VxRail Reviews

In medium-sized installations, many of our customers require a reasonably-priced solution to replace legacy computer storage. Those are the customers who we are suggesting using the  VxRail solution to. If the customer is building a data center using VMware, we are recommending VxRail because of the VMware compatibility.  

Medium set-ups can be used in a large enterprise but only when they need this solution as a smaller part of their environment. It works well for small setups or medium setups, or for new application setups.  

Most of the products of this type have features that are almost the same. We are using VxRail especially because we would like to have products that are compatible with VMware and Dell to support our prospective client base.  

The configuration of HCI (Hyper-Convergence Infrastructure) solutions is very easy compared to the legacy solutions. Legacy systems run the computer and the storage separately and use switches to get the connectivity. That is much more complicated. It is completely the opposite when using generic HCI technology. The implementation is very simple and so is the operation.  

The only thing about the HCI solution is that troubleshooting is a little bit difficult because it is still a new technology. Other than this it is simpler than the traditional technology. HCI is nice and it makes sense. I think there is a need to improve the solution because it is difficult to troubleshoot. But compared to legacy solutions, you are troubleshooting one that is a little bit difficult instead of troubleshooting two different products that might each be a little easier. In the end, the difference as far as troubleshooting is not much but the advantages are still there on the HCI side and technology upgrade.  

The other thing I would like to see improved is not really a feature. It is about scalability. It would be good to increase the limit of the number of nodes within the clusters.  

I had experience before 2018, but I have been using it for this past year.  

Even compared to Cisco, I think VxRail is a very stable solution. It is in the same class as Cisco.  

VxRail is easy to scale, but the number of nodes is limited. This is not the same with other solutions like Nutanix. VxRail has a limit for a certain number of nodes within the cluster and if you need more than that then you have to create another cluster. It is an issue but at the same time, it is not an issue. It is kind of just a configuration difference.  

I do not have any direct contact with technical support because I am not doing the product delivery. If the technicians have some issues, they have to make the contact. I have not heard anything bad or good about the support. That suggests it is good.  

The initial setup was simple. The amount of time it takes depends on the number of nodes you have.  

It does require some maintenance over time. For maintenance, you have to request that through your supplier or even through the implementation team. It will be totally different depending on the kind of activity and the issue, but it should not be disruptive for the most part. The only exception is in critical applications. These may be critical but it is simple to restore the network connectivity or storage availability.  

My advice about cost and setup is that it is just as cheap to have the HCI solution as to stay with legacy solutions. If you convert the value of HCI versus the traditional, legacy solution you gain more than you spend. It comes out to an even trade as far as budget.  

Compared to other HCI products, VxRail has advantages in stability and support from the vendors. If you bought Cisco, for example, you have to open an account with Cisco for the hardware and open an account with VMware for the software separately. With VxRail this is not what happens. You opened the account with them and they will manage all the communication and the services. That ends up being more stable. Getting your support from one company is better than having to get support from different companies when dealing with an issue shared between products and trying to sort that out.  

I recommend VxRail as a solution especially for those using legacy services. We often recommend VxRail over other competitors. The only exception really is if the customer does not want Dell computing resources. For example, the client may have another vendor they tend to use. So if everything they have is HP they may like to have an HP solution. If they are using Cisco, they may want a Cisco solution. Those are the only times that we will not go with suggesting VXRail.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the VXRail solution as an eight-out-of-ten.  

At a remote location where physical servers were deployed in order to address latency or process delays, one of these appliances is now installed and a low cost virtual environment is in place. This has also allowed snapshot backups to be taken with our Avamar solution rather than just performing file level backup with an agent.

Being able to perform upgrades and check the system through the VxRail Manager has been very helpful. It allows files to be uploaded, performs a pre-check against the system, then upgrades the appliance from the hardware up through the VMware environment.

My main issue so far is that the installation created a default datacenter name of "Marvin" and it cannot be changed. This can be a problem with multiple device\location deployments where all of the names are "Marvin".

As with any new product, we have had a few bugs that were address in the last upgrade we performed. For example, we had a host that would appear to become disconnected or missing from vCenter, but later return and be online. However, there has never been an outage or loss of data with any issues. In the above mentioned issue, the VMs still functioned and were reachable. This was correcting with a software update.

We have not had a reason to scale or add to the initially purchased appliance.

Customer Service:

Our customer service is outstanding. As with many Dell EMC accounts, there is a primary person assigned as our account representative. He maintains regular contact and interaction to ensure we are not only satisfied with our VxRail, but also our other Dell EMC solutions.

Technical Support:

The few times I have contacted technical support they have always been very responsive. I have never felt as though it was a low-level support person, reading a script. They all seem to have been top-level support individuals. As with other Dell EMC products, the appliance includes an ESRS gateway, so they have the ability to remotely access (if allowed) and proactively address issues that may occur through the dial-home service.

No, we did not have any previous HCI installations.

The initial setup was not really any more complex than some other HCI deployments. We completed a spreadsheet, with IP addresses and names, that was imported into a JSON file. This was then used to automate the deployment and creation of the virtual environment.

