VxRail HCI System Software consists of multiple integrated software elements. They extend VMware native capabilities to deliver a seamless and automated operational experience, keeping the infrastructure in a prevalidated configuration to ensure that workloads are consistently up and running. VxRail HCI System Software is preinstalled on the VxRail system as a single virtual machine, the VxRail Manager VM.

Figure 3.   Core components of VxRail HCI System Software

The software services in VxRail HCI System Software can be grouped into three main areas: life cycle management (LCM) for predictable outcomes, management flexibility and extensibility, and simplified services and support experience.

Life cycle management for predictable outcomes

• Intelligent LCM functionality automatically updates clusters with prevalidated, pretested software and firmware components, ensuring that the HCI stack is in a Continuously Validated State.
• The electronic compatibility matrix serves as a compliance asset, providing validation that all possible configuration and update path permutations are sound. Customers can choose the Continuously Validated State of their choice to optimize each cluster for its respective workloads.
• Ecosystem connectors tightly integrate with infrastructure components including vSAN, PowerEdge server components, and networking. This integration enables automation and orchestration services across the entire stack for simple cluster software and firmware updates.

For more information about VxRail LCM, see Life cycle management.

Management flexibility and extensibility

• VxRail Manager, which is natively integrated with and accessed through vCenter, is the overall management engine for all VxRail operations. VxRail Manager is used to deploy, manage, update, patch, and add nodes to a cluster.
• SaaS multi-cluster management is designed to provide centralized multi-cluster management powered by AI-driven operations insights through a software-as-a-service delivery model. The continuous innovation and continuous delivery approach allows for frequent, incremental updates to introduce new capabilities. SaaS multi-cluster management provides detailed health checks and predictive analytics. SaaS multi-cluster management further simplifies the VxRail cluster update process with on-demand pre-update health checks, update bundle download and staging, and cluster updates at scale.
• A broad set of publicly available RESTful APIs are provided to customers to deliver greater cloud and IT automation extensibility.

For more information about these features, see Management flexibility and extensibility.

Simplified services and support experience

Customers always have access to Dell Secure Remote Services for all included hardware and software within VxRail throughout the entire life cycle of the infrastructure.

For more information about VxRail services and support, see Simplified services and support experience.