VxRail Reviews

We use VxRail for private cloud and running core applications.

VxRail is aligned with the VMware environment, and VMware is a stable product. Running a virtual machine on it is much easier and more accessible because it is a configured appliance. VxRail allows us to contain the sprawling of servers and provides visibility. With VxRail, we can manage the life cycle of a virtual machine.

The support charges for VxRail should be optimized and made cheaper.

I have been using VxRail for approximately six years.

VxRail is a stable solution.

Scalability-wise, VMware or Dell says the solution can go up to 64 nodes in a single cluster. We have gone to almost 48 to 50 server nodes, and it is stable. Around 30 customers are using the solution.

The solution’s initial setup is straightforward. The solution's implementation is straightforward and presents no challenges. However, upgrading the versions of the solution requires some time.

The solution's deployment took 30 to 45 minutes per box.

We have seen a good return on investment with VxRail.

VxRail has a subscription model usually tagged with the appliance box only.

VxRail is a scalable and easy-to-use solution. Creating a private cloud helps us help our customers create a streamlined environment with fewer engineers. VxRail supports our virtual desktop infrastructure.

The initial setup of boxes is much cheaper than when we go for upgrades or add more nodes into the cluster. It is easy to manage VxRail.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight or nine out of ten.

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.

We primarily use the solution for hyper-converged infrastructure.

It's a four-node cluster that has internal storage and the solution has combined all four nodes via vSAN. vSAN is software, a software-defined storage software from which we can combine our four-node storage and other resources into one virtual storage tool. It's a software-defined model.

We are using it for surrounding applications, not for core applications. For core applications, we are using Power Systems and IBM Cloud Storage.

The product is a very good software-defined solution.

The product has been simplified so that it's very easy to use.

VxRail is a good product and since Dell acquired VMware and went hyper-converged infrastructure, it's been great. It's a very robust solution.

The main thing is that vSAN software is built-in, inside the hypervisor. It's an excellent way of doing things and it's common sense. If we are talking about other hypervisors, such as, let's say, Cisco HyperFlex, HP SimpliVity, and Nutanix, the difference is where vSAN is built on the VMware. You don't need to create a VM for vSAN. It's built-in, in its hypervisor.

When VMware was acquired by Dell, the hardware and software were combined together, which has been very good.

The support has been excellent, especially if you compare it to IBM.

The solution is very good for smaller entities, such as small or medium-sized organizations.

You can scale the solution quite well.

From a security point of view, the solution is pretty good.

The licensing is a bit too costly. They should work on lessening the overall price.

I've been using the solution for the last two years or so. It hasn't been for that long.

The solution is very good for small and medium-sized organizations. 

The product can scale. When we go for an upgrade, all the upgraded software is combined in a one-bundle unit.

We've just extended our solution. We have four-node clusters, and recently we acquired more resources. We just extended this cluster to eight nodes. We are waiting for the delivery of the equipment. We already replaced some of it.

We've had a good experience with technical support.

The support mechanism of Dell EMC offers a very quick response. They give us the attention we need when we say there's an issue. The engineer will come online immediately and provide support. We've been quite satisfied with their level of service overall.

The solution is expensive and it could be a bit more reasonably priced for its customers. We hope it's something that will get worked on.

VxRail is the product of Dell, with both hardware and software combined together. It's a very good product.

We bought this VxRail for our VMware-certified applications. Those applications only run on VMware-certified systems. That's why we procured VxRail. Otherwise, we have Hyper-V as well, Microsoft Hyper-V. Hyper-V is an American-based company, which always offers hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. On Edge we are using Hyper-V, It is also a software-defined box.

We have our own private Cloud as well for converged infrastructure. We have the Lenovo Blade series and the external storage is connected to the chassis which we are using for our surrounding applications. This is our private Cloud. It is also on Microsoft Hyper-V.

We aren't using the latest version of the solution. We are using the version before.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a nine out of ten. We've been very happy with it.

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 have some virtual machines for the active directory, some virtual machines for security like firewalls, and some for other security. We have some other solutions here that are on virtual machines, such as our web page. Its applications and some functions are on virtual machines, too. 

Some solutions are internal solutions and I think they are going to setup a SaaS solution here in our cluster. We have about three more clusters here and it's around 20 terabytes.