The implementation used a combination of in-house staff being onsite and Dell EMC personnel being on a WebEx. This was mostly due to being one of the early deployments of the system. I am not sure of the current requirements around new deployments.

The VxRail has allowed an environment to be created that is easy to manage and back up. This reduces the amount of time that is required by staff to manage and update systems.

At the time, VMware licensing was purchased separately. I have heard that now it is offered as part of the appliance. There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process.

We did look at some other solutions, but at the time we were only capable of 1G networking and this device was the only one available at that speed. However, it has performed great and has been easy to manage.

I'm the software system team leader. 

The valuable features for us are the VDI, UCC, and HCI.

My only complaint about this solution is that it's vendor-locked with Dell being the only supplier for VxRail.

I've been using this solution for almost a year. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable.

Customer support has been good so far. It's possible the good service is somewhat related to the license agreement we have, I'm not sure. 

The initial setup is straightforward. We have close to 1,000 end users who connect directly to the VDI and to the UCC solution. 

We generally procure a three-year license with a support agreement from the supplier. 

I recommend this solution, it's a good product. We recommend it to our customers.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

A valuable feature of the solution is that it allows everything to be integrated into a single model, comprised of hardware and software. 

When using hybrid nodes, such as VxRail, there should not be compression and deduplication, only in All-Flash nodes. So, it's about improvement. It's good to see deduplication in hybrid nodes.

I have been working with VxRail for around one year. 

I am satisfied with the stability. To my knowledge, our customers don't have any problems with the solution.

As I am not an engineer, I am not in a position to talk about the installation. I do not have familiarity with implementation. 

I do not believe that the price should be lower. I feel it to be reasonable. This is because we can compare blade with blade server, MX7000 for example, when it comes to buying VMware products, meaning it will not act like a true hyper converged infrastructure. 

I prefer VxRail to that of HyperFlex, because the VMware facilitates the configuration of two or more disk groups. Yet, HyperFlex offers one test drive and separate capacity drives, so this group only handles one load.

My knowledge of HyperFlex is limited, which is why I am in the process of comparing it with the solution.

Everything is balanced in the solution. The hardware is integrated with VMware. 

VxRail is a good solution. It offers easy administration, including updates, along with a central console enabling complete visibility of management, administration and monitoring. 

I rate VxRail as a ten out of ten. 

We primarily deploy the solution to medium-sized businesses from different markets, from automotive to sales to medical, etc.

The installation was really easy to perform. 

The most valuable aspect on VxRail is the one-click update where they are doing the updates all at once for the drivers, buyers, ID reg, and for the VMS. In one click it's running. It's great.

The performance is very good.

The update process is very convenient.

The price should come down a little bit. It has become better than it was at the beginning. There was a really big price difference between a hyper-converged infrastructure and the classic servers and storage. The gap is lessening, however, it's still there.

I first saw VxRail in 2016 when I was at EMC World in Las Vegas. I found it was a very, very interesting solution then, however, we didn't make our first installation until 2018.

The scalability is great. You can scale within the system easily. You just put in more disks and more memory. Even if you stop with one CPU, you can add a second one or you can go and just add another when customers come and say, "Okay we need more." We just buy another node and put it in. Within, let's say, 20 minutes, the node is within the cluster. It's quick and easy.

For us, we used to earn our money with installing and updating, etc., however, the customer's doing it all by himself now, even if he gets a new server or cluster, it's one each click.

Since we do not use the VxRail internally and we are just sending it to our customers, we have a technical team of about 10 people that are working in the service. Within this, there are three people who are working with VxRail.

How useful technical support really is in terms of solving the issue at hand depends on who you get. It's not only at Dell EMC. It's at Fujitsu, it's at HP, at Lenovo. It depends on which person you get on the other line of the phone. Sometimes it's great and there's no problem. Within a few minutes, the problem is solved. Sometimes you have to wait for the second or the third person that you get to be able to know what the problem is and be able to help you solve it.

I'd recommend the solution.

The big advantage of the VxRail is the one-click update. If you are using, let's say HP or Fujitsu, and use the standard VSAM cluster, then you have to update the virtual center, you have to update the host, you have to update the VSAM, you have to update drivers, etc. 

You also have to consider the HCL, whether the driver fits to that new VM version. For example, let's say from the customer side when they are working with the solution, there's no big difference whether the user is working with VxRail or the VSAM cluster. However, when you look at it from a maintenance and updating perspective, the VxRail really offers a superior system.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The product is almost perfect. It really does fit the needs of our customers.

We use it in a infrastructure in a box-style setup for onsite deployments. We take certain assets to remote locations and record data for whatever sorties that they are doing.

The flexibility has improved our organization. If we went the traditional method, we would have to carry a lot more equipment. VxRail allows us to take all the systems that we would use in a full rack in a quarter rack.

It gives us tons of flexibility. We can create new machines, then destroy them if they don't work out. We test a lot of use cases that may or may not play out. We can build all types of scenarios into virtual machines that we may or may not use. If we don't use them, we just turn them off, no using up resources.

