VxRail Reviews

Our whole company uses it. We have VxRail in our solution center, which designs software and hardware solutions for our customers' new opportunities. For example, recently, we were asked to develop a Kubernetes environment that the customer wanted to use and researched several different organizations, such as Red Hat's OpenShift.

We wanted to test capabilities on Tanzu, and VxRail was a great home for that, so we brought all the software into the VxRail and showed the inner workings of the data flows for this new capability to the customer. In the end, they didn't necessarily need a VxRail, but that's the beauty of it. It's a vanilla platform to reside modernized software on.

The VxRail is built on two specific platforms that have been in the industry for the last 15 to 20 years: the 1-U socket and the 2-U socket platforms from Dell. They're in their sixteenth generation of those platforms, I believe, so they're very stable. 

VxRail is in its third generation, I think, and I know there are consistent updates to that material on nearly a monthly basis. Most of my customers are federally focused, which means some of this material comes into an environment where few people will have access to that environment.

I would like to see Dell take a crack at simplifying the process of moving from a node to a cluster and assembling everything into the appliance. It would be great if Dell could provide a pathway where a customer could actually install it without the certifications. Of course, I can't say how you would dumb down something so complex. That's a challenge, but it would be valuable.

It would also be helpful if they added some warnings to prevent users from making mistakes when upgrading stuff with VMware, like a notification that says, "Hey, this upgrade should be done through the VxRail manager." Those could steer customers off the path of decoupling that cluster or pulling a node offline when it doesn't need to be.

These things have room to grow in the industry. As more organizations look to develop what they currently have, Dell could provide a pathway to taking integrating the older hardware with the new hardware. I think that would be valuable, too. There are a couple of things that I'd also like to see them improve upon. One could be to actually deliver a cluster to the customer from their manufacturing facility that is already put together. That might be a good opportunity for them.

The VxRail platform is stable. Anytime you're dealing with technologies, you'll find a bug somewhere. There's always a challenge that must be overcome, but once the initial cluster has been stood up, we find it's one of the most stable platforms today.

If you want to scale VxRail, you buy another node and add it to the cluster. That process is straightforward. It will re-image the new node, give it the same firmware, and provide the same orchestration as the rest of the node. Scalability is probably one of the biggest reasons people choose VxRail.

I've contacted Dell tech support on many occasions for VxRail. I always put in a case with Dell on all the service tags of the nodes before taking on any support mechanism. I recommend starting that process early. One of the main reasons we put in a case is to do some maintenance or make some changes.

We always consult with Dell on best practices initially. It helps to provide them with as much information as possible about the health and wellness of that initial cluster. It generally depends on the service agreement you get from Dell, but we'll get a response in five or 10 minutes after putting in that initial case.

I've never had problems with Dell support, but I always recommend pro support from my customers and organization. Depending on the size of your organization and how much Dell hardware you have, they'll assign a technical account manager to your team or to the Dell team, so you always have a consistent point of contact if things don't go as planned. That's helpful if you have a technical account manager assigned to your organization.

VxRail is a hyper-converged system that's automated and consists of nodes. Those nodes are one or two U-servers depending on the requirement. Bringing the VMware automation and lifecycle management platform together is difficult, so we recommend having a certification to do that assemblage. 

It assembles these servers into nodes in an appliance. Once the appliance is set up, it's simple to manage the solution and the box. However, assembly and automation are complex. You want to make sure that the firmware is all the same between the nodes.

We've seen situations where we had a five-node cluster, and one firmware was not mapped to the others. We recommend working with Dell on those challenges, but our architects are also really well versed in those nuances. And if you want to deep dive into a technical requirement, I have several that have done that for a living.

I rate VxRail eight out of 10. I would say it is the go-to solution for hyper-converged infrastructure. 

The scripts that bring all of those servers into a node and cluster situation are proprietary to Dell. Anytime you're using that proprietary stuff, you need to be trained on it. Let's say, for example, you are in one of those systems, and you're working with some software that may not be acting like it should. Or it may have a feature that you want in a new generation. In some cases, there may be some dependencies on vCenter, vSAN, or Vsphere, which are all part of that integration.

One might be tempted to start to upgrade it outside of the lifecycle management that's inherent to the VMware platform. I've seen architects go ahead and update it right from the VMware console when they should be using the VxRail manager. Knowing how to do those upgrades is very important to getting the clusters to see the proper nodes together.

