Dell VxBlock System Reviews

VxBlock is our data center. We run all of our applications, central applications, and systems, off the VxBlock. It's in our production data center.

The solution simplified our operations, and made us more efficient. We consolidated from 17 cabinets with IT equipment in the data center. We were able to consolidate down to six cabinets and made a smaller infrastructure footprint, which obviously saves costs and makes the operations more simple and optimized. We also had a non-virtualized environment. What we did is we converted all of our applications to run onto virtualized infrastructure. It's basically helped us in that journey to become more agile.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integrated architecture, which is on a highly available, highly redundant infrastructure. It is purposefully built on a highly redundant architecture. 

It's a highly optimized piece of equipment that doesn't give us any problems.

The fact that you've got one single point of contact for your support is very appealing.

The only thing that I can say is when you procure the VxBlock, obviously you have to complete detailed questionnaires about your architecture including the configuration, et cetera. If you make a mistake on the implementation, then you need to rebuild the entire VxBlock. That is just a point of consideration rather than a flaw. You need to be absolutely sure and validate the upfront configuration information that you provide due to the fact that your VxBlock comes delivered and built according to that exact information.

We originally installed the solution in 2016. It's been about four years or so.

The solution is extremely stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's excellent.

The solution scales very well. Obviously, you need to size it with your growth predictions in mind, however, so far, we've been able to comfortably scale to meet our rising demands.

Our entire company uses this solution. That's about 3000 users. Plus, we use it for all of the applications that we use in-company. That would include your Microsoft applications, databases, ERP systems, and financial systems. We run our entire company on this piece of infrastructure.

We don't reach out to EMC's technical support. We use a third-party.

We used the normal, non-integrated infrastructure, where you've got your server infrastructure, your network infrastructure, and your storage infrastructure, all from different providers. They were standalone systems. It wasn't provided by a single supplier, which obviously the VxBlock being an integrated architecture, is now. It's a one-stop-shop

We switched mainly due to the fact that the innovation helped us to make the adjustment from a standalone to a virtual platform. It was cheaper, cost-wise, to consolidate and run on this kit rather than support and run any standalone legacy infrastructure. We also switched in order to improve our service to the business.

Previously, we had a lot of outages due to the legacy equipment we were running on. The age of it and the poor design were weighing us down. You ran out of capacity, et cetera. The way that capacity was bolted on and the solution grew, was very poorly designed in the past. The business suffered a lot of outages as a result of it. Having switched to the VxBlock provided the business with almost no downtime. We run an extremely stable, efficient operation at this point in time.

It's complex in that you need to be exact in your configuration as it comes to you pre-configured to your specifications, and if there is a mistake, you need to start from scratch and get a new VxBlock. 

You almost need to build your entire design, your entire configuration, upfront. There's no room for, if you make a mistake, changes to it after the fact, due to the fact that it's a pre-built solution.

Deployment is very fast. It takes only about a week or so.

For us, we had a whole data center refresh project that we ran as part of the implementation of this product.

We use a third party for maintenance purposes. The thing with the solution is that the people that are allowed to work on it, whether it's for implementation or support services, need to go through an extensive training program and certification program with Dell EMC. They're highly skilled in the solution. That adds to the value of it. These professionals are so good. We've not experienced any outages on the system, either when we upgraded it or when we scaled. When a component fails, it's immediately replaced, and the professionals that work on it are very well-trained.

We used an integrator that assisted us with the initial setup. They were highly skilled and professional. It was a very good experience. It was a third-party EMC partner, not EMC themselves.

I can't really give a good indication of the ROI.

We were able to consolidate some of the support roles. For example, where you would have a virtualization engineer, a server engineer, a network engineer, and a storage engineer - four separate roles to normally support this environment. We consolidated that basically into one role. It is a managed service, but from a managed services perspective, they've got a single person looking after all of those components within the platform. So that obviously is a cost-saving.

There have definitely been cost efficiencies, however, I can't share exact numbers.

I don't know whether it's always feasible, however, my understanding is that what one needs to do is to select their product, go for what they deem to be the best, and then negotiate for the best price from there.

We evaluated hosted cloud options from several suppliers and also some other hyper-converged solutions. That said, we decided, from a cost perspective, it made more sense to run the VxBlock. It was more cost-effective than having a hosted cloud platform. It also provided us with more flexibility because some of our platforms were not suited to run on hosted cloud environments, where you don't have access to the virtualization layer and the virtualization software. When we ran our own private cloud on the VxBlock, we had the ability to interface directly into the virtualization platform, which was a requirement for some of our applications.

We didn't choose a hyper-converged platform at that point in time as the VxBlock provided a better performing platform. We could obtain high throughput, through the VxBlock, than what the hyper-converged solutions could give us at that stage.

We deemed Dell to be the leader in the market. They were the first to enter the market with a converged platform. And I think they'd more of a market presence at that point in time than anybody else.

We're using the VxBlock 350 deployment model.

The change in the operating model has been an eye-opener. A few years ago, it was difficult to imagine how a real virtual or cloud-like environment would run as we'd been so used to the standalone environments that we were operating. To see how that operating model really changes and the ease of use going to a virtualized or cloud-like platform has been great. It's one of the biggest takeaways I have.

