Dell vSAN Ready Nodes Reviews

I am familiar with VMware Workstation, but we don't actually use a workstation. We only use ESXi because we're running a big organization. We have people that are responsible for a Citrix farm that are running with a VDI infrastructure. Mainly, the servers for business and production are Windows and Linux running on the ESXi host.

For vSAN, we are hosting virtual machines there. It's easy to use, as we aren't running on SAN because each host comes with a number of physical disks for the OS and additionally provides capacity.

We are using Dell vSAN Ready Nodes.

With regards to storage area networks versus virtual SAN, vSAN is better off. It is much faster because the disk is within, utilizing NVMe type disks running SSD for the OS and capacity, making it easier to expand storage.

It is stable, and similar to any issues on a standalone machine, there's resilience; if we lose one host, data will not be lost because of the technology on vSAN that allows us to free up that host into maintenance mode without issues.

The benefit of using vSAN is that it's easy to manage on vCenter. You can see if there are issues, get recommendations, and overall, it's highly fault-free which is beneficial because we want to minimize downtime.

Operationally, we perform well enough during the week; the only time we are highly operational on vSAN is when we do switch upgrades on the MX7000 switches and firmware, which we schedule outside of business hours.

I would want VMware to ensure that when there's a hardware failure on a host, it should gracefully migrate the VMs to another host available in the cluster without restarting, which would be a great improvement.

We don't do data encryption with this product as it depends on business requirements and must go through certain departments, for instance, the risk team can assess if it's possible to provide that mechanism.

We have been using Dell vSAN Ready Nodes for more than two years.

We are looking into automating tasks on vSAN, wanting to ensure that when deploying a new machine into the cluster, it involves running a script that will not hinder anything and will prepare the OS to be configured and patched.

The technical support is knowledgeable; if we require a replacement part, the engagement is usually within four hours, and if a part isn't available, they might ship it within eight hours or by the next business day.

Positive

The planning took longer, but the execution was not complex because we had a Dell engineer assisting us with the deployment. When the OS is running, we configure vSAN by ourselves as long as we have the nodes ready with the operating system and the TCP/IP configured on them on the network.

We haven't utilized native cloud integration at the moment; we are looking into having a hybrid setup between the external cloud and on-prem. The architects are probably still doing some stuff, but that's the way forward into the future and something in the pipeline.

It was a big deployment across two sites. It took us about one week per site, so two weeks in total.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell vSAN Ready Nodes a ten.

The main use cases with the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes have changed since Broadcom, but we still have customers that have legacy VMware in place. A lot of it had to do with Cloud Foundation, which was a product that VMware created that allowed you to run on-premise environments and then replicate it in AWS or Azure. There are also a number of providers. I completed large projects for state governments, including $15 million projects, where we went from a converged VCE network environment to Dell vSAN Ready Nodes with additional management features.

We could then scale those and eliminate secondary data centers and scale them into AWS or Azure for VMware on AWS. It runs as a bare-metal platform using that whole Cloud Foundation stack.

The value of deploying the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes on-premises and maintaining control over hardware assets and sensitive data is significant as many of our customers are moving to the cloud but still have on-premises needs. For example, we're implementing one where we're using the Azure cache file storage, running that on a three-node Dell vSAN Ready Node environment where we can run all their virtual machines and do everything there while being tied directly to the cloud.

They have a local cache on the vSAN, and the other data where their environments are working in the cloud works effectively. As clients are moving more towards the cloud, and more of them are hybrid, you don't need the really big systems. You might need fewer than 50 workloads running on-premise, or you'll have designated workloads such as VDI. But even that's moving into Azure virtual desktops and other solutions. The Dell vSAN Ready Node's value is that you can still get a quality solution at a much lower cost entry point.

The best feature about any type of storage related to the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is its ease of scaling. With a converged infrastructure platform, you can easily add a storage node or a compute node to the stack, and you can grow in smaller increments compared to getting a whole new array or upgrading controllers. The whole hyper-converged platform provides flexibility.

