VMware EVO:RAIL [EOL] Reviews

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

As written in the previous post, there are different approaches for implement a SDDC and EVO:RAIL represent the VMware’s way for implement fast and in a simple way an Hyper-Converged Infrastructure.

EVO represents an entire new family of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure offerings from VMware, and EVO:RAIL represents the first product in this family. It was announced in this VMworld 2014 (with a first list of EVO partners) and will be available during the second half of 2014.

Note that this product will be available only through qualified EVO partners (similar in the concept on how vSphere could be sold through a pre-installed OEM channel). But in this case will be ONLY thought this way: if you want to play with EVO:RAIL you must buy an entire solution or use the Hands on lab. Announced partners include Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Inspur, NetOne and SuperMicro.

From the tecnical point of view the EVO:RAIL “building block” is a 2U system composed by 4-Node unit (just microserver), where each node is an independent physical server within the 2U enclosure (this make microserver different, for example, from blades).

The form factor (initially will be only this) has been chosen to simplify the decision (no choice, just add more node) but also the deployment and the efficiency.

Each of the four nodes in a EVO:RAIL appliance have (at a minimum):

• Two Intel E5-2620 v2 six-core CPUs
• 192GB of memory
• Internal Drive Bays for the entire appliance – up to 24 hot plug 2.5 drives
• One SLC SATADOM or SAS HDD as the ESXi™ boot device
• Three SAS 10K RPM 1.2TB HDD for the VMware Virtual SAN™ datastore
• One 400GB MLC enterprise-grade SSD for read/write cache
• One Virtual SAN-certified pass-through disk controller
• Two 10GbE NIC ports (configured for either 10GBase-T or SFP+ connections)
• One 1GbE IPMI port for remote (out-of-band) management
• 1 x Expansion Slots PCI-E
• Dual PSU – rated between 1600W

Each EVO partner could make something different, but those will be the minimum requirements, and the form factor actually is fixed (but I suppose that there will be other form factor, for example for VDI environments where GPU are needed).

Will be possible scale out up to four Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Appliance (HCIA), for a maximum of 16 nodes in a cluster (considering the vSphere limit, will be possible to have more in next release).

The top of rack (ToR) switch is not included in the EVO:RAIL requirements, but of course will be needed (an possible with good redundancy), so probably some EVO partners will build a complete offer.

Note that storage will be provided by Virtual SAN, as could be expected in an Hyper-Converged Infrastructure.

But the most intesting aspect of EVO:RAIL is how easy is deploy, configure and also manage it:

• Rapid configuration in minutes
• Simple management with a pure HTML5 interface
• Easy non-disruptive upgrades
• Automatically scales out

The installation is almost simple (and fast) and based on a guided and automatical deployment mode both for ESXi (note that is something new, not the AutoDeploy system) and for the virtual appliances (like vCenter Server).

And the management will also be simple, though the new HTML5 interface (compatible with any browser without any plugin and with any device!), but note that is just a “wrapper” to the vSphere API, so you can choose to use the new interface or still the vSphere Web Client to manage your environment.

The new interface will be more simple and faster for common tasks and could become also something more (for example a self-provisioning and/or multi-tenant UI).

For sure this could awesome for customers that need to build new infrastructure and potentially (as seen in several post) could be valuable for the SMB and the Mid-size. The only limit that I see is potentially the cost: the vSphere edition will be the Enterprise Plus one, where the cost is not so much SMB friendly! But actually we have to wait to see first proposal of EVO:RAIL appliances.

It’s all perfect? Probably no, but seems really promising. It’s just version 1.0, but the UI is fast and reactive (seems that there is a lot of experience derivated from vCloud Hybrid Service), but some features is missing in this version: for example the hardware managment could be better (hardware lifecycle is separated, and other tools are needed, like for firmware upgrade), EVO:RAIL lacks of API and probably also for plug-in… but lot of new features are already planned for the next release.

Will this solution kill other converged or hyper-converged infrastructure? For sure will be something strange: most of the EVO partners have existing solution based on “building blocks” converged or also hyper-converged (for example Dell has the vStart but also the Nutanix alliance) and will be interesting see if those solution will remain (for example for other hypervisor or for OpenStack implementation) or will be dropped.

