VxRail Reviews

Our whole company uses it. We have VxRail in our solution center, which designs software and hardware solutions for our customers' new opportunities. For example, recently, we were asked to develop a Kubernetes environment that the customer wanted to use and researched several different organizations, such as Red Hat's OpenShift.

We wanted to test capabilities on Tanzu, and VxRail was a great home for that, so we brought all the software into the VxRail and showed the inner workings of the data flows for this new capability to the customer. In the end, they didn't necessarily need a VxRail, but that's the beauty of it. It's a vanilla platform to reside modernized software on.

The VxRail is built on two specific platforms that have been in the industry for the last 15 to 20 years: the 1-U socket and the 2-U socket platforms from Dell. They're in their sixteenth generation of those platforms, I believe, so they're very stable. 

VxRail is in its third generation, I think, and I know there are consistent updates to that material on nearly a monthly basis. Most of my customers are federally focused, which means some of this material comes into an environment where few people will have access to that environment.

I would like to see Dell take a crack at simplifying the process of moving from a node to a cluster and assembling everything into the appliance. It would be great if Dell could provide a pathway where a customer could actually install it without the certifications. Of course, I can't say how you would dumb down something so complex. That's a challenge, but it would be valuable.

It would also be helpful if they added some warnings to prevent users from making mistakes when upgrading stuff with VMware, like a notification that says, "Hey, this upgrade should be done through the VxRail manager." Those could steer customers off the path of decoupling that cluster or pulling a node offline when it doesn't need to be.

These things have room to grow in the industry. As more organizations look to develop what they currently have, Dell could provide a pathway to taking integrating the older hardware with the new hardware. I think that would be valuable, too. There are a couple of things that I'd also like to see them improve upon. One could be to actually deliver a cluster to the customer from their manufacturing facility that is already put together. That might be a good opportunity for them.

The VxRail platform is stable. Anytime you're dealing with technologies, you'll find a bug somewhere. There's always a challenge that must be overcome, but once the initial cluster has been stood up, we find it's one of the most stable platforms today.

If you want to scale VxRail, you buy another node and add it to the cluster. That process is straightforward. It will re-image the new node, give it the same firmware, and provide the same orchestration as the rest of the node. Scalability is probably one of the biggest reasons people choose VxRail.

I've contacted Dell tech support on many occasions for VxRail. I always put in a case with Dell on all the service tags of the nodes before taking on any support mechanism. I recommend starting that process early. One of the main reasons we put in a case is to do some maintenance or make some changes.

We always consult with Dell on best practices initially. It helps to provide them with as much information as possible about the health and wellness of that initial cluster. It generally depends on the service agreement you get from Dell, but we'll get a response in five or 10 minutes after putting in that initial case.

I've never had problems with Dell support, but I always recommend pro support from my customers and organization. Depending on the size of your organization and how much Dell hardware you have, they'll assign a technical account manager to your team or to the Dell team, so you always have a consistent point of contact if things don't go as planned. That's helpful if you have a technical account manager assigned to your organization.

VxRail is a hyper-converged system that's automated and consists of nodes. Those nodes are one or two U-servers depending on the requirement. Bringing the VMware automation and lifecycle management platform together is difficult, so we recommend having a certification to do that assemblage. 

It assembles these servers into nodes in an appliance. Once the appliance is set up, it's simple to manage the solution and the box. However, assembly and automation are complex. You want to make sure that the firmware is all the same between the nodes.

We've seen situations where we had a five-node cluster, and one firmware was not mapped to the others. We recommend working with Dell on those challenges, but our architects are also really well versed in those nuances. And if you want to deep dive into a technical requirement, I have several that have done that for a living.

I rate VxRail eight out of 10. I would say it is the go-to solution for hyper-converged infrastructure. 

The scripts that bring all of those servers into a node and cluster situation are proprietary to Dell. Anytime you're using that proprietary stuff, you need to be trained on it. Let's say, for example, you are in one of those systems, and you're working with some software that may not be acting like it should. Or it may have a feature that you want in a new generation. In some cases, there may be some dependencies on vCenter, vSAN, or Vsphere, which are all part of that integration.

