We use it for our applications, which are all homeward applications and on a Windows-based server. VxRail has performed well so far.
Head of IT at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The technical support is helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product
Pros and Cons
- "There is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact."
- "It is scalable. When you are buying it, you have to buy a minimum of three nodes. After that, if you want to add more nodes, you can buy can buy them. You can also add-on additional compute and storage."
- "The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product."
- "They should add automation and activation going forward."
- "Next release, we would like to see online applications."
What is our primary use case?
How has it helped my organization?
With VxRail, there is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact. With other products of HPE, you have to procure different vendors and pay the hardware to HPE, the software to VMware, and the maintenance to someone else.
What needs improvement?
- They should add automation and activation going forward.
- VxRail is missing some of the features that Nutanix has in its product.
- Next release, we would like to see online applications.
For how long have I used the solution?
Less than one year.
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VxRail
October 2024
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What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is very stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It is scalable. When you are buying it, you have to buy a minimum of three nodes. After that, if you want to add more nodes, you can buy can buy them. You can also add-on additional compute and storage.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was straightforward.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:
- Stability
- Scalability
- Technical background of the company
- Price.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Works at Professsionales ‘‘em computer
Has a good design, but storage for databases needs improvement
Pros and Cons
- "We like the design and that it meets data storage needs."
- "My customers want more storage for university databases."
What is most valuable?
We like the design and that it meets data storage needs.
What needs improvement?
My customers want more storage for university databases.
For how long have I used the solution?
We've been using this solution for approximately one year.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support needs to be improved, and I would give them a six out of ten. They could assign more digital architects to the support team.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Neutral
What about the implementation team?
We used a reseller for the implementation. It took about two months to deploy the solution.
VxRail is deployed in one location, and we have about 22 people who use the solution.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price is good.
What other advice do I have?
I tell customers that VxRail solves a lot of storage problems, and I would rate it a five on a scale from one to ten.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Buyer's Guide
VxRail
October 2024
Learn what your peers think about VxRail. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Senior Manager Information System Administration at a consumer goods company with 201-500 employees
Don’t just buy a server, transform your infrastructure with more power with easy maintenance and less cost.
Pros and Cons
- "VxRail is an agile solution with easily scalable, simplify operations with software driven automation and lower operational cost."
- "The search feature isn't good."
What is our primary use case?
We were using VMWare and Dell products from long time. We wanted reliable technology partner who can provide technology, solution and support during migration. We use Microsoft technology.
What is most valuable?
We are not just purchased the server, we transformed our infrastructure into Powerful and Efficient, agile, flexible and scalable, polished and proven technology solution build with VMWare. New HCI - VxRail replaced with our existing 42U rack devices consists of BladeCenter, storage and other rack mountable servers into simple, more powerful 4 node VxRail device
which saves power and maintenance cost very drastically.
What needs improvement?
We are in the process of exploring more options which is bundle with this solution.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using VxRail for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is a stable product, deploy appliance with ease, update all software in single click, monitor using dashboards for health, events and physical views. And maintain with direct access to support, articles and community.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The solution is scalable.
How are customer service and support?
Whenever there are any technical or hardware issues, we contact Dell. They will attend to us immediately. On a scale of one to five, I would give them a five.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We switched to VxRail because our previous solution was at the end of service life. We had used it for more than six years. We wanted new technology with new scalability. power, technology and easy maintenance.
How was the initial setup?
We migrated from our older hardware consists of multiple servers, storage and switches to simple and more powerful HCI - 4 node VxRail device.
Studying current and future Business requirement, validating multiple solution which suits our requirement, which is agile, easily scalable and more power to suite our future plans. It took almost six plus months to freeze the VxRail solution. Post finalization, releasing the order and receiving to hardware it took almost 6 months to complete the migration to new setup. Delay was due to lockdown, travel restrictions otherwise it would have been completed within three months. Complete migration was very smooth and very minimal downtime without any Business impact.
What about the implementation team?
In-house team with OEM Support.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Identifying and freezing the solution by multiple tech discussions and negations. Finalizing solution with hardware is bundled with license. Closing the order with Five-year Support and migration support from OEM.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution 10 out of 10.
Just buying the product is not important, along with solution on-time support is very crucial for Business-critical applications. We are using Dell products, solutions and services from more than 10years. From my experience with Dell, their technology, support and services which plays a critical role to select Dell as our products and solution vendor.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Cloud Consultant at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
Compute, storage, networking and virtualization resources in a single device
Pros and Cons
- "VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization."