We use it for implementing VDI solutions.

Hyperscale is the most valuable feature I found on this solution. It's the ability to utilize the resources for the VMware cluster setup on which Citrix VDA runs.

The only issue we've faced is with their Call Home Support Center. Any alert that has to be triggered, we're just currently working on to fix. Otherwise, it has been a pretty good system.

One problem we had was when we ordered the first node of cluster setup, and then we wanted to add two more nodes, we could not get the same configuration. We had to use a different configuration for the cluster setup.

Scalability becomes a problem when two or three years have passed because you don't get the same model. You get a better model and to make that model work, you need to have a different cluster setup. You tend to lose on the continuity or expansion. I would recommend having a capability where even your older versions of hardware can be seamlessly utilized and additional expansion becomes so much easier.

I've been using this solution since 2020.

The stability of VxRail is good. We are content with its stability.

This solution is scalable. We purchased two additional units the following year.

Technical support for this solution was very good, professional, and they had the skills to get it implemented.

We used Nutanix. VxRail is more economical than Nutanix. It's more cost-effective so we prefer it over Nutanix.

We used so far three different solutions. The first was not a recommended solution. It was pushed down our throats to use that particular hardware. As I was involved in that setup, I knew the first time that implementation was on the wrong hardware, against the recommendation of the partner and the implementer. We definitely did not succeed. The second was a failure again, because of not following the recommendation of the implementer or the partner. The third one, lesson learned and we had no objections to that. We got a better recommendation from someone we trusted, so we were successful with our choice.

The initial setup was straightforward. The engineers asked for what is required and they came with the same initial set.

We used a partner for the deployment. My experience with them was good. They fully supported us during the pandemic situation to get this up and running.

We evaluated Nutanix.

We're quite content with this solution for the purposes it was purchased.

Deployment was completed within two weeks.

Almost all of the people in the company used this solution since the pandemic. Now it's mostly used by the task workers.

For deployment and maintenance of this solution, we require four staff where some are admins who handle multiple storages in other systems as well. They don't do this full-time. They only spend one-third or less of their time managing deployment and maintenance.

I have no plans to increase VxRail usage in the future. The only problem with it is the usage of the cloud is being promoted to its peak, so the next expansion would be on the cloud.

The cloud has always been talked about and people have been asked to venture into it. On the cloud, you don't have to wait and implement or pay upfront for the whole hardware. For some of the cloud versions, you can pay as much as you use. You can start with 50 users and then grow. If it has to be on-prem though, I'll have to at least factor a box that can cater to 200 or 300 users. You need to pre-plan and the hardware delivery might take some time, so making it market-ready is a little time-consuming.

I'm rating this solution a ten out of ten. This is because of my previous experience with other solutions where I had three failed implementations on different hardware. They failed because of one particular reason: They're not low-maintenance. This solution, on the other hand, does not need heavy system maintenance. People prefer to use the system rather than the desktop, which makes it convenient for them to work from anywhere. There are a lot of benefits. You have your data saved on a data center. The availability is there which makes it flexible for users.

After the pandemic, when people returned to the office, we utilized this solution as an agile workspace, so people can sit and work on any desk. When they come to the office, they don't have to go to a particular desk. They can choose where they want to work, so this solution provides a lot of benefits for us.

For our stores, we primarily use the solution for what's called edge computing to provide all the data processing needs in our stores.

The product allows us to have the capacity for the future to be able to add applications to help us better serve our customers.

We've seen reductions in cost by being able to reduce the amount of staff who needs to support the application. We've reduced staff by about 20%. It's enabled us to roll out applications that help us provide better customer service to our customers.

The ease of deployment and management of the solution are the most valuable aspects of the product. It's important due to the fact that, with 1800 stores, we can't afford to have an extensive staff to manage it.

We'd like to see improvements in the supply chain. We're evaluating that for the future.

I would like to see more solutions for satellite capabilities where we can put it into smaller locations and still have the redundancy that we have with a larger cluster.

We implemented the first solution in February 2019. 

It's stable. I would rate it ten out of ten for stability.

We've now implemented it across our store network. We'll have 1800 stores on the VxRail by the end of October.

We have more capacity than we need. The reason we selected the product is that it is scalable. We can add additional components when needed. We haven't had to, however, it's available if we need to.

