We seriously considered a public cloud infrastructure before opting for VxRail. However, we ultimately decided against it because many of our applications originated in the traditional on-premises environment and function optimally there. We were concerned that introducing latency or outsourcing these applications to the cloud might compromise their performance. Consequently, we opted for self-management to maintain optimal control.

I know that they evaluated solutions from HPE and hyperconvergence solutions from other manufacturers.

VxRail surpasses them due to the solidity it offers in terms of the stability of the platform. It is a platform that is easy to set up and easy to deploy, and once it is implemented in production, you do not have to constantly attend to the environment. It is an environment that does not require continuous maintenance time. I just set it up and implement it, and it works independently.

We considered public cloud infrastructure before choosing VxRail. We have public cloud environments. The commerce website is in the public cloud, and we are considering taking many virtualized VxRail environments to the public cloud in the future.

Especially with the public cloud, one of the problems I have is that if tomorrow, for example, I have a problem with a communications line going down in a store, I would not be able to sell in a public cloud. VxRail allows me to continue operating even if the store is completely cut off.

We evaluated Nutanix and HPE. Dell has the largest market share, however, and it's the most mature of the other providers.

I have trained and worked with all of the major HCI options out there.

VSAN (VxRail is built on top of this)

Nutanix ( a very solid alternative)

Simplivity ( not to the level of VSAN or Nutanix)

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct ( good idea, not quite ready for production)

We evaluated HPE SimpliVity, and we are left with VxRail.

We considered public cloud infrastructure before choosing VxRail, but due to costs, we decided to use VxRail. The latency is much lower. VxRail is faster in your CPD than in the cloud. It is less scalable because you have to buy nodes, which takes a while, whereas a cloud can keep growing according to the demand.

We evaluated HPE and Lenovo. 

There are very many competitors between the hyper-converged solutions, such as Nutanix and Dell, and so on. We also looked at VMware options. However, we are wanted to go with something that was more stable and we're generally attracted to Dell. 

We evaluated HyperFlex and NetApp. The best part aboutHyperFlex is that it operates on the CDM layer to integrate the VM-ware reports which need an extra 20% of the resources that the box or the production data needs. However, I would say that HyperFlex is more complicated to install than VxRail.

We did not evaluate other vendors previously. While we checked other solutions, this one proved the easiest.

We've looked at alternatives like Nutanix and VMware vSAN ReadyNode.  In terms of management, VxRail is much more expandable. VxRail manager's built-in monitoring tool is a nice feature available in VxRail, but not in ReadyNodes. We don't see many features missing in VxRail but present in other solutions. 

Nutanix is a good competitor for VxRail, and Nutanix's software is helping to position it in the market better. Nutanix's software is better than vSAN's, but VxRail is better overall. However, if we're looking at costs, Nutanix will win because it allows flexibility in the type of hardware you can use.

In 2017, when I did my benchmark, I looked into all of the options. I saw what Nutanix was doing and what DataCore could offer, but I made a choice to go for VxRail.

Considering my usage, there was not a big difference between them. I did not use any cloud. I did not have any containerization. It was the same good old-school virtualization, so all three solutions achieved the same thing for me, but what made the difference was the relationship with the Dell staff. All of the work we did with the salesperson at the time as well as the company's strength were the factors that guided my choice. Nutanix was still quite young. HPE had just bought the SimpliVity technology, and I did not quite know which way it was going to go, so I decided on Dell.

We did not consider the option of a public cloud infrastructure before choosing Dell VxRail. I work in the medical field. In 2017, we were not ready to start using the cloud.

We evaluated Nutanix for Discover FLeX and Dell. The Nutanix hardware is really stable and they still follow the chassis architecture. 

Dell changed from the chassis form factor to different nodes, so installing different nodes each time is easy, but when you have too many nodes it needs more space.

Given our established, positive relationship with Dell and our ongoing appreciation for their offerings, we opted to forgo exploring other potential solutions.

We evaluated Nutanix, Nimble, Cisco... We went with Dell VxRail, as Dell were already a trusted partner, and it has great support and products.

We did not evaluate other options. We had other Dell servers, but we did not have VxRail. We did not need any alternatives. We like working with Dell. The colleagues offered it to us and sold it to us.

We did not consider a public cloud infrastructure before choosing VxRail.