The automated data management and enhanced storage availability have helped manage various workloads efficiently by simplifying operations. There isn't much you can't do there that you do on a large array, such as a PowerStore. It's just a different cost entry point. The features have been quite good, and we have not experienced any issues.

The integration of the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes in the VMware environment has contributed positively to IT modernization efforts in terms of security. However, with VMware's acquisition by Broadcom, more customers are now exploring alternatives such as Hyper-V and Nutanix.

The Dell vSAN Ready Nodes can be improved if Broadcom reverts to VMware's previous licensing approach because they've made it difficult for smaller environments to consume the product. Most of our customers have existing licensing, but Broadcom appears to be less interested in serving smaller customers.

I have worked with Dell vSAN for approximately seven or eight years.

I have evaluated other options for HCI and compared them. There are some open-source options I investigated, such as Proxmox.

I deal with Dell frequently as a Dell partner. On the storage side, I've been using more Dell vSAN and cloud-based storage recently, rather than the larger arrays PowerStores or PowerMaxes.

I have utilized both all-flash and hybrid configurations with the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. Hybrids, with a combination of spinning disks, allow you to create different storage tiers based on the type of data and workloads. I use the all-flash tier for VDI environments. For block storage needs, we can use spinning disks and create a cache, putting flash disks up front to achieve decent performance without the high storage costs.

Regarding maintaining control over hardware and sensitive data, it requires the same hardware lifecycle management and software lifecycle management as always. Our complete managed services division builds this as a service, including all management and maintenance in their consumption cost.

These integrations are helping with security, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness.

Aside from the licensing, my experience with the pricing is that the hardware is excellent. It's a very low-cost entry point to get a highly capable solution in place. A Dell vSAN Ready Node can handle most required tasks. While VMware Cloud Foundation runs at a higher cost from a licensing perspective, it allows full integration of every aspect. I have a customer who remains a significant Horizon user, and we're using VCF to connect to Azure. VMC on Azure works excellently, providing high availability and DR across both the cloud and their environment, which has about three to four years of depreciation remaining.

On a scale of one to ten, I would rate Dell vSAN Ready Nodes an eight.

I am dedicated to Cisco and work with multiple products as a consultant from one of the managed service providers.

Mostly it is compute, so I take care of this part only.

The performance issues concern site and IOPS requirements, in the case of PCI cards to the VMs. Sometimes expected IOPS are not there, and storage IOPS are not present. It is not very frequent, but sometimes we encounter disk failure issues with the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, and it generally takes some time to change the disks.

My job is to be a solution architect, proposing and building items. It is more about designing solutions and implementation, not too much in daily operations and troubleshooting.

I deal with multiple environments. Sometimes we see 20 plus nodes around 32 or even more. Sometimes it is a small cluster, two node cluster, or three node cluster. I would say all kinds of environments based on customer needs.

Regarding existing environments and third-party solutions for backup and monitoring, primarily we do the installation of the VMware platform, VMware vSphere ESXi. VMware has one of the largest ecosystems with on-premises or private cloud providers. Integration perspectives require some API-based work.

It is a starting story for AI, but we are taking some use cases leveraging the Dell vSAN Ready Nodes along with GPU cards from NVIDIA. We are exploring other providers such as AMD, and Intel is also doing enhancements based on AI. We are recommending customers leverage nodes which have AI-supported applications using Dell vSAN Ready Nodes that support AI-based workload primarily. The VMware container technology integration allows VMware customers to enable AI-based applications, but that is with the latest generation only, not with older ones.

First is the administration which makes it easy compared to using third-party storage. Second is the storage policies, with different flavors available all within a single management console when we want to configure different sets of policies as per workload requirements. I would say in-house management, administration, and storage policies are the three key differentiators compared to normal non-Dell vSAN Ready Nodes where we are leveraging external storage.

There are no specific issues, but in some cases we have seen hardware failures and performance issues where performance suddenly deteriorates.

More than 10 years.

Sometimes we experience performance issues and disk failure issues frequently. Sometimes it impacts another disk group situation. For example, a disk group for five disks can be problematic, and customers need to tolerate downtime if the disk is not available, leading to space issues.

Scalability involves two types of environments: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and non-VCF environment where we use VMware Validated Foundation. With VCF we have significant automation built-in within the VCF console within SDDC manager as the primary management console. For non-VCF environments, it depends on customer choice. For small environments, we do manual scalability and sometimes use Terraform scripts to keep the host ready and add in the cluster automatically. For large environments with frequent scalability actions, we propose the Terraform solution that builds ESXi, does necessary configuration, and automatically starts up for associating with the existing environment. If scaling is infrequent, with one or two hosts per month, it is a manual job. From a challenge perspective, it seems easier, with just a few pre-checks regarding make and model compatibility, disks, and server health on the hardware level.

Not much interaction, as we work with multiple vendors including Dell, HP, Cisco, and Lenovo.

Positive

The cost is higher compared to non-Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, but when compared with external storage solutions, there are significant benefits. For example, if a customer needs 1,000 TB of storage or 1 petabyte as an external storage solution, they would need additional storage fabric, boxes, and controllers. With Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, compared to two-tier architecture, customers get 30 to 40% savings. This applies not only to CAPEX but also to operational costs over 5 years. The OPEX benefits are around 30 to 40% because the same engineer who manages vSphere can handle Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, eliminating the need for additional support engineers.

We work with HP and Dell, and sometimes it is a customer decision, while other times we have to recommend based on customer budget and terms with respective vendors.

HCL Tech has now become senior in the field.

My recommendation would be especially for private and public cloud vendors, as Dell has their own AI solutions. I would recommend customers looking for AI-based workload to leverage and experience Dell vSAN Ready Nodes. They should start with a smaller scale then scale up based on their comfort and experience.

I rate Dell vSAN Ready Nodes 8 out of 10.

My overall rating for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is 8.5, considering all perspectives.

The main use case for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes involves general-purpose virtual machines, typically around 10 to 20 virtual machines. Most setups consist of three to four nodes, with our least number being three, and the maximum is four since we never go beyond that. We offer Dell vSAN Ready Nodes because they are VMware certified, which is the preferred hypervisor for our customers.

Initially, with version seven, everything was functioning properly, but as we started using it, it wouldn't work with the later versions since no more patches or support were available. We can still find updates for drivers, but they're running out of support.

There's potential for improvement in the hardware, while the system itself is adequate. The challenge lies with support and renewals, since prices have escalated significantly for customers.

Dell's technical support is generally very good. Whether we have pro support plus or just the basic level, they are helpful and reliable as long as we provide the necessary details.

The challenge lies with support and renewals, since prices have escalated significantly for customers. Extending the warranty is difficult now because maintaining it costs much more than before. Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are useful as a product, but the lack of expansion with VMware has led customers to refrain from further upgrades.

I'm still supporting it since 2022, and the three-year warranty runs until 2025.

The initial setup for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes can be complex or simple depending on the preference. In VXRail, we can perform automated setup, while in vSAN, we install VMware manually, adding disks and vCenter in a detailed process I prefer.

While there were some certificate issues, they were solvable.

I would rate scalability around seven because when customers want to expand capacity but all the drive slots are full, they are forced to buy new servers or nodes which adds more costs with licenses and hardware, rendering it less scalable than other storage setups.

Dell's technical support is generally very good. Whether we have pro support plus or just the basic level, they are helpful and reliable as long as we provide the necessary details.

Positive

The initial setup for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes can be complex or simple depending on the preference. In VXRail, we can perform automated setup, while in vSAN, we install VMware manually, adding disks and vCenter in a detailed process I prefer. I prefer manual installation for easier troubleshooting, compared to the automated setup which had some errors in my past experiences.

As for competitors of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, we haven't tried Nutanix, but I have heard about them, yet we don't have experience with those products.

When we talk about storage from Dell, it's similar to PowerEdge, which is one of the start versions from the storage lineup. We want to work with those solutions, but considering our area is small to medium business enterprise-focused, it isn't feasible.

We are also trying for HCI from Dell, but this was before Broadcom bought VMware. Our initial deployments started in 2022, and we supported it until 2023 and into 2024. However, once Broadcom bought VMware, the price for solutions and renewals increased significantly, prompting customers to look for alternatives. They're not abandoning the systems we sold, but they prefer just to maintain them for as long as possible.

There was potential for improvement in the hardware, while the system itself is adequate. I recommend Dell vSAN Ready Nodes primarily for larger enterprises as small-scale businesses face challenges in scaling up due to financial limitations.

On a scale of one to ten, I rate Dell vSAN Ready Nodes a nine.

The primary use case of vSAN ReadyNodes is for block storage and general-purpose compute hosting in a virtualized environment. It is beneficial for companies that want to run a private cloud.

vSAN ReadyNodes provide easy scalability and allow for single-team management. They eliminate the need for a separate storage team to manage storage arrays and fiber channel switches.

vSAN ReadyNodes offer easy scalability, which has proven beneficial for storage needs. The ability for single-team management without requiring a separate storage team for managing arrays and fiber channel switches is also a valuable feature. 

Additionally, vSAN ReadyNodes are easy to configure and scale up, providing the benefits typical of any hyper-converged solution.

Although vSAN ReadyNodes work well, a faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement.

I have been familiar with vSAN ReadyNodes for six or seven years.

We have experienced some issues with performance. However, we have learned to manage the performance effectively over time.

The scalability of vSAN ReadyNodes is rated as very good, a nine out of ten.

The technical support from Dell is satisfactory. There is always room for improvement in terms of response time and reaching knowledgeable staff quickly. Still, they are responsive and available with regular monthly calls with the support account team.

Positive

Before using vSAN ReadyNodes, we utilized a three-tier architecture with fiber channel arrays and iSCSI arrays.

The complete configuration took about seven months after deciding to go down the hyper-converged path eight years ago.

The deployment was done internally, with no third-party involvement.

I'm not sure about the exact ROI observed since integrating vSAN ReadyNodes into our system.

There is no specific licensing model for vSAN ReadyNodes as it is linked with Broadcom VMware's solutions rather than Dell's. As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to our considerable business dealings.

We evaluated NetApp SolidFire at the time before choosing vSAN ReadyNodes.

Overall, I would recommend vSAN ReadyNodes for the right workloads they suit. They are effective for all sizes of companies depending on their specific workload needs. 

I rate vSAN ReadyNodes as a nine out of ten.

We use Dell vSAN Ready Nodes for our insurance systems and employee systems, to host everything in one environment.

Using Dell vSAN Ready Nodes has consolidated our storage, which lifts most of the heavy work.

The most beneficial feature is the consolidated storage which is the vSAN. It handles most of the heavy work.

The solution should offer more flexibility and freedom for the customer. Currently, it's like a black box that only Dell technical support knows how to handle. I faced several problems that I couldn't solve without Dell's help.

I have around two years of experience deploying and working with it in general, including technical experience and administration experience.

I would rate the stability at eight out of ten. It offers good stability, but it requires careful setup.

I would rate the scalability at eight out of ten. It's very flexible with scalability. It's like a plug-and-play solution.

Technical support from Dell is rated at six out of ten. Even with high-severity tickets, the response time is slower compared to other companies like HPE and VMware.

Neutral

We previously used Dell VxRail. We switched because the VCF solution from VMware was integrated with Dell VCF.

