VxRail Reviews

For our stores, we primarily use the solution for what's called edge computing to provide all the data processing needs in our stores.

The product allows us to have the capacity for the future to be able to add applications to help us better serve our customers.

We've seen reductions in cost by being able to reduce the amount of staff who needs to support the application. We've reduced staff by about 20%. It's enabled us to roll out applications that help us provide better customer service to our customers.

The ease of deployment and management of the solution are the most valuable aspects of the product. It's important due to the fact that, with 1800 stores, we can't afford to have an extensive staff to manage it.

We'd like to see improvements in the supply chain. We're evaluating that for the future.

I would like to see more solutions for satellite capabilities where we can put it into smaller locations and still have the redundancy that we have with a larger cluster.

We implemented the first solution in February 2019. 

It's stable. I would rate it ten out of ten for stability.

We've now implemented it across our store network. We'll have 1800 stores on the VxRail by the end of October.

We have more capacity than we need. The reason we selected the product is that it is scalable. We can add additional components when needed. We haven't had to, however, it's available if we need to.

At this point, we've adopted the solution 100% across our organization.

Technical support overall is excellent. It was a seamless process. We were very successful in the implementation. 

Positive

We used a three-tier architecture that we replaced with this product. It was the end of life and didn't have the capacity we needed to provide to our source.

I was involved in the deployment of VxRail. The whole process was straightforward. 

In terms of deployment, we did the first 600 stores in three months, and we now are doing 1200 stores and we'll be done by October. We worked together with Dell. We had a cross-functional team and we started slow and then built up to peak volume. Our strategy was to make sure we didn't disrupt any location.

About four or five people on our side were involved in the implementation. Dell assisted us and I don't know how many Dell had. Obviously, they needed people to go to every store to implement.

Our job was to act in coordination and communication with the locations where it was being deployed.

The solution does require maintenance, however, it's very easy since there are tools that are provided with the technology. About five people are involved with administration and maintenance. They address any predictive alerts that come out on failures and care and feed any additional firmware or other types of updates that are required.

We used the Dell Technologies services to help us with the deployment and that went very well.

The pricing is fair. It's combined with the hardware and the VMware technology to run it as well. It's bundled.

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

This solution is on-premises in our data centers and also in our stores.

My advice to others would be to look strongly at the hyper-converged infrastructure technologies that come with it. It virtualizes a lot of the functions that were previously separate. It brings it together in one easy-to-manage solution.

I'd rate the product ten out of ten.

The environment is easy to manage.

The compute is good and we have not had any issues with the vSAN.

VxRail requires VMware support. When an issue occurs in VMware vSphere, for example, you would have to log a complaint with VMware support, and sometimes Dell Support can resolve the problem, but you will also have to log a complaint with VMware support internally, and the support agent will work with us to resolve the problem. Hardware support is adequate. They are capable of resolving the issues. We believe Dell's vShpere support falls short of the mark.

In the next release, I would like to see our graphical user interface allow us to manage VxRail clusters and everything on a single pane of glass where I can monitor and shut down the server, similar to a VxRail manager.

I have been working with VxRail for one year.

VxRail is very stable. It is working very well.

VxRail is very scalable. It can scale out to 64 hosts.

In our company, we have eight to ten people who are using this solution.

The automatic creation of support tickets Whenever an issue arises, ESRS and VxRail are present and automatically forward the complaints to Dell. These are fantastic features.

Technical support is not very good, but it's not bad.

We were not working with pre-configured appliances. We were using servers that we configured. We used VMware and vSAN. 

VxRail is easy to set up. It was very easy.

The complete configuration and powering of VxRail took a couple of days to set up the servers and infrastructure, as well as the cabling. When we power up the servers, VMware and vSAN were already applied to it. We will only need to buy the license to configure the appliances.

VxRail has a great return on investment.

When compared with others, the price is very reasonable.

It's a very good product. I would recommend this solution to others who are considering it.

I haven't used any other product that I can compare it with, but so far it has been good.

I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten.

The solution is primarily used as a general data center and VDI. 

I consult multiple organizations across many industries.  VxRAIL is a platform  I lead with. It reduces IT admin time and complexity around managing a hyper-converged environment. 

The solution is perfect for the lifecycle management of hardware.

The solution allows automated updates to hosts os and hardware, and in some cases switch hardware patches as well.