And will change the role of system admins (or the virtualization admins)? Maybe, but to be honest, also the existing “block-based” solution are reducing the effort for the deployment and installation and existing management/monitoring tools are reducing the operational effort. But good architects are still needed and skill may change, but integrations, automation and organization capabilities will be still needed.

About the name, seems confirmed that EVO stands for ‘Evolutionary’ and RAIL simply represent the ‘rail mount’ attached to 2U/4-node server platform that allows it to slide easily into a datacenter rack. Previously EVO:RAIL was also know by the projects name: Marvin (Marvin Droid is visible in some screenshots) or Mystic.

For more information on EVO:RAIL see also:

• Meet VMware EVO:RAIL™ – A New Building Block for your SDDC
• What’s New at VMware VMwold: EVO:RAIL and EVO:RACK
• VMware EVO:RAIL – Overview

Note that EVO:RAIL is the first product of the EVO family, but no long the only one: EVO:RACK (a hyper-converged infrastructure project) has been announced as a Technology Preview.

This post is also available in: Italian

What is most valuable?

What needs improvement?

What is most valuable?

How has it helped my organization?

Originally posted in Spanish at www.rhpware.com/2014/08/introduccion-vmware-evo-rail

VMware EVO: RAIL combines computing power, networking and storage in an appliance hyper converged to create a one-stop solution simple and easy to deploy qualified to be offered by VMware partners.

Simplicity transformed

EVO: RAIL lets you create a virtual machine and turn it on in a matter of minutes, as well as the deployment of VMs, apply updates and patches and non-disruptively with a single click, thus offering simplified management.

Building blocks defined by the software

EVO: RAIL is a building block that forms a software-defined datacenter (SDDC) that offers computing, networking, storage, and centralized administration to promote a private or hybrid cloud computing for end users, testing and development environments and branch environments office.

Reliable base

Built on technology VMware vSphere, vCenter Server and VMware Virtual SAN EVO: RAIL provides the first appliance hyper converged infrastructure using VMware software 100%.

Highly resilient by design

The highly resilient design allows start with four separate host and datastores Virtual SAN distributed that ensures "zero downtime" application during scheduled maintenance or disk errors, network failures or hosts.

Infrastructure running speed innovation

It lets you meet the demands of accelerated solid business infrastructure simplifying design scaling and sizing predictable, allowing make the purchase fluidly with a single SKU and reducing both CapEx and OpEx.

Freedom of choice

EVO: RAIL is offered as a complete appliance consists of hardware, software and support of the most recognized brands, but customers who choose the option you want.

VMware is not entering the hardware market as the EVO software package: RAIL is available only through qualified partners, and indeed will be the partner who will provide all the hardware and software support to customers.

Appliance

Each appliance EVO: RAIL has four independent nodes with computing power, storage and network as mentioned above, but all these resources will be redundant to eliminate single points of failure (SPF Single Point of Failure).

Nodes

Each of the four nodes EVO: RAIL has:

Two Intel 6-core E5-2620v2

• 192 GB of memory
• SLC boot device SATADOM or SAS HDD for ESXi hypervisor
• Three SAS disks 10K RPM 1.2TB of capacity for VMware Virtual SAN datastores
• An enterprise-grade SSD 400GB MLC for read and write cache
• A disk controller pass-through certificate for Virtual SAN
• 10GbE two NICs configured for both connections to 10GBase-T SFP +)
• A 1GbE port for IPMI remote management

Reliability and fault tolerance

Each appliance EVO: RAIL has the following components and reliability features:

• Four ESXi hosts in a single appliance allowing it to be resilient to hardware failure or maintenance
• Two redundant power supplies
• Two NIC ports per node 10GbE
• Device boot ESXi hypervisor
• Mechanical and solid state disks enterprise grade

Automatic scaling

EVO: RAIL Version 1.0 can scale up to four appliances, giving a total of 16 hosts ESXi, 1 Virtual SAN datastores supported by vCenter Server and an instance of EVO: RAIL. It will handle the deployment, configuration and management, allowing computing capacity and growth are automatic Virtual SAN datastores. The new appliances will be discovered automatically and added to the cluster EVO simplest form: RAIL with just a few clicks.

Software

EVO: RAIL provides the first appliance hyper convergent 100% powered by software from VMware and its suite of products and offer, as lines behind it was already mentioned, through qualified partners and partners of VMware business. This software package will come fully installed and loaded into the hardware partner.