At this point, we've adopted the solution 100% across our organization.

Technical support overall is excellent. It was a seamless process. We were very successful in the implementation. 

Positive

We used a three-tier architecture that we replaced with this product. It was the end of life and didn't have the capacity we needed to provide to our source.

I was involved in the deployment of VxRail. The whole process was straightforward. 

In terms of deployment, we did the first 600 stores in three months, and we now are doing 1200 stores and we'll be done by October. We worked together with Dell. We had a cross-functional team and we started slow and then built up to peak volume. Our strategy was to make sure we didn't disrupt any location.

About four or five people on our side were involved in the implementation. Dell assisted us and I don't know how many Dell had. Obviously, they needed people to go to every store to implement.

Our job was to act in coordination and communication with the locations where it was being deployed.

The solution does require maintenance, however, it's very easy since there are tools that are provided with the technology. About five people are involved with administration and maintenance. They address any predictive alerts that come out on failures and care and feed any additional firmware or other types of updates that are required.

We used the Dell Technologies services to help us with the deployment and that went very well.

The pricing is fair. It's combined with the hardware and the VMware technology to run it as well. It's bundled.

We evaluated Nutanix and HPE. Dell has the largest market share, however, and it's the most mature of the other providers.

This solution is on-premises in our data centers and also in our stores.

My advice to others would be to look strongly at the hyper-converged infrastructure technologies that come with it. It virtualizes a lot of the functions that were previously separate. It brings it together in one easy-to-manage solution.

I'd rate the product ten out of ten.

It is used for server virtualization. Most of my work is around server virtualization. There has been a lot of interest lately in virtual desktop interfaces but not much is happening there. Most of the customers come for server virtualization. They generally have three-tier architecture running VMware vSphere, and they are looking to upgrade their technology for different reasons, such as performance or hardware being the end of life. Our customers are mostly using the new versions of this solution.

There are so many features, but if I have to choose, I would go for scale-out upgrades and performance.

Scale-out upgrades are very valuable. Typically, when customers engage in virtualization, they're committing themselves to run many virtual machines on a fewer number of hosts. They'll have five or six hosts, and they will run all their virtualization on vSphere. They could be having anywhere from 50 to 100 or even more virtual machines. Once all these go into production, getting downtime or getting planned maintenance windows is extremely difficult. It is something that typically businesses will frown upon. With VxRail, you can just go ahead and add a node without disrupting the existing environment, which works very well. That's why scale-out upgrades are a key feature.

Its performance is also valuable. It delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated.

It would be nice if its installation can be simplified, but it is currently not too bad.

They can provide deduplication and compression in hybrid configurations. To the best of my knowledge, these features are not there, and it would be nice if these are added. Some of its competitors already have these features, so it will help VxRail to have a better feature set and compete more effectively.

I have been off and on working with VxRail for more than three years.

It is fairly stable. There are no showstoppers as such.

It is easy to scale, but typically, it involves adding more nodes. So, there is an investment from the customer side. They have to have the budget for it, and then scalability is not an issue.

We are focused on all segments. Some of our customers start off with something as small as a three-node cluster, and we also have large enterprise customers who start off with 10 or 12 nodes.

I don't interact with their technical support.

Its installation can be a little complex, but it is not bad. If you plan it well and stay in touch with the customer about requirements, it is not difficult. For an implementation project, it is a standard practice for us to work very closely with the customer. It is definitely not as complicated as deploying a three-tier architecture with SAN storage, SAN switches, and those kinds of things.

In terms of maintenance, it usually requires version upgrades. When a VxRail cluster is already in production and in use, these things are discussed very deeply with the customer, and whether to go for an upgrade or skip it is decided based on the consultation with the customer. It depends on a whole lot of things, and the customer is the key in deciding such things. You have to consider the following:

• What is the business cycle at that point in time?
• What is the workload on the virtual machine?
• Is this the right time to carry out the upgrade?
• Is the upgrade really necessary?
• Is the upgrade going to impact any of their applications?

I would definitely recommend VxRail. If you have a heavy investment in VMware software infrastructure, it is definitely useful.

I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten.

We use VxRail for the promotion of all our infrastructure VM services.

VxRail has helped us by increasing the performance and capacity of our workload. 

