What needs improvement with VxRail?

There's a specific procedure to follow when shutting down a VxRail system. The process can be complex due to the system's configurations and load balancing. Because VxRail uses node-based configurations, handling shutdowns, restarts, or reboots might seem challenging. Simplifying this process could improve the overall user experience.

There is an area for improvement with VxRail, specifically the upgrade process. Upgrading the is quite complex and almost exclusively requires Dell support. You can't do it alone, so you need to have support contracts running, which could be streamlined to improve the solution.

The solution is expensive.

The solution's setup is a bit complex, and the complexity needs to be reduced.

The solution should facilitate the separate expansion of computing and storage.

It can be a bit complex for engineers who are new to it. There's a learning curve involved. They have to learn to operate it. Moreover, encryption at the OS level isn't available. We'd like to have that feature in future releases.

The product has high pricing. This particular area needs improvement.

I want to have a hybrid solution between the virtual environment that we have on-premises in the store and a replica or replication system in the cloud. I want a system to be able to balance my workload based on the volume and the real needs of my business at all times. I want a system more appropriate to what I need. I would like to have a unified platform where I, for example, can manage my 50 stores from a single portal in VxRail and be able to apply all the updates at once. I want to unify them into a centralized console.

Its price could be better.

The agility of the support team to provide you with better solutions should be improved. VxRail also has to be improved in terms of simplicity. Adding a simple node seemed like quite a project.

If they continue developing their product regarding VMware, it will be one of the best products in the HCI space. In terms of additional features, there is nothing missing because, for data protection, they also have the CDP option for VM. They can protect the VM at any point in time.

They are always coming out with new updates and fixes. There are no immediate fixes needed. There's always room to improve on both the front and back end. It might offer better integration with other products.

The solution is very expensive. And it's not scalable for small businesses, just medium to large enterprises. The pricing could be cheaper. Another area of improvement is support. It could be faster.

The tool needs to improve its price.

When it comes to maintenance, it takes 16 hours to upgrade a 12 node VxRail plus. This could be improved in the system.

VxRail could improve by having domain data protection.

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

We have some issues, but they are possibly out-of-the-box issues. There was a host that was dead on arrival, and there were some file issues on other hosts. We're currently working actively with Dell to resolve all these issues. Once they are resolved, the product should be stable. In terms of the additional features, we still need to adopt what we have. It has lots of features, and we need to start using it heavily. I might have something to add in a year or so, but currently, I don't have anything.

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.

VxRail is an expensive solution. It could be improved by having more information on the integration portion of ACI.

It would be nice if the update process was shortened and that patching would be simpler.

We are in the process of exploring more options which is bundle with this solution.

As of right now, I cannot think of any improvements, as it has been working very well. It might help if there was more confidentiality between VxRail and the Data Domain for Backup. There are several issues with backup solutions. We'd like integration with Avamar. We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future.

The fact that is based on vSAN is the main issue of this solution.

It would be great to have a mechanism that identifies whether or not the configuration has been done well. Right now, we are doing that manually. A compliance check would be a helpful feature. Some of the features of the hyperconverged infrastructure could be integrated with external storage. Right now, for example, if I have surveillance going, I need to purchase very cheap storage. So, an integration between the hyperconverged infrastructure and external storage would be good.

There are multiple things that have space for improvement. The most important are the features related to VMware, vSphere, vCenter, etc.

Sometimes during implementation, you can some scripting errors. And there are some issues when we update the version. There are some issues like the version will not get updated or stable at some time. Dell needs to resolve these problems, we don't waste time fixing them.

When you converge the solution, you have to be very careful because the great scalability comes at an important cost. If you want to use three nodes with a standard license, for example, and you want to converge the solution with three nodes, you have chosen the wrong product because you have to buy a new server if you want to scale up. In my opinion, the lack of improvement is from a commercial point of view, not from a technical point of view. It also lacks a single easy remote server for disaster recovery.