The licensing costs are too expensive for smaller deployments. They should work on their pricing model at the low end. many of the customer's at the smaller end of the scale would benefit the most from the automation but it often times becomes cost prohibitive.

The solution needs a little more flexibility in the hardware that is supported by VxRAIL. Right now, they're very restrictive of the hardware supported. 

I've been dealing with the solution for two or three years.

The stability of the solution is rock solid. Organizations consider it completely reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash. It's great.

The scalability of the solution is very impressive, actually. You can scale a very large environment with ease. It's not trouble at all.

On the converse of that, it doesn't work so well for very small environments. This is mostly for if you've got, for example, four hosts already. It's not for small environments. You need to really have 100 to 200 VMs to really take advantage of it.

As a reseller, I'll typically check in with clients after a few months to see how things are going and to see if they need a new node or anything of that nature.  Typically, they are looking to scale a bit more.

The technical support is phenomenal. I'd give it five stars. They are very responsive and knowledgeable. We're satisfied with the level of service they provide.

I have been selling virtualization platforms for around 10 years.  Hyper Converged Infrastructure is perfect for general data center work loads and for VDI.  

For myself, it's fairly straightforward and no longer very complex. However, I've done more than a dozen of them so far. If you don't know what you're doing, it can be pretty complex. You really do need some expertise with the solution to manage everything.

In terms of deployment, it chiefly takes about two days of planning and about two days of implementation.

In terms of maintenance, what makes it so nice is that it automates management and patching of all of an organization's virtual hosts and even their switches if the switches are supported. Therefore, it reduces admin.

We handle the implementation for our clients.

Users do find that licensing is quite pricey.

The costs vary from customer to customer.

A typical node that I would sell to a customer has a list price be between $50,000 and $80,000 per node. Organizations typically start with four nodes. That's the hardware, software, VMware licensing, everything. 

Customers typically pay about half of that for VSAN REady nodes - approximately $25,000 to $50,000 a node. On average, it costs about $200,000 to get your foot in the door. That can be quite expensive for any organization that isn't a large enterprise.

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're a partner with Dell VMware. VxRail is a part of Dell.

I largely just sell and set up the solutions; I don't use the solution regularly myself.

It's an amazing product overall.

This solution definitely requires an organization to plan everything out correctly. You need to map out your networking, understand what your resource utilization is going to be, make sure you get the right amount of RAM and storage on the host, and then also understand the impact to your licensing costs for Microsoft.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I would give it perfect marks if it wasn't so expensive.

When it comes to our infrastructure, VxRail has been performing well for the last three years. I also worked with a client who uses the solution in their setup.

Based on our requirements in the VxRail environment, we can increase or decrease the resources as needed, without needing to reconfigure every server at a specific time. This solution ensures uptime, providing 100% availability so servers can operate without downtime.

The solution works with VMware on the software side. It's an integrated EMS product with hardware provided as a bundle by Broadcom. Unlike Nutanix, which focuses solely on HCI, VxRail includes VMware software, offering a complete solution without the need to choose operating systems like Windows or Linux separately. The solution also has AI capabilities.

It has a good interface. However, during upgrades, some aspects get broken, requiring us to follow up with the VMware team to fix them. It's not a major issue though.

I have been using the solution for more than four years. Currently, I’m using version 7.0.

The solution is stable; its performance depends on the load you put on the cluster. It should work perfectly if you allocate resources—such as memory and storage.

The solution is scalable.

It is more than satisfactory, it is really good because they always respond to emails and issues immediately. They don't take their own sweet time, especially during critical times.

It is easy to deploy. It can be done within a couple of hours. However, the deployment time depends on the number of nodes. In a low-node-count scenario, we can deploy it in three to four hours. One person is sufficient for deployment. There are two aspects to deployment: hardware and software. Stacking alone takes time as it involves installing equipment in the rack, which takes a couple of hours to complete properly. After stacking, another couple of hours are needed to configure all nodes into a cluster.

We have a single deployment package we can upload and proceed with. It automatically applies the package to each node by putting them in maintenance mode, which makes it very easy. I have not faced any issues with this process, including with my clients.

The solution is on the higher end of the price range compared to Cisco and Nutanix.

Based on my direct usage of the solution, I find Dell more mature in product maturity than Nutanix and Cisco. However, I rate Nutanix as a close second, considering Cisco's relatively late entry into the visualization market. I must mention that I cannot accurately rate these products since I have not used them. This assessment is based on my research and understanding; my opinion might change if I gain direct experience with the products.

Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

The solution is used in our organization for hardware consolidation. VxRail is also used in our company to run compute and database workloads. 

In our organization, whenever we require support from VxRail, we call a single support line where we get the issues resolved over the same call, whether it's a hardware or software issue with VxRail.

The present SaaS model license structure can be improved. Our company prefers perpetual licensing instead of the license that expires along with outdated hardware. Whenever the hardware for running VxRail needs to be replaced in our company, the license must be repurchased. 

In future releases from the vendor, I would prefer that other parts of the VMware environment, such as NSX, be integrated with the VxRail bundle. Presently, the vendor offers NSX as an add-on feature.  

I have been using VxRail for six years. 

I would rate the stability a ten out of ten. The solution is exceptionally resilient. Even when we are doing maintenance on VxRail, it doesn't hinder the product's functionality for end users. Managing system downtime for maintenance is a lot more seamless in VxRail compared to other solutions. 

When there are hardware failures on the system, it doesn't impact the end customers in VxRail. The downtime issues are managed efficiently in VxRail and it gets back to full-scale production without anyone noticing the outage. 

I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. If nodes are being added to the solution after several years since deployment, a similar type and size of hard drives are required that were primarily used. As processor drives are constantly evolving, it's hard to obtain some specific types of processor drive models, which can be challenging to execute within the cluster. If the ideal hardware equipment can be procured, scaling the cluster is a straightforward process in VxRail. 

In our company, there are hundreds of VxRail users, it's a critical component of our daily operations and is used 24/7. In the future, our organization is planning to migrate more systems to VxRail and increase usage due to its satisfying performance over the past few years. In our organization, we have recently replaced the solution's cluster with hardware that will facilitate expansive use in the future. 

On rare occasions when we have reached out to customer support, we have experienced quick fault identification from the team and resolution over a single phone call. Whatever challenges we face in our company with VxRail, it's quite easy to overcome with the support from the vendor. I would rate the tech support a ten out of ten. 

Positive

We used specific servers prior to using VxRail, in 2018 our company switched to VxRail to virtualize our application. The traditional model of virtualizing at the time was using a standby storage with had a significant cost to enter the virtualizing space.

So, with VxRail, our company was able to start virtualization on a smaller scale and grow as we needed it, whereas traditional three-tier virtualization requires huge storage from the start. In our organization, we also evaluated three-tier virtualization with SAN storage, but we opted for VxRail based on its cost and features. 

I would rate the initial setup a ten out of ten. The Dell support team has done an excellent job with VxRail's documentation. Once the prerequisites of the system installation are met, the deployment process becomes extremely easy. 

The initial setup of VxRail in our organization took around 48 hours to make the complete cluster operational. Planning is the first step in the deployment of VxRail; there's a set of network requirements that need to be implemented. Once the aforementioned step is completed in our organization, we arrange for cabling off of the system.

Then, as part of the deployment process, hardware installation and configuration need to be performed. The integration of VxRail is quite straightforward. VxRail offers a simplified way to fill in key data, unlike network subnet ranges and DNS host names. Once the deployment process of VxRail is completed, the cluster gets auto-created.

In our company, I managed the VxRail deployment process along with one external Dell services professional. Only one person is required for the maintenance of VxRail on an ad hoc basis who can maintain multiple other solutions besides VxRail. The solution's maintenance process is straightforward. 

VxRail offers satisfying integration capabilities based on the VMware platform. The solution also integrates effectively with VMware vCenter and external backup systems. Our company has hyper-converged infrastructures, where sometimes VMs need to be migrated from VxRail to other systems. The aforementioned migration process can be implemented effortlessly using the solution. The VMware API is easily accessible to third parties, and the solution integrates seamlessly with VxRail. 

I would rate the pricing as seven out of ten. It's a highly expensive solution. Our company purchases VxRail with a five-year license agreement. But our organization makes additional payments in between for renewal of support or replacement of equipment. Our company about six years ago paid around five million rands to adopt a four-node VxRail solution. 

The solution allowed our organization to dramatically reduce its overall footprint in the data center from about three racks to less than half a rack. 

VxRail has improved our organization's resilience of hardware footprint. The solution has enhanced our company's operations in terms of frequent backups compared to physical systems. The total time to recover data has also improved by leveraging VxRail in our company. 

