VxRail Reviews

VxRail is allowing us to solve a problem that we've had for quite a while, as far as having distributed computing, networking, and storage. VxRail has a combined HCI environment. As a result, all of our resources are together, and life cycle management helps us with sustainability in deploying and managing the environment.

It helps us to consolidate a lot of our legacy, storage, and other computing environments.

What I find very valuable is VxRail's life cycle management. The life cycle management takes care of everything from firmware to the actual upgrading of the hypervisor and keeps everything up to level.

They need to keep upgrading the environment and improving automation so that the solution keeps getting better and better.

I've been using VxRail for about eight months now.

VxRail's support is excellent. I would give them a nine out of ten.

Positive

Our previous environment consisted of HP, Dell, and VxBlock. We switched because HCI is our new environment/ecosystem. There are a lot of supportability improvements, and it is much easier to manage with VxRail.

The more difficult part of it was the planning. The actual deployment was not as difficult.

The deployment didn't take more than a month from doing the actual planning to having it shipped, brought inside, and then brought online.

VxRail is deployed to data centers and globally as well.

The maintenance is sustained within supportability, so it has to be updated whenever leases come out.

We used Dell ProDeploy and had a combination of engineering and facilities staff for the deployment process.

As far as our consolidation ratios are concerned, we have seen a return on investment.

Pricing is competitive.

Definitely look into VxRail. Plan for your needs and utilize the services from ProDeploy.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate VxRail at nine.

I'm not a direct user. I'm a team manager, and we are using it in our company. We are using it as our new-generation virtualization platform. Currently, we are just building the environment, and we still have things to do directly with Dell.

We are very happy with the purchase, and it works well. It is fast. We went with the full-flash version, meaning that we have SSDs. So, we can build a Windows virtual machine in two minutes. We were surprised when we first tried to do that. So, currently, we are very happy with it.

The best features of HCI are the reliability and no need to have additional storage models and storage administrators. All the things—such as virtualization models, storage models, and networking—are in one environment. So, a single hardware administrator can access and support everything. I like HCI because of being able to have all components of virtualization in one cluster and in one place. There is no SAN and storage. It brings simplicity to hardware maintenance.

We have some issues, but they are possibly out-of-the-box issues. There was a host that was dead on arrival, and there were some file issues on other hosts. We're currently working actively with Dell to resolve all these issues. Once they are resolved, the product should be stable.

In terms of the additional features, we still need to adopt what we have. It has lots of features, and we need to start using it heavily. I might have something to add in a year or so, but currently, I don't have anything.

We have been using this solution since December. It has been two full months.

We are having some out-of-the-box issues, and we're actively working with Dell to resolve those issues. Once those issues are resolved, it should be stable, but as a virtual environment, it has never failed. These are only single-node or single-component issues that don't affect the whole virtual environment, which is great and which is why I love HCI.

It is scalable. Currently, we have 12 people who are working with this solution, but there will be more.

A vendor did the whole implementation. We have purchased it as a service. So, we had a third-party vendor who installed and configured everything. My technicians were watching and learning. So, we were not the ones who were primarily responsible for configuring things. The process took some time, but the result is very satisfying.

It is reasonable. Compared to the legacy hardware that we had so far, we are not paying way more, but we have very good performance. Its price is good.

I would rate it a nine out of 10 because of those out-of-the-box issues. They are a bit annoying, but I believe we will be able to resolve them quickly, and then it would be a 10.

The big portion of it is the VDIs, XenDesktop VDIs. I would say that our biggest deployment for VDI is approximately 15,000 users.

Our team actually maintains the solution and deploys the updates, etc. We have two people that handle all maintenance-related issues. Mostly me but I have support from another person.

VxRail does not require fiber switches or external storage. It's easy to replace and manage. It's centralized management through VxRail Manager.

The upgrade process is still not finished up. Sometimes during the upgrade process of VxRail, we experience errors that have nothing to do with reality and I cannot troubleshoot them without calling Dell and bringing in an engineer to figure it out.

If the VxRail upgrade fails on one of the particular nodes in the cluster, it doesn't stop, It pauses. When a problem's fixed and you retry it, it starts from the beginning.

For example, If I have 32 nodes in a cluster and I have a problem with the 31st node, I have to start from node 1 to check everything. To get to node 31, it takes up to three hours.

I have been using VxRail for three and a half years.

Stability is not related to VxRail. It's related to vSAN. Because VxRail has nothing to do with vSAN. VxRail's just aiding automation and the orchestration processes to vSAN, the VMware vSAN. Overall, the stability is pretty good if the hardware is stable.

The scalability is 10 out of 10. I can add or remove hosts at any time. I have no problem with that.

I'm really pleased with the technical support because it's centralized. It's not just VxRail support, it's hardware support and vSAN support, VMware support. If I call Dell for any problems relating to VxRail, I don't have to call anybody else.

In any case, if we need VMware engineers, it's just a matter of internally bringing somebody on the call, and then we figure it out together.

The initial setup is straightforward. As soon as I prepare a JSON file I have no problem.

Usually deployment depends on the number of nodes — it's taken up to two hours.

I was not involved in the licensing of this solution.

If you're interested in using VxRail, use your judgment. There are multiple solutions and all of them are geared toward different use cases. Some people will prefer HyperFlex, others will prefer to go with Nutanix, VxRail, or, for god's sake, vSAN ReadyNodes.

VxRail has some limitations. For me, it's limited from doing what it's supposed to do because it's provided by VxRail — it's automated and orchestrated by VxRail. For example, I cannot use VMware Update Manager. I have to use a bundle, which is produced by Dell, and usually, they are at least a month to a month and a half behind VMware.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give VxRail a rating of eight.