One might be tempted to start to upgrade it outside of the lifecycle management that's inherent to the VMware platform. I've seen architects go ahead and update it right from the VMware console when they should be using the VxRail manager. Knowing how to do those upgrades is very important to getting the clusters to see the proper nodes together.

We have some virtual machines for the active directory, some virtual machines for security like firewalls, and some for other security. We have some other solutions here that are on virtual machines, such as our web page. Its applications and some functions are on virtual machines, too. 

Some solutions are internal solutions and I think they are going to setup a SaaS solution here in our cluster. We have about three more clusters here and it's around 20 terabytes.

The integration with VMware is great. I like it so much because it is so much cleaner and the VMware modeling with the VxRail Manager is very nice. The solution is very good. It is easier. We haven't had any issues with it.

We have three nodes and we had an issue with one of the nodes once and the response time from their support was very nice. When they fixed the part that was bad in the cluster, it began functioning again very nicely and very quickly. It was a great solution. We didn't have any outage or crash due to this failure.

It has a tool called RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, and I liked it so much because it allows for business continuity, and I can replicate virtual machines from one appliance to another. Normally, there are all these rules that we have to have in VMware. We are just implementing this in the first one and the second one. I have the end unit of this distributed solution. It's going to be good but at the moment, we are just deploying it. We made some tests and RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines was very nice.

It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware.

I have been using VxRail for almost three years at my office. It's a great solution.

The stability is very nice. We haven't had any issues with the cluster. The cluster is very stable. No problems with slowness. Everything has been stable. It was well-architectured.

The scalability of VxRail is very good because they told me that it scales up to 64 nodes, but at this time we haven't had the need for that kind of scale. We can scale it on disks but we don't have to scale it. We don't have a node. It is cheaper to scale it up with disks while we need some space. We are okay with the CPU and all of that, so the disk solutions are very nice. Its scaling is very nice because we can scale it up with only disks. When we need to scale a computer or something, we need to buy another node if we run out of the disks.

Our organization has about 100 people.

Technical support is very nice. I think it's the best support that I have tested because I have some other solutions with HP which were okay. Before we had VxRail, we had a solution that is called Simplivity. I didn't like it very much. It was a two-node solution. It was very bad. We had some issues with both the support and the solution, so we had to change it.

The initial setup was very easy. It took about one and a half days and then another three or four days, maximum, with the tuning and everything else.

We had to energize each node and I did it a week before they went to implement the process. They asked about everything. They asked about IP addresses, everything that was technical. They made some assessments and the day that we implemented VxRail, they had everything set. They just wrote all the addressing and everything of our root and our network. The implementation goes so fast. Almost a day. That was what it took to implement that machine.

The next day, they migrated from virtual machines with the VMware Converter. They used two RecoverPoints for Virtual Machines, I think. It didn't take too much time. Only a few hours, maybe half of the day, and it was okay. We started planning it and we made some tests over a day and a half on the timing and stability of the system and we had the process standard because we needed to have a hybrid solution.

My advice to other people looking to implement VxRail is that it is a very nice solution. It's an integrated solution so we don't have to jump into several providers because it is only one point of contact. We don't have to call VMware or another vendor. We only have one point of contact.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give VxRail a nine.

We use it for our applications, which are all homeward applications and on a Windows-based server. VxRail has performed well so far. 

With VxRail, there is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact. With other products of HPE, you have to procure different vendors and pay the hardware to HPE, the software to VMware, and the maintenance to someone else.

• They should add automation and activation going forward.
• VxRail is missing some of the features that Nutanix has in its product.
• Next release, we would like to see online applications.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. When you are buying it, you have to buy a minimum of three nodes. After that, if you want to add more nodes, you can buy can buy them. You can also add-on additional compute and storage.

The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher.

We went with Dell VxRail because we have a good relationship with Dell EMC. The second reason was the price. We procured a very limited edition of VxRail. 