The initial setup was straightforward. However, there is a need for detailed steps, and missing any step could result in the solution not working. The whole environment, including designing and preparation, took around two weeks, and the deployments, including shipping of the servers and everything, took another two weeks to make it production ready. It was around four weeks in total from starting design to being production ready.

We worked closely with partners for the deployment, as there are many steps to do before deploying.

Comparing it with similar solutions, it was more pricey. Including the VCF solution, it was at a higher price point.

Based on my experience, I would recommend Dell vSAN Ready Nodes to those who want to create a private cloud. It is a good solution for them.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I use the solution to handle corporate use cases since some web-based applications run on it.

If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability.

The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required. The price of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes could be lowered. Dell's competitors offer many products at very good prices.

I face some issues with the stability of the product, making it an area where improvements are required.

In the future, I want to receive technical support directly from the vendor.

I have been using Dell vSAN Ready Nodes for a year.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

The product's scalability is good. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

More than 200 people in my company use the product.

The product is extensively used in my company.

The product's technical support is good and fast. I am not happy with the fact that the solution provides support through a third party, like Tata Elxsi, Wipro, or Tech Mahindra.

The product is easy to deploy.

The solution is deployed on an on-premises model.

The solution can be deployed in an hour to an hour and a half.

Around 22 technical people in my company are required to deploy the solution.

Our company's technical team took care of the product's deployment phase.

My company makes yearly payments towards the licensing charges attached to the solution. The solution is expensive.

The product is primarily used in our daily infrastructure for our company's applications, and it also helps with our customers' applications.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it.

The product is easy to use and deploy. It is also easy to get support for the product.

Virtualization is the most beneficial aspect of the product, and it can be used in our company's entire infrastructure to operate at a full-fledged efficiency level.

I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

Our customers use it to create the cluster. We use it for VMware; it's certified.

Price is a major factor.

There is room for improvement in the maintenance pricing. Maintenance isn't difficult, but the prices are high and ridiculous. Some customers feel it is better to go with a new solution rather than renew this one.

We would love to have some new features.

I have been working with this solution for the last eight-plus years.

So far, it's stable. Depends on the applications the customers drive. Overall, it has been a stable solution.

We work with large enterprises and SMBs. It is a scalable solution. 

The customer service and support are okay.

It is easy to install. The time is taken for implementation from cluster to cluster, scope to scope changes. It is a short time period. It's like a couple of days, not weeks. 

One engineer is usually enough for implementation. It is a simple task. 

Maintenance isn't difficult, but the prices are high and ridiculous. Some customers feel it is better to go with a new solution, rather than renew this one. 

The price is higher compared to Lenovo and Huwaei. Losing deals because of the pricing.

Our customers are licensed every year. Maintenance costs are too high for Dell.

We evaluate others; look at big players.

It is a good solution. I would recommend using it.  

Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten because the minute the application is driven on complex applications it becomes difficult. It is stable in normal environments. 

The tool's most valuable feature is high availability. 

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes' deployment is complex. 

I have been using the product for four years. 

I rate Dell vSAN Ready Nodes' stability a ten out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a ten out of ten. 

We have seen ROI with the tool's use. 

I rate Dell vSAN Ready Nodes a ten out of ten. 

My customers use the product for server virtualization and as a virtual desktop. 

You don't have to spend much time evaluating the hardware. It can be deployed in a short time. The tool is also easy to upgrade. 

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes must be flexible since it is complex in designing concepts. It needs to improve stability. The product should integrate with the public cloud. 

I have been working with the product for more than ten years. 

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is scalable. 

The tool's support is good. 

Positive

Dell vSAN Ready Nodes' deployment is easy and can be completed in one day. Its maintenance is easy. A senior engineer is enough to do it. 

The tool's pricing is competitive compared to others. The tool's licensing is based on annual subscriptions. 

I rate Dell vSAN Ready Nodes an eight out of ten.