We do not use the storage part of VxRail, we use Pure Storage to map out the VxRail because the disk performance from Pure Storage was far better than the performance of the disk on the inside of VxRail. I have found that Dell sales are the worst part of the organization or the blemish of their solutions. When they tell you, you are receiving something, and then down the road, you find out you actually have to buy something else in order to have the intended functionality it can be frustrating. We should have been told when purchasing this solution that we needed to purchase VMware Tanzu for private clouds.

The price could be better. The backup mechanism could also be better. Some of our clients prefer to work with backup software from a different vendor. They don't do a built-in backup solution. It would be better if they had guidelines on proper sizing and the whole life cycle from the requirement collection. If there aren't any proper guidelines, how do I go to the customer and evaluate their existing infrastructure? How can you do appropriate sizing to migrate to a hyper-converged environment? I think this is a requirement because most of our clients are migrating to a hyper-converged environment. In the next release, they can improve absolutely anything you can think of to improve the product in general—for example, the clusters and backup software.

A beneficial improvement they could make would be the integration of all the dealings with VMware to provide a license with VxRail so the customer can purchase it without the need to pay for an additional license for the VMware. If the license for VMware were to come together with the hardware at no additional cost, that would be great. Nutanix offers this package.

In the next release, maybe they could add in integration with the hyper-cloud so it will be easier to do the movement up and back to the cloud in order to scale in and scale out. If I could have some kind of a container-based solution, I'd be happier. That way I would be able to run my containers, my Kubernetes, in that environment.

The price of the solution is rather on the high side, not generally speaking but only as concerns VxRail. Dell Strava has exactly the same kind of price when it comes to HPE. VxRail starts at a higher price, so we tend to use SimpliVitity solutions concerning small companies. The full solution is not completely included as a bundle, such as we see with SimpliVity. VxRail lacks a backup solution.

The cost is quite high. It's a very expensive solution to run.

I wish for the performance environment to be improved.

VxRail is a closed system with an out-of-the -box solution approach, it has basic 3 layers, Hardware, Network, Storage, Software, (Virtualizing) Applications. Release notes and improvement tips, patches from the back office, the business units, should be frequent and up to the patches which are coming from different vendors as far as the operating system application and also the technology itself is concerned. It's sometimes difficult if you have to decommission and add a new node, especially when you go for the qualification of the new node through the python script, there are multiple checks which are always on, and sometimes they are already covered and the script is focused on those. It is mandatory to resolve this issue and call the technical support back office team to suppress the checks and do the expansion or the break-off for a new node. This is my main concern because sometimes we are not able to get to the right engineer especially when you are in a different time zone. I generally catch them at the end of a shift and a new engineer takes a handover from the previous, then you have to explain everything a second time and the new engineer would resolve the issue with a different approach. Or sometimes he is dependent on Engineering team advice. There are multiple things to be considered and we are dependent mostly on the vendor.

There is limited support for SAP HANA with this solution. Sometimes there are customers we have that want a solution based on SAP HANA and it is not compatible.

It could be very interesting to integrate VxRail with vSAN Ready Nodes, which we also use. Both solutions were built by Dell. vSAN Ready Nodes is another family of products, but with the same building blocks as VxRail, I think. VxRail easier to manage and deploy, but it is a little more expensive, and vSAN Ready Nodes would work better for some of our clients' use cases. It would be good to have both of these solutions on the same dashboard. We don't want to have two management domain. It would be great for us to have these two Dell solutions integrated. Dell could do more to help customers understand the real value proposition of this solution, especially related to deployment and scaling. A lot can be done with this solution. For example, it can be used for coverage bonds for virtual machines or as a solution for disaster recovery. This is important for customers with critical infrastructures. In-person training and online training tools could be great, as well. Including training in the bundle with the equipment would be beneficial for us.

The licensing is a bit too costly. They should work on lessening the overall price.

