VxRail Reviews

I like the simplicity of the orchestrating network, storage, and compute under one umbrella.

The footprint is very minimal too. For management operations, the VxRail appliance is easy to use.

I like that there is a dependency on the storage controller.

I would like to see how they work with multiple vendors and not just with their own branded hardware.

One of the complications in teaming is the number of patches that are required, which is too high. 

This is also a challenge when your infrastructure might be legacy and you want the latest platform installed. Most of the ports might already be consumed and you have very few ports available for your new deployment, and due to the SEI, you are required to have a high port density.

I would love to see license migration from one host to another.

I have been working with this solution for a year.

We are using the latest version.

For now, it has been stable. 

We have posted a really critical application and so far it's been great.

I have not dealt with technical support from VxRail yet. We have not had any issues.

The initial setup was straightforward.

It took less than a week to deploy, without dedicating full days. It was approximately two to three hours a day for this particular job.

It comes with preloaded ESX sites, it's about how you configure it.

I would totally recommend this product. If you have a good proportion or, if their infrastructure requirement has a higher compute, proportionally designed storage, and memory, then go for higher VxRail, which is the ACI platform. Instead, if your computing requirement is higher and the storage of memory doesn't really matter, the benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure are not for you.

I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten.

I am working for a service provider, we provide IT services for our customer in Egypt. I have deployed this solution in approximately 10 companies. The solution provides many components into one box for data centers.

When it comes to valuable features there are two different areas. From the business perspective, it is a lot cheaper, simple to manage, and easy to store in a small data center. You will only need small preparations for all the credential from the data center. From a technical perspective, you are able to manage all your data centers from one portal.

Dell owns the EMC, EMC owns VMware, and there are many other interconnections throughout the industry which allows a fully integrated solution from a technical perspective. If you open a ticket related to hardware or software it is from the same portal.

Additionally, we do not have a lot of issues with the customers related to the workloads or any sort of business related to this solution, we do not have issues with compatibility.

There is limited support for SAP HANA with this solution. Sometimes there are customers we have that want a solution based on SAP HANA and it is not compatible. 

I have been using this solution for three years.

We have found the solution to be stable.

The solution has scaled well for us. When you need to scale up all you need to have is additional nodes to insert, power them on, pre-configure, and it is in production.

The support was very fast at responding and resolving issues in all the tickets we created with them.

The installation is very straightforward. You forward your IP, password, and some other information then you are done.

The deployment is based on two scenarios, the budget and the software that would be running over the virtual machines in VMware and on this solution. 

There are multiple series within this solution, we have to select the right sizing for the customer needs. If the company needs to implement SAP, Oracle, or regular infrastructure, based on this information we provide the solution business series. There are many things to consider, what is the nodes needed for the configuration, this could be three, four, five, etc. Which license is required with VMware, either standard or enterprise. Staying within the budget is important, this solution can be expensive and is based partially on the workloads that they will work on.

The solution is priced well for businesses.

One of the issues I come across when we implement the solution is our customer's technical team do not have the knowledge of VMware and the technical operational components. They need to be trained very well before they start using the solution.

If you are wanting to improve your data centers this solution is one small box that can be used in a data center providing low power consumption and requiring minimal administration. You are almost able to combine all the business into one.

I rate VxRail a ten out of ten.

We use this solution mainly as a middleware application. We work in banking and use VxRail to run all of our mid-layer applications.

We would like to have on-premise technical support.

A more containerized approach in regards to the interface would be better.

I have been using this solution for one year.

VxRail is very stable.

We haven't had problems with bugs, We recently updated VxRail and we haven't had any problems.

If there are any issues, we just open a ticket and are connected with an engineer who helps us solve the problem.

We use two solutions: Vxrail with a hypervisor on VMware; and HyperGrid, with a hypervisor on Microsoft Windows, 2016. Both solutions are different and have separate pros and cons.

The initial setup was not complex. 

We had an integrator from Dell to help us set up everything. I can't remember exactly, but I believe deployment took only one or two days.

Pricing its depend on your requirement well licensing is very simple all VMware and other license cost including in VxRail. But If an organization wants to buy a VMware enterprise license, then they need to pay separately.

VxRail is a good solution, but it all depends on your strategy. We could build our own VMware cluster by buying a separate product. Technically, I could purchase a server and then built my own solution, but with VxRail, everything comes in one box, including licensing, Dell EMC and VMware — It's nice and simple. Although, if an organization wants to buy a hypervisor layer on Microsoft, then that's another story. There are many solutions available for this, including Cisco, which uses Unity to provide a hypervisor layer. HyperGrid uses Windows 2016 on its host operating system. It all comes down to your strategy and roadmap. You need to select your hypervisor first. If you go with VMware, then VxRail is a great choice; however, if you're not using a VMware hypervisor, then there are many other options to choose from.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give VxRail a rating of nine, simply because there is always room for improvement.

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.

We are a customer of VxRail with 200 users. We use the solution for production workloads for the company workflow.

We have Dell enterprise licensing and use all the features. VxRail is a complete solution that includes performance, backups, and disaster recover.

VxRail should try to improve the pricing.

We have been using VxRail for 12 months.

Stability is good.

VxRail is vSAN, so we only need to buy a node when we need to scale, which is not a problem.

Technical support is good.

The initial setup is straightforward. Installation took approximately 2 days, but migration from the old UCS to the new infrastructure took time.

We have ten people on our in-house technical team including networking, security, and data center engineers who do storage and servers.

VxRail is doing the job we require, we are not making money from it.

VxRail is an expensive solution as we have the enterprise license that is billed annually. It has everything we need but it would be nice if they could do something about the pricing.

If you have done the research about VxRail and know what you are looking for then I recommend using it.

I rate this solution a 10 out of 10.

It's somewhat hard to speak about specific features, but I like VxRail's simplicity and ease of use. It's a decent solution for customers with a small footprint. If you're operating a big data center, it's not easy to position VxRail or HCI solutions, but when you have a small customer managing many different components, it's easier to work only with one solution.

If VxRail could also offer file services in addition to virtualization, that would be nice because sometimes people want to complement their environment with file services, and you don't have that in VxRail.

I've been working with VxRail for several years.

VxRail is stable.

VxRail is not an easy tool for selling big projects or a lot of services.

VxRail is comparable to vSAN, which is the same product but more integrated. 
Nutanix offers more services, and it can behave as object storage, file server storage, or Sun storage, whereas VxRail is more of a virtualization solution. Also, Nutanix can work independently of VMware. That's an advantage for some customers because VMware is costly, so it increases your budget if you go with VMware and VCF. However, I can't say which is better for HCI. If something works with VMware, it works on VxRail. It's in the scope of VMware, so I don't see any restrictions.

Setting up VxRail is straightforward. 

I rate VxRail eight out of 10. I'm very satisfied with the product. 

We are using the VxRail hyperconverged infrastructure to host some of our applications' virtual machines. We have customized this virtual machine and our applications serve different departments within the company.

The most valuable feature for me in this latest release has been the ability to add a compute or storage node. In the previous release, if I wanted to add only the compute mode, I need to buy a full node, including both compute and storage. That is no longer the case. I can upgrade whatever I want one based on my demand.

It would be great to have a mechanism that identifies whether or not the configuration has been done well. Right now, we are doing that manually. A compliance check would be a helpful feature.

Some of the features of the hyperconverged infrastructure could be integrated with external storage. Right now, for example, if I have surveillance going, I need to purchase very cheap storage. So, an integration between the hyperconverged infrastructure and external storage would be good.

I have been using VxRail for almost three years now. 

The stability and performance of VxRail are excellent. 

VxRail is very scalable. This is one of the advantages of hyperconverged infrastructure: Whenever you need to scale, all you have to do is add a node. We use this product on a daily basis. 

The first layer of technical support is not well equipped to help you identify the root cause of issues. However, the second level is. 

There is room for improvement with the first level of technical support. 

The initial setup was not complex, it was very straightforward. Deployment took us three to four days. 

The maintenance we do on it now is mostly preventative. 

We have two people working on VxRail. 

The pricing is reasonable considering the value of this product. 

There are no additional licensing and support costs. 

I would recommend this product to other users. 

We are system integrators and IT providers. 

The solution is cost-effective and easy to instal, it's just a plug and play. It also contains a ready VMware solution that I use to manage virtual machines. Finally, it is a hyper-converged infrastructure, so it's not a regular server.

A beneficial improvement they could make would be the integration of all the dealings with VMware to provide a license with VxRail so the customer can purchase it without the need to pay for an additional license for the VMware. If the license for VMware were to come together with the hardware at no additional cost, that would be great. Nutanix offers this package.

I've been using this solution for four years. 

The solution is very reliable. 

The solution is flexible, scalable and easily integrated. We can add to it at any time and it'll give extra performance and extra CPU.

Our engineers deal with any support issues we may have.

The initial setup is straightforward and can take up to four days. Deployment requires a technician and an assistant engineer to plan everything and get it ready to host the services. Maintenance is required but we receive documentation regarding updates and framework feature updates. We have five system administrators working on this product.

Dell VxRail is flexible and reliable and scalable. It's easy to restore without the higher cost. We're not comfortable with the cost of VxRail and neither are our clients. As a result, we sometimes have to go to other brands because the price of VxRail is not competitive. Not that comfortable with some projects so the recommendation is Dell can do the same price as the normal server. I know it's marketing plan, especially for Middle East. It'll be much better and we will buy all the required servers from VxRail not, as you know, you'll go to all hyper-converged infrastructure.

We also offer Nutanix to our clients. What Nutanix offers is not available in Dell or HPE. Nutanix has its own management system similar to VMware and is also easy to configure. Through the system, the system administrator can manage and ensure all the virtual machines or virtual appliances that will host the services. If they could change the licensing structure so there is no additional license required, it would be a great feature that would strengthen Dell against their competitors.

I always recommend VxRail because of their scalability and flexibility, but sometimes the cost creates a barrier with the client. All of our clients who have chosen VxRail are happy with it, it's just the cost that's an issue. 

I rate the solution nine out of 10.