VMware EVO:RAIL [EOL] Reviews

My view on EVO:RAIL has always been that it is a nice piece of technology, but it is way too expensive with a deeply flawed licensing model (more thoughts at VMware EVO:RAIL or VSAN – which makes the most sense?). It has just been “improved” because you can now use existing vSphere licenses which will dramatically reduce the cost of the appliance (more details here).

Even though VMware had a great chance to really make things so much better they have wasted the opportunity – amazingly they are still forcing you to use Enterprise Plus whereas Essentials Plus would be more appropriate in most cases. It is also not clear if the vSphere licences can be moved, or if Virtual SAN and Log Insight are still tied to the hardware or if existing licenses can be used as well.

So this still leaves us with the following questions:

1. Why would you have to use vSphere Enterprise Plus?
2. Why would you not have perpetual rights to all of the software?
3. Why would you want 4 under-powered nodes?
4. Why would you want the minimum number of nodes to be 4 (2 or 3 would be better)?
5. Why would you scale in 4 node increments (1 would be better)?
6. Why would you not allow the addition of extra drives?

The bottom line is I would love to know what VMware’s agenda is for EVO:RAIL – if anyone knows please get in touch because I just do not get it.

I really like what VMware is doing with their Software-Defined Data Centre strategy – the idea of allowing customers to use commoditised low cost compute, storage and networking hardware for their infrastructure has got to be a good thing – we are on the verge of hopefully making IT both much simpler and cheaper.

What I am not so sure about is EVO:RAIL, I get VSAN (see An introduction to VMware Virtual SAN Software-Defined Storage technology and What are the pros and cons of Software-Defined Storage?), but does EVO:RAIL actually make sense?

There are some advantages – it is easy to order, as it is a fixed configuration and it is easy to deploy, just plug-in, power-on and go.

But compared to VSAN it has some serious constraints:

1. Why can’t we specify a CPU and memory quantity (6-cores seems a bit behind the times today)?
2. Why can’t we specify the SSD and HDD configuration (the supplied capacity seems a bit on the low side)?
3. Why can’t we start with 3 nodes and then add nodes one at a time (purchasing 4 nodes at a time does not seem ideal)?
4. Why can’t we re-use existing vSphere and VSAN licences?
5. Why can’t we choose to use something other than vSphere Enterprise Plus (Standard or Essentials Plus may well be more appropriate)?
6. Why can’t we transfer the VMware licences to another EVO:RAIL appliance or standard server (the licences are OEM based and tied to the hardware)?

I would also argue that VMware has done a great job of making vSphere and VSAN easy to deploy, yes it is going to take a bit longer than EVO:RAIL, but you are not talking about a significant amount of extra time.

So for me EVO:RAIL just does not make sense, not from a technical point of view, but commercially. If VMware were to follow their strategy of Software-Defined solutions surely they would allow customers to buy EVO:RAIL compliant hardware and EVO:RAIL software separately.

Even better just have a special EVO:RAIL build of vSphere that uses standard vSphere/VSAN licencing – that way the customer can move their licences between what ever hardware form they like, is that not the point of the Software-Defined Data Centre?

It looks to me a bit like the vRAM tax and hopefully VMware will listen and make some adjustments.

Comments would be very much appreciated as I am sure there are plenty of people with different opinions.

2015 IT Trends: Convergence, Automation, and Integration.

The hyper-converged gaining momentum each of the last few years, there are more and more customers taking notice. During VMworld 2014 in August, VMware announced of hyper-convergence: the EVO: RAIL, the combination of virtualization software loaded onto four blade servers, sliding on a rail into a 2u space of a server rack. It represents compute, storage, and networking in a single modular unit.

Please read my other post for VMware EVO:RAIL and Nutanix.

VMware software included with an EVO:RAIL appliance:

• vSphere Enterprise Plus
• vCenter Server
• Virtual SAN
• Log Insight
• Support and Maintenance for 3 years

Hardware:

Hypervisor:

Some customers are implementing non VMware products to virtualize workloads, the flexibility to support more than VMware is quickly becoming important. VMware EVO:RAIL only support VMware while Nutanix support KVM or Hyper-V over VMware.

Read my other post for VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V 2012R2 here.

Storage:

This comparison is not cover performance, only comparing the availability and data services that the hyper-converged platforms offer.

Nutanix are using a Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA). There is a VSA on each node in the storage cluster and they act like scale out storage controllers. While VMware has taken the approach of building VSAN as a module in the vSphere kernel. Each approach has its benefits and draw backs. The VSA model will use more host resources to provide storage services. Using the VSA is allowing vendors to offer deduplication, compression, backup and replication among other services. While VMware’s integrated approach uses far less resources, it does lag in the data services it can offer currently.