Home > Workload Solutions > Virtual Desktop Infrastructure > White Papers > White Paper – Modernizing Retail with Scalable and Highly Available Virtual Desktop Environments > Dell hyperconverged VxRail infrastructure
Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) is an IT infrastructure that improves efficiency and scalability while lowering costs. HCI integrates compute, storge, and networking into a single appliance with data management and consolidation capabilities that can scale out according to application needs, eliminating the need for traditional SAN or NAS. HCI is a revolutionary architecture that breaks with the traditional three-tier architecture and decoupled systems, embracing simplified IT with a lower time to market.
VxRail uses several types of nodes with different characteristics based on specific business requirements. The VxRail E, P, V, D, S, and G-series offers different workload optimized infrastructure, addressing most use cases. VxRail is built on Dell PowerEdge servers with a choice of Intel and AMD processors. VxRail is designed to face mission-critical workloads and deliver multiple compute, memory, storage, networking, and graphics options to support a wide variety of applications. Dell has also introduced VxRail dynamic nodes that enable independent scaling of compute and storage for more business flexibility. With HCI, customers can focus more on their business. That means they spend less time building and integrating solutions and dealing with the challenges that brings, such as interoperability issues, time to deploy, lack of consistent support, third party integrations, connectivity issues, and so on.
For more information, see the Dell VxRail spec sheet.
VxRail uses storage virtualization software such as VMware vSAN, which can optimize storage and pool disk capacity in a single area. IT administrators can create datastores in this area to provide storage resources to applications. vSAN enables users to easily aggregate all capacity and make it available through all nodes.
VxRail also offers integrated support, firmware lifecycle management, and orchestration steps. Dell provides integrated support for VxRail solutions and offers levels of support with specialized resources on Dell hardware and the VMware software stack. Most cases are resolved using Dell support resources and only a small percentage require escalation to Dell or VMware.
VxRail life cycle management enables customers to reduce risk while deploying mission-critical updates and upgrades. All major VxRail components are easily upgradable with validated packages for firmware and patches, so customers can apply code that is tested and certified. Dell has also created automated and orchestrated hardware, VMware software, and networking procedures to provide a best-in-class user experience and simplified management experience while reducing the risk to daily operations.