Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers Reviews

We have a 1U and a 2U PowerEdge Server. We're using them to scale storage devices. They provide a platform for our software that involves managing multiple, high-speed disks. We're using them to connect Mellanox and Intel NICs, which are very fast network interfaces.

For us, the most valuable feature is the iDRAC. It helps us to solve problems when a server is stuck or hung or we don't have any network access. 

It's also easy to deploy new firmware or a new update to the servers remotely. 

We're also able to manage multiple servers in one place. 

Also, the way the hardware is architected, you can replace parts in no time. It's very quick and easy to replace a fan, disk, CPU, or insert a new card into the server.

I would like to see more information about server health and the server's state, on the front. HP has a little screen that shows server utilization, how many disks there are inside, and the power consumption. HP also shows an alert if there is a malfunction of any device inside. Those kinds of features would be useful for Dell customers.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel for about seven years.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel are very stable.

The scalability is a bit of a downside because of our technology. In our environment, the scalability comes from the network and not from adding another server. We are adding a lot of NVMe devices and when we reach capacity we need to add another server. This is what determines the scalability.

Dell provides very good support. It's very fast and they answer in a professional manner. That's what I need.

I would rate their support at nine out of 10. It's not a 10 because they have to improve by answering even faster. They also need to give local distributors more permission or to provide hardware parts faster. If you have a malfunction with the device, you usually have to send it abroad, and they investigate it and then bring it back. That takes a long time.

Positive

We are currently using Lenovo, AIC, Tyan, and Quanta servers in addition to the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel, because we need some OEM equipment to reduce the cost. PowerEdge has a high price tag. The price is a critical factor in our company. We don't have a lot of budget for acquiring servers and that is why we look at other vendors.

But the flexibility of the PowerEdge servers and the approach to resolving problems really quickly make it more convenient to work with. I like working with PowerEdge. Solving a problem on a PowerEdge will take, say, a few minutes, while with the other vendors it will take 10 to 20 minutes to investigate and debug the problem.

We are using both Intel and AMD technology with our Dell servers. We are comparing the performance of both. While there are some issues and challenges on the Intel side in some areas, the overall impression of the Intel technology is that it is working well. I expect we are going to use it for the next few years.

The Dell platform works very well. We are very happy with it. If price isn't a concern, I would recommend Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

We primarily used the solution for the servers. It's a node among many in a multiprocessor, supercomputer environment. It's a very verified application. The customer uses a lesser file system, which means that one file system is shared among the entire installation. You're not going to see that very often in your career unless you're in that business. It's a multi-node, high-performance computing file system. It's Linux based.

It fit the requirements of the client, that's really all that it was for us. It could deliver the IOPS and the local storage that was required. It could have been anybody else, Lenovo, IBM, HP, etc. We were Dell's number one reseller in Canada and probably worldwide. We got very favorable terms and that also helped with the decision.

The only way you could improve it is, for the purpose of HPC installations, is IOPS and the only way to improve it is to get a more powerful machine to deliver more IOPS. Basically, you need more CPUs and you need more RAM and you need a faster backbone. We were running on 100 gigabits Infiniband.

Until they get new technology and density, it would be nice to see four nodes in a one-year package instead of a three-year package.

I'm recently retired, however, I did work with the solution on one of my last projects which lasted a few months.

The solution delivers what it promises. You look at the specs and it delivers them. If it doesn't deliver you move onto another model.

There's really nothing special about it, and Dell doesn't make servers that are any better than anybody else's. The prime reason we chose it is that it delivers what it promises to deliver in terms of IOPS and the price right for us because when you're a platinum level reseller for a server company, they will give you very favorable terms especially in this time of a pandemic, hardware sales are down across the board for the entire industry.

It's very scalable. That's the whole idea. When you want to add more computation power to the platform you just throw in another act of compute nodes and storage.

I've never used technical support. Out-of-the-box it works, and if it doesn't, then the client deals with it directly. The equipment is sold to them so they own the serial numbers and they own the service contracts, so if anything went wrong during the installation the client would take care of them, not us.

We've worked with HP, Cisco, Lenovo, and IBM in the past. We always choose the solution that makes the most sense for our clients.

We handed over the complete installation in September. We started in August. It takes time. You're coming into an empty room. You have to have power, you need the AC for the equipment there that has to be moved out. It takes time. The racks were pre-populated in Toronto and shipped to Montreal, and then in Montreal, they were set up and powered. We had liquid cooling and radiators on the rear of the cabinet for the heat.

