VxRail Reviews

We use it for implementing VDI solutions.

Hyperscale is the most valuable feature I found on this solution. It's the ability to utilize the resources for the VMware cluster setup on which Citrix VDA runs.

The only issue we've faced is with their Call Home Support Center. Any alert that has to be triggered, we're just currently working on to fix. Otherwise, it has been a pretty good system.

One problem we had was when we ordered the first node of cluster setup, and then we wanted to add two more nodes, we could not get the same configuration. We had to use a different configuration for the cluster setup.

Scalability becomes a problem when two or three years have passed because you don't get the same model. You get a better model and to make that model work, you need to have a different cluster setup. You tend to lose on the continuity or expansion. I would recommend having a capability where even your older versions of hardware can be seamlessly utilized and additional expansion becomes so much easier.

I've been using this solution since 2020.

The stability of VxRail is good. We are content with its stability.

This solution is scalable. We purchased two additional units the following year.

Technical support for this solution was very good, professional, and they had the skills to get it implemented.

We used Nutanix. VxRail is more economical than Nutanix. It's more cost-effective so we prefer it over Nutanix.

We used so far three different solutions. The first was not a recommended solution. It was pushed down our throats to use that particular hardware. As I was involved in that setup, I knew the first time that implementation was on the wrong hardware, against the recommendation of the partner and the implementer. We definitely did not succeed. The second was a failure again, because of not following the recommendation of the implementer or the partner. The third one, lesson learned and we had no objections to that. We got a better recommendation from someone we trusted, so we were successful with our choice.

The initial setup was straightforward. The engineers asked for what is required and they came with the same initial set.

We used a partner for the deployment. My experience with them was good. They fully supported us during the pandemic situation to get this up and running.

We evaluated Nutanix.

We're quite content with this solution for the purposes it was purchased.

Deployment was completed within two weeks.

Almost all of the people in the company used this solution since the pandemic. Now it's mostly used by the task workers.

For deployment and maintenance of this solution, we require four staff where some are admins who handle multiple storages in other systems as well. They don't do this full-time. They only spend one-third or less of their time managing deployment and maintenance.

I have no plans to increase VxRail usage in the future. The only problem with it is the usage of the cloud is being promoted to its peak, so the next expansion would be on the cloud.

The cloud has always been talked about and people have been asked to venture into it. On the cloud, you don't have to wait and implement or pay upfront for the whole hardware. For some of the cloud versions, you can pay as much as you use. You can start with 50 users and then grow. If it has to be on-prem though, I'll have to at least factor a box that can cater to 200 or 300 users. You need to pre-plan and the hardware delivery might take some time, so making it market-ready is a little time-consuming.

I'm rating this solution a ten out of ten. This is because of my previous experience with other solutions where I had three failed implementations on different hardware. They failed because of one particular reason: They're not low-maintenance. This solution, on the other hand, does not need heavy system maintenance. People prefer to use the system rather than the desktop, which makes it convenient for them to work from anywhere. There are a lot of benefits. You have your data saved on a data center. The availability is there which makes it flexible for users.

After the pandemic, when people returned to the office, we utilized this solution as an agile workspace, so people can sit and work on any desk. When they come to the office, they don't have to go to a particular desk. They can choose where they want to work, so this solution provides a lot of benefits for us.

We are implementers of this solution. We have deployed this product in many Middle East regions. We are also customers and an IT service.

The last time I installed the solution, we were using version 4.7 and we are planning to upgrade to version 7. The solution is deployed on-prem.

We installed the upgrade and migrated from a traditional solution to the virtual machine.

It's a good product based on the features. You can upgrade the solution with only one click.

You cannot install another operating system such as Microsoft or Hyperflex or Nutanix. We have also had a hardware problem.

Hopefully, it can be installed with another stable solution, but I doubt that because it's based on VMware.

I have been using this solution within the past year.

The solution is very stable.

The solution is scalable.

For deployment, we used a consultant. We needed auto recovery because we faced a hardware problem. It was a board problem. That's why we engaged DNC to replace the board, and it was very easy to discover the node and deploy the process.

An organization can get ROI because the solution is scalable. It's cheaper to expand and add more resources than the traditional solution.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10.

Before proceeding with any configuration and implementing the solution, you should prepare the prerequisite. Prepare the VLAN, the prerequisites, and the IP requirements before proceeding with any installation.

It is used for consolidation, modernization of infrastructure, and simplification. That's what most customers are looking for with this solution.

I am using its latest release.

Our clients value being able to upgrade with one click or a few clicks. 