We are currently looking at buying a full featured edition of a hyper-converged product. For example, we are considering buying Nutanix, HPE SimpliVity, VxRail (the third edition), or Cisco HyperFlex solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Stability
• Scalability
• Technical background of the company
• Price.

We like the design and that it meets data storage needs.

My customers want more storage for university databases.

We've been using this solution for approximately one year.

The technical support needs to be improved, and I would give them a six out of ten. They could assign more digital architects to the support team.

Neutral

We used a reseller for the implementation. It took about two months to deploy the solution.

VxRail is deployed in one location, and we have about 22 people who use the solution.

The price is good.

I tell customers that VxRail solves a lot of storage problems, and I would rate it a five on a scale from one to ten.

We are using this solution for our business-critical application.

VxRail solution provides hassles free deployment for small IT team. It also provided High Availability and Scalability for future extensions.

I have found that the professional deployment services from Dell EMC, monitoring Services likes Secure Remote services , and the many others services such as patch updates. Additionally, the deployment team has demonstrated the best practice approach for the appliances.

I have been using the solution for one month.

The solution is quite efficient for scaling horizontal  but will a bit difficult to expand vertical where on the certified engineer can authorized. For example, increasing RAM and storage.

The installation was straightforward and took approximately five days to implement the whole stack.

We used Dell EMC team together with local vendor team to implement the solution and we have two engineers to do the maintenance. Their knowledge and skills are outstanding.

There is a license required for this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. This solution is for people who want to simplify the whole virtual data center. Initially, if you want to use virtual data center, you need to buy hardware and the license separately. After combining everything together, if anything happened to each product, you need to do a lot of troubleshooting and communicate with different parties . With this solution, it is quite straightforward. You can have a deployment team come and install it for you within a week if you provide the correct configuration. This will save you a lot of time.

I rate VxRail an eight out of ten.

VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization. It really frees up resources as it requires little maintenance. If you're providing a platform that has consolidated compute, storage, and fabric, then it's basically a turnkey type of solution that organizations can use. It also has one patch, so you're not dealing with several different ecosystems, for example, one supplier for storage, one supplier for compute, and one supplier for networking. It's all bundled into one platform which reduces costs. That also makes it easier to maintain and manage as well.

I have been using VxRail for two and a half years.

It's absolutely a stable product. The reason why we chose this solution and that particular type of technology were that we were running many different private clouds within our data centers. Considering the time spent on the maintenance and the patchwork, if we've consolidated and we're offering one platform to house over 3000 clients and over a thousand private clouds, it is a very stable platform. Given the fact that it's a software-defined technology, if it resides within a software-defined data center, the analytics are very transparent and it's easy to address a singular patch across an entire landscape of clients. It's very stable. In terms of scalability, capacity, and modularity, that's the reason why we selected it.

I don't have first-hand experience with technical support. We have a support help desk. Clients can call in and we help them with VxRail. I've never had to contact their support for help with any client issues.

If you partner with Dell, they offer Dell ProDeploy support and SmartHands. We hire them to do the shipping and implementation into a client's data center, whether that's on-prem or in a third-party incumbent location, such as our data center. They have a lot of expertise behind that. from my perspective, it always runs fairly smoothly.

Generally, we procure VxRail through Dell and then we sell it back to the client within our margin. With VxRail, comes Dell's ProDeploy and SmartHands capability to ship and then install.

The way that VxRail is licensed could be improved. I'm not entirely sure, but I think what I encounter is licensing VMware as Dell. Dell and VMware go together and I think that the licensing has become quite complicated and costly. For things like vSAN especially, having those types of skews displayed and a bit easier to understand how the licensing works behind the infrastructure would be a nice change.

Licensing things like vSphere on top of the platform itself can be quite tricky to manage. For anyone wanting a subscription-based model or a perpetual model, that's always quite important to scrutinize.