We've done many of these installations, and it's pretty routine. There's nothing complex about it. The complexity is mostly that there are so many key parts in terms of getting it delivered on-site. There are so many parts from so many different vendors and there are penalties if you don't deliver on time. Nobody wants to pay penalties.

I didn't deal with the pricing, and therefore don't know the exact costs. 

However, they would compete with pricing on the market. Even if HP made an equivalent platform, and they do, we wouldn't get good terms. They're all pretty well in the ballpark range in cost and the variation. The list price might be 10%. They know what the competition is doing so they don't want to price themselves, the values, off the list of potential. If I'm looking at servers that deliver so much IOPS and they price themselves out, HP knows what Dell is doing and Dell knows what HP is doing.

My company partners with Dell.

I'm recently retired, however, I did most of the infrastructure, backup storage, and high-performance computing. I was in pre-sales. I was a solution architect. Therefore, I'm not an end-user.

We only used Dell for the servers. We used Seagate for storage. They have hard drives. They've been in the hard drive business for 40 years.

My biggest piece of advice for those considering the solution is to make sure they are delivered on time. When clients are spending $50 million for an installation and you say it's going to be ready September 15th, it better be ready September 15th. One of the main reasons stuff's not ready is because parts are missing. That means you can't deliver a complete solution. If you're missing a box of spare hard drives, they're just spares, they're not preventing the installation, however, they're missing, and therefore you haven't delivered the product.

Overall, I'd rate the product ten out of ten.

We use Dell PowerEdge for virtualization purposes, particularly with VMware.

The new hardware, including Dell PowerEdge, has contributed to reducing unplanned production downtime.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are incredibly valuable because they are both user-friendly and powerful for managing hardware.

I am generally very satisfied with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. However, there is room for improvement in technical support.

I have been working with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for five years.

We have not had any issues with the stability of the servers.

The servers are scalable, especially in terms of adding extra disks. It is a straightforward process; if you need more storage space, you can easily scale up by adding additional disks to meet your requirements.

Tech support is generally good, but there can be challenges, especially when dealing with support from India. Language differences can sometimes make communication difficult, but having a proficient English speaker or a good interpreter usually helps resolve issues effectively.

My company used a mix of Dell and HP hardware before, but now we exclusively use Dell. I find Dell's servers more powerful and user-friendly for remote management.

Deployment was relatively straightforward for us. The most labor-intensive part was the physical setup in the data center, handled by the data center team. After that, the installation of AHI was a breeze, making the overall process quite manageable.

Overall, I would rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers as a nine out of ten.

I use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers in my company, mostly for virtualization and also for some applications running directly on physical machines.

The solution's lifecycle management with iDRAC works really well, and it is a valuable feature because it helps with maintenance and keeping track of what we have in our company.

The product offers a bit of a larger landscape to manage the entire environment. There is a feature that allows you to see the power distribution the rack servers in your environment use. 

The product has some other features that were really beneficial for my company and made it easier for us to work with the systems, as it became easier to expand and fix them online.

We wanted to have two storage cards during the onboarding process of the solution, which were available only on the more expensive version of the boxes that we usually use for work in our company. It would have been easier for my company to deal with the product if the two storage cards provided during the solution's onboarding process of the expensive versions of the solution were available for the slightly simpler versions of the tool.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for six years.

In our company, we have had some really good results with the product's hardware, but we also had a couple of sets of hardware be bought that had a lot of memory errors, so we needed to have a lot of DIMM hardware replaced. In my company, we had really stable sets of hardware and not-so-stable ones as well.

The range of systems under Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is large enough to have both small enough systems and large enough systems, so the product's scalability is fine.

It is not me but mostly my colleagues who have contacted the solution's technical support. From what I know, I can say that the solution's technical support works really well, so it's okay. In our company, we can schedule a replacement part very quickly with the help of the solution's technical support. 

I rate the technical support a nine out of ten.

Positive

In my company, we had experienced too many hardware failures with our previous solution supplier, HPE.

My company's tools for deployment had to be modified to take care of the product's deployment phase. The product's deployment phase was not super complicated, but it did take my company a couple of weeks to build it up and to make it work, which was not too bad. The aforementioned process would have been the same for every other company as well, so it was okay, in my opinion, since it was not worse than the processes of some other tools.

I don't know about the product's licensing part. Price-wise, it is an okay product. I believe that the cheaper the better, but I think that the product's price is okay.