I have found the vSAN is highly flexible. The documentation is good and the interface of the solution is responsive and fast. The interface has everything you need to manage the solution, such as the VxRail and VMware integration. You can manage the hardware from within the VMware plasma pan.

I have been using VxRail for approximately four years.

VxRail is stable because it has redundancies. VxRail is our standard system for the deployment of HR environments.

We have one person for the maintenance of the solution and one person for the backups.

We use the solution on a daily basis.

I have found VxRail highly scalable. You are able to add more nodes and increase the hardware to scale. It is flexible.

We have thousands of people using the solution. However, it is difficult to know for sure since many different business units use it.

VxRail comes from Dell and they have a one-stop service. You can work with Dell to get everything solved. Any issues in hardware or in software, whether it be VMware related or Dell related, everything is done by one team from Dell. The support aspects of the solution are good but it carries a price. We're happy to pay the price if we get that level of service.

One of the most valuable aspects of the support is the knowledge of the people and the speed at which they respond. If you have a problem and you phone them up, they immediately have the experts at the end of the phone to assist. if there is a problem they come in and fix the problem quite fast. If it is more difficult they will spend the time that is needed to solve it. They have helped us out of some heavy situations we caused ourselves. The support is very good.

The support that they offer us is why we purchased the solution.

We have previously used Hyper-V-based systems, StarWind, and Nutanix. We have mostly done testing of the other solutions and have not fully introduced them. Out of all the solutions we tested, we settled on the VMware-based VxRail. 

We switched from the others solutions because the support from Dell VxRail was excellent.

The configurations of VxRail can be difficult. However, it has improved in the newer version. From version 6 to 7, there has been a lot of changes.

The initial setup of VxRail was straightforward because they get handled by Dell themselves. There is a one-stop-shop for all your needs. They gather the information on what you require in your environment and how you want to set it up, such as what local IT information networks are required. They do a good job and the whole process took them a couple of hours to half a day.

Dell did the implementation of the solution for us.

VxRail is expensive because it's based on VMware and V-SAN. The price is not the cheapest. The technical support is expensive, but it is a good service.

My advice to others would be not to attempt to fix issues yourself and let Dell look after them.

I rate VxRail a nine out of ten.

Today, we completed the first stage with one customer. We finished our POC and sold six VxRail systems to the customer. The customer usually uses standard VxRail systems for data storage and servers. 

The customer wants to do some implementation to replace an old system. They are a manufacturing company that wants to improve their system with a more valuable storage area because they have a lot of data stored across various products. For example, they have 10 terabytes of information on one storage platform and another 2 terabytes on the other, etc. 

We faced competition from HPE SimpliVity and won. Yesterday, we got the good news from the customers, who were pleased with licensing for virtualization. The VxRail system provides some good benefits, and the customers are happy. We have two more projects lined up, but they are waiting for the new year, especially because they are arranging budgeting issues. We expect to see some new business in the first quarter. 

We deploy VxRail systems to provide our customers with a distributed information solution. The customer was impressed because we delivered a serious data reduction. For example, we showed them that 10 terabytes on their traditional storage solution could be reduced to 1.5 terabytes in the VxRail systems. That's why the customers also like it so much,

One of the biggest VxRail features our customers require is hardware redundancy. Customers have good network products like Cisco for their local networks, so they were ready when they did the POC work. The other thing is application completion, VxRail's most effective feature.

Dell wants to implement the disaster recovery site in the new year, but they haven't decided yet. I hope we will have the opportunity to sell VxRail with this disaster recovery site. It is not really clear at the moment, but hopefully, we will get some good news from the customers in the new year. Maybe in the second quarter, we will start to work for the disaster recovery site, I hope so. I think we have to implement the new systems, and maybe we can talk about what can happen in the future after that. 

We've been using VxRail for the last two years.

VxRail's stability is amazing. The performance is always effective and good.

VxRail is a scalable product. Of course, it depends on the business and the markets, but the scalability is usually excellent.

Dell's support in Turkey has helped us so much in the project, especially the salesperson. He supported us so much, and we are so appreciative.

We haven't fully deployed VxRail because we only got our first order for the systems today, and we will go to the setup, but the demo system was easy to use and set up.