The bundle includes:

• Deployment, configuration and administration of EVO: RAIL
• VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus, including ESXi
• Virtual SAN
• vCenter Server
• Log vCenter Insight

EVO: RAIL also is optimized for new users of VMware as well as for experienced administrators. A minimum experience for installation and deployment is required, as well as for configuration and management, thus enabling use in environments where IT staff is limited or almost nil. By using VMware products as core, administrators EVO: RAIL can apply all their knowledge of VMware, best practices and processes.

EVO: RAIL uses the same database vCenter Server, therefore, changes in the configuration and management carried out in EVO: RAIL automatically be reflected in vCenter Server and vice versa.

Computing, networking, storage and management EVO: RAIL - Computation

VM density

EVO: RAIL is dimensioned to run 100 VMs sizes and average overall purpose in a datacenter. The actual capacity varies according to the size and workload of the virtual machines. There are no restrictions for the types of applications and all types of applications that can run on vSphere supported.

VM profile General Purpose: 2 vCPUs, Vmem 4GB, 60GB vDisk redundancy

EVO: RAIL is optimized for VMware Horizon View with settings that allow up to 250 virtual machines on a single appliance View EVO: RAIL. Of course, the actual capacity varies according to the size of the remote desktop and the workload they own.

Desktop Profile Horizon View: 2vCPU, 2GB Vmem, 32GB vDisk for linked clones

EVO: RAIL - Red

Connections

Each node EVO: RAIL has two 10GbE network ports. Each port must be connected to a switch with 10GbE TOR also supports IPv4 and IPv6 multicast enabled

Remote management is available at each node through an IPMI 1GbE port that connects to the management network. It is clear that in some configurations these ports can be covered and disabled.

Traffic

EVO: RAIL supports four types of traffic: Management, vSphere vMotion, Virtual SAN and Virtual Machine.

Separation of traffic in VLANs for vSphere vMotion, Virtual SAN and VMs is recommended. EVO: RAIL Version 1.0 does not place management traffic on a VLAN.

The TOR switches must support IPv4 and IPv6 multicast enabled. The automatic scaling feature EVO: RAIL uses IPv6, but IPv6 is required across the network.

VLANs are not necessary to customize the configuration of EVO: RAIL, however it is highly recommended. When using the option Just Go! It assumes that the VLANs are already configured.

EVO: RAIL - Storage

EVO: RAIL creates a unique Virtual SAN datastores with all available disks in a cluster, using SSDs to cache read / write. Total storage capacity is 16TB per appliance EVO: RAIL appliance:

• 14.4TB of disk capacity (13TB usable) per appliance, hosted on the datastores Virtual SAN for VMs
• 1.6TB SSD capacity per appliance to cache read / write
• VM size pre provisioned management: 30GB

EVO: RAIL - Administration

EVO: RAIL enables the deployment, configuration and administration through an intuitive new interface based on HTML5. In turn, EVO: RAIL provides non-disruptive software upgrades with "zero downtime" and automatic scaling of appliances EVO: RAIL.

Deployment, configuration and management

Deploying EVO: RAIL is very simple and consists of only four steps:

Step 1: Decide the network topology EVO: RAIL (VLANs and switches TOR - Top of the rack). The instructions are given in detail in the User Guide that is included in EVO: RAIL

Step 2: Installation and wiring, 10GbE adapters from EVO: RAIL to switch 10GbE TOR

Step 3: Turning EVO: RAIL

Step 4: Connect a laptop or PC client TOR switch and configure the network addresses to communicate with EVO: RAIL. Then open the IP address assigned to EVO: RAIL in a browser using the following format: https://192.168.0.100:7443

EVO settings: RAIL

EVO settings: RAIL has three options:

1. Just Go!
2. Customize Me!
3. Upload Configuration File

With Just Go! EVO: RAIL configure a set of IP addresses by default allowing quick setup. You only need to configure the switch TOR and click the button ‘Just Go!’ you just have to create two passwords.