As a part of my company's evaluation process, we considered Supermicro against Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers. Compared to Supermicro, Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are a bit cheaper, but the product's con stems from the fact that we had to do too many things in our company to make it work. The amount of effort to maintain all of it and to build or maintain it all was too much. Though the product was a little bit more expensive than Supermicro, its management features were way more extensive, which made a difference for us in our company.

In my company, we were trying to resolve some particular issues through the implementation of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, as we had experienced too many hardware failures with our previous solution supplier, HPE.

PowerEdge Cyber Resilient Architecture's approach to security, including the silicon-based root of trust, signed firmware updates, and user access security, works well, but my company doesn't have many sales-related areas to report.

The assessment of Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for energy consumption in my company is not much of a big deal for us. In our company, we saw that the energy consumption of the product depends on which role of the machines it is concerned with, especially when it came to the more mission-critical servers which we used to use in high-performance mode, causing them to use more power because it helped make our company quicker which in turn helped with the generation of higher revenue for us. Power consumption was not much of an issue like a couple of years ago, meaning it has changed a bit. Our company has B Corp certification, causing us to look towards areas like the product's energy consumption since it is much more important now than it used to be in the past.

In terms of the concept of power or energy consumption of the product, I can say that it fits and helps meet my company's requirements because of the different power profiles we can deploy.

In my company, we don't use OpenManage Enterprise.

The overall flexibility of our organization's operations with the use of PowerEdge Rack Servers has been okay, as we usually use virtualization software on top of the product, giving us big-sized machines.

There are a lot of options that one can opt for when using the solution. I like how my company talks with people inside Dell to help us with what we need or figure out how to do something. If you look at the product from a broader perspective, it works really well as a large package.

I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We are local governments, and we use the solution for computing power and view. We use the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for our ESX cluster, SQL servers, domain controllers, virtual center servers, and backup environment.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are easy to manage and install, and it gives us a lot of time to do other things. We hang it in a rack, install software on it, and it is automatically deployed for the environment.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers could improve the bezels in front of it. Because they always change the bezels, it's strange when you come with the customer into your cell room and see ten different bezels hanging.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for 25 to 30 years.

Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is a pretty stable solution. When there's something wrong with the hardware or hard drives, it can be changed in a running system.

The solution's technical support is good. I call the technical support team when I have a question or problem, and it's always fixed within 30 to 60 minutes. The technical support team resolves our issues on the phone, or the next day, an engineer would come with spare parts to fix the issue.

I rate the solution’s technical support eight and a half out of ten.

Positive

We previously used HPE Compaq Server.

After surveying what was better for us, we came to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers and stayed with it because it was good. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers' price is better than HPE Compaq Server, and it's easy to rack mount. You don't need equipment to hang it on a rack. With other equipment, you need a screwdriver and a bolt. Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers are easy to hang and get out of the systems.

The solution's initial setup is a bit complex because we have a fiber environment and a network environment, which we always have to configure. The fiber environment takes a lot of time. The network environment takes some time, wherein you install the OS and deploy your configuration file on it. The implementation is pretty fast and takes five to ten minutes. Then, you do all the configuring around it because you want to connect it to your power store.

In our environment, it takes between 30 and 60 minutes to get the solution out of the box into a running system.

The solution's power consumption has improved a lot. We always have two power supplies on it. When there's a power outage, and one doesn't work, we have the other spare one. The power consumption is always balanced over two. So, power consumption has gone from high to medium and is even lower now. We are not using the spinning disk anymore.

The solution's ability to handle the evolving needs of high-performance workloads is good. We have a couple of power racks exclusively used for SQL storage. Since the SQL databases are running on them, they need performance, and they perform perfectly.

The solution has helped reduce our unplanned production downtime, but that is because we are also using VMware. So, you can do downtime during the daytime and plan it. Our hardware doesn't power off once a year.

We check every month for OpenManage updates. We check the OpenManage appliance, get a catalog, look at it to see if there is new hardware or firmware, and always deploy them every month. So we are always on top of the new updates.

Overall, I rate Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers a nine out of ten.

Our main uses for PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel are virtualization, file servers, and Active Directory, which our entire infrastructure sits on.

I have five Dell PowerEdge servers now. About 40,000 users are using these servers. About 70 to 80 people use the file server.

Support for virtualization is very important to us. It provides redundancy when booting from storage, where the servers are loaded from a separate storage. It provides full server support.

The use of OpenManage Console reduces the time it takes to manage PowerEdge Rack Servers in terms of updates and maintenance.

Unfortunately, PowerEdge Rack Servers do not support NVMe storage.

