VxRail Reviews

Our company is global. We have a wide range of customers and clients in many countries. Our customers who use VxRail are typically big companies.

Some of our customers are in the banking sector and use VxRail because they're concerned about using automated software for updates, upgrades, etc. VxRail is for a specific category, mostly for banking, oil, and gas — a few others sectors as well.

For me, the most valuable feature is in relation to the software updates. Updated software is very critical as I cannot risk making a mistake. To avoid this, VxRail provides me with pre-tested updates that can be implemented with little interruption. Since we are talking about banking, oil, and gas, there's no need for automating virtual machine creation.

Currently, I don't see much room for improvement; however, there could be better documentation and they should allow everyone to access the simulator. If Dell could provide access to a simulator or a demo for regular users, it would make things much easier. 

In order to gain access, you need to be a golden partner — normal users can't do it. It would be more beneficial to everyone if they could access the simulator and run some trial and error experiments before operating the real product. Many other companies (like Cisco) allow all of their users to do this. You can simply download the materials from the internet, including the simulator. 

In regard to VxRail or Dell products in general, you cannot do this because it's very limited to specific partners — typical end users don't have access. It would be great if it was more available to all partners, not just their top-tier partners. There would be less resistance from potential customers because they wouldn't be afraid of daily operations, support, etc. 

I have been dealing with VxRail for roughly two to three years.

VxRail is very stable. We haven't experienced any issues, stability-wise.

As VxRail is constantly updating, it makes it really easy to scale-out and scale-up.

We are experiencing some issues with Dell's live-chat support as the support is different based on the support included with the hardware. If you're on a basic plan, there will be some challenges. We're hearing this from our customers in Gulf countries, third-world countries, and even second-world countries. They also face some challenges due to international time zones. There should be online support everywhere, not limited to specific geographical locations, it's limiting. Other companies are not doing this. If you compare Dell with HP, that's not the case. With HP, whenever you have a problem, despite the hardware, you get premium support. With Dell, communicating with support can be a challenge.

The complexity of the initial setup depends on your infrastructure as you need to integrate some existing components. It's not only about the VxRail components, but integration with the existing network and firewall. It's case-by-case. Sometimes it's very easy, sometimes it's not.

We do not deploy this solution for our customers. We step in once it's been deployed. We handle end-to-end operations like security, computing, and networking — the whole portfolio.

VxRail is not cheap, but it's not expensive either. Mainly it's for big enterprise customers. VxRail has its own or target customers and they know the value of this product; however, the hyper-converged solution is not for everyone. The good news is there are no hidden costs.

I would absolutely recommend VxRail. From my previous experience, and because I work with a wide range of technical engineers, compared to other products, this solution offers a solid hardware performance. Generally, we look for value combined with price. If you're able to find a better solution, it will also come at a higher cost. Considering the range of prices overall, Dell is the best — my first choice. You can go for a premium version, but there will be an additional cost. For example, you can go for NetApp, which is better hardware, but the price is higher.

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

We use it for our data center.

It helps our servers and it is very efficient. 

It's very flexible. We can add more servers as much as we want. It also includes the VMware license, I find this good. We do not waste a lot of resources because you are able to use them efficiently, depending on the usage and the processing unit that is used in a node or not. 

I cannot think of anything right now, nothing in coming to my mind.

The implementation started last December and it went on to January and February; in total, we have used it for less than one year. 

It is a stable solution.

It is very easy to add new servers, the scalability is very easy.

We did contact technical support. In the beginning, we had some tickets with them. They responded well and were very helpful.

We did the setup through the service provider because we didn't have the experience. It was something new for us, so we went through them to get help. They showed us how to migrate from the old service to the new one and we continued to do the process. The implementation took two days for the setup.

What I did not like so much was the amount of VMware that you have to put in your system related to the VxRail. This uses a lot of resources and not all of them are necessary. We did not use everything that came with VxRail to set it up so it is okay.

We also evaluated another product by Cisco.

I would recommend this product, we have another site that we need to replace the data center and we will implement the same solution.  

I would rate VxRail nine out of ten.

I'm a reseller. I've been selling VxRail as well as Nutanix for about one to two years. My customers use this solution as a virtualization server for general virtualization and also for VDI. I am currently selling versions 70 and 71. 

For the main boot systems where all virtual machines are deployed, it has been very effective on the throughput side. We have a much faster deployment of the machines after they are located on the host disk as compared to the storage side.

My customers use it for VDI. It has been very usable and very fast to use with VDI. On the VxRail side also, it has been very fast.

Its price needs to be improved. It is very expensive. 

NSX should be licensed together. It will make the network virtualization layer more usable. It would be better if they come together in a bundle, not separately.

It has been very stable. I haven't seen many problems with it, and I do not have any complaints about it.

It is quite easy to scale. You just need to add more nodes. 

Our clients are both medium and large companies. Most of our clients have a virtual environment, and they use VMware as a traditional infrastructure and add VxRail to it. As the company grows, the usage of this solution will also grow.

Their technical support is very good. It is 10 out of 10.

The initial setup is quite simple and very easy.

I live in Brazil, and my customers are from Brazil. It is quite an expensive solution. It is more expensive than the traditional environment. 

I would recommend VxRail because is simple to use and administer. It just saves time in deploying the platform. Most of the teams are already able to use VMs and have experience with that. You just have to improve a little bit of storage knowledge. It is not very much different, and you don't have to learn a whole new platform. It is easy, and you should use it.

I would rate VxRail a nine out of ten. It is a very good platform.

We have four nodes. We're using it for our VMware infrastructure.

The updating of the features was one aspect of the solution that made us decide to use it. I have yet to actually do an update, however.

All updates are supposed to be done through VxRail, however, the vCenter actually showed that there was an update it needed. I've just started using the product. I didn't know what I was doing. I actually updated my vCenter and that actually threw the VxRail system offline. We had to spend some time trying to get that working again. If possible, they should make the process a bit more clear so we don't make mistakes like this in the future. There should maybe be some sort of pop-up that can direct you.

I haven't used the solution for too long. So far, it's only been about two to two and a half months.

Aside from our mistake updating the vCenter, which threw things off, we haven't had any issues. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't freeze. So far, it's been rather reliable.

As far as the documentation goes, it seems to be scalable. I haven't had to do any scaling, however, the documentation certainly makes it seem like it's just a matter of adding another node and everything will just work fine. 

So far, the technical support has been pretty good. We actually worked with a third-party who worked with Dell on the vCenter problem we had. So far, they seem knowledgable and responsive. We're satisfied with the level of service our organization receives.

We did not previously use a hyper-converged solution. We had a Cisco UCS and we needed to update it. We looked at HyperFlex and at VxRail. We're actually a big Cisco and a big Dell shop, however, on the server-side, we're more of a Dell shop and I liked the step updating. That's pretty much why we went with that.

The initial setup was not complex. It was pretty straightforward for us.

We had a technician from Dell actually do the initial setup. It helped make the entire process very seamless.

We don't have to pay for anything after the initial purchase. There aren't ongoing licensing costs. I don't know the exact price of the solution.

We're just customers. We don't have a professional relationship with the company.

If an organization is considering implementing the solution, I would advise they get some help doing so, unless they have the correct staff in house that can handle it, or they are very concerned about getting outside help for some reason. The technician that helped us got right through it. I would have been hard-pressed to get the implementation done on my own.

Overall, I would rate the solution eight out of ten. Aside from the one issue we had at the beginning with the update confusion, it's been very good.

We primarily use the solution as a platform for all of the virtual platforms using VMware. We change the traditional infrastructure and don't sell any servers anymore. We're now selling appliances and VxRail and change the traditional platform to the hyper-converged platform.

Our customers have found that there is better performance across all of the virtual platforms and the routings. Routing and running are now faster.

The software-defined storage and software-defined network are great. We can easily change to VMware on Amazon, or on Azure or on private Cloud running Vx. It's very flexible.

The performance of data centers needs to be improved. They need to process more and deliver more in the space of the storage and offer better performance.

The solution should offer more integration with other virtual software. VxRail runs just with VMware.

We've been dealing with the solution for three or four years now.

The stability continues to get better and better. It's pretty reliable.

You are able to scale up to 64 nodes at a maximum. It does scale to that size. I don't know of any client that would need 64. We have a few clients that have an installation of 16 to 24 nodes and that's rather sizable. Chances are you wouldn't have to scale quite as large as 64. Therefore, it would be a rare instance in which it wouldn't scale enough for a company.

All of our clients are quite large and government-related.

We've never had to reach out to technical support, not have our clients. We have an SLA, however, we really don't have many requests as the solution works very well.

The solution does not have a complex setup. It's very simple and very straightforward.

I've personally helped my clients with the initial setup. While I don't have all of the technical skills, I have a team that's very well versed in the product.

We're a reseller. We sell the solution to our clients. 

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're using. It might be the latest, which is the most likely.

We launch the solution on-premises in order to launch a private cloud.

Overall, I would rate the solution ten out of ten.

Our primary use case is for VDI processes.

The manageability for controlling the console is the most valuable feature. 

The version upgrade process should be simplified. 

I have been using VxRail for four years. 

It is stable. 

We have around 30 daily users who use VxRail. 

We didn't have any issues with technical support. 

The initial setup was straightforward. 

The price is fair. 

I would rate VxRail a seven out of ten. If the performance was improved, it would get a higher rating. 

Most of our customers are Microsoft customers, so they are all seeking their own application servers on top of VMware. I'm a senior engineer infrastructure solutions and we are partners with VxRail. 

The support is very good from the dataset. The recent technologies and management features that have been implemented, especially the application part, are good features.  

The pricing of the solution could be improved. We are reliant on the distributor. I'm a technical person but I know from speaking to customers that they feel it's a bit costly compared to the generic product.There are also some major components of the product not available for download. Even though we are partners, we don't get them. They provide backup features but it comes at an additional cost. It would be helpful if they would include something like the standard backup procedure, backup features like the application manager.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

This solution is quite stable. 

The solution is scalable. 

I did some online training before setup, implementation probably took a few months. 

Given the overall product, I would rate this solution a nine out of 10. 

The finger click upgrade is the solution's most valuable aspect.

The single point of contact for support is excellent.

Management and monitoring tools are great. The solution has a very nice user interface and an easy to navigate dashboard. Everything that a company needs can be found on VxRail. 

The downside of the solution is this: if one drive load is down, it will take some time to sequence the data. There is a need to improve on this a little bit. This inclusion of data just takes too much time. It should be improved. It should not take so much time in the case of a hard drive failure.

It should not be deployed on one hypervisor. There should be multiple hypervisors supported like Hyper-V or KVM. 

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

The stability is very good. We haven't had any issues at all. There aren't bugs or glitches. There aren't system crashes or anything of that nature.

The scalability of the solution is great. If an organization needs to expand out the service they can do so quite easily.

We're quite satisfied with the level of technical support provided. They're great. They're knowledgeable and responsive. There's absolutely no issue. It's a single point of contact for support for any issue whether it is VMware or any kind of hardware issue.

I have worked a lot on VxRail. I have also worked on Nutanix, however, not as much as I've worked on VxRail.

Nutanix performance is pretty good and they have something called a CVM, or controller VM. VxRail, however, is based on hardware connections. That's the major difference between the two. That is why the high ops of VxRail is better as compared to Nutanix. Nutanix is simply a different point of VL. 

The solution's implementation is very straightforward. It will take, at a maximum, one hour to deploy all the nodes. It's not complex at all. It's easy.

The pricing is pretty typical. There is no difference in competitors for the most part. I cannot say VxRail is cheaper than Nutanix. There really is no significant difference to discuss.

We are a gold platinum partner for Dell EMC.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

I'd recommend the solution, however, it really depends on the company's requirements. If someone mentions having already used VxRail and not wanting to go with another hypervisor, the best recommendation from my side is to still go with VxRail. With VxRail, they have ample VMware so there's no issue with an upgrade or anything of that nature.

However, on the other hand, if you're going with something like and Acropolis hypervisor, which is both free and a Nutanix solution, and if you are a new organization that doesn't want to invest much, then I would suggest going with something like Nutanix instead. This is due to the fact that the Acropolis hypervisor has all kinds of features. It's very important for any smaller firm if they don't want to invest too much on the hardware, to go with Nutanix as it could be more affordable as a free solution.

The primary use for this solution is storage refresh, where you want to take advantage of the HCI functionality and/or bringing in another tier of storage. 

This solution has improved our organization in the following ways:

• Easier to manage: reduced management points, consolidated alerts, automation.
• Capacity planning: manage growth with one purchase as well as plan my depreciation of assets easier.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the automation and integration points with other automation tools.  

Having a native replication would be an improvement.

It is part of the VMware stack for our data center and cloud.

I'm one of the architects for hybrid cloud. I like the new releases that Dell EMC is doing with VMware. They are allowing for flexibility across the hybrid cloud. This allows organizations to use containers and to be able to move into the public cloud, but also not have lock-in. They can come back to the private cloud when they want to, so it's creating a lot of flexibility across the stack.

Looking at the modernization and flexibility with VCM and VCF into the cloud.

We would like to see tighter integration with Pivotal, because we're looking for end-to-end transformation and tight integration. So, we would like to see the Dell EMC family have stronger integration with their products, as this would be the best thing.

It still has some maturity to grow. It needs to be more tightly integrated with its own family of products. It has shown that it is open with the other products within the market, through its stack, but it needs to have the proof in the market (with use-cases), and it has to have the scalability with the integration.

It is a lot more stable than it used to be.

It's a lot more scalable than it was. With the combination of the stack, I just recently went to training two weeks ago. For somebody who had been certified in VMware, then sort of stopped using it, I'm back as a proponent of using the solutions across the hybrid cloud and within the data center consolidation and hybrid cloud solutions.

I have not used technical support. I've just been going to technical training as a partner.

It should be straightforward. That's what we're trying to do. We are trying to make it straightforward.

I lead the largest integrator group that we're partnering with.

The real ROI is the benefit of being able to do a true hybrid cloud, not having to move from CAPEX to OPEX in a pure break. 

It is also being able to have the flexibility without having lock-in. By being able to use skills that you already have within your data center, you can optimize those as you are adding-on public cloud skills. Then, you can continue to build upon those skills with flexibility and immediate use them within the market.

Although, everybody tries to say that public cloud can be more cost-effective. By having that flexibility that fits your business need, there is a greater business case and value case for the business to create that flexibility. By going with the VxRail and full speed of VCM and VCF, it's a much greater investment and creates a greater flexibility and scalability for the customer.

Dell has a really strong set of solutions, probably the best in the market.

The first thing they should do is look at their overall enterprise architecture. Don't immediately follow the advice and take the jump to move. What they want to do is look at the investments that they've already made, and look at what the future state is that they want to go to, not just for that one simple solution. They need to look at what's their entire enterprise architecture future state, then consider everything: skills, interoperatability, integration, and future scalability. Then, look at the solution that they want to go with because they want that flexibility. They should be able to not only move to the public cloud, but be able to move back to the private cloud, and understand what's the cost of their legacy.

They should be looking at replace, refactor, and retire. How long is it going to take them to retire? You don't want to just rush into retiring your applications or replacing them if they're applications that are not coasting a lot to maintain, or you don't do a lot with them. Then, retiring those applications should be a thoughtful, longer process. It's okay to consolidate them and continue to run them on your VMware environment.