We performed a comparison between Vmware vSAN and Vxrail based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Vxrail seems to be a slightly superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Vmware vSAN rather expensive to purchase and somewhat difficult to deploy. Some users feel that the support offered by both solutions could be improved.
"The support has been amazing and quick to reply."
"The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"Having the ability to migrate machines live in our environment was made possible by this software."
"The product has improved the ability to mimic physical SAN environments to demo scenarios and troubleshoot problems."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"The most valuable features are high availability and real-time replication between two servers."
"The license price is one of the cheapest in the market."
"The user interface for this application is amazing."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"Everyone uses virtualization to more efficiently utilize hardware resources. That's the main point of vSAN and VMware."
"The solution fits well with my requirements."
"The valuable feature of the solution is the total hyperconverged facility."
"I have found the solution to be scalable."
"The solution is easy to use."
"VMware vSAN is an easy to use and easy to manage storage solution. Deploying and upgrading are easy. Technical support is very good."
"Overall the solution is very good."
"VxRail can manage the whole cluster at the same time, so it's easy to expand. VxRail has more features vSAN ReadyNodes that make it easier to implement from scratch."
"This solution optimizes our clients' resources."
"VxRail is an agile solution with easily scalable, simplify operations with software driven automation and lower operational cost."
"The solution is stable and reliable. This is one of the main reasons why we purchased this solution."
"What I like the most in terms of features is the fact that the VxRail update can be done in one week. It takes much less time to do a whole server upgrade and an infrastructure update as well."
"VxRail has given us a lot of tools in a one-stop-shop environment."
"VxRail has high performance and has great efficiency. There is a single place for us to manage all of our virtual machines. The ability to right-size instead of overcommit VMs is a large benefit."
"We have seen ROI using this solution. It has simplified the work of the staff that we have which allows us to do more work with the same number of people, without having to incrementally grow the staff. The reliability of the product has been exceptional."
"It would be good to have a little more access to control certain aspects within the UI."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"The logs can also become very noisy when there is an issue, which is very infrequent."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"We ran into an issue with alerts."
"Diagnostics information or alerts on the state of systems could also be implemented to give more visibility."
"The system failovers properly on its own without too much worry."
"Although minor, some of the documentation could be rewritten to be clearer."
"VMware vSAN needs to improve its features because other solutions have more advanced features."
"It would be ideal if clients didn't need to monitor the solution on a daily basis."
"The pricing model is sometimes a challenge for us because their licenses are very costly."
"The updating process could be easier."
"I would like for the next release to be a bit cheaper."
"They should provide Deduplication and Compression over the hybrid drives."
"Based on my testing, I would like to expand deduplication to include hybrid deployments and not just for all-flash deployments."
"It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins."
"Deployment was not initially straightforward for us. We had an incompatibility issue that was very difficult for Dell Professional Service to solve."
"You cannot install another operating system such as Microsoft or Hyperflex or Nutanix. We have also had a hardware problem."
"The solution is okay to scale vertically but a bit difficult to expend horizontally. For example, increasing RAM."
"Technically speaking, the vCenter and the administration of the integration of the vCenter could be improved."
"Lacks integration of licenses so that it's an expensive solution."
"A disadvantage is that the initial first deployment can be complicated."
"The most important thing that I want to be included in this solution is the VMware license. Its deployment time can be quicker so that instead of 40 minutes, it takes 10 minutes."
"if we're looking at costs, Nutanix will win because it allows flexibility in the type of hardware you can use."
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VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 76 reviews while VxRail is ranked 2nd in HCI with 62 reviews. VMware vSAN is rated 8.2, while VxRail is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VxRail writes "It's built on platforms that have been in the industry for more than 15 years, so it's very stable". VMware vSAN is most compared with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and HPE Hyper Converged, whereas VxRail is most compared with HPE SimpliVity, Dell PowerFlex, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Cisco HyperFlex HX-Series and HPE Hyper Converged. See our VMware vSAN vs. VxRail report.
