Vblock [EOL] Reviews

I feel this is a tie between two features. VCE’s secret sauce is their release compatibility matrix which allows us to deploy updates without the need for significant testing. The second is the Cisco UCS platform which allows a simple and easy way to manage all of our compute.

In the past the server team would spend weeks downloading and testing interoperability with different versions of firmware on the servers, switches, fabric, and storage to get the most up to date and bug free operations. Now VCE gives us basically a menu of firmware versions and we can upgrade to the latest version and interoperability is guaranteed.

The VCE Vision product definitely needs some improvement as it is not as easy to use as other commercial off the shelf software. There is a lot of configuration that needs to be done from the Linux command line. Hopefully in the future all configuration can be done from an HTML5 webpage. Also, each Vblock needs its own Vision appliance which gets cumbersome when you own many Vblocks. The ability to use a pair of HA vision servers to manage multiple Vblocks would be helpful

The first Vblock 720 was installed in 2014. Currently we have two Vblock 720 models, each with two XtremIO bricks. They are connected with a vplex metro cluster. We also own multiple Vblock 100s for remote office computing.

We have expanded the capacity of our existing systems numerous times without issue.

Extremely good. We usually receive on shore support when we have issues, which is always a plus as there is no “lost in translation” issues that can occur with some offshore support models.

It was very straightforward, we filled out a spreadsheet called a logical configuration survey which contains all of our integration information and the Vblock arrived configured and ready to be plugged in.

We used VCE professional services for all of our installations. The team is very easy to work with and extremely reliable.

The cost of the system really comes down to the discount you are receiving from VMware, Cisco, and EMC. If you deal with these vendors on a regular basis you will better understand the cost of a complete solution.

Internal IT services.

We used to have different departments, each with their own IT section. Everybody was making their own IT investments, and every department had their own little bits of applications here and applications there. Now, it's all coordinated, all synchronized. That reduces the risk of equipment and costs as well. We no longer have people running different applications, different tools, in a multi-vendor environment. Now, we have one synchronized solution.

• Ease of operation. 
• Access, without constraining actions. The tool is available to actually move things around, do things quickly quickly.
• The speed.
• The support behind it as well. There is always quite good support around the box. Any fixes and updates are done pretty quickly.

As the technology changes and comes down in price as well, we're looking at VDI, having a virtual desktop infrastructure, so instead of using client, using a virtual environment, a thin client.

Also, I would like to see them improve their switching infrastructure and rely on Cisco configurations. They are a bit more complex and technical, but result in a slightly reduced cost in terms of switching on the network side of it. It's a very complicated process, our configuration, from the network side.

It's stable.

It is scalable. But the cost is quite expensive, so scalability is not as cheap as you think, when you initially get it. It's quite expensive.

Tech support is very good. They're always responsive. We have built a relationship over the years.

We use to use HPE but the monitoring side of it and the different tools you needed to buy, invest in... This system is much better, including the storage, which is much better as well. And the speed, compared to the different tools HPE was using, we found this is much better.

It takes a bit of time. It's a bit long because of the configuration, to be set up to your requirements specifically, takes a bit longer than you think. The initial set up is complex and needs to be studied, the details. It took longer than expected.

I would not say the pricing is not good value. It is still on the expensive side, near the top-end of cost compared to what's available now.

The licensing has to be improved. There has to be a clear definition of the licensing from the initial set-up so the customer knows what they are paying for, without being hit later on with extra licensing. The licensing definitions should be clearer and, perhaps, have one set of licenses rather than multiple licenses.

We looked at IBM and HPE.

My advice is that you should look at the licensing in more detail, as well as compare the cost, because the technology has changed quickly. When you're investing, you need to make sure to invest well.

I would rate this solution at seven out of 10. I think it still lacking: First in terms of cost, as well as regarding an up-front explanation.They need to give more details to the customer regarding licensing.

UCS, brings the entire datacenter system together. We can offer non-disruptive, seamless upgrades and storage tiering for people with higher IO demands. It gives us flexibility.

It gives us a private, internal cloud and a self-provisioning portal for personnel to spin up their own VMs.

There are little things, for example, we ran into bugs when upgrading a blade, but that was an EMC issue, not hardware.

It’s very stable, no more bugs than any other problems with 2,500 operating systems.

It’s very scalable. Every year we upgrade our capacity and just add another blade.

It's pretty good, but not great.

It's straightforward, although complex too because it's a large system.

Private cloud hosting of ERP solutions for remote US customers. Install two with replication for cross-site DR.

Troublesome relationships with VCE at the beginning of our use came undone quickly after we went live, making installs/adds/changes less than cohesive. 

UCS Manager worked well for net/blade management and has allowed fairly easy use of dedicated bare-metal blades. VNX Unified performed as expected.

VCE tools, like Vision or AMP were not stand alone, and depended too much on other management consoles. RCM upgrades were not scripted, and you needed to roll on your own. We were led to believe this would be otherwise.

Systems run solidly, although we never really took advantage of VCE tools, like Vision or AMP very much. RCM upgrades are painful.

Enterprise private cloud for federal government in a high availability service with primary and secondary datacenters.

I collaborated in a Vblock growth sizing and analysis. The scalability of the solution is interesting.

Capability for scale and growth within a single rack brings strong possibilities for capacity planning.

OEM services requires too much planning and low availability of certified engineers.

Related to tech support: I believe it is too expensive.