The storage virtualization feature of VxRail has been the most vital part of our company's improvement in operations. The solution assisted our organization in achieving the latency we desired. VxRail is a full-time key solution. 

I would recommend VxRail as an excellent turnkey solution to any company focusing on applications rather than the hardware platform. Very limited management or maintenance is required for VxRail, and it's considered a safe solution. I would rate the solution as eight out of ten. I would definitely recommend VxRail to other users. 

It is for virtualization. It is where all our servers run. It is for server storage.

By implementing VxRail, we wanted hyperconvergence. We wanted to have the entire infrastructure unified in a single system. We were also looking for power, speed, and computation.

VxRail has improved our organization a lot. It has greatly simplified the infrastructure. Previously, we had many more nodes. We had the network on the one hand, the storage on the other, and the computing on the other. VxRail has unified them and created a much more agile and easier management.

It has unified the cluster. We have managed to move all of them to a single one, so we have all the data in a microcluster. It works well.

VxRail has the ability to consolidate infrastructure from multiple locations, but currently, we have it at only one location.

In terms of energy consumption, I am not an expert in energy consumption, but it must be one of the least consuming ones. It seems good.

VxRail has helped to reduce unplanned production downtime. We never had a crash, and we never had a service stoppage. It has been 100% successful.

VxRail has had a lot of impact on the flexibility of our operations or business because it is very scalable. We have already grown twice in nodes. Instead of expanding a different infrastructure, what we do is add new nodes, and we manage to have a much more flexible cluster.

Homogeneity is most valuable. The truth is that having everything in a single cluster helps a lot.

Its price could be better.

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

The stability of VxRail is very good.

It is very agile.

Their support works very well. We have had problems with hard drives, and we have an NDA. They came and changed them perfectly and quickly. They take one business day.

Positive

We used HPE SimpliVity, and it did not have a very good result, so we changed it for the better. There was a management issue, and it consumed almost 40% of the machine's resources. It is as if you buy a Ferrari and it already takes away 40% of your speed, whereas, with VxRail, you have 100% speed. We are very happy with it.

I do not have any return on investment in mind.

It is very expensive.

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.

It has not failed us, and we find it highly reliable. I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten.

Foreign Language:(Spanish)

Se adapta bien, nunca falla y simplifica la infraestructura

¿Durante cuánto tiempo utiliza Dell VxRail?

He estado usando VxRail durante tres años y medio.

¿Cuál es su principal caso de uso de esta solución? (Incluya detalles sobre su entorno).

Es para virtualización. Es donde funcionan todos nuestros servidores. Es para el almacenamiento del servidor.

Al implementar VxRail, queríamos hiperconvergencia. Queríamos tener toda la infraestructura unificada en un único sistema. También buscábamos potencia, velocidad y computación.

Comparta cómo Dell VxRail ha mejorado su organización. Si no fue así, explique por qué.

VxRail ha mejorado mucho nuestra organización. Ha simplificado enormemente la infraestructura. Anteriormente teníamos muchos más nodos. Teníamos la red por un lado, el almacenamiento por el otro y la informática por el otro. VxRail los ha unificado y creado una gestión mucho más ágil y sencilla.

VxRail ha unificado el clúster. Hemos conseguido moverlos todos a uno solo, por lo que tenemos todos los datos en un microcluster. Funciona bien.

VxRail tiene la capacidad de consolidar infraestructura desde múltiples ubicaciones, pero actualmente la tenemos en una sola ubicación.

En cuanto al consumo de energía, no soy un experto en consumo de energía, pero debe ser uno de los que menos consume. Me parece muy bueno.

VxRail ha ayudado a reducir el tiempo de inactividad de producción no planificado. Nunca tuvimos un accidente y nunca tuvimos una interrupción del servicio. Ha sido 100% exitoso.

VxRail ha tenido un gran impacto en la flexibilidad de nuestras operaciones o negocios porque es muy escalable. Ya hemos crecido dos veces en nodos. En lugar de ampliar una infraestructura diferente lo que hacemos es añadir nuevos nodos y conseguimos tener un cluster mucho más flexible.

¿Qué características le han parecido más valiosas y por qué?

La homogeneidad es lo más valioso. La verdad es que tener todo en un solo cluster ayuda mucho.