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Quite simply, VxRail is a vSAN appliance. It's a Dell based server node fully integrated with a pre-loaded VMware vSphere and vSAN software stack. Since it's integrated, the hardware is optimized to take full advantage of all the features and functions associated with vSAN.This is the best choice for someone who is interested in deploying hyper-converged infrastructure but doesn't currently have one in place. The VxRail nodes can be simply slid into the racks, connected and zoned.
vSAN, on the other hand, is purely a software solution. It's best for a data center that's already using VMware and would like to introduce storage management elements into their infrastructure. The benefit of this approach is that the configuration is customizable and feature elements can be added as needed.
In case of Dell EMC nodes, the only difference is setting up vSAN by yourself or pay someone else to set it up for you. In VxRail, you get licenses which are OEM locked that means you can not use those licenses on any other hardware. In VMware vSAN ready nodes, you can pick the hardware of your choice (from VMware HCL) and start building your vSAN cluster and all of the servers from different vendors work in the same cluster. In VxRail, you pay for the solution plus vSphere licenses based on your requirement. In VMware vSAN ready nodes, you pay for all the licenses separate from the hardware cost like, vCenter Server, vSphere, vSAN. for remote sites or very small setups you can use ROBO licenses in VMware vSAN ready nodes where this multi vendor thing can be very useful. From my experience, if the customer has 2-3 years old hardware, most of the times the hardware is good to be converted to an VMware vSAN ready node by making few or no changes.
VxRail is a Turnkey solution from Dell EMC that uses VMware vSAN as the underlying storage technology
The main differences are:
vSAN can Run on any ReadyNode and can differ in the vendor, while VxRail only uses Dell Servers (PowerEdge) I do know that there other products that use CISCO (VxBlock, VXFLEX)
vSAN Requires a vSAN Licence and is renewed yearly (Or whatever your VMware Agreement is) VxRail vSAN Licences are Perpertual.
Patching and install on VxRail are simple and Dell EMC Check the updates before its generally available so the quality control is good. This is good as a bad/incompatible firmware can really cause issues with vSAN , all patching and firmware will need to be vetted and installed by yourself.
VxRail locks you into a Dell Solution. Where as with vSAN you can choose the Hardware you want.
VxRAIL is a pre buid HCI solution, with optimised configuration ready to deploy
also Vmware software VSAN and Vcenter are bundled with better prices and other bundled software
If you want to have an optimized and integrated software environment with integrated VSAN-in-Kernel into an appliance, a streamlined deployment experience, and single-vendor support go with VxRail because Dell EMC and VMware jointly developed the VxRail system powered by VMware vSAN software-defined storage. VxRail Manager is the sole and primary source for VxRail lifecycle management, cluster compatibility, software updates, and version control.
VxRail Manager further reduces operational complexity and provides software upgrade automation. Hence, VxRail is the simplest and easiest path to ready HCI and Hybrid Cloud.
VSAN is hardware agnostic but should need to have hardware/component level VSAN certifications. vSAN is enterprise-class, storage virtualization software that, when combined with vSphere, allows you to manage to compute and storage with a single platform. With vSAN, you can reduce the cost and complexity of traditional storage and have Software-Defined Storage in place but without integration with some appliance and always need to have VSA in place to bridge the communication between/among VMs and IO.
Thanks
Sufyan Ali Khan
+923018224536
The hardware hosting the solution. Vxrail is an engineered appliance from Dell to host vSAN.
In addition vSAN can be installed on any hardware that meets its requirements
When someone ask biggest, smallest, etc., they need simple answer :D VxRail is easy, while vSAN is complex. VxRail is prebuilt: easy to deploy, easy to scale out, one support contact for everything. VmWare vSAN is just an Software Defined Storage. Complex to deploy, complex to scale up/ out, and need several contact support for the whole solution.
Technically, it is hard to differentiate between two solutions.
As DellEMC is in the position of proposing two solutions at the same time, it really depends on the customer situation.
If the customer has favor on VMware and good experience of it, then VSAN would be better.
If the customer has an experience of Cisco or HP’s HCI solution, then Dell EMC will propose VxRAIL rather than VSAN.