The ability to manage everything from a single console is one of the key advantages that our clients see. They don't have to worry about how to manage the storage, how to manage the servers, and how to manage the virtualization layer. Everything comes in a single platform. As a result, IT teams are shrinking, and very often, the budgets are no longer for people. They're more for automation.

They're getting better with their one-click upgrade. The success factor is now between 85% to 87% with the latest release. They should just continuously improve on that one-click factor and make it more seamless.

It has been about a year, but previously, I have worked on the Fujitsu equivalent for many years.

It is very reliable.

Scalability is a misunderstood notion in the hyper-converged environment. Very often, people misunderstand what and how things are being scaled within a hyper-converged environment, and this is applicable to every solution out there. So, from a scalability point of view, in terms of the technology itself, it is fairly easy, but in terms of dollars and what it means, very often, people are a little bit surprised about it. If you want to upgrade your storage, you don't necessarily upgrade just one hard drive. If you're in all-flash storage, every node has to be upgraded. There are rules around disk groups and things of that nature, so it becomes a bit of a challenge, and sometimes, it is at a price that customers do not expect. The pricing and how things are evolving over a period of time are very often misunderstood by customers.

I don't deal with them. I am more on the presales and delivery side. I'm sure there are challenges around that, but I'm not aware of any concerns at this point.

It is very straightforward.

It varies. It could be $100,000 at the smaller end and millions and millions of dollars at the higher end. 

It is a very reliable and simplified solution. If you're looking for simplification of operations, this is a great solution to implement.

I would rate it an eight out of 10.

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.

All of our servers run on this system and we are also able to use it for file servers, domain controllers, print servers, SQL servers, etc.

I have two teams - one in Copenhagen with about 400 people and one in New York with about 200 people. Their roles are mainly architects and administration.

It would be nice if the update process was shortened and that patching would be simpler.

I have been using the solution for a year and a half.

It's so reliable that we haven't had one breakdown since we got it. It's very stable.

It is very scalable. You can scale compute or storage or both. I am looking to expand my New York cluster this quarter.

Initially, they had a lot of issues when I bought it as they were understaffed. So, it was a little bit hard to get support. But now, a year and a half later, it's so much better and very good.

We were originally using VMware and SAN. We switched so that it can be administered and managed in a centralized format.

The initial setup was straightforward. It took about a week initially, plus three weeks to move all my VMs to the new system.

I was able to perform this myself with the assistance of a consultant.

Fees vary by license type.

First and foremost, I would advise people to purchase this solution mainly for the simplicity of the system. And it's all managed in one place, which is nice compared to Nutanix where you had to administrate multiple places. And, the support now is very good.

We're using three nodes appliance.

VxRail is a hyper-converged infrastructure that delivers a solution with full performance. It's scalable and easy to maintain. 

The replication capabilities have been great.

We find the solution easy to manage. 

The product is user-friendly and easy to navigate.

We have had zero problems so far with this product. It's quite reliable.

There is good support on offer. 

It's a very quick product.

Updating the product has been very easy. Often, they let us know that there is an update pending so we can expect it. 

The features are very powerful.

There are a lot of great features on offer. 

We've found the scalability to be very good.

The solution is stable. 

The cost is quite high. It's a very expensive solution to run.

We purchased the solution originally in 2017. We've been using it for about four years or so at this point. 

The stability of the product is great. We have not had any issues whatsoever and find it to be very reliable. The performance is good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

VxRail is easy to scale out. That said, from 2017 until now we're using just three nodes. We haven't upgraded our VxRail to scale. Therefore, we haven't personally scaled. 

Dell EMC support is very, very good. They offer lots of useful information and are very friendly. We find them to be helpful and supportive. We're quite satisfied with the level of service they provide. They offer very good after-sales support. YOu can even invest in premium support.

The product is very, very expensive, even when you are renewing. It's a problem for us as management is complaining about the price. 

I'm a customer and an end-user.

I'd recommend this solution to others. It has a lot going for it in that the performance is good and it's reliable. They have great after-sales support and is generally easy to maintain. However, it is a very expensive option and a company needs to be prepared for the price tag.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten, however, if the pricing was a bit more reasonable, I would rate it higher. 

Overall, I'm very impressed with the product.

It is used for server virtualization. Most of my work is around server virtualization. There has been a lot of interest lately in virtual desktop interfaces but not much is happening there. Most of the customers come for server virtualization. They generally have three-tier architecture running VMware vSphere, and they are looking to upgrade their technology for different reasons, such as performance or hardware being the end of life. Our customers are mostly using the new versions of this solution.

There are so many features, but if I have to choose, I would go for scale-out upgrades and performance.