The integration with VMware is great. I like it so much because it is so much cleaner and the VMware modeling with the VxRail Manager is very nice. The solution is very good. It is easier. We haven't had any issues with it.

We have three nodes and we had an issue with one of the nodes once and the response time from their support was very nice. When they fixed the part that was bad in the cluster, it began functioning again very nicely and very quickly. It was a great solution. We didn't have any outage or crash due to this failure.

It has a tool called RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines, and I liked it so much because it allows for business continuity, and I can replicate virtual machines from one appliance to another. Normally, there are all these rules that we have to have in VMware. We are just implementing this in the first one and the second one. I have the end unit of this distributed solution. It's going to be good but at the moment, we are just deploying it. We made some tests and RecoverPoint for Virtual Machines was very nice.

It would be an improvement if VxRail could be integrated with some other hypervisors and not just with VMware.

I have been using VxRail for almost three years at my office. It's a great solution.

The stability is very nice. We haven't had any issues with the cluster. The cluster is very stable. No problems with slowness. Everything has been stable. It was well-architectured.

The scalability of VxRail is very good because they told me that it scales up to 64 nodes, but at this time we haven't had the need for that kind of scale. We can scale it on disks but we don't have to scale it. We don't have a node. It is cheaper to scale it up with disks while we need some space. We are okay with the CPU and all of that, so the disk solutions are very nice. Its scaling is very nice because we can scale it up with only disks. When we need to scale a computer or something, we need to buy another node if we run out of the disks.

Our organization has about 100 people.

Technical support is very nice. I think it's the best support that I have tested because I have some other solutions with HP which were okay. Before we had VxRail, we had a solution that is called Simplivity. I didn't like it very much. It was a two-node solution. It was very bad. We had some issues with both the support and the solution, so we had to change it.

The initial setup was very easy. It took about one and a half days and then another three or four days, maximum, with the tuning and everything else.

We had to energize each node and I did it a week before they went to implement the process. They asked about everything. They asked about IP addresses, everything that was technical. They made some assessments and the day that we implemented VxRail, they had everything set. They just wrote all the addressing and everything of our root and our network. The implementation goes so fast. Almost a day. That was what it took to implement that machine.

The next day, they migrated from virtual machines with the VMware Converter. They used two RecoverPoints for Virtual Machines, I think. It didn't take too much time. Only a few hours, maybe half of the day, and it was okay. We started planning it and we made some tests over a day and a half on the timing and stability of the system and we had the process standard because we needed to have a hybrid solution.

My advice to other people looking to implement VxRail is that it is a very nice solution. It's an integrated solution so we don't have to jump into several providers because it is only one point of contact. We don't have to call VMware or another vendor. We only have one point of contact.

On a scale of one to ten, I would give VxRail a nine.

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.

We like the design and that it meets data storage needs.

My customers want more storage for university databases.

We've been using this solution for approximately one year.

The technical support needs to be improved, and I would give them a six out of ten. They could assign more digital architects to the support team.

Neutral

We used a reseller for the implementation. It took about two months to deploy the solution.

VxRail is deployed in one location, and we have about 22 people who use the solution.

The price is good.

I tell customers that VxRail solves a lot of storage problems, and I would rate it a five on a scale from one to ten.

We are using this solution for our business-critical application.

VxRail solution provides hassles free deployment for small IT team. It also provided High Availability and Scalability for future extensions.

I have found that the professional deployment services from Dell EMC, monitoring Services likes Secure Remote services , and the many others services such as patch updates. Additionally, the deployment team has demonstrated the best practice approach for the appliances.

I have been using the solution for one month.

The solution is quite efficient for scaling horizontal  but will a bit difficult to expand vertical where on the certified engineer can authorized. For example, increasing RAM and storage.

The installation was straightforward and took approximately five days to implement the whole stack.

We used Dell EMC team together with local vendor team to implement the solution and we have two engineers to do the maintenance. Their knowledge and skills are outstanding.

There is a license required for this solution.

I would recommend this solution to others. This solution is for people who want to simplify the whole virtual data center. Initially, if you want to use virtual data center, you need to buy hardware and the license separately. After combining everything together, if anything happened to each product, you need to do a lot of troubleshooting and communicate with different parties . With this solution, it is quite straightforward. You can have a deployment team come and install it for you within a week if you provide the correct configuration. This will save you a lot of time.

I rate VxRail an eight out of ten.