- "The way that the VxRail is licensed could be improved."
What is most valuable?
VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization. It really frees up resources as it requires little maintenance. If you're providing a platform that has consolidated compute, storage, and fabric, then it's basically a turnkey type of solution that organizations can use. It also has one patch, so you're not dealing with several different ecosystems, for example, one supplier for storage, one supplier for compute, and one supplier for networking. It's all bundled into one platform which reduces costs. That also makes it easier to maintain and manage as well.
What needs improvement?
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using VxRail for two and a half years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It's absolutely a stable product. The reason why we chose this solution and that particular type of technology were that we were running many different private clouds within our data centers. Considering the time spent on the maintenance and the patchwork, if we've consolidated and we're offering one platform to house over 3000 clients and over a thousand private clouds, it is a very stable platform. Given the fact that it's a software-defined technology, if it resides within a software-defined data center, the analytics are very transparent and it's easy to address a singular patch across an entire landscape of clients. It's very stable. In terms of scalability, capacity, and modularity, that's the reason why we selected it.
How are customer service and technical support?
I don't have first-hand experience with technical support. We have a support help desk. Clients can call in and we help them with VxRail. I've never had to contact their support for help with any client issues.
What about the implementation team?
If you partner with Dell, they offer Dell ProDeploy support and SmartHands. We hire them to do the shipping and implementation into a client's data center, whether that's on-prem or in a third-party incumbent location, such as our data center. They have a lot of expertise behind that. from my perspective, it always runs fairly smoothly.
Generally, we procure VxRail through Dell and then we sell it back to the client within our margin. With VxRail, comes Dell's ProDeploy and SmartHands capability to ship and then install.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The way that VxRail is licensed could be improved. I'm not entirely sure, but I think what I encounter is licensing VMware as Dell. Dell and VMware go together and I think that the licensing has become quite complicated and costly. For things like vSAN especially, having those types of skews displayed and a bit easier to understand how the licensing works behind the infrastructure would be a nice change.
Licensing things like vSphere on top of the platform itself can be quite tricky to manage. For anyone wanting a subscription-based model or a perpetual model, that's always quite important to scrutinize.
What other advice do I have?
Although it's really the only hyper-converged platform that I have any experience with, overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give VxRail a rating of ten. I understand the competitiveness between Nutanix and NetApp and other hyper-converged platforms. But I think that given the strengths behind Dell and their acquisition of VMware, it makes for a very solid platform — it's very reliable. We've benchmarked our whole company off of hyper-converged Dell.
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
Senior Network & System Administrator at UOWD
Has good performance but it should have an option to only upgrade individual modules of the architecture
Pros and Cons
- "VxRail's feature that we found most valuable was its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages."
- "It's not really flexible with different use cases."
What is our primary use case?
We used it for hosting on the infrastructure.
How has it helped my organization?
We previously had a traditional infrastructure where we always had issues with the performance. The vendor then introduced us to VxRail and the performance improved drastically. That was one of the best things I can say about it. The time spent on reports and support went down a lot.
What is most valuable?
VxRail's feature that we found most valuable is its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages. However, we switched out from VxRail because some of our use cases and workloads required a different solution.
What needs improvement?
I would say its support could be improved. One issue that we faced was that often a single file upgrade would cause an issue, whether it was an update for the hardware or for every component. They should have an option to only upgrade individual modules of the architecture. For example, there should be an option to upgrade only the individual VMware module and not rely on a single update file for everything.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability was excellent. It takes around three people to manage.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability was good but we didn't make use of it. It's scalable from an architecture point of view but we never took advantage of that functionality.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup was a bit complex and they didn't manage to bring it up in the first attempt. Really, only the support people can do it and if something happened the support people need to have control of it. The second attempt also took longer than expected. It took almost two days to complete the full installation, which is longer than the claim that it should take around two to three hours for the full setup.
We had three people involved in the deployment process.
What about the implementation team?
It is implemented from the supplier side, not with our people. There were 35 VxRail guests involved in the implementation.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
What other advice do I have?
My advice to anyone looking to get VxRail is to really understand your use case because from our experience this solution doesn't fit certain use cases. So clearly defining your use case is very important when you're choosing VxRail.
The product was good, but as I said, it's not really flexible with different use cases. That was a lesson we learned from buying VxRail. It's not meant for all use cases, it is only meant for specific ones, which is why we had to switch. It's difficult for it to adapt.