Scale-out upgrades are very valuable. Typically, when customers engage in virtualization, they're committing themselves to run many virtual machines on a fewer number of hosts. They'll have five or six hosts, and they will run all their virtualization on vSphere. They could be having anywhere from 50 to 100 or even more virtual machines. Once all these go into production, getting downtime or getting planned maintenance windows is extremely difficult. It is something that typically businesses will frown upon. With VxRail, you can just go ahead and add a node without disrupting the existing environment, which works very well. That's why scale-out upgrades are a key feature.

Its performance is also valuable. It delivers a very high number of IOPS for a hybrid configuration or an all-flash configuration. The processors that are available in the Xeon family are very powerful. They are multi-core with typically 2 gigahertz, 2.4 gigahertz, or higher frequency, so the performance is very much appreciated.

It would be nice if its installation can be simplified, but it is currently not too bad.

They can provide deduplication and compression in hybrid configurations. To the best of my knowledge, these features are not there, and it would be nice if these are added. Some of its competitors already have these features, so it will help VxRail to have a better feature set and compete more effectively.

I have been off and on working with VxRail for more than three years.

It is fairly stable. There are no showstoppers as such.

It is easy to scale, but typically, it involves adding more nodes. So, there is an investment from the customer side. They have to have the budget for it, and then scalability is not an issue.

We are focused on all segments. Some of our customers start off with something as small as a three-node cluster, and we also have large enterprise customers who start off with 10 or 12 nodes.

I don't interact with their technical support.

Its installation can be a little complex, but it is not bad. If you plan it well and stay in touch with the customer about requirements, it is not difficult. For an implementation project, it is a standard practice for us to work very closely with the customer. It is definitely not as complicated as deploying a three-tier architecture with SAN storage, SAN switches, and those kinds of things.

In terms of maintenance, it usually requires version upgrades. When a VxRail cluster is already in production and in use, these things are discussed very deeply with the customer, and whether to go for an upgrade or skip it is decided based on the consultation with the customer. It depends on a whole lot of things, and the customer is the key in deciding such things. You have to consider the following:

• What is the business cycle at that point in time?
• What is the workload on the virtual machine?
• Is this the right time to carry out the upgrade?
• Is the upgrade really necessary?
• Is the upgrade going to impact any of their applications?

I would definitely recommend VxRail. If you have a heavy investment in VMware software infrastructure, it is definitely useful.

I would rate VxRail an eight out of ten.

VxRail alleviates the operational constraints within an organization. It really frees up resources as it requires little maintenance. If you're providing a platform that has consolidated compute, storage, and fabric, then it's basically a turnkey type of solution that organizations can use. It also has one patch, so you're not dealing with several different ecosystems, for example, one supplier for storage, one supplier for compute, and one supplier for networking. It's all bundled into one platform which reduces costs. That also makes it easier to maintain and manage as well.

I have been using VxRail for two and a half years.

It's absolutely a stable product. The reason why we chose this solution and that particular type of technology were that we were running many different private clouds within our data centers. Considering the time spent on the maintenance and the patchwork, if we've consolidated and we're offering one platform to house over 3000 clients and over a thousand private clouds, it is a very stable platform. Given the fact that it's a software-defined technology, if it resides within a software-defined data center, the analytics are very transparent and it's easy to address a singular patch across an entire landscape of clients. It's very stable. In terms of scalability, capacity, and modularity, that's the reason why we selected it.

I don't have first-hand experience with technical support. We have a support help desk. Clients can call in and we help them with VxRail. I've never had to contact their support for help with any client issues.

If you partner with Dell, they offer Dell ProDeploy support and SmartHands. We hire them to do the shipping and implementation into a client's data center, whether that's on-prem or in a third-party incumbent location, such as our data center. They have a lot of expertise behind that. from my perspective, it always runs fairly smoothly.

Generally, we procure VxRail through Dell and then we sell it back to the client within our margin. With VxRail, comes Dell's ProDeploy and SmartHands capability to ship and then install.

The way that VxRail is licensed could be improved. I'm not entirely sure, but I think what I encounter is licensing VMware as Dell. Dell and VMware go together and I think that the licensing has become quite complicated and costly. For things like vSAN especially, having those types of skews displayed and a bit easier to understand how the licensing works behind the infrastructure would be a nice change.

Licensing things like vSphere on top of the platform itself can be quite tricky to manage. For anyone wanting a subscription-based model or a perpetual model, that's always quite important to scrutinize.

Although it's really the only hyper-converged platform that I have any experience with, overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give VxRail a rating of ten. I understand the competitiveness between Nutanix and NetApp and other hyper-converged platforms. But I think that given the strengths behind Dell and their acquisition of VMware, it makes for a very solid platform — it's very reliable. We've benchmarked our whole company off of hyper-converged Dell.