Although it's really the only hyper-converged platform that I have any experience with, overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give VxRail a rating of ten. I understand the competitiveness between Nutanix and NetApp and other hyper-converged platforms. But I think that given the strengths behind Dell and their acquisition of VMware, it makes for a very solid platform — it's very reliable. We've benchmarked our whole company off of hyper-converged Dell. 

We used it for hosting on the infrastructure.

We previously had a traditional infrastructure where we always had issues with the performance. The vendor then introduced us to VxRail and the performance improved drastically. That was one of the best things I can say about it. The time spent on reports and support went down a lot.

VxRail's feature that we found most valuable is its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages. However, we switched out from VxRail because some of our use cases and workloads required a different solution.

I would say its support could be improved. One issue that we faced was that often a single file upgrade would cause an issue, whether it was an update for the hardware or for every component. They should have an option to only upgrade individual modules of the architecture. For example, there should be an option to upgrade only the individual VMware module and not rely on a single update file for everything.

The stability was excellent. It takes around three people to manage.

The scalability was good but we didn't make use of it. It's scalable from an architecture point of view but we never took advantage of that functionality.

The initial setup was a bit complex and they didn't manage to bring it up in the first attempt. Really, only the support people can do it and if something happened the support people need to have control of it. The second attempt also took longer than expected. It took almost two days to complete the full installation, which is longer than the claim that it should take around two to three hours for the full setup. 

We had three people involved in the deployment process.

It is implemented from the supplier side, not with our people. There were 35 VxRail guests involved in the implementation.

We did evaluate a couple of other options like Nutanix and HP before choosing VxRail.

In the end, we chose VxRail because we had been using Dell for a year. That was one of the main reasons. The second reason was cost. The third was the performance of the appliance. And the last reason was its architecture.

My advice to anyone looking to get VxRail is to really understand your use case because from our experience this solution doesn't fit certain use cases. So clearly defining your use case is very important when you're choosing VxRail.

The product was good, but as I said, it's not really flexible with different use cases. That was a lesson we learned from buying VxRail. It's not meant for all use cases, it is only meant for specific ones, which is why we had to switch. It's difficult for it to adapt. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate VxRail a seven.

It is for small-to-medium businesses, who are looking to simplify IT effectively, reduce costs, and make it easier to maintain their whole lifecycle process.

For my customers who have it, it's reducing the complexity of IT management, single panes of glass, etc. It eliminates the three-tier architecture effectively where there is storage and storage network, then compute.

It is a pre-architected solution, so it's an off-the-shelf solution designed by Dell EMC engineers who work with VMware. 

It's a turnkey solution, which is good for customers, because they are buying into stability.

I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket. As far as I'm aware, it's not there yet. I have heard rumors it's on the roadmap. I have customers who want to do it and got the public cloud space. They want to be able to move workloads in and out of VxRail.

So far, the stability is good.

I'm not at the stage yet where I need to expand with my customers, but it is easy to add on to.

I haven't used the technical support.

It is a logical progression for customers who are on a three-tier architecture to go with VxRail. It reduces the cost of ownership, so you don't need that storage network layer anymore. You're not buying a dedicated piece of hardware for the storage. It reduces latency, because it's bringing the storage closer to the chip, which is always going to be a good thing. Customers like lower latency and higher IOPS.

The initial setup is very straightforward. Fill out the spreadsheet and generate the JSON file, then pump it in. 

Customers like it. It's simple to deploy. 

The price point needs improvement, certainly for smaller SMBs. The cost of it is still quite painful. I think all vendors should do a product which is capped either by terabytes, IOPs, or VM instances. It should be an SMB solution that's going to make hyper-converged solutions easier for SMBs to get hold of. It's fine for those big guys that have billions of dollars of budget, but not for customers who have barely a 100,000 dollars or pounds in budget.

There is only Dell EMC in my world. In hyper-converged, I do a lot of storage spaces as well, like Microsoft storage spaces. Obviously, customers who already bought into the VMware product line will want to stay down the hypervisor route, and customers who are already Microsoft customers will want to stay down the Hyper-V route.