VxRail Reviews

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 medium-sized installations, many of our customers require a reasonably-priced solution to replace legacy computer storage. Those are the customers who we are suggesting using the  VxRail solution to. If the customer is building a data center using VMware, we are recommending VxRail because of the VMware compatibility.  

Medium set-ups can be used in a large enterprise but only when they need this solution as a smaller part of their environment. It works well for small setups or medium setups, or for new application setups.  

Most of the products of this type have features that are almost the same. We are using VxRail especially because we would like to have products that are compatible with VMware and Dell to support our prospective client base.  

The configuration of HCI (Hyper-Convergence Infrastructure) solutions is very easy compared to the legacy solutions. Legacy systems run the computer and the storage separately and use switches to get the connectivity. That is much more complicated. It is completely the opposite when using generic HCI technology. The implementation is very simple and so is the operation.  

The only thing about the HCI solution is that troubleshooting is a little bit difficult because it is still a new technology. Other than this it is simpler than the traditional technology. HCI is nice and it makes sense. I think there is a need to improve the solution because it is difficult to troubleshoot. But compared to legacy solutions, you are troubleshooting one that is a little bit difficult instead of troubleshooting two different products that might each be a little easier. In the end, the difference as far as troubleshooting is not much but the advantages are still there on the HCI side and technology upgrade.  

The other thing I would like to see improved is not really a feature. It is about scalability. It would be good to increase the limit of the number of nodes within the clusters.  

I had experience before 2018, but I have been using it for this past year.  

Even compared to Cisco, I think VxRail is a very stable solution. It is in the same class as Cisco.  

VxRail is easy to scale, but the number of nodes is limited. This is not the same with other solutions like Nutanix. VxRail has a limit for a certain number of nodes within the cluster and if you need more than that then you have to create another cluster. It is an issue but at the same time, it is not an issue. It is kind of just a configuration difference.  

I do not have any direct contact with technical support because I am not doing the product delivery. If the technicians have some issues, they have to make the contact. I have not heard anything bad or good about the support. That suggests it is good.  

The initial setup was simple. The amount of time it takes depends on the number of nodes you have.  

It does require some maintenance over time. For maintenance, you have to request that through your supplier or even through the implementation team. It will be totally different depending on the kind of activity and the issue, but it should not be disruptive for the most part. The only exception is in critical applications. These may be critical but it is simple to restore the network connectivity or storage availability.  

My advice about cost and setup is that it is just as cheap to have the HCI solution as to stay with legacy solutions. If you convert the value of HCI versus the traditional, legacy solution you gain more than you spend. It comes out to an even trade as far as budget.  

Compared to other HCI products, VxRail has advantages in stability and support from the vendors. If you bought Cisco, for example, you have to open an account with Cisco for the hardware and open an account with VMware for the software separately. With VxRail this is not what happens. You opened the account with them and they will manage all the communication and the services. That ends up being more stable. Getting your support from one company is better than having to get support from different companies when dealing with an issue shared between products and trying to sort that out.  

I recommend VxRail as a solution especially for those using legacy services. We often recommend VxRail over other competitors. The only exception really is if the customer does not want Dell computing resources. For example, the client may have another vendor they tend to use. So if everything they have is HP they may like to have an HP solution. If they are using Cisco, they may want a Cisco solution. Those are the only times that we will not go with suggesting VXRail.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate the VXRail solution as an eight-out-of-ten.  

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 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 primarily deploy the solution to medium-sized businesses from different markets, from automotive to sales to medical, etc.

The installation was really easy to perform. 

The most valuable aspect on VxRail is the one-click update where they are doing the updates all at once for the drivers, buyers, ID reg, and for the VMS. In one click it's running. It's great.

The performance is very good.

The update process is very convenient.

The price should come down a little bit. It has become better than it was at the beginning. There was a really big price difference between a hyper-converged infrastructure and the classic servers and storage. The gap is lessening, however, it's still there.

I first saw VxRail in 2016 when I was at EMC World in Las Vegas. I found it was a very, very interesting solution then, however, we didn't make our first installation until 2018.

The scalability is great. You can scale within the system easily. You just put in more disks and more memory. Even if you stop with one CPU, you can add a second one or you can go and just add another when customers come and say, "Okay we need more." We just buy another node and put it in. Within, let's say, 20 minutes, the node is within the cluster. It's quick and easy.

For us, we used to earn our money with installing and updating, etc., however, the customer's doing it all by himself now, even if he gets a new server or cluster, it's one each click.

Since we do not use the VxRail internally and we are just sending it to our customers, we have a technical team of about 10 people that are working in the service. Within this, there are three people who are working with VxRail.