We evaluated couple of other solutions, also gone through Nutanix demo. Nutanix is a very good solution, but they don't have their own hardware, we have to depend on third party people like Dell, HP or IBM. We were long time Dell product user and preferred the Dell.

We evaluated Nutanix.

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.

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.

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.

We use Dell EMC products and this solution was the best one for our customers and projects.

We also evaluated another product by Cisco.

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.  

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 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.

I have evaluated Nutanix.

We also offer Nutanix to our clients. What Nutanix offers is not available in Dell or HPE. Nutanix has its own management system similar to VMware and is also easy to configure. Through the system, the system administrator can manage and ensure all the virtual machines or virtual appliances that will host the services. If they could change the licensing structure so there is no additional license required, it would be a great feature that would strengthen Dell against their competitors.

I also deal with HyperFlex and Nutanix. In fact, I prefer VxRail. 

When comparing with HyperFlex, VxRail is much alike HyperFlex. It is very cost-effective, and it doesn't have too many conditions like HyperFlex. When you start with building clusters in HyperFlex, you stick to the selected nodes forever. It is not the same in VxRail. You start with pNode in VxRail, and then you add eNode, sNode, etc.  

HyperFlex has its own limitations. They say we can create up to 64 nodes, but, in fact, there are only 52 storage and 52 nodes compute with no mixing between two workloads. On the other hand, in VxRail, you can really create up to 64 nodes, which means the double amount of nodes to carry more servers, more computing in the clusters. 

There are too many concerns about HyperFlex, especially related to performance. HyperFlex source the deduplication compression. You don't have the option to enable or disable the deduplication compression, which means that deduplication ends the performance. In VxRail, you can enable or disable the deduplication compression. So, you can gain a net performance against the storage, and you can move the storage against the performance. You can balance the full configuration. 

When it comes to the software, Nutanix is great. The main concern is that Nutanix doesn't have its own hardware, and it is integrated with different types of servers to deploy its own system. Nutanix just has a contract with Noble, Supermicro, or HP to develop its own system, which is okay for some types of users. However, many types of users request and prefer the full software or hardware that comes from a single vendor so that they can achieve the maximum and ultimate support.

We looked at Cisco and HPE. A lot of what drove of our decision is because VxRail is VMware integrated, so it was easy to manage and learn.

We also evaluated HP and other solutions, but in the end, we chose VxRail because other colleagues were using it and we already had that knowledge close to us. We said, “Well, let’s take advantage of the know-how.”

We did not consider public cloud infrastructure before choosing VxRail. Due to our business characteristics, a public cloud is not an option. We must have everything on-premises.

We evaluated two other options before choosing this product. The first was Nutanix and SimpliVity from HP.

Compared to Nutanix, we are not as aggressive in the market, but VxRail is a good product with good design. If VxRail is to compete with Nutanix, it needs a single easy remote server for disaster recovery, but that depends on vSAN, which the design of VxRail is based on. The core of vSAN is not designed for this, maybe because vSAN customers are higher level.

We evaluated XtremIO which is also a Dell EMC product. We chose this because of the integration with VxRail. It integrates the vSAN and VMware and that was the big selling point, the fact that we could run our own vCenter right off of the storage. We know the support and we know what they are going to give us.

I evaluated for a storage increase and it's an add-on whereas with VxRail it is built in and I'm not adding on anything. It's built for both V7 and the vSAN; it works well doing both things. 

We did a POC with Nutanix and with SimpliVity. We wanted to see how well they would suit our organizational requirements and only did small tests.

Dell has a really strong set of solutions, probably the best in the market.

Nobody else was on our shortlist, because Dell EMC is our strategic partner. We were expecting them to bring us something that would work very quickly and easily, but also be at a reasonable price point, and they did.

With VxRail, the vendor choice is always Dell. The main reason being is because of the comprehensive hardware and software support as well as the deployment features. When proposing a solution, we need to look at the full package available by a single vendor rather than going with multiple different vendors to get a similar solution.

I have used Nutanix in the past and there are some features I prefer over this solution. For example, it has better support.

We evaluated CDW and Insight. We went with CDW because it seemed to be the better option of the two companies.

Nutanix, Cisco HyperFlex, and HPE Hyper Converged.

We evaluated VxRail vs HPE SimpliVity, as well as Flex, and others.