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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Dell PowerEdge

    Score7.6 out of 10
    N/ADell's PowerEdge R is a line of rack servers, offering a range of options from cost-efficient one-socket servers to four-socket servers designed to support intensive and critical data center workloads.N/A

    VMware ESXi

    Score7.4 out of 10
    N/AA bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.N/A
    Pricing
    Dell PowerEdgeVMware ESXi
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Dell PowerEdgeVMware ESXi
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Dell PowerEdgeVMware ESXi
    Considered Both Products
    Dell Technologies
    Chose Dell PowerEdge
    Better Management, Better ROI, Better Supply Chain System ensures timely delivery even in recent times where Supply Chain has become a big issue. Also ensuring timely project completion leading to chain effect like customer able to utilize their budget within timelines and we …
    Incentivized
    VMware by Broadcom
    Chose VMware ESXi
    While all of the above hypervisors have their pros and cons, ESXi has the advantages of being free, well supported by the community, easy to setup, easy to use, and good hardware support.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    21 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    93 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    18 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    86 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    21 Answers
    99%
    Happy with the feature set
    94 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    17 Answers
    99%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    95%
    Implementation went as expected
    20 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    91 Answers
    Features
    Dell PowerEdgeVMware ESXi
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Dell PowerEdge and VMware ESXi
    Feature
    Dell PowerEdge
    -
    Ratings
    VMware ESXi
    8.2
    128 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning00 Ratings8.0116 Ratings
    Management console00 Ratings9.0128 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup00 Ratings8.0112 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration00 Ratings8.0116 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security00 Ratings8.0117 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Dell PowerEdgeVMware ESXi
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    HPE ProLiant DL
    Score8.8 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM Power
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Dell PowerEdgeVMware ESXi
    Likelihood to Recommend
    10.0
    (23 ratings)
    9.0
    (129 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (16 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (16 ratings)
    10.0
    (55 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.1
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Dell PowerEdgeVMware ESXi
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Dell Technologies
    An excellent warranty and excellent technical assistance can be expected from the PowerEdge C Series, which comes from a well-known brand with a long track record in the market. Scalability, physical space optimization and performance and dependability for handling sensitive and vital data like databases and ERP systems that are fairly sophisticated are just some of the benefits we get from Dell gear, which saves us resources and energy by up to 40%.
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Dell Technologies
    • 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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
    • Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
    • VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Dell Technologies
    • The value of 24x7 support is expensive, the value of 8x5NBD is more attractive.
    • The other superior models of the C series are more expensive.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
    • VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
    • I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Dell Technologies
    It is the best server in the market.
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Dell Technologies
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Dell Technologies
    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.
    Incentivized
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    VMware by Broadcom
    I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Dell Technologies
    Installation was easy.
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Dell Technologies
    Against hp servers, Dell has outperformed them in terms of incidents regarding hardware memory parts. With the Dell PowerEdge R series servers we have not had any incidents regarding memory modules. On the other hand, with HP servers, we encountered a lot of failures regarding memory modules during the first year of implementation.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Dell Technologies
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Dell Technologies
    • 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.
    Incentivized
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    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
    • VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
    • As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
    Incentivized
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