OpenManage Console is slightly confusing, especially after upgrade releases. There isn't a manual for what to do with lifecycle management and in what sequence. I have to rely on user forums instead of Dell in these cases.

This is my third purchase. I bought my first three PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel two years ago.

The primary reason that we chose PowerEdge - they are stable and don’t crash.

I keep my firmware, BIOS, and drivers up-to-date. Regarding security, we have not had any incidents.

The two Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers that I am using solve my needs completely in terms of redundancy and scalability.

I used Dell support a couple of times, and it was okay.

I would rate Dell’s support as eight out of 10. When resolving an issue, they transferred me to multiple support techs. This is because when you reach global support, your request is processed by the operator. Then, there are a few other steps. Usually, I am asked primitive questions before being transferred to Tier 2 or 3, who take a couple of days to get back to me.

Positive

One of the reasons that we choose to use Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers is because we never had a problem with the previous ones. Whereas, we have had servers and blades from Lenovo with a lot of problems. There were constant motherboard failures.

In addition to Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers, we also have Dell's storage. Since there have been no problems with them, except for routine battery changes, we continue to use Dell’s reliable hardware. 

It was straightforward with the help of the Dell wizard. I just needed to connect it to VMware. Obviously, someone has to study when preparing to deploy and configure PowerEdge Rack Servers. In my case, deployment and configuration of two PowerEdge Rack Servers with VMware, cloud, and integration with our storage took about three days.

My strategy was to launch these servers as quickly as possible. First, we made sure that there was communication. Then, we installed clients in VMware. After that, we started installing the PowerEdge Rack Servers.

As an educational institution, we have certain budget restraints. So, we work around our budget and what hardware we can get from it.

We considered Lenovo and HPE, but chose Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers because of their reliability.

Choose stable servers when considering fast servers, because even though they might work fast, they might not last. We have been happy with Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers.

I would absolutely rate PowerEdge Rack Servers as 10 out of 10.

We use PowerEdge Rack Servers for quantitative analytics, data simulations, and machine learning.

The hardware makes it a good solution.

PowerEdge Rack Servers are very good for handling the evolving needs of high-performance workloads.

Its tuning and performance are good.

The specs for the benchmarks are very good, but the firmware and software are lacking. There are some issues with the Linux kernel and the long-term support (LTS) for some of the firmware's dependencies. It is causing the kernel to dump. The support for the Linux brands isn't optimal. We would like them to optimize the kernel drivers for benchmarks.

There are some issues that need to be solved with our model in regards to UEFI and firmware. 

I have been using it for about 10 years.

There haven't been any issues with downtime.

Dell's open source support is very good. There are a lot of issues that they need to handle though, like the firmware and UEFI.

We previously used IBM and Lenovo.

It is a cluster, so you just plug and play.

Lenovo is very good with updates.

We use AMD Opteron instead of Intel Xeon.

We chose Dell because of its open source. Our community likes Dell because of its open source delivery.

We use GCP Spot and AWS Graviton as our failover solutions.

I would rate this solution as eight out of 10.

We install a lot of VMware and vSAN on the Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel.

All the customers that I have implemented PowerEdge for are very happy and like the performance. I think PowerEdge has improved the entire system where I have implemented it. 

Intel's Xeon scalable processors used in PowerEdge Rack Servers have helped to improve the performance of the targeted workloads by about 20 percent, according to feedback from our customers.

• I love the updates from the iDRAC, they are very nice. 
• The installation is easy.
• Replacement, if something fails, is so easy and so good.

PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel are also good at handling high-performance workloads. It depends on the CPU, of course, and the type of server, but the performance is great.

In addition, all the security features work great. That is a very important part.

Dell's OpenManage console is user-friendly. You can connect to everything from Dell. It's simple. In the companies where I have implemented it, I have shown the IT staff how to use it and they are happy with it. I don't know if they use it every day, but during the implementation, it seems like it's good for them.

I don't really know where PowerEdge could be improved. I really like these servers. Even VxRail works great with them. Maybe they could change the logo to something more beautiful.

I have been using Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers for about five years.

PowerEdge is very stable. 

There are issues, of course, but not major issues. On a scale of one to 10, the stability is a nine.

The scalability of all brands is great, and that includes Dell PowerEdge Rack Servers powered by Intel.

I like Dell's tech support very much. Not just for PowerEdge Rack servers but for all of Dell's products, if I have issues, the online support answers and gives solutions very quickly.

Positive

It normally takes one day to integrate PowerEdge.