VxRail HCI System Software consists of multiple, integrated software elements that extend VMware native capabilities to deliver a seamless, automated, operational experience, keeping the infrastructure in a pre-validated configuration to ensure that workloads are consistently running. VxRail HCI System Software is pre-installed on the VxRail system as a single virtual machine, the VxRail Manager VM. The VxRail Manager VM operates outside the I/O path for applications and workloads running on VxRail. The software services in VxRail HCI System Software can be grouped into three main areas: Life cycle management for predictable outcomes, management flexibility and extensibility, and simplified services and support experience.

Lifecycle management for predictable outcomes

• Automated, intelligent life cycle management functionality automatically updates clusters with pre-validated, pre-tested software and firmware components, ensuring 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 upgrade path permutations are sound, enabling customers to 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, enabling automation and orchestration services across the entire stack for simple cluster software and firmware updates.

Management flexibility and extensibility

• VxRail Manager, natively integrated with and accessed through vCenter, is the overall management engine for all VxRail operations 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 using a software-as-a-service delivery model. The continuous innovation and continuous delivery approach allows for frequent, incremental updates to introduce new capabilities.
• A broad set of publicly available RESTful API capabilities is provided to customers to deliver greater cloud and IT automation extensibility.

Simplified services and support experience

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

Figure 7.   Core components of VxRail HCI System Software

When used for a cloud deployment use case, the VxRail HCI System Software sits in between the infrastructure layer and cloud orchestration software. Local management features include vCenter Plug-ins, life cycle management, serviceability using eServices and Secure Remote Services, and health alerts. The extensibility of VxRail HCI System Software is available to VMware SDDC solutions like VMware Cloud Foundation including backend APIs, SaaS multi-cluster management, and open REST APIs for configuration management solutions such as Puppet and Ansible.

Figure 8.   VxRail HCI System Software architecture

VxRail Manager

VxRail Manager features user-friendly workflows for automating VxRail deployment and configuration and monitoring the health of individual systems in the entire cluster. It also incorporates functionality for hardware serviceability and system platform life cycle management. For instance, it guides system administrators through adding new systems to an existing cluster, and it automatically detects new systems when they come online. VxRail Manager is also used to replace failed disk drives without disrupting availability, to generate and download diagnostic log bundles, and to apply VMware updates or software patches non-disruptively across VxRail nodes. 

With VxRail Manager plug-in for vCenter Server, all VxRail Manager features are integrated with and accessible from the vCenter Server so that users can benefit from these valuable capabilities on a familiar management interface. With the VxRail Manager plug-in, the vCenter Server can manage physical hardware of the VxRail cluster.

Figure 9.   Dell  VxRail Manager

VxRail HCI System Software simplifies system platform life cycle management by delivering patch software and update notifications that can be automatically installed without interruption or downtime.

Dell Secure Remote Services, also accessible from within VxRail Manager plug-in or REST API, provides enterprise-class support and services.

In addition to SRS-specific support, the VxRail support page on vCenter Server links to VxRail Community pages for Dell  Knowledge Base articles, user forums for FAQ information, and VxRail best practices documents.

The VxRail Manager functionality visible through the HTML5 vCenter plug-in is illustrated in the following screenshots. Figure 10 displays a vCenter view showing the VMware Cloud Foundation management domain and workload domain that is built on VxRail clusters.

Figure 10.    vCenter view showing VMware Cloud Foundation management domain and workload domain

Figure 11 displays going to the vSAN cluster level, choosing the Monitor tab and selecting Appliances to get to the link to open the VxRail Manager provided physical view for this cluster.

Figure 11.    Open the cluster VxRail physical view

Figure 12 shows the top level four node management cluster VxRail Hardware view.

Figure 12.    VxRail cluster physical view

Drilling down on the physical views can display additional details. An example of this is provided in Figure 13 which shows a hardware view used for instance for disk hardware replacement.

Figure 13.    VxRail disk hardware replacement screen

Detailed VxRail hardware component level events and alerts are collected by the VxRail Manager and displayed in vCenter as part of the integrated vCenter HTML5 plug-in. This provides holistic, system-level health awareness within the SDDC management framework. Failure events are passed to vCenter. Alarms from VxRail start with the prefix ‘VXR.’ Figure 14 shows an example in vCenter displaying VxRail hardware alarms.

Figure 14.    Example of VxRail hardware alarms in the vCenter HTML5 plug-in

With VxRail HCI Software version 7.0.010 (and above), VxRail Manager supports geographic location tags for VxRail nodes. The capability allows for important user-defined node meta data that can assist many customers in gaining greater visibility of the physical location mapping of the HCI infrastructure that makes up their cloud. Customers can leverage this data to choose VxRail the node/host order they want to be displayed in the VxRail Manager vCenter plug-in Physical View. These geo_location host attribute tags can be applied during VxRail Day 1 cluster installation or during node expansion and host edit Day 2 operations (see Figure 15).

This provides customers with full stack physical to virtual infrastructure mapping to help further extend the VMware Cloud Foundation management experience and simplify operations only available with VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail.

Figure 15.    Example of VxRail geo_location host tags in the vCenter plug-in

REST APIs

VxRail HCI System Software includes APIs that enables customers to leverage the full power of automation and orchestration services across data centers. This extensibility allows infrastructure to operate with cloud-like scale and agility and streamlines the integration of the infrastructure into your IT environment and processes. Instead of manually managing environments through the user interface, repeatable operations can be triggered and performed programmatically by software. More customers are embracing DevOps and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) models as they need reliable and repeatable processes to configure the underlying infrastructure resources required for applications. IaC leverages APIs to store configurations in code, making it repeatable and reduces error risk.

VxRail API is a feature of VxRail HCI System Software that exposes management functions with a RESTful application programming interface. It is to simplify VxRail customer and ecosystem partner experiences, who would like to integrate third-party products with a VxRail system.

VxRail API was designed to complement VMware REST APIs, such as vSphere Automation API, and focuses on the underlying infrