VxRail Reviews

The solution is primarily used as a general data center and VDI. 

I consult multiple organizations across many industries.  VxRAIL is a platform  I lead with. It reduces IT admin time and complexity around managing a hyper-converged environment. 

The solution is perfect for the lifecycle management of hardware.

The solution allows automated updates to hosts os and hardware, and in some cases switch hardware patches as well.

The licensing costs are too expensive for smaller deployments. They should work on their pricing model at the low end. many of the customer's at the smaller end of the scale would benefit the most from the automation but it often times becomes cost prohibitive.

The solution needs a little more flexibility in the hardware that is supported by VxRAIL. Right now, they're very restrictive of the hardware supported. 

I've been dealing with the solution for two or three years.

The stability of the solution is rock solid. Organizations consider it completely reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash. It's great.

The scalability of the solution is very impressive, actually. You can scale a very large environment with ease. It's not trouble at all.

On the converse of that, it doesn't work so well for very small environments. This is mostly for if you've got, for example, four hosts already. It's not for small environments. You need to really have 100 to 200 VMs to really take advantage of it.

As a reseller, I'll typically check in with clients after a few months to see how things are going and to see if they need a new node or anything of that nature.  Typically, they are looking to scale a bit more.

The technical support is phenomenal. I'd give it five stars. They are very responsive and knowledgeable. We're satisfied with the level of service they provide.

I have been selling virtualization platforms for around 10 years.  Hyper Converged Infrastructure is perfect for general data center work loads and for VDI.  

For myself, it's fairly straightforward and no longer very complex. However, I've done more than a dozen of them so far. If you don't know what you're doing, it can be pretty complex. You really do need some expertise with the solution to manage everything.

In terms of deployment, it chiefly takes about two days of planning and about two days of implementation.

In terms of maintenance, what makes it so nice is that it automates management and patching of all of an organization's virtual hosts and even their switches if the switches are supported. Therefore, it reduces admin.

We handle the implementation for our clients.

Users do find that licensing is quite pricey.

The costs vary from customer to customer.

A typical node that I would sell to a customer has a list price be between $50,000 and $80,000 per node. Organizations typically start with four nodes. That's the hardware, software, VMware licensing, everything. 

Customers typically pay about half of that for VSAN REady nodes - approximately $25,000 to $50,000 a node. On average, it costs about $200,000 to get your foot in the door. That can be quite expensive for any organization that isn't a large enterprise.

I have trained and worked with all of the major HCI options out there.

VSAN (VxRail is built on top of this)

Nutanix ( a very solid alternative)

Simplivity ( not to the level of VSAN or Nutanix)

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct ( good idea, not quite ready for production)

We're a partner with Dell VMware. VxRail is a part of Dell.

I largely just sell and set up the solutions; I don't use the solution regularly myself.

It's an amazing product overall.

This solution definitely requires an organization to plan everything out correctly. You need to map out your networking, understand what your resource utilization is going to be, make sure you get the right amount of RAM and storage on the host, and then also understand the impact to your licensing costs for Microsoft.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. I would give it perfect marks if it wasn't so expensive.

We have our internal servers allocated to the solution.

The tool's price is competitive and it is easy to use.

The tool needs to improve its price.

I have been using the solution for two years.

The tool is scalable and I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We used VMware before. We switched to the solution because we needed a system with more performance and scalability.

I would rate the tool's setup an eight out of ten. The tool's deployment got completed in a few hours.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. The tool fulfills our needs.

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.

Our customers who have the old infrastructure and are looking for high-performance and modern infrastructure, use VxRail. 

VxRail has improved our organization by providing our admin team with an easy-to-use interface. 

The upgrade packages require a lot of bandwidth. This could be reduced for an improved experience.

I have been using this solution for four years. 

This is a stable solution. 

The technical support for this solution is great. I would rate it a ten out of ten. 

Positive

We used a different open-source product but it was not easy to manage which is why we switched.

The initial setup is straightforward. The time it takes to set up depends on the size of the cluster. For a mid-size cluster of 12 nodes, it usually takes one to two days.

We have seen a return on the investment due to how easy this solution is to use and the time it frees up for our staff. 

Its pricing is reasonable compared to other products.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We have four to five clusters, and one of those clusters is an OT environment. We work in the oil and gas sector. We have deployed VxRail in three sites, mainly as a DMZ zone. We have another cluster for our internal network and a new VxRail cluster is going to be deployed and dedicated to SAP HANA.

The major advantage is the blueprint. You do not need to separately manage the sand or network part because it all gets virtualized.

The upgrading and virtualization of VxRail are easy to use. Compared to some of the other technology we use which requires a 32 GB memory minimum for one VM, VxRail does not require this additional memory. 

The SCL database sends out a warning and you have to download the adjacent file from the Dell website. You have to upload and retest it. We cannot always connect our systems to the internet which means we sometimes miss these important updates. 

I have been using this solution for five years. 

This is a scalable solution. 

The support for this solution is really good. I always use the chat medium because it is easy to open a ticket and get assistance. 

I would rate the support for this solution a ten out of ten. 

Positive

We previously used the initial generation of VxRail but experienced some issues. We went with another vendor but faced hardware-level stability issues and so we returned to VxRail.

The main issue during the initial deployment is if there are any errors, you have to completely re-image the nodes. There is no option to fix the issues and resume from where you stopped. This adds many hours to the process. 

We always follow what Dell recommends and their best practices.

We evaluated Nutanix for Discover FLeX and Dell. The Nutanix hardware is really stable and they still follow the chassis architecture. 

Dell changed from the chassis form factor to different nodes, so installing different nodes each time is easy, but when you have too many nodes it needs more space.

I would recommend VxRail because after using the solution for many years, I still prefer VxRail.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

We use VxRail to manage capacity issues. It is very scalable and solved a lot of our challenges. We are an international company and provide services and platforms to customers based in South America, Latin America, and North America.

It improved from an operations standpoint as we reduced failures compared to a previous vendor. The hardware that we previously used had a lot of issues with components failing regularly.

This solution is very scalable and you can add extra nodes to the cluster and bring it online without any interruption to production systems.

When it comes to maintenance, it takes 16 hours to upgrade a 12-node VxRail plus. This could be improved in the system. 

We have used this solution for two and a half years.

The customer support team for this solution are very good at responding to cases. I would rate them a nine out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup was a little lengthy but straightforward. To deploy a 12 node plus it took two months.

We partnered with Dell Technologies and they helped us implement the solution. We provided the required data for networking and firewall rules for them to roll out the solution. Four senior engineers were involved in the deployment.

We have seen a return on investment. It reduced the need for manpower in keeping our hardware up and running.

The pricing for this solution is on the high end but we do get good value for money based on performance.

I would advise those considering this solution to take a closer look at their workload and design clusters needed to meet that workload. Typically it is easy to deploy large clusters and it becomes tedious to maintain a large cluster. Scaling back on the number and nodes in the cluster is something I would recommend considering during implementation.

I would rate this solution a nine out of ten. 

I'm the software system team leader. 

The valuable features for us are the VDI, UCC, and HCI.

My only complaint about this solution is that it's vendor-locked with Dell being the only supplier for VxRail.

I've been using this solution for almost a year. 

The solution is stable. 

The solution is scalable.

Customer support has been good so far. It's possible the good service is somewhat related to the license agreement we have, I'm not sure. 

The initial setup is straightforward. We have close to 1,000 end users who connect directly to the VDI and to the UCC solution. 

We generally procure a three-year license with a support agreement from the supplier. 

I recommend this solution, it's a good product. We recommend it to our customers.

I rate this solution nine out of 10. 

In the last deployment, I had VxRail connected to Dell EMC Isilon storage and it increases the complexity of what you're doing and you need to have a team that can manage it.

I have used VxRail within the last 12 months.

I did not have any issues with the stability of VxRail. 

VxRail ability to expand was good, I don't remember what it maxes out at but the one deployment that I was working on and assisting with is one where they were running out of storage too quickly. However, this does not matter if it's HCI or if it's a traditional storage array that you're connecting via iSCSI or Fiber Channel or ports. Running out of storage is a lack of knowledge of utilizing the tools, such as vRealize or Turbonomic, and it is important to do capacity planning. When comparing VxRail to Nutanix, Nutanix had similar scalability capabilities.

The technical support from Dell was very good.

I have used other solutions, such as Nutanix.

The implementation of a VxRail, it's straightforward, but the ongoing utilization, and integration, are where it can start to become difficult if you're not used to doing it.

I rate the Dell price a four out of five.

The price of VxRail highly depends on your design and your configuration. For example, if I connect Pure Storage directly to ESXi hosts and bypass Fiber Channel switches and I will save on money. However, it reduces my redundancy and makes it not as robust of deployment and easy to manage. An HCI environment, it's more cost-effective than utilizing a traditional SAN. With storage and computing altogether, you don't necessarily have to involve the networking team as much. I don't necessarily need somebody that understands Brocade's or Cisco Fiber Channel Switches, because I have it all right there.

One of the most important aspects of implementing VxRail is the capacity planning and understanding of what kind of expansion is going to be needed over a period of 12, 24, and 36 months. No matter what the solution is, you'll start off with a minimum of three nodes, and growing from there, it's very difficult to go back and get more capital. 

Make sure that you understand using an RV tools exporter or something similar to understand when you are designing the solution. This will help make sure that I've allowed for 20, 30, or 40 percent growth over a period of 12 months, or 24 months, depending on the use case. 

It is important to manage budgets, such as OpEx and CapEx. You will always have a certain amount of money that you can spend and not need to go back and attempt to gather more capital, capacity planning is critical.

All right. Overall for the VxRail, how would you scale it from one to ten? If ten was the best and one was the worst.

I rate VxRail an eight out of ten.