For remote work, we use VMware Horizon, running on VxRail, and have centralized all applications and storage.

We can do updates at a much higher cycle with much less resources. We can monitor all the VDI desktops, and I don't have to physically maintain desktops.

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.

The update for the graphics integration and the media drivers isn't included in the VxRail update.

We've been using it for the past three years.

It's very stable. We haven't had any downtime so far.

The technical support is good, and I would give it a nine out of ten.

Positive

We used a terminal server from Microsoft and switched because we had to renew the whole data center and wanted to use the latest technology.

We liked the integrated update, and the people behind Dell technologies made the difference.

The initial setup was straightforward. The process took around one day.

Our environment is in one location, and it's not a stretch cluster; it's a single cluster. We run about 190 virtual desktops and 200 virtual servers on it.

The solution does not require a lot of maintenance, and the system engineer takes care of that.

We wanted to roll out the VDI department by department. We used an integrator for the initial deployment, who was very competent. We also used one system engineer.

The pricing is very accurate, and we haven't had any problems with the licensing costs.

We evaluated HPE and Lenovo. 

I recommend testing the data applications first, which could really speed up the process of installing the golden images or setting up the initial golden image.

I rate this solution ten on a scale from one to ten.

The data conversion capabilities are very good.

Deduplication is excellent.

The initial setup is simple.

As of right now, I cannot think of any improvements, as it has been working very well.

It might help if there was more confidentiality between VxRail and the Data Domain for Backup. There are several issues with backup solutions. We'd like integration with Avamar.

We'd like to see more automation capabilities in the future. 

I've been using the solution for about one year.

The solution is like a rock. It's extremely stable. We've had no issues. It doesn't crash or freeze. There are no bugs or glitches. 

We haven't tested the scalability and therefore I cannot comment on its capabilities. 

Currently, we have more than 1,000 users on the solution. They are basically working with the database.

Next year, we have plans to increase usage. e plan on getting more customers and therefore will need to bill for more storage. 

For any phase-one issues, I would first go to the integrator. I can escalate straight to the vendor if I need to. So far, our experience with the integrator has been very good. We have no complaints. 

We didn't have any issues with the initial setup. It was very straightforward and not overly complex. 

Our contract partner handles any maintenance tasks. 

An integrator assisted us with the initial implementation process. They were very professional and the experience overall was positive. 

I can't speak to the licensing aspects of the solution. It's basically just a one-time purchase. 

There are very many competitors between the hyper-converged solutions, such as Nutanix and Dell, and so on. We also looked at VMware options. However, we are wanted to go with something that was more stable and we're generally attracted to Dell. 

We're just a customer and an end-user.

It's a very stable system. It's very easy to use. You just need one desktop for control over all the items of the system. As of now, it's been problem-free.

I would rate the solution at a ten 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.

We use VxRail for VDI and for our production environment hosted on VMware. Within our organization, there are roughly 3,000 employees that use this solution.

We enjoy the ease of management since all of the resources are located on one box — one single point of support. 

I host a lot of other clients on my premises, the ACR, and I need to charge them for the services I provide. I would like it if there were tools that provided the billing costs. In other words, this infrastructure or this resource will cost you X amount of dollars. In short, I would prefer it if each cell had a tool geared toward billing clients.

The initial setup for the VxRail economy requires a minimum of three nodes. We might consider building a new cluster with a minimum of four, as not all customers can sponsor for the sub-training number of nodes. In short, to implement VxRail, you need a minimum of three nodes for the initial setup; and the initial setup isn't cheap. 

I have been using VxRail for two and a half years.

VxRail is very stable — it scales up and spins out.

I am very satisfied with the customer support.

For the HCI it's quite straightforward; however, in regard to the switches, there is no GUI implemented with the top-rack switches which can make things difficult. Overall, deployment took one week.  

We evaluated HyperFlex and NetApp. The best part aboutHyperFlex is that it operates on the CDM layer to integrate the VM-ware reports which need an extra 20% of the resources that the box or the production data needs. However, I would say that HyperFlex is more complicated to install than VxRail.

Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of nine.

I use the solution pretty much for everything. We use it for VMs. Our customers are on VMs, and that's the main use case for us. 

We use the solution to get rid of the physical machines so we can work from anywhere in a virtual environment. 

It's a powerful solution. It's very capable. That's useful for us in our environment. 

It helps simplify the management of VMware. They make it very easy.

It's useful that we can consolidate infrastructure from multiple locations. This is important to us. We've already consolidated a lot of physical machines. It makes management easier and centralizes everything. We don't have everything split across separate locations or thousands of physical machines.

VxRail helped with production downtime. 

We have four clusters at the moment and can easily shift around our virtual appliances. It's really flexible. We can shift around as needed. 

They are always coming out with new updates and fixes. There are no immediate fixes needed. 

There's always room to improve on both the front and back end. It might offer better integration with other products. 

I've been using the solution for about four years. 

The solution is very stable. 

The product is very scalable. 

In the beginning, support wasn't that great. However, it got a lot better after a few calls and meetings. 

Positive

We did not use a different solution previously.

We deployed the solution with Dell. The process was very easy.

Dell assisted us with the first two clusters, and we mostly did the second two clusters ourselves. 

We do not consider ROI in terms of the goal of the company in relation to this solution. We're a non-profit.

I'm not involved in the pricing or licensing. 

We did not evaluate other vendors previously. While we checked other solutions, this one proved the easiest.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. We find it to be a very good product. Of course, there's always room for improvement.