How useful technical support really is in terms of solving the issue at hand depends on who you get. It's not only at Dell EMC. It's at Fujitsu, it's at HP, at Lenovo. It depends on which person you get on the other line of the phone. Sometimes it's great and there's no problem. Within a few minutes, the problem is solved. Sometimes you have to wait for the second or the third person that you get to be able to know what the problem is and be able to help you solve it.

I'd recommend the solution.

The big advantage of the VxRail is the one-click update. If you are using, let's say HP or Fujitsu, and use the standard VSAM cluster, then you have to update the virtual center, you have to update the host, you have to update the VSAM, you have to update drivers, etc. 

You also have to consider the HCL, whether the driver fits to that new VM version. For example, let's say from the customer side when they are working with the solution, there's no big difference whether the user is working with VxRail or the VSAM cluster. However, when you look at it from a maintenance and updating perspective, the VxRail really offers a superior system.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. The product is almost perfect. It really does fit the needs of our customers.

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.

We used it for hosting on the infrastructure.

We previously had a traditional infrastructure where we always had issues with the performance. The vendor then introduced us to VxRail and the performance improved drastically. That was one of the best things I can say about it. The time spent on reports and support went down a lot.

VxRail's feature that we found most valuable is its really good performance. That was one of VxRail's advantages. However, we switched out from VxRail because some of our use cases and workloads required a different solution.

I would say its support could be improved. One issue that we faced was that often a single file upgrade would cause an issue, whether it was an update for the hardware or for every component. They should have an option to only upgrade individual modules of the architecture. For example, there should be an option to upgrade only the individual VMware module and not rely on a single update file for everything.

The stability was excellent. It takes around three people to manage.

The scalability was good but we didn't make use of it. It's scalable from an architecture point of view but we never took advantage of that functionality.

The initial setup was a bit complex and they didn't manage to bring it up in the first attempt. Really, only the support people can do it and if something happened the support people need to have control of it. The second attempt also took longer than expected. It took almost two days to complete the full installation, which is longer than the claim that it should take around two to three hours for the full setup. 

We had three people involved in the deployment process.

It is implemented from the supplier side, not with our people. There were 35 VxRail guests involved in the implementation.

We did evaluate a couple of other options like Nutanix and HP before choosing VxRail.

In the end, we chose VxRail because we had been using Dell for a year. That was one of the main reasons. The second reason was cost. The third was the performance of the appliance. And the last reason was its architecture.

My advice to anyone looking to get VxRail is to really understand your use case because from our experience this solution doesn't fit certain use cases. So clearly defining your use case is very important when you're choosing VxRail.

The product was good, but as I said, it's not really flexible with different use cases. That was a lesson we learned from buying VxRail. It's not meant for all use cases, it is only meant for specific ones, which is why we had to switch. It's difficult for it to adapt. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate VxRail a seven.

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.

We use it in a infrastructure in a box-style setup for onsite deployments. We take certain assets to remote locations and record data for whatever sorties that they are doing.

The flexibility has improved our organization. If we went the traditional method, we would have to carry a lot more equipment. VxRail allows us to take all the systems that we would use in a full rack in a quarter rack.

It gives us tons of flexibility. We can create new machines, then destroy them if they don't work out. We test a lot of use cases that may or may not play out. We can build all types of scenarios into virtual machines that we may or may not use. If we don't use them, we just turn them off, no using up resources.

I would like them to include an easier solution to host its own DNS. When they changed to version 6.5, they took out the easy features of letting the rail be its own DNS. You can still trick the system and make the VxRail Manager another one of the rail-required VMs become the DNS, but it's a lot of extra work. I'd like to see it put back into the UI.

The stability of version 6.5 and above has been pretty good. 

Version 6.0 and below has always been kind of a pain to work with, but there have been huge improvements. I like the inclusion of the HTML5 vCenter.

The scalability is great. Thankfully, our data needs are in the 200 gigabyte range when we go out onsite, so we're not overloading it. We just have the single rail that has four hosts on it.

The technical support is not so great. They had the VMware personnel trying to help us out. We had some issues on one of the rails, and it never got resolved. It is just one of those things on the to-do list. 

They were walking me through some of the diagnostic stuff, and it was clear that they had no idea. I ended up sending five different sets of logs to their FTP site, and there was no resolution. After I sent the last set of logs, which was right over Christmas break, they were like, "We can't keep this ticket open for two weeks while Dell EMC goes offline at the end of the year." 

This just something I haven't picked back up yet. Thankfully, it's not a production critical piece of equipment right now. However, I would love to figure out how to do a factory reset and start from scratch. This was from version 6.0, and I've got reservations with anything lower than version 6.5.

The initial setup is straightforward for versions 6.5 and 6.7.

There is the logistical cost savings of the produced footprint of the equipment. 

There is an administrative cost savings. Instead of having seven to 15 separate boxes that someone has to administer on 15 different terminals, you can do the majority of it from one interface. Therefore, it saves on manpower costs.

I don't think I would have picked a different product.