Dell VxBlock System Reviews

VxBlock is our data center. We run all of our applications, central applications, and systems, off the VxBlock. It's in our production data center.

The solution simplified our operations, and made us more efficient. We consolidated from 17 cabinets with IT equipment in the data center. We were able to consolidate down to six cabinets and made a smaller infrastructure footprint, which obviously saves costs and makes the operations more simple and optimized. We also had a non-virtualized environment. What we did is we converted all of our applications to run onto virtualized infrastructure. It's basically helped us in that journey to become more agile.

The most valuable aspect of the solution is the integrated architecture, which is on a highly available, highly redundant infrastructure. It is purposefully built on a highly redundant architecture. 

It's a highly optimized piece of equipment that doesn't give us any problems.

The fact that you've got one single point of contact for your support is very appealing.

The only thing that I can say is when you procure the VxBlock, obviously you have to complete detailed questionnaires about your architecture including the configuration, et cetera. If you make a mistake on the implementation, then you need to rebuild the entire VxBlock. That is just a point of consideration rather than a flaw. You need to be absolutely sure and validate the upfront configuration information that you provide due to the fact that your VxBlock comes delivered and built according to that exact information.

We originally installed the solution in 2016. It's been about four years or so.

The solution is extremely stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's excellent.

The solution scales very well. Obviously, you need to size it with your growth predictions in mind, however, so far, we've been able to comfortably scale to meet our rising demands.

Our entire company uses this solution. That's about 3000 users. Plus, we use it for all of the applications that we use in-company. That would include your Microsoft applications, databases, ERP systems, and financial systems. We run our entire company on this piece of infrastructure.

We don't reach out to EMC's technical support. We use a third-party.

We used the normal, non-integrated infrastructure, where you've got your server infrastructure, your network infrastructure, and your storage infrastructure, all from different providers. They were standalone systems. It wasn't provided by a single supplier, which obviously the VxBlock being an integrated architecture, is now. It's a one-stop-shop

We switched mainly due to the fact that the innovation helped us to make the adjustment from a standalone to a virtual platform. It was cheaper, cost-wise, to consolidate and run on this kit rather than support and run any standalone legacy infrastructure. We also switched in order to improve our service to the business.

Previously, we had a lot of outages due to the legacy equipment we were running on. The age of it and the poor design were weighing us down. You ran out of capacity, et cetera. The way that capacity was bolted on and the solution grew, was very poorly designed in the past. The business suffered a lot of outages as a result of it. Having switched to the VxBlock provided the business with almost no downtime. We run an extremely stable, efficient operation at this point in time.

It's complex in that you need to be exact in your configuration as it comes to you pre-configured to your specifications, and if there is a mistake, you need to start from scratch and get a new VxBlock. 

You almost need to build your entire design, your entire configuration, upfront. There's no room for, if you make a mistake, changes to it after the fact, due to the fact that it's a pre-built solution.

Deployment is very fast. It takes only about a week or so.

For us, we had a whole data center refresh project that we ran as part of the implementation of this product.

We use a third party for maintenance purposes. The thing with the solution is that the people that are allowed to work on it, whether it's for implementation or support services, need to go through an extensive training program and certification program with Dell EMC. They're highly skilled in the solution. That adds to the value of it. These professionals are so good. We've not experienced any outages on the system, either when we upgraded it or when we scaled. When a component fails, it's immediately replaced, and the professionals that work on it are very well-trained.

We used an integrator that assisted us with the initial setup. They were highly skilled and professional. It was a very good experience. It was a third-party EMC partner, not EMC themselves.

I can't really give a good indication of the ROI.

We were able to consolidate some of the support roles. For example, where you would have a virtualization engineer, a server engineer, a network engineer, and a storage engineer - four separate roles to normally support this environment. We consolidated that basically into one role. It is a managed service, but from a managed services perspective, they've got a single person looking after all of those components within the platform. So that obviously is a cost-saving.

There have definitely been cost efficiencies, however, I can't share exact numbers.

I don't know whether it's always feasible, however, my understanding is that what one needs to do is to select their product, go for what they deem to be the best, and then negotiate for the best price from there.

We evaluated hosted cloud options from several suppliers and also some other hyper-converged solutions. That said, we decided, from a cost perspective, it made more sense to run the VxBlock. It was more cost-effective than having a hosted cloud platform. It also provided us with more flexibility because some of our platforms were not suited to run on hosted cloud environments, where you don't have access to the virtualization layer and the virtualization software. When we ran our own private cloud on the VxBlock, we had the ability to interface directly into the virtualization platform, which was a requirement for some of our applications.

We didn't choose a hyper-converged platform at that point in time as the VxBlock provided a better performing platform. We could obtain high throughput, through the VxBlock, than what the hyper-converged solutions could give us at that stage.

We deemed Dell to be the leader in the market. They were the first to enter the market with a converged platform. And I think they'd more of a market presence at that point in time than anybody else.

We're using the VxBlock 350 deployment model.

The change in the operating model has been an eye-opener. A few years ago, it was difficult to imagine how a real virtual or cloud-like environment would run as we'd been so used to the standalone environments that we were operating. To see how that operating model really changes and the ease of use going to a virtualized or cloud-like platform has been great. It's one of the biggest takeaways I have.