With ‘Customize Me!’ customers can specify the following parameters:

• Names of the hosts and vCenter Server
• Network (IP ranges and / or VLAN ID): ESXi, Virtual SAN, vSphere vMotion, vCenter Server and VM Networks
• Passwords for ESXi and vCenter Server hosts; optionally authentication with Active Directory
• Global: Time zone, NTP server, DNS, Proxy servers. Also options for vCenter Log Insight logs or server logs or third parties own

With Configuration File Upload can select and load the options from a configuration file:

EVO: RAIL verifies the configuration data and builds the appliance. EVO: RAIL implements data services, creates new set ESXi hosts and vCenter Server. The final screen contains a link to the administration interface

EVO: RAIL Management.

EVO: RAIL Management revolutionizes management computer with live monitoring of the health of the CPU, memory, storage and use of virtual machines to complete clusters EVO: RAIL, individual appliances and individual nodes. EVO: RAIL Management saves the collection of logs or log files, licenses and settings such as language internationalization. Also simplifies the scaling of computing power, network and storage simple and easy and you can add new appliances transparently and dynamically to any cluster. EVO: RAIL Management also allows users to check for updates or patches to vCenter, ESXi and EVO: RAIL if available and download and apply the simple form of the environment and non-disruptively without service drops.

VMware EVO:RAIL represent the first Hyper-Converged Infrastructure offerings from VMware, announced in VMworld 2014 and available from the second half of 2014, and based (on the software part) on vSphere 5.5 and VSAN 1.0.

Now there is a new software release of VMware EVO:RAIL which includes also support for the VMware EVO:RAIL vSphere Loyalty Program.

One of the most notable improvements is that the scale of the hyper-converged infrastructure appliances are now doubled: from beyond the initial four appliances in a cluster and 16 nodes overall to eight appliances in a cluster and 32 nodes overall. Appliances running the updated EVO:RAIL software will now support approximately 800 general purpose virtual machines or 2,000 virtual desktop virtual machines per cluster.

This new limit is aligned with the vSphere 5.5 limits (where the maxium number of node per cluster is 32).

An there are some enhancements in management: now the hardware replacement process for components in the appliances has been automated. The management interface in the new release of EVO:RAIL software now automates that process for HDDs, SSDs, and 10 GbE NICs.

But note that EVO:RAIL remain still with vSphere 5.5… and not on vSphere 6.0! This point could be really interesting to see when the major release upgrade will be handles. Could be a good sign when VMware itself will consider the new product really ready for the enterprise production environments (see also the upgrade or not upgrade post).

Dell has also two new updates to their line of Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL:

• They are introducing Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL Horizon Edition, a hyper-converged end-to-end virtual desktop infrastructure appliance for VMware EVO:RAIL.
• They are introducing an updated Dell Engineered Solutions for VMware EVO:RAIL, infrastructure edition 1.2, which includes support for the VMware EVO:RAIL vSphere Loyalty Program. You can read all of the news from Dell here.

For more information on EVO:RAIL see also:

• Hyper-Converged Infrastructure with VMware EVO:RAIL
• VMware EVOlution

Summary: At VMworld in August VMware announced their new hyperconverged offering, EVO:RAIL. I found myself discussing this during TechFieldDay Extra at VMworld Barcelona and this post details my thoughts having spent a bit longer investigating. I’m not the first to write about EVO:RAIL so I’ll quickly recap the basics before giving my thoughts and some things to bear in mind if you’re considering EVO:RAIL.

Briefly, what is EVO:RAIL?

There’s no point in rediscovering the wheel so I’ll simply direct you to Julian Wood’s excellent series;

• EVO:RAIL introduction
• EVO:RAIL hardware dissected
• EVO:RAIL management

As of October 2014 there are now eight qualified OEM partners although beyond that list there’s very little actual information available yet. Most of the vendors have an information page but products aren’t actually shipping yet and it’s difficult to know how they’ll differentiate and compete with each other. Several partners already have their own offerings in the converged infrastructure space so it’ll be interesting to see how well EVO:RAIL fits into their overall product portfolios and how motivated they are to sell it (good thoughts on that for EMC, HP, and Dell). Unlike their own solutions, the form factor and hardware specifications are largely fixed so it’s going to be management additions (ILO cards, integration with management suites like HP OneView etc), service, and support that vary. For partners without an existing converged offering this is a great opportunity to easily and quickly compete in a growing market segment.