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 host a lot of other clients on my premises, the ACR, and I need to charge them for the services I provide. I would like it if there were tools that provided the billing costs. In other words, this infrastructure or this resource will cost you X amount of dollars. In short, I would prefer it if each cell had a tool geared toward billing clients. The initial setup for the VxRail economy requires a minimum of three nodes. We might consider building a new cluster with a minimum of four, as not all customers can sponsor for the sub-training number of nodes. In short, to implement VxRail, you need a minimum of three nodes for the initial setup; and the initial setup isn't cheap.

The product could support and have more compliance with other vendors. It is a big problem that you can not choose any other vendors and must only buy VxRail equivalents, such as Lenel. Some additional features in the next release should include support for duplication and compression. There should also be more support features on private and hybrid clouds.

It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware.

I can't speak to any missing features or weak aspects of the system just yet. We haven't had a chance to really dig in.

As I said, one place for improvement would be the automated update for VMware Tools. Additionally, better integration with ServiceNow because if there are some issues, we could directly get the notification through IPS and Tools, so that integration is missing. Somehow they did it, but it was not a very smooth integration because we have to use email features since they are sending emails. We contacted someone at ServiceNow at our end and we sent emails to ServiceNow and they converted it to some incidents or something. If we could have some out of the box ideas in integration, I think that would be a great feature. VxRail provides more automation. For example, the process going from VMware to Tools is still a manual process where we have to manually update the VMware Tools. There should might be an option to upgrade VMware Tools automatically. We know that we need some downtime, but still, there should be a possibility to do this as an automated process.

We would like to see integrating with Nutanix. Currently, we are working on integrating the two to see if there is any value in doing so.

Currently, I don't see much room for improvement; however, there could be better documentation and they should allow everyone to access the simulator. If Dell could provide access to a simulator or a demo for regular users, it would make things much easier. In order to gain access, you need to be a golden partner — normal users can't do it. It would be more beneficial to everyone if they could access the simulator and run some trial and error experiments before operating the real product. Many other companies (like Cisco) allow all of their users to do this. You can simply download the materials from the internet, including the simulator. In regard to VxRail or Dell products in general, you cannot do this because it's very limited to specific partners — typical end users don't have access. It would be great if it was more available to all partners, not just their top-tier partners. There would be less resistance from potential customers because they wouldn't be afraid of daily operations, support, etc.

In the version that I was working with, the integrations are in need of improvement. The technical support is in slight need of improvement.

In the future, they could provide faster performance. VxRail has many components integrated into one solution. Instead of integrating many components, having a single component with VMware as a solution; this could be useful.

I cannot think of anything right now, nothing in coming to my mind.

The licensing needs to be improved upon. For example, when we need to move your Oracle databases to VxRail solutions, we need to license the processor core and the solutions. This comes at a high cost to customers. There needs to be better integrations with other products.

Its price needs to be improved. It is very expensive. NSX should be licensed together. It will make the network virtualization layer more usable. It would be better if they come together in a bundle, not separately.

All updates are supposed to be done through VxRail, however, the vCenter actually showed that there was an update it needed. I've just started using the product. I didn't know what I was doing. I actually updated my vCenter and that actually threw the VxRail system offline. We had to spend some time trying to get that working again. If possible, they should make the process a bit more clear so we don't make mistakes like this in the future. There should maybe be some sort of pop-up that can direct you.

The requirements need improvement. Some of the managers of VMs are a little sensitive to where they need to be placed in the environment and what names they need to have. I would like a little more control over that so that it fits into our naming scheme and it fits our organizational structure within vSphere. That's cosmetic, however. It's not a functional problem. It's just slightly disorganized. We have to put exceptions into our rules in order to check our rules.

The performance of data centers needs to be improved. They need to process more and deliver more in the space of the storage and offer better performance. The solution should offer more integration with other virtual software. VxRail runs just with VMware.

