 2.0 ports, optical drive, VGA connection, and an iDRAC vFlash SD card slot, which requires an iDRAC enterprise license.

The back of the server provides access to redundant power supplies, 2 USB 2.0 connections, VGA port, dedicated iDRAC Enterprise connection, serial port, a choice of quad port LAN or dual port LAN with dual 10Gbe port, and PCIe slots.

Choose between the platinum or titanium rated 750W power supply or the platinum rated 1100W power supply. Up to 4 hot plug redundant PSU’s can be configured with the system.

The R920 comes with 8 PCIe 3.0 slots standard and two more can be added so there’s plenty of room for expansion.

CPU 1

Slot 1: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x24 connector), baseboard

Slot 2: NDC riser slot (Network Daughter Card)

Slot 3: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x16 connector), baseboard

(optional riser)

Slot 1/1: full-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x4 (x8 connector), left riser

Slot 2/2: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x4 (x8 connector), left riser

Slot 4: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 5: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

4 CPU systems

Slot 6: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 7: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 8: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 connector), baseboard

Slot 9: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x16 (x24 connector), baseboard

(optional riser)

Slot 1/9: full-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x16 connector), right riser

Slot 2/10: half-length, full-height, PCIe 3.0 x8 (x16 connector), right riser

Various PCie cards can be installed including additional NIC’s, Infiniband cards, and Fusion IO drives.

Dell’s iDRAC 7 Express Level Management Technology comes standard offering remote management and monitoring without the need to install additional software. Upgrading to Enterprise allows you to maintain complete server control and access your server from any remote location using a browser, in addition to enabling the dedicated management port and vFlash SD slot.

The R920 can weigh up to 130 lbs. and is 6.8” tall…….18.99” wide…..and 29.65” deep (31.59” with PSU and bezel).

Supported operating systems include Microsoft Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux

Enterprise Server, Oracle Solaris, VMware, and Citrix XenServer.

A brief upbeat and informative video overview of the Dell R920 4U rack server:

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.

Hybrid Cloud

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. 

Private Cloud

Other

We are using Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers for building management, attendance, and HR applications.

The solution is easy to use and has good performance.

I have been using this solution for approximately five years.

The solution is stable.

The scalability could improve. If you want more scalability and high availability, you will have to change to a solution similar to VxRail.

We have three administrators that use the solution.

We have been satisfied with the paid level of support we currently are on. There are different levels of support that can be purchased. We are on the 8:00 am to 5:00 pm next business day support. If we want to improve the support we can pay more.

The installation is easy and takes approximately one hour. The servers are okay for stand-alone deployments. 

I did the implementation myself.

We have evaluated VxRail.

We are discontinuing the use of this solution and moving to VxRail.

I rate Dell EMC PowerEdge Rack Servers an eight out of ten.

On-premises

We primarily use the solution for a variety of use cases. These include holding technologies such as VMware, databases, web application servers, and copies, in some cases. 

The Dell EMC PowerEdge offers best performance per price

Their support is very good and very effective. 

The price of the system is very fair. 

The design of the hardware is very good - especially the management system. 

Overall, PowerEdge is a very good system. 

The performance has been excellent so far.

The initial setup is very easy to manage.

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

I've been using the solution for six years or so. It's been a while at this point. I've definitely worked with the solution over the last 12 months as well.

The solution is stable. the performance is good and very reliable. We haven't had any issues so far. 

The scalability is good. The system has many options for scalability. If a company needs to expand, it can do so with relative ease.

In our case, our clients are mostly small to medium in size.

Technical support has been very helpful and responsive. They are knowledgeable. We're quite satisfied with their level of support. They are a good service and very supportive.

The initial setup is not overly complex or difficult. We found it to be easy. It's straightforward. A company should have no trouble whatsoever.

The deployment only took a few short hours. It's pretty quick.

I cannot recall the amount of staff it requires for deployment and maintenance. It's my understanding that only one engineer is required.

We are an integrator. We can implement the solution for our clients as required. In a year, we may implement four or five projects.

The solution offers very good, very fair pricing. It's reasonable. It's not overly expensive.

I do not have any knowledge of our clients evaluating other options before choosing this product.

We are Dell partners. We work with various versions of the solution. These include the 14 Generation, 13 Generation, and 11 Generation. We aren't currently in the process of buying a new server.

I'd recommend the solution. I'd rate it at a perfect ten out of ten. It's been very good for us. We haven't had issues. 

On-premises

Our primary use case of this solution is for the virtual machines for our PBX which is installed on it. We are customers of Dell EMC and I'm the telecommunication department head. 

I've never had any down time with this solution and it's very user friendly.

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

I've been using this solution for three years. 

We haven't needed to contact technical support but we use PBX support for our servers. We're waiting to receive another four servers that we'd like to deploy. 

The initial setup was straightforward, we had consultants do this for us with a 3-person technical team and it took one day. We currently have over 100 users. 

When we were looking for a solution we also evaluated HPE ProLiant.  

I rate this solution an eight out of 10. 

On-premises