¿En qué áreas se podría mejorar Dell VxRail?

Su precio podría ser mejor.

¿Utilizó anteriormente una solución diferente? De ser así, ¿por qué la cambió?

Usamos HPE SimpliVity y no tuvo muy buen resultado, así que lo cambiamos para mejor. Hubo un problema de gestión que consumió casi el 40% de los recursos de la máquina. Es como si te compraras un Ferrari y te quitaran el 40% de velocidad, mientras que con VxRail tienes el 100% de velocidad. Estamos muy contentos con ello.

Antes de elegir, ¿evaluaste otras opciones? ¿De ser asi, cuales?

Evaluamos HPE SimpliVity y nos quedamos con VxRail.

Consideramos la infraestructura de nube pública antes de elegir VxRail, pero debido a los costos, decidimos usar VxRail. La latencia es mucho menor. VxRail es más rápido en su CPD que en la nube. Es menos escalable porque hay que comprar nodos, lo que lleva un tiempo, mientras que una nube puede seguir creciendo según la demanda.

¿Qué aconseja a otros sobre el costo de instalación, el precio y/o la licencia?

Es muy caro.

¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la escalabilidad de esta solución?

Es muy ágil.

¿Cuáles son sus impresiones sobre la estabilidad de esta solución?

La estabilidad de VxRail es muy buena.

¿Has visto el ROI (Retorno de la Inversión)? En caso afirmativo, ¿de qué manera (es decir, métricas/puntos de datos)?

No tengo en mente ningún retorno de la inversión.

Cuéntanos tu experiencia con el servicio y soporte al cliente.

Su soporte funciona muy bien. Hemos tenido problemas con los discos duros y tenemos un NDA. Vinieron y me los cambiaron perfectamente. Tardaron un día laboral.

¿Cómo calificaría esta solución en una escala del 1 al 10 en cuanto a servicio y soporte?

9.

En una escala del 1 al 10 (1=peor, 10=mejor), ¿cómo calificaría Dell VxRail? Por favor explique por qué.

No nos ha fallado y nos parece muy fiable. Calificaría a VxRail con un ocho de diez.

The big portion of it is the VDIs, XenDesktop VDIs. I would say that our biggest deployment for VDI is approximately 15,000 users.

Our team actually maintains the solution and deploys the updates, etc. We have two people that handle all maintenance-related issues. Mostly me but I have support from another person.

VxRail does not require fiber switches or external storage. It's easy to replace and manage. It's centralized management through VxRail Manager.

The upgrade process is still not finished up. Sometimes during the upgrade process of VxRail, we experience errors that have nothing to do with reality and I cannot troubleshoot them without calling Dell and bringing in an engineer to figure it out.

If the VxRail upgrade fails on one of the particular nodes in the cluster, it doesn't stop, It pauses. When a problem's fixed and you retry it, it starts from the beginning.

For example, If I have 32 nodes in a cluster and I have a problem with the 31st node, I have to start from node 1 to check everything. To get to node 31, it takes up to three hours.

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

Stability is not related to VxRail. It's related to vSAN. Because VxRail has nothing to do with vSAN. VxRail's just aiding automation and the orchestration processes to vSAN, the VMware vSAN. Overall, the stability is pretty good if the hardware is stable.

The scalability is 10 out of 10. I can add or remove hosts at any time. I have no problem with that.

I'm really pleased with the technical support because it's centralized. It's not just VxRail support, it's hardware support and vSAN support, VMware support. If I call Dell for any problems relating to VxRail, I don't have to call anybody else.

In any case, if we need VMware engineers, it's just a matter of internally bringing somebody on the call, and then we figure it out together.

The initial setup is straightforward. As soon as I prepare a JSON file I have no problem.

Usually deployment depends on the number of nodes — it's taken up to two hours.

I was not involved in the licensing of this solution.

If you're interested in using VxRail, use your judgment. There are multiple solutions and all of them are geared toward different use cases. Some people will prefer HyperFlex, others will prefer to go with Nutanix, VxRail, or, for god's sake, vSAN ReadyNodes.

VxRail has some limitations. For me, it's limited from doing what it's supposed to do because it's provided by VxRail — it's automated and orchestrated by VxRail. For example, I cannot use VMware Update Manager. I have to use a bundle, which is produced by Dell, and usually, they are at least a month to a month and a half behind VMware.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give VxRail a rating of eight.

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.