I rate VxRail nine out of 10. I'd like to add something about the market for this product. A bank or a company like that can easily use VxRail. Another benefit is that customers don't need to close the systems without updates. For example, it's easy to upgrade the firmware upgrades. VxRail is really effective in a banking or insurance company that doesn't need to close the systems. However, it is not possible in our sector. We really work a lot on this project. We spend so much time with the customers and the project.

We mostly provide VxRail for companies that need to integrate different solutions. It's an embedded solution with storage, computing, and networking parts. Most customers use it because for integration. Our clients are mostly government agencies, educational companies, and enterprise labor.

Depending on your architecture type, it's simple to manage and implement VxRail compared to other solutions. That's why most of our customers use it. 

The most valuable aspect of VxRail is its management capability, especially during deployment. It has so many built-in features. 

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. 

We've been actively implementing VxRail solutions for different projects at various companies for two years, and we've worked with several series of VxRail solutions.

VxRail is very stable, and you can upgrade it as needed. It will prompt you to update if there are any updates available.  

VxRail is scalable. You can add up to 64 nodes in a single cluster. Anytime you need to scale up or scale out, you can add hard disks on the node or you can add the node itself to the cluster. The scale depends on the customer's requirements. They put out a bid proposal and based on that, we propose the solution they need. It's VxRail most of the time. We first visit their site and look at the solutions in their existing environment. Then based on that, we provide the best solution, which is usually VxRail.

Dell support is proactive. I'm happy with their support. They're active and supportive.

In addition to this hyperconverged solution, we have implemented CI Converged solutions, which is a Dell EMC product. However, we recommend the HCI solution for most companies.

Deployment is simple because everything is already built into the finished product. Implementation will not take as long as other products. The management is also straightforward. It has its own support that integrates directly through the network with the vendor. The vendors can automatically log into the system and support the customer. This and other features make VxRail more accessible to our customers.

I've deployed it so many times, including the mounting, nodes, cabling, visualizing, and configuring everything until it gets into production. The full deployment takes a day at most. The maintenance can either be physical or software maintenance. If there are any issues with the physical part, we do the RME process to get the hardware directly from the vendor. If there is a software issue, it's usually an issue we've seen before, so we can troubleshoot it ourselves. If there are any issues we can't resolve, we create a support ticket for the vendors to log into the system and do the maintenance directly.

I rate VxRail eight out of 10. It's a good solution compared to the three-tier architecture, especially for companies that need educational sector services for VDI solutions. It's better to base this on Dell EMC. In the computer, this three-tier architecture is like a docking sensor in your box solutions to use, implement, and manage. 

We work with Dell's Italian partner, so we go where the market goes. When Dell merged with EMC, we did several courses, and I got a certification with VxRail. We usually work with companies that have projects. We are solution architects. We don't work with software, programs, databases, or custom software.

VxRail is easy to deploy and easy to scale up, but you have to buy a new server if you want to scale up—not just a classic solution like RAM, CPU, or more disk. The solution would be good for a great company that is dynamic and wants to go up very fast.

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 started using VxRail three years ago.

The stability is great because it is based on VMware, so it's the same panel and same code.

VxRail has great scalability.

Dell's EMC technical support is very good.

The initial setup process is pretty straightforward. Technically speaking, there could be some complications, but Dell's support is very good.

In the course for VxRail, they tell you that it's a single click to deploy. From a technical viewpoint, that isn't true because you have to build the rack system. If the system is projected well, then you have a single click to deploy it with a single panel of glass.

The price could be lower. If the price were dropped, the products could sell more easily.

Compared to Nutanix, we are not as aggressive in the market, but VxRail is a good product with good design. If VxRail is to compete with Nutanix, it needs a single easy remote server for disaster recovery, but that depends on vSAN, which the design of VxRail is based on. The core of vSAN is not designed for this, maybe because vSAN customers are higher level.

I would give this solution a 9 out of 10. 

VxRail isn't for a small company. If you need less than five servers, you could technically use it, but there are probably other solutions that are cheaper. A classic solution for a small customer is cheaper than other convergence solutions.

In my mind, the hyper-convergence solution is a requirement only for a great company. If you are a small Italian company that isn't going to scale up for a few years, it's very difficult to afford the price, and you might have a problem with technical knowledge as well because your normal technicians won't be able to assist in other convergence solutions if you have an issue. In this case, we prefer traditional systems over VxRail to give the client the correct stability and simple management.