Things to note about EVO:RAIL

In my ‘introduction to converged infrastructure’ post last year I listed a set of considerations – let’s run through them from an EVO:RAIL perspective;

Management. The hyperconverged nature should mean improved management as VMware (and their partners) have done the heavy lifting of integration, licencing, performance tuning etc. EVO:RAIL also offers a lightweight GUI for those that value simplicity while also offering the usual vSphere Web Client and VMware APIs for those that want to use them. This is however a converged appliance and that comes with some limitations – you can manage it using the new HCIA interface or the Web Client but it comes with its own vCSA instance so you can’t add it to an existing vCenter without losing support. It won’t use VUM for patching (although it does promise non-disruptive upgrades) although you can add the vCSA to an existing vCOps instance.

Simplicity. This is the strongest selling point in my opinion – EVO:RAIL is a turnkey deployment of familiar VMware technology. EVO:RAIL handles the deployment, configuration, and management and you can grow the compute and storage automatically as additional appliances are discovered and added. As the technology itself isn’t new there’s not much for support staff to learn, plus there’s ‘one throat to choke’ for both hardware and software (the OEM partner). Some people have pointed out that it doesn’t even use a distributed switch, despite being licenced with Ent+. Apparently the choice of a standard vSwitch was because of a potential performance issue with vDS and VSAN, which eventually turned out not to be an issue. Simplicity was also a key consideration and VMware felt there was no need for a vDS at this scale. I imagine we’ll see a vDS in the next iteration.

Flexibility. This is probably the biggest constraint for customers – it’s a ‘fixed’ appliance and there’s limited scope for change. The hardware and software you get with EVO:RAIL is fixed (4 nodes, 192GB RAM per node, no NSX etc) so even though you have a choice of who to buy it from, what you buy is largely the same regardless of who you choose. There is currently only one model so you have to scale linearly – you can’t buy a storage heavy node or a compute heavy node for example. EVO RAIL is sold 4 nodes at a time and the SMB end of the market may find it hard to finance that kind of CAPEX. As mentioned earlier the partner is responsible for updates (firmware and patching) – you won’t be able to upgrade to the new version of vSphere until they’ve validated and released it for example. Likewise you can’t plug in that nice EMC VNX you have lying around to provide extra storage – you have to use the provided VSAN. Flexibility vs simplicity is always a tradeoff!

Interoperability/integration. In theory this is a big plus for EVO:RAIL as it’s the usual VMware components which have probably the best third party integration in the market (I’m assuming you can use full API access). Another couple of notable integration requirements;

• 10GB networking (ToR switch) is a requirement as it’s used to connect the four servers inside the 2U form factor given the lack of a backplane. You’ll need 8 ports per appliance therefore. I spoke to VMware engineers at VMworld on this and was told VMware looked for a 2u form factor where they could avoid this but couldn’t. Many SMB’s have not adopted 10GB yet so it’s a potential stumbling block – of course partners may use this opportunity to bundle 10GB networking which would be a good way to differentiate their solution.
• IPv6 is required for the discovery feature used when more EVO:RAIL appliances are added. This discovery process is proprietary to VMware though it operates much like Apple’s Bonjour and apparently IPv6 is the only protocol which works (it guarantees a local link address).

Risk. This is always a consideration when adopting new technology but being a VMware backed solution using familiar components will go a considerable way to reducing concern. VSAN is a v1.0 product, as is HCIA although as that’s simply a thin wrapper around existing, mature, and best of breed components it’s probably safe to say VSAN maturity is the only concern for some people (given initial teething issues). Duncan Epping has a blogpost about this very subject but his summary is ‘it’s fully supported’ so make sure you know your own comfort level when adopting new technology.

Cost. A choice of partners is great as it’ll allow customers to leveraging existing relationships. It’s worth pointing out that you buy from the partner so any existing licencing agreements (site licences etc) with VMware probably won’t be applicable. At VMworld I was told VMware have had several customers enquire about large orders (in the hundreds) so it’ll be interesting to see how price affects adoption. I don’t think this is really targeted at service providers and I’ve no idea how pricing would work for them. Having spent considerable time compiling orders, having a single SKU for ordering is very welcome!

Pricing

Talking of pricing, let’s have a look at ballpark costs. I’ve heard, though not been officially quoted, a cost of around €150,000 per 4 node block (or £120,000 for us Brits). This might seem high but bear in mind what you need;

UPDATE: 30th Nov – I realised I’d priced in four Supermicro chassis, rather than one, so I’ve updated the pricing.

• Hardware. Let’s say approx £11k per node, so £45k for four nodes ie. one appliance (this is approx – don’t quote!);
  • Supermicro FatTwin chassis (inc 10GB NICs) £3500 (one chassis for all four nodes)
  • 2 x E2620 CPUs £400 each
  • 12 x 16GB DIMMs (192GB RAM) = £2000
  • 400GB Enterprise SSD = £4500 (yep!)
  • Three 1.2TB 10k rpm SAS disks = £600 x 3 = £1800
  • …plus power supplies, sundries
• Software. List pricing is approx £11k per node plus vCenter, so a shade under £50k
  • vCenter (vCSA) 5.5 = £2000
  • vSphere 5.5 = £2750 per socket = £5500 per node
  • VSAN v1 = £1500 per socket = £3000 per node
  • Log Insight = £1500 per socket = £3000 per node
• Support and maintenance for 3 years on both hardware and software – approx £15k
• Total cost: £110,000

Once pricing is announced by the partners we’ll see just how much of a premium is being charged for the simplicity, automation, and integration that’s baked in to the EVO:RAIL appliance. There are of course multitudes of pricing options – you could just buy four commodity servers and an entry level SAN but there’s not much value in comparing apples and oranges (and I only have so much time to spend on this blogpost).

UPDATE 1st Dec 2014 – Howard Marks has done a more detailed price breakdown where he also compares a solution using Tegile storage. Christian Mohn also poses a question and potential ‘gotcha’ about the licencing – worth a read.

Competition

VMware aren’t the first to offer a converged appliance – in fact they’re several years behind. The likes of VCE’s vBlock was first back in 2010 and that was followed by the hyperconverged vendors like Nutanix and Simplivity. As John Troyer mentioned on vSoup’s VMworld podcast, Scale Computing use KVM to offer an EVO:RAIL competitor at cheaper prices (and have done for a few years). Looking at Gartner’s magic quadrant for converged infra it’s a pretty crowded market.

Microsoft recently announced their Cloud Platform Services (Cloud Pro thoughts on it) which was developed with Dell (who are obviously keeping their converged options wide open as they’ve also partnered with Nutanix and VMware on EVO:RAIL). While more similar to the upcoming EVO:RACK it’s another validation of the direction customers are expected to take.

Final thoughts

From a market perspective I think VMware’s entry into the hyperconverged marketplace is both a big deal and a non-event. It’s big news because it will increase adoption of hyperconverged infrastructure, particularly in the SMB space, through increased awareness and because EVO:RAIL is backed by large tier 1 vendors. It’s a non-event in that EVO:RAIL doesn’t offer anything new other than form factor – it’s standard VMware technologies and you could already get similar (some would say superior) products from the likes of Nutanix, Simplivity and others.

Personally I’m optimistic and positive about EVO:RAIL. Reading the interview with Dave Shanley it’s impressive how much was achieved in 8 months by 6 engineers (backed by a large company, but none the less). If VMware can address the current limitations around management, integration, and flexibility, while maintaining the simplicity it seems likely to be a winner.

Pricing for EVO:RAIL customers will be key although not all of the chosen partners are likely to compete on price.

UPDATE: April 2015 – a recent article from Business Insider implies that pricing is proving a considerable barrier to adoption for EVO:RAIL.

Further Reading

Good post by Marcel VanDeBerg and another from Victoriouss

Mike Laverick has a lot of useful material on his site, but as the VMware Evangelist for EVO:RAIL you’d expect that right! The guys over at the vSoup Podcast also had a chat with Mike.

A comparison of EVO:RAIL and Nutanix (from a Nutanix employee)

Good thoughts over at The Virtualization Practice

VMworld session SDDC1337 – Technical Deep Dive on EVO:RAIL (requires VMworld subscription)

Microsoft’s Cloud Platform System at Network World – good read by Brandon Butler

UPDATED 9th Dec – Some detail about HP’s offerings

UPDATED 16th Dec – EVO:RAIL differentiation between vendors

UPDATED 1st May – EVO:RAIL adoption slow for customers