Likelihood to Recommend We chose Dell PowerEdge R series because we need to consolidate a lot of physical load into a smaller number of nodes. Their hardware configuration, specifically for vSAN helps us achieve a high-density load in a very low number of physical servers. On top of that, they have lots of expansion ports, so we can increase our load internally on each other with simple upgrades.
Read full review I believe all businesses would benefit from Lenovo's series of products - as they can be custom-built to meet your needs. We have been utilizing Lenovo servers for the past seven or eight years now, and have had get success with their hardware builds. We had one issue with a bad SD card that was in a RAID0 - they replaced both SD cards free of charge, and I had them the next business day (this, obviously, is contingent on the level of warranty protection that you purchase with your hardware - but support was fantastic to work with!)
Read full review Pros Good price - Compared to other vendors’ server platforms. In our scenario (virtualization) we found out PowerEdge offers the best price/vCPU and RAM ratio. Customizable - We were able to select optimal memory/disk capacity for our use case. Other platform's minimum requirements were above our needs, hence needlessly expensive. Good warranty and service - Our project did not involve creating a big cluster with a lot of spare capacity, so the next business day warranty came handy. Read full review Affordability Flexibility with custom builds SATA/SSD/M2/SD support for front-end caching or for an entire storage solution Allow x2 SD cards to be installed in a RAID0 setup, so that the host can run ESXi without any internal hard drives whatsoever. Also came with an internal battery for the RAID controller. Lenovo Support is very quick to respond to issues - either by phone or by email. Read full review Cons Getting DSAT report remotely does becomes a challenge sometimes Server rebooting becomes an issue, it does not starts up easily Server heats up sometimes a lot, emitting lot of noice Read full review A video tutorial on upgrading built-in firmware on their systems would be fantastic. As it was a bit difficult to navigate to find the download, and also the install process the last time I did so. The remote BIOS utility through the XClarity controller is difficult to reset a password on - if it's forgotten. I have yet to find a way to reset it on a host that has a password not working. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It is the best server in the market.
Read full review Usability The Dell PowerEdge R range is just intuitive when you have skills engineers managing them in-house, although even with new members of staff on the team, the learning curve is very low providing they have previous general service hardware management experience. From the specification through to the management of this range, the usability is excellent.
Read full review Support Rating We consider Dell's support to be best-in-class compared to other solutions and is also reasonably priced. Their SLA targets have almost always been met, except for minor occasions that have had extenuating circumstances. The service staff is also professional and thorough. Overall, we are very satisfied with the level of support we receive.
Read full review Implementation Rating Installation was easy.
Read full review Alternatives Considered PowerEdge R servers was selected by CIO. I think the servers have lots of benefits for our company and are well placed on our projects. In most business cases they are working good and our management have a clear vision to upgrade them to the same brand with better specs. Hope to see this upgrade in close future.
Read full review The initial selection of Lenovo for servers was provided to us as a recommendation from a reseller. I was skeptical, initially, as I am not a fan of Lenovo's consumer-grade laptops. I was very intrigued by the price of these devices though, so we purchased two for a location to see how they worked. The recommendation panned-out, and all of our needs were met (and exceeded) by this new line of products brought to our attention. I'm sure there are countless other stories like mine with dozens of other manufacturers - but we are more than pleased with our fleet of Thinksystem servers at our district
Read full review Return on Investment From the perspective of physical server consolidations, when servers spread across multiple branch and remote offices are gathered into a central data center, this simplification process provides ROI in several ways. One, the configuration control, restriction of server access. Reduce complexity and enable greater standardization of hardware purchases, which lowers costs. Increased security of the move are important. The costs of moves, add-ins, and changes are reduced, as well as the costs of travel time and maintenance. Migrating legacy operating systems to a newer version via rehosting brings similar ROI benefits when it comes to server consolidation. Read full review Our uptime has increased from our old HP ProLiant servers from 8+ years ago. These servers are also cheaper than previous models we have deployed in the past XClarity controller allows for remote BIOS functionality - which we hadn't been able to utilize, previously. Read full review ScreenShots