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate VxRail a seven.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Principal at Austin Tovey Ltd
It reduces latency, because it's bringing the storage closer to the chip
Pros and Cons
- "It's a turnkey solution, which is good for customers, because they are buying into stability."
- "I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket."
What is our primary use case?
It is for small-to-medium businesses, who are looking to simplify IT effectively, reduce costs, and make it easier to maintain their whole lifecycle process.
How has it helped my organization?
For my customers who have it, it's reducing the complexity of IT management, single panes of glass, etc. It eliminates the three-tier architecture effectively where there is storage and storage network, then compute.
What is most valuable?
It is a pre-architected solution, so it's an off-the-shelf solution designed by Dell EMC engineers who work with VMware.
It's a turnkey solution, which is good for customers, because they are buying into stability.
What needs improvement?
I would like it to tier to the cloud effectively, making sure that cold data can be pushed out to some sort of Bitbucket. As far as I'm aware, it's not there yet. I have heard rumors it's on the roadmap. I have customers who want to do it and got the public cloud space. They want to be able to move workloads in and out of VxRail.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
So far, the stability is good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I'm not at the stage yet where I need to expand with my customers, but it is easy to add on to.
How are customer service and technical support?
I haven't used the technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
It is a logical progression for customers who are on a three-tier architecture to go with VxRail. It reduces the cost of ownership, so you don't need that storage network layer anymore. You're not buying a dedicated piece of hardware for the storage. It reduces latency, because it's bringing the storage closer to the chip, which is always going to be a good thing. Customers like lower latency and higher IOPS.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is very straightforward. Fill out the spreadsheet and generate the JSON file, then pump it in.
Customers like it. It's simple to deploy.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The price point needs improvement, certainly for smaller SMBs. The cost of it is still quite painful. I think all vendors should do a product which is capped either by terabytes, IOPs, or VM instances. It should be an SMB solution that's going to make hyper-converged solutions easier for SMBs to get hold of. It's fine for those big guys that have billions of dollars of budget, but not for customers who have barely a 100,000 dollars or pounds in budget.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
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.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
Senior Consultant at SoftEd Systems
Has a quick installation and is easy to manage
Pros and Cons
- "I can roll out the system in thirty minutes and the customer can work with it."
- "I would like to see integration with vCenter if possible."
What is our primary use case?
We use this solution for middle customers and headquarters. It's very scalable and works fine. I can roll out the system in thirty minutes and the customer can work with it.
What is most valuable?
The most valuable feature is the quick installation. I build the system for the customer and then it is quick and easy to manage. The price is a little bit on the higher side but the system and management are so quick and easy that it's worth it for the customer.
What needs improvement?
I would like to see integration with vCenter if possible.
For how long have I used the solution?
Between two and three years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In terms of stability, it's an easy solution.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I can start with two systems for a robot, or I can start with a bigger system that has twelve or more nodes, and I can add the customer's workload.
We had a big project in Germany that started with one cluster. It expanded over a year and a half to a fourteen cluster system.
How are customer service and technical support?
In the beginning, we had to put in a lot of requests with their technical support. Now, we have fewer tickets. The support is okay.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup of this solution is not complex. Take it out of the package and implement; it's very easy.
What about the implementation team?
We implement the systems ourselves.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We use Dell EMC products and this solution was the best one for our customers and projects.
What other advice do I have?
We typically use G Series, but for a certain customer, we have the P Series to handle the application workload. The P Series has more performance which you may need for your application. All of the other clusters are G Series.
I have some colleagues who also use this solution. This is a good product of the future.
I would rate it a ten out of ten. I love it.
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
SE Infrastructure at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Data infrastructure solution that offers high performance at a reasonable price
Pros and Cons
- "VxRail has improved our organization by providing our admin team with an easy-to-use interface."
- "The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience."
What is our primary use case?
Our customers who have the old infrastructure and are looking for high-performance and modern infrastructure, use VxRail.
How has it helped my organization?
VxRail has improved our organization by providing our admin team with an easy-to-use interface.
What needs improvement?
The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for four years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
This is a stable solution.
How are customer service and support?
The technical support for this solution is great. I would rate it a ten out of ten.
How would you rate customer service and support?
Positive
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We used a different open-source product but it was not easy to manage which is why we switched.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward. The time it takes to set up depends on the size of the cluster. For a mid-size cluster of 12 nodes, it usually takes one to two days.
What was our ROI?
We have seen a return on the investment due to how easy this solution is to use and the time it frees up for our staff.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Its pricing is reasonable compared to other products.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
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