VxRail Reviews

Our primary use case is company growth, where storage an compute is growing fast. VDI is due to be deployed imminently

We are opening new properties. This product has given us clear visibility into what we need technology-wise to grow.

ESRS: This gives us the confidence that when we are not monitoring our environment, then Dell Tech is, and can make us aware of any failures/pending issues before those issues impact us globally. We do not have the manpower to monitor 24/7, so this saves us significant costs on support contracts.

RecoverPoint: It give us peace of mind knowing any corruption or server issue can be rectified very quickly, making sure the business impact is minimal. It has also allowed us during our setup to failover an entire cluster. This is a significant improvement for our system availability.

Expansion: Our business is growing rapidly with new hotels being built and acquired. We need to scale our data centre quickly and easily. There is no in-depth config involved nor third-party needed, saving us time and money.

Support - fantastic! as we try to automate the business and the mundane processes , the support element with VXrail has helped us along this journey. We are having to make fewer calls chasing different Storage /Server / VMware / Network vendors , we now make 1 call!

The initial setup between the different Dell departments is fragmented (ESRS Team, onsite deployment team, RecoverPoint team, etc.). The engineers who come to rack/stack and do the initial config should be trained on all the areas and work with the different Dell departments whilst they are onsite to give a smoother install and better experience for customer.

At present, VxRail is a hyperconverged state of the art product being installed in a legacy way. We need hyperconverged install teams.

Before we had VxRail, we had stability issues. After installing VxRail, we did not experience issues.

Before we had VxRail, we had scalability issues. After installing VxRail, we did not experience issues.

I would rate technical support as a 10 out of 10.

We switched from converged to HCI for the ease of management and business growth.

The initial setup could have been easier. There were too many cooks with all the Dell departments.

Compare it to what you spent on your last solution. Look at other costs: Power, IT staff, time to manage the system, cost of expansion for the future versus current (all costs: human/power/kit).

We evaluated Nutanix, Nimble, Cisco... We went with Dell VxRail, as Dell were already a trusted partner, and it has great support and products.

• Look at your pain points.
• Look at where your business is and where it is going.
• Look at the time currently invested by IT personnel to carry out mundane firmware and software upgrades.
• Look at how you currently log support calls for different entities.

We use it for our applications, which are all homeward applications and on a Windows-based server. VxRail has performed well so far. 

With VxRail, there is a single vendor with the hardware, software, and maintenance. Thus, there is a single vendor with whom we can contact. With other products of HPE, you have to procure different vendors and pay the hardware to HPE, the software to VMware, and the maintenance to someone else.

• They should add automation and activation going forward.
• VxRail is missing some of the features that Nutanix has in its product.
• Next release, we would like to see online applications.

It is very stable.

It is scalable. When you are buying it, you have to buy a minimum of three nodes. After that, if you want to add more nodes, you can buy can buy them. You can also add-on additional compute and storage.

The technical support is very helpful and answers questions whenever we have issues with the product.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Compare the VxRail product to Nutanix. Nutanix has more features, but its pricing is higher.

We went with Dell VxRail because we have a good relationship with Dell EMC. The second reason was the price. We procured a very limited edition of VxRail. 

We are currently looking at buying a full featured edition of a hyper-converged product. For example, we are considering buying Nutanix, HPE SimpliVity, VxRail (the third edition), or Cisco HyperFlex solution.

Most important criteria when selecting a vendor:

• Stability
• Scalability
• Technical background of the company
• Price.

For use with our on-premise infrastructure.

It makes for easier deployments through automation and improved accessibility. 

Its ease of administration is extremely valuable. It allows me to make better use of my time for other tasks instead of maintaining systems through multiple administration consoles.

It needs faster deployment of security patches. Dell EMC is already improving its patching method, but faster security patch rollout would alleviate risks associated from known vulnerabilities within VMware/subsystems.

No issues with stability.

No issues with scalability.

Technical support has not been needed.

We previously used traditional storage and compute. We switched because we needed a single pane of glass for administration.

The initial setup was straightforward.

Be mindful of your storage needs now and for the future.

We evaluated VxRail vs HPE SimpliVity, as well as Flex, and others.

You should make use of all the products available within the solution.