When we changed infrastructures, we decided to build a complete environment. To start to build the IT infrastructure from scratch, completely new, was daunting. We refreshed absolutely everything. We even went as far as to build a new active directory environment. We basically built a completely new IT platform for our company. That was an extremely daunting task when we set out to do it. Within six months we were at a point where we cut over and we realized the goal that we set out to achieve. In the end, those daunting tasks are where one grows their own skillset. It's quite an achievement at the end to reach a goal that you almost thought was impossible at the outset of a project.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at a nine. Many people criticize the product due to the requirements needed to make the pre-configuration piece. However, as long as you don't make a mistake there, it works like a dream.

We use the solution for database applications, using all the core features. We're a customer of VxBlock.

The most valuable features of the solution would be its good default features and the compressions. Those are the features we use regularly.  

For VxBlock, the consistency of disc quality could be improved. 

I've been using this solution for almost six years. 

The product is very stable. 

The product is scalable. 

We've used technical support from time to time and they are very good. 

We made some comparisons with other products - WMC and HP 3par but have never used them. 

Setup is fairly straightforward, deployment took between two and three weeks. 

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. 

The monitoring and management parts are the most valuable. Monitoring is specifically valuable because you have one console to monitor everything. This console is called Vision.

We are finding it a bit challenging in terms of the management of a specific VxBlock component. Currently, we have different units as a part of the block storage. We have one for Cisco equipment and one for Dell. When we have an issue in the infrastructure, Dell EMC VxBlock System should automatically detect it and send a notification to VC support, but, unfortunately, it is doing that only for one unit. It is not working for Cisco components. We have informed them about this area of improvement, and they are working on this.

The way different parts are integrated should be improved. We should have one console to log in to see all the infrastructure in terms of each machine and hardware.

I have been using this solution for three years now.

The system is quite stable. We have not faced any major issues. The issues that we faced were just minor and manageable.

In terms of scalability, it is good. The beauty is that we can scale whatever we want. We can add more compute nodes, storage nodes, or memory. We have a variety of users from different groups.

Their technical support can be improved because, sometimes, when you report an issue, it takes a while for them to respond.

It is complicated with the latest technology because you have to connect with the switches, servers, storage, and everything. All the components have to be connected so that the system can work properly. It might take three to five days, which is a lot of time.

We used an integrator.

Its price is high. That's why people are now moving to hyper-converge.

I would advise to stop using the normal spinning disk and going for an all-flash disk on the storage because of the performance issues.

I would rate Dell EMC VxBlock System a six out of ten.

We use VxBlock mainly for the OLTP workload, so all online transaction processing and most of the daily transactional application servers system. So VxBlock can take care of all our call databases each year and covers most of the customers we have using that system. We also went ahead and connected the other systems like HPU on Twitch.

So we work with clients who have different environments. For example, IBM is running Oracle, and we have customers using that setup in the banking sector. And when they implemented VxBlock, they doubled the speed of their operations. A process that used to take eight hours now only requires four hours, so they're getting a return in terms of performance. Then there is the issue of business continuity. The tools embedded in VxBlock are much more racked and easier to manage than most of the other tools on the market.

Since VxBlock is built and configured at the factory, the core back-end is very racked. It's at least 99 percent problem-free because it's factory-built. So from an informational point of view, everyone trusts that VxBlock has been tested well at the factory and has been configured to their requirements. So the rest of the add-on connections are in the core, providing a good foundation in the backend for it to run on. It's very well designed.

I want to get more information from the vendors. The hardware lifecycle is not documented very well. For example, now you can buy a piece of equipment, but you don't know if the hardware will still be in production next month or next year. Most customers expect to run this hardware and still be supported for the next five years or so. I think the projections about the lifetime of the hardware and the systems need to be better documented.

I've been working with VxBlock for maybe eight years now.

VxBlock is very stable.

VxBlock is highly scalable. We have many clients using it, and most of them are government agencies at the ministerial level, and they have thousands of users. For example, one customer has around 3,000 users. Another has 7,000 users now, and they're in the process of scaling up. So by next year, it'll be approximately 10,000 users. And that's just the primary users who are getting services directly. There are many more indirectly using VxBlock.

Support is straightforward because they have one single support entity. Different vendors supply the internal components, but the support is from one source. So that makes things simple.

As I mentioned, VxBlock is part of a more extensive system, and it is one of the fastest solutions. However, we still deploy some of their competitors depending on the customer requirements. Some other solutions are designed to work specifically for Oracle databases, whereas VxBlock is heterogeneous. It can take any workload. 

The initial setup is done at the factory. It comes pre-built, and onsite integration is plug-and-play. Irrespective of the hardware environment, it takes no more than two days per site. It takes about one or two people to deploy VxBlock. Since we are integrators, we do most of the pre-planning for the implementation. This entails making sure the environment is ready to receive and start using the equipment. So we ensure everything meets the criteria and is prepared for deployment. We spend more time on planning than implementation. If you take the time to develop a perfect plan, your deployment will be smooth.

The cost of the license varies based on the kind of software and the components you are using. It's a subscription mainly for the software that runs on the VxBlock hardware. If the software says that the subscription has expired, then you have to renew it. So basically, if the customer is running Oracle, they have to renew Oracle, but they have to renew VMware subscription licenses if they're running VMware. So the cost is dependent on that. We have customers running VMware, Microsoft, etc. So it varies from customer to customer.

I rate VxBlock nine out of 10. If you're thinking about implementing VxBlock, you need to have the right team. You need someone who understands the differences in hardware rather than someone who specializes in a particular product. So you should have a person on your team with a comprehensive understanding of the hardware. Also, some countries might be out of the service area for most vendors. In that case, you should have a contingency plan if you need a hardware replacement. It can take a long time to deliver your parts if the vendor has no presence in that region.