When we changed infrastructures, we decided to build a complete environment. To start to build the IT infrastructure from scratch, completely new, was daunting. We refreshed absolutely everything. We even went as far as to build a new active directory environment. We basically built a completely new IT platform for our company. That was an extremely daunting task when we set out to do it. Within six months we were at a point where we cut over and we realized the goal that we set out to achieve. In the end, those daunting tasks are where one grows their own skillset. It's quite an achievement at the end to reach a goal that you almost thought was impossible at the outset of a project.

On a scale from one to ten, I'd rate the solution at a nine. Many people criticize the product due to the requirements needed to make the pre-configuration piece. However, as long as you don't make a mistake there, it works like a dream.

We are using this solution for VMware virtualization. We are customers of Dell and I'm a senior system and storage administrator.

A valuable feature for me is the virtual machines for the infrastructure.

I'd like to see hardware improvement and the ability to support different kinds of mixed applications - a mixed workload support. The technical support could also be improved. 

I've been using this solution for a year. 

The stability is good. We haven't had any problems and we're happy with the product. 

This solution is mainly in the IT environment and is scalable. We have somewhere between 400-500 users in the organization. 

We previously used the HP system. We weren't using hyper-converged in HP, we moved onto that when we started with Dell. 

The initial setup was straightforward and deployment took us about a month. We used a system integrator for implementation. We have five people in the system team managing the solution. 

There is an HCI license on top of the VMware license. There are no costs on top of that. 

The rating for this Dell product is better than for other HCI products available on the market. We've compared it with HP SimpliVity, and Nutanix and we found the Dell rating highest.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10. 

All of our IT runs on this infrastructure.

The most valuable feature is the flash.

Integration with VMware and VMotion definitely brings a lot of value.

One thing that it lacks is multiple user interfaces. It has a single interface that is used to access multiple layers and there are different levels of management. We are hoping that Nutanix will simply this.

Scalability is an area that needs to be improved.

We have been using this system for almost three years.

This platform has been pretty stable. We have had our challenges with people trying to hook things up, hardware failures, and cable failures. This is one of the reasons that we are looking to moving to hyper-converged infrastructure.

We have not had any challenges with scalability. The only component that we have scaled is storage. The compute and everything else is pretty modular. At the same time, our infrastructure team believes that Nutanix will be a better solution, overall, including from a scalability point of view.

We previously used HPE Superdome and the Dell solution is better.

The VxBlock System was easier to set up than our previous product by HPE.

We are currently evaluating our infrastructure needs and are thinking about implementing a solution from Nutanix.

This is a product that has plusses and minuses. It is better than HPE Superdome and using big servers, and it works well with VMware and VMotion. At the same time, there are challenges with scalability.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I like that it is manageable.

It's a good product but the price could be lowered. It's expensive. The total cost of ownership is a very important figure against quality and performance and pricing. It should be the total package and that is the reason why I think this is a very good product.

I have been using this solution for one year. 

It is stable.

It is scalable. The system is built for customers.

I have not needed technical support. Until now I don't need technical support.

We also used Dell, HPE, and sometimes Cisco.

VxBlock has good performance, so that is an advantage.

The initial setup was straightforward. I have to do maintenance on it. That is the reason why I was searching for this kind of information.

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

In the next release, I would like to see more performance, but every three months they increase this figure already.

We use the solution for database applications, using all the core features. We're a customer of VxBlock.

The most valuable features of the solution would be its good default features and the compressions. Those are the features we use regularly.  

For VxBlock, the consistency of disc quality could be improved. 

I've been using this solution for almost six years. 

The product is very stable. 

The product is scalable. 

We've used technical support from time to time and they are very good. 

We made some comparisons with other products - WMC and HP 3par but have never used them. 

Setup is fairly straightforward, deployment took between two and three weeks. 

I would rate this product a nine out of 10. 

We use this solution in our clearance and distribution department.

We are using this solution for virtualization with Hyper-V. Our entire infrastructure is Hyper-V, and it's working fine. We have a twenty-eight blade system with E-SATA storage, which is fantastic and very fast.

This is an on-premises deployment.

We completely replaced our old data center using this solution. We used to have around one hundred and fifty blades, two storage devices, two Cisco SAN Directors, and a lot of fibre cables. We have replaced all of this with just two VxBlock cabinets. It is very fast and very neat. There are no wires outside.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the speed. We have a legacy data center that is separated from the blades. It used to be very slow, and now it is very fast.

We have had no trouble with backups.

This solution does not support Hyper-V, and we would like the new version to be supported and certified to work with Hyper-V. It only supports VMware. We need this as a virtualization solution for the hardware.

This is a stable solution.

Our experience has been very good and we are considering increasing our usage of this solution by adding blades. Our local partner has told us that we can extend this solution using another cabinet.

We do not contact technical support directly. Rather, we go through our partner for which we have a support contract. Our local partner takes care of monitoring the status of our system.

If we need to then we are able to open support tickets.

We replaced our entire legacy data center using this solution.

There was an issue because of the Hyper-V, but after it was configured, everything worked very nicely.

We had a VMware group from the UAE assist us with the implementation.

We purchased this solution with a ten-year manufacturer warranty, and we have a three-year warranty with our local partner.

This is a solution that I recommend for others.

The biggest lesson that I have learned from using this solution is that the vision for technology is always changing. As administrators, we worry about new technology because if one thing goes wrong in a cabinet that contains everything, how much will be affected? So far, nothing has happened and everything is working nicely. It is very good.

This solution ships from the manufacturer with VMware, but our Hyper-V is working fine. We expected to have an issue, but it works.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.