They could make something like an actual catalog where you could just put your weblogs and then you cold can get the recommended specs along with the utilities like which processor to get. That would be an economical way to figure out the specs of the solution in relation to your requirements. Right now, it's difficult for a non-technical person to participate in using the product. It could be made more consumer-friendly. It should give output or recommend orders and dissolve effects. They could be more clear in terms of which options to choose. For example, they could say, "We recommend, if you want high performance, to go with this pack." Or "if you want an economical option, try this". The solution could improve on some existing features, especially experience-based access or something like that. The product could benefit from more tightly integrated management.

The version upgrade process should be simplified.

We would like to have on-premise technical support. A more containerized approach in regards to the interface would be better.

If they can provide deduplication compression through the traditional hard drives, as Cisco does in the HyperFlex system, it will be very cost-effective, especially when it comes to archiving workload. VxRail doesn't allow the mixing of old flash clusters and hyper clusters. When I'm starting with an old flash cluster and it comes to archiving workload, I will also need to attend the new cluster. So, I either manage two different clusters, or I pay and upload my work with the archiving mobile hard drive, which is not cost-effective at all. The main key is to allow mixing between two types of clustering, like Nutanix, or allow deduplication of completion over the period of shared hard drive on SAV. It will be much better.

The pricing of the solution could be improved. We are reliant on the distributor. I'm a technical person but I know from speaking to customers that they feel it's a bit costly compared to the generic product.There are also some major components of the product not available for download. Even though we are partners, we don't get them. They provide backup features but it comes at an additional cost. It would be helpful if they would include something like the standard backup procedure, backup features like the application manager.

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.

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.

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.

The downside of the solution is this: if one drive load is down, it will take some time to sequence the data. There is a need to improve on this a little bit. This inclusion of data just takes too much time. It should be improved. It should not take so much time in the case of a hard drive failure. It should not be deployed on one hypervisor. There should be multiple hypervisors supported like Hyper-V or KVM.

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.

Having a native replication would be an improvement.

From a hardware and software perspective, there could be an improvement in the sales cycle, as there are a lot of hoops to go through to get pricing on a solution.

There are still some features which aren't built into Cisco, like virtualized networking, that use its applications. However, these can be purchased through another product as an additional licensing cost to us.

I would like to see integration with vCenter if possible.

If they can improve the HTML client that would be great because the HTML client is a lot more responsive. It's a lot smoother than the flash that it comes with and flash updates every minute and every time flash updates I can't open my web client. You should update and make sure the HTML client works. If it does then you have a product that gives you an excellent 9.5/10 from most vendors with no problem. Everybody complains that for 6.5 and 6.7 there's no desktop client for V7. Everyone misses the desktop client. I don't like the web client. If they can bring back the desktop client for the next release of the VxRail that would be great.

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.

I would like an easier migration. This way, if a node fails like it did, the data would have been migrated and I would not have had to get up at three in the morning.

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.

We would like to see tighter integration with Pivotal, because we're looking for end-to-end transformation and tight integration. So, we would like to see the Dell EMC family have stronger integration with their products, as this would be the best thing. It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration.

I would like better integration with VCF from VMware, which is the Cloud Foundation tool set, so we can easily provision servers very quickly. Dell EMC could put in their own monitoring tool set for this environment, or if they wanted to, they could use it to expand into other environments.

* Networking to be included * A single upgrade button for all the environment including network resources.

* 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.

The initial setup between the different Dell departments is fragmented (ESRS Team, onsite deployment team, RecoverPoint team, etc.). The engineers who come to rack/stack and do the initial config should be trained on all the areas and work with the different Dell departments whilst they are onsite to give a smoother install and better experience for customer. At present, VxRail is a hyperconverged state of the art product being installed in a legacy way. We need hyperconverged install teams.

It needs faster deployment of security patches. Dell EMC is already improving its patching method, but faster security patch rollout would alleviate risks associated from known vulnerabilities within VMware/subsystems.