With SSD cache managed by vSAN technology, all servers have a much faster experience.

vSAN: It is the most valuable Software Defined Storage ever to manage all storage workloads, and also offers high availability.

It still has compatibility issues with the latest version of VMware vSphere 6.5. In fact, we spend around six months waiting for a confirmation and firmware upgrade to confirm this step.

Only in replication using native RP4VM software.

No issues.

They are always in touch with us doing whatever they can.

I used to use traditional infrastructure (blade servers and SAN storage). I switched for scalability and for the fast-growing data center that I have.

It is a little complex. We had a lot of technical discussions to set a proper plan and basic architecture.

Most of hyper-converged solutions require additional licenses for the virtualization layer (like VMware). Nutanix, for example, offers their solution (Acropolis) for free. So, you have to revisit your needs and budget.

Nutanix, Cisco HyperFlex, and HPE Hyper Converged.

It is good choice if you are looking for flexibility and scalability for the future.

At a remote location where physical servers were deployed in order to address latency or process delays, one of these appliances is now installed and a low cost virtual environment is in place. This has also allowed snapshot backups to be taken with our Avamar solution rather than just performing file level backup with an agent.

Being able to perform upgrades and check the system through the VxRail Manager has been very helpful. It allows files to be uploaded, performs a pre-check against the system, then upgrades the appliance from the hardware up through the VMware environment.

My main issue so far is that the installation created a default datacenter name of "Marvin" and it cannot be changed. This can be a problem with multiple device\location deployments where all of the names are "Marvin".

As with any new product, we have had a few bugs that were address in the last upgrade we performed. For example, we had a host that would appear to become disconnected or missing from vCenter, but later return and be online. However, there has never been an outage or loss of data with any issues. In the above mentioned issue, the VMs still functioned and were reachable. This was correcting with a software update.

We have not had a reason to scale or add to the initially purchased appliance.

Customer Service:

Our customer service is outstanding. As with many Dell EMC accounts, there is a primary person assigned as our account representative. He maintains regular contact and interaction to ensure we are not only satisfied with our VxRail, but also our other Dell EMC solutions.

Technical Support:

The few times I have contacted technical support they have always been very responsive. I have never felt as though it was a low-level support person, reading a script. They all seem to have been top-level support individuals. As with other Dell EMC products, the appliance includes an ESRS gateway, so they have the ability to remotely access (if allowed) and proactively address issues that may occur through the dial-home service.

No, we did not have any previous HCI installations.

The initial setup was not really any more complex than some other HCI deployments. We completed a spreadsheet, with IP addresses and names, that was imported into a JSON file. This was then used to automate the deployment and creation of the virtual environment.

The implementation used a combination of in-house staff being onsite and Dell EMC personnel being on a WebEx. This was mostly due to being one of the early deployments of the system. I am not sure of the current requirements around new deployments.

The VxRail has allowed an environment to be created that is easy to manage and back up. This reduces the amount of time that is required by staff to manage and update systems.

At the time, VMware licensing was purchased separately. I have heard that now it is offered as part of the appliance. There is a permanent vSAN license included since it is required, but vCenter\ESXi host licensing should be validated in the purchase process.

We did look at some other solutions, but at the time we were only capable of 1G networking and this device was the only one available at that speed. However, it has performed great and has been easy to manage.

We use the solution for specialized customers looking for a particular infrastructure. One of our customers runs all their infrastructure on VxRail. We also have a customer in the banking industry who moved to VxRail because they needed the infrastructure that VxRail provides.

The solution is very easy to manage. It is a software-defined storage. One person can manage the whole infrastructure instead of two to three people managing the servers and the storage. Manageability is the greatest advantage of the product. Our customer chose VxRail because of its manageability. The one-click update for everything is significant for simplifying IT operations. We don't have to upgrade our VMware and other systems separately. Everything is managed from a single console.

The technical support team must improve the quality of responses.

The tool is easy to implement.

The product is expensive compared to other solutions. It is not suitable for small companies. They won’t have the budget for such infrastructure. We generally recommend the solution to banks and large enterprises. The pricing must be reduced. It will attract more customers.

For small deployments, we recommend SAN along with servers.

We haven’t scaled the tool yet. I will recommend the product to others. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.