Figure 1.              Front view, Dell EMC VxRail

VxRail is a jointly engineered hyperconverged infrastructure from Dell EMC and VMware. It is the only fully integrated, pre-configured, and tested HCI system optimized for VMware vSAN software-defined storage and the VMware vSphere ESXi hypervisor. Managed through the VMware vCenter interface, VxRail provides existing VMware customers with a consistent and familiar operating experience. VxRail is the only jointly engineered HCI system with full VMware Cloud Foundation integration, delivering a complete and automated hybrid cloud platform.

VxRail is a distributed system consisting of common modular building blocks powered by the highly differentiated VxRail HCI System Software. VxRail allows customers to start small and grow, scaling capacity and performance easily and non-disruptively from two to 64 nodes in a cluster. VxRail HCI System Software with intelligent lifecycle management (LCM) is used to automate non-disruptive upgrades, patches, node additions, and retirement to ensure that the VxRail infrastructure remains in a continuously validated state. Coupled with detailed health reporting using machine learning from SaaS multi-cluster management, it has never been easier to keep infrastructure running smoothly.

Figure 2.              VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail automation 

VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail is the first hyperconverged system fully integrated with VMware Cloud Foundation SDDC Manager. This means that both the hyperconverged infrastructure layer and the VMware Cloud software stack are managed as a complete and automated platform. Full integration between VMware SDDC Manager and VxRail Manager gives users consistent operations with familiar VMware tools to deploy and manage clusters and workloads across the hybrid cloud infrastructure. (IDC White Paper, sponsored by Dell EMC, Benefits of the Consistent Hybrid Cloud: A Total Cost of Ownership Analysis of the Dell Technologies Cloud, April 2019. Results based on U.S. costs of the Dell Technologies Cloud deploying common cloud environment workloads over a five-year period v. a leading native public cloud service provider. Actual results will vary.)

VxRail HCI System Software intelligent lifecycle management helps customers confidently and non-disruptively execute upgrades without the need to do extensive research and testing. Simply choose the next VxRail version and VxRail automatically upgrades the fully integrated hardware and software stack, keeping clusters in continuously validated states. IT productivity skyrockets with single-click, non-disruptive upgrades no matter what hardware generation or node types are in the cluster!  

VxRail supports vSphere updates within 30 days after VMware general availability, which involves rigorous testing and a single point of contact for support. This helps to predictably evolve and expand your HCI footprint across the core, edge and cloud.

VxRail is the only jointly engineered HCI system with deep VCF integration that delivers automated lifecycle management to streamline operations and reduce TCO by 47 percent.

VxRail provides an easy method for updates, ensuring that the environment is operating at or near the same version of vSphere that is being used in the VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery ecosystem. This means that virtual machines can operate consistently across active and DR environments without the need for time-consuming upgrades during a disaster.    

Even before disaster strikes, VxRail helps organizations to align more closely with operational compliance, and therefore to be better prepared for disaster. VxRail provides consistency and repeatability in the data center and at the edge. 

Simply put, when a repeatable process doesn’t exist, disasters are harder to recover from. This is especially true of do-it-yourself (DIY) environments. IT staff are required to be experts at how to install and configure all the different bits that make up today’s modern IT infrastructure. From installing the virtualization platform to configuring storage and joining it to a cluster, many tasks must be done precisely and correctly. 

Furthermore, in a DIY environment, being able to deploy IT infrastructure quickly and correctly doesn’t make the organization more money or improve performance at their core competencies, but it can have disastrous outcomes when deployed incorrectly. For example, if storage is misconfigured, a tiny ‘hiccup’ can cause a catastrophic loss of storage. 

These are the perils to be faced in the DIY environment: minimal benefit to the organization for all the extra work to get it right, and massive consequences when something fails. IT should be focused on areas that enhance, accelerate, and set the organization apart from its competitors, without having to be IT infrastructure deployment specialists.    

In contrast to ominous DIY environments, VxRail provides a repeatable process for creating and maintaining data center infrastructure, because it helps operationalize the details of what must be configured in order to create or expand the data center. This means that VxRail can easily be incorporated into an operational compliance model that delivers consistent results in the data center. It also means that IT can be more focused on driving organizational value. 

VxRail also helps with disaster avoidance and recovery. Because a VxRail environment is inherently consistent, there is less likelihood of the kind of misconfiguration that occurs when infrastructure is only being deployed occasionally. And when disaster does strike, a consistent environment is easier to recover.

These attributes make VxRail an outstanding choice for planning continuity of the organization’s applications. Since applications are the lifeblood of many organizations, being able to recover applications quickly means being able to keep moving forward.