I would like them to include an easier solution to host its own DNS. When they changed to version 6.5, they took out the easy features of letting the rail be its own DNS. You can still trick the system and make the VxRail Manager another one of the rail-required VMs become the DNS, but it's a lot of extra work. I'd like to see it put back into the UI.

The stability of version 6.5 and above has been pretty good. 

Version 6.0 and below has always been kind of a pain to work with, but there have been huge improvements. I like the inclusion of the HTML5 vCenter.

The scalability is great. Thankfully, our data needs are in the 200 gigabyte range when we go out onsite, so we're not overloading it. We just have the single rail that has four hosts on it.

The technical support is not so great. They had the VMware personnel trying to help us out. We had some issues on one of the rails, and it never got resolved. It is just one of those things on the to-do list. 

They were walking me through some of the diagnostic stuff, and it was clear that they had no idea. I ended up sending five different sets of logs to their FTP site, and there was no resolution. After I sent the last set of logs, which was right over Christmas break, they were like, "We can't keep this ticket open for two weeks while Dell EMC goes offline at the end of the year." 

This just something I haven't picked back up yet. Thankfully, it's not a production critical piece of equipment right now. However, I would love to figure out how to do a factory reset and start from scratch. This was from version 6.0, and I've got reservations with anything lower than version 6.5.

The initial setup is straightforward for versions 6.5 and 6.7.

There is the logistical cost savings of the produced footprint of the equipment. 

There is an administrative cost savings. Instead of having seven to 15 separate boxes that someone has to administer on 15 different terminals, you can do the majority of it from one interface. Therefore, it saves on manpower costs.

I don't think I would have picked a different product.

The main reason a customer would acquire VxRail is if they're looking for a platform for more easy management of hardware and software.

I'm a presale engineer and we are a business partner with VxRail, so we sell the solution. We make consulting sales for other customers. Version 7.0 is the last version of VxRail that we've worked with.

Management of the hardware and software in one console is the most valuable feature. It's also compatible with vSAN.

Technically speaking, the vCenter and the administration of the integration of the vCenter could be improved. I know that VxRail has two options to manage the cluster with an external and internal vCenter. There are some concerns about managing the cluster with an external vCenter, which is not included in the appliance. This is the only thing that I've found to be quite complicated because if the customer has an existing platform with a vCenter and we wanted to integrate it with the new cluster of VxRail, there are some concerns about losing the external vCenter.

The second processor upgrade could be an additional feature included in the next release.

It would also be great if the second processor operated without factory reset because I have had many customers ask me about that.

I think there are some things to improve with the stability because I talk with the implementation engineers a lot. I don't implement the solution, but the engineers that implement and update and maintain the platform of VxRail told me that the solution sometimes gets problems with updating the versions of the firmware and the software. The software that comes on VxRail doesn't work smoothly because they have problems with updates.

It's scalable. You can increase a cluster without downtime for the customer. You can add more discs and more drives for the clients. The only thing that could be improved is that when I designed the appliance with one processor, the engineers of the EMC told me that if a client has one processor and you want to upgrade the appliance with a second processor, you can do it without a factory reset of the appliance. So, if the client has an appliance cluster or nodes cluster with one processor for each appliance, and the customer wants to upgrade with a second processor for each appliance, there is another viable option because you have to reset all the clusters and delete all the data. It would be better if there was a way to make a second processor upgrade without a factory reset.

I haven't had any experience with tech support because I'm in presales.

When I asked for a quote for a partner that was doing the implementation, they told me that it took two people to complete the implementation. 

I would give VxRail an 8 out of 10.

The main advantage is that VxRail is integrated with vSAN. I think that most people who use VMware also use vSphere. It's like a less disruptive way to migrate a platform to a hyper-converged architecture. My main advice is that if a customer has vSAN, this is a less disruptive way to migrate to a more scalable architecture. 

Here in Mauritius, most companies prefer on-premise deployments. We use VxRail for civil aviation services.

The solution could improve by having more storage performance because in some other solutions you can have a file system that can be mounted at several places at one time.

I have been using VxRail for approximately 10 years.

VxRail is stable and we have had no issues.

The scalability of VxRail is very good.

We have four customers using this solution.

We have previously used Nutanix and SimpliVity. The support was not very good. VxRail could be viewed as lower grade and not a top seller compared to others, but if you have an issue with anything, such as the control or engines and it needs replacing, VxRail is better.

Additionally, I have used PowerScale and Isilon.

The process of the installation is straightforward. The initial implementation took use three to four months. The technician allocated to it did not have much networking experience. Once he mastered networking everything went well. You have to be good at networking to be able to have everything completed in a timely manner.

We do the implementation, maintenance, and support of VxRail with one technician.

The VMware licenses are included and we do not have to worry about the license, everything is integrated.

I would recommend this solution to others if the use case fits. Other solutions, such as PowerScale might be better in a particular use case.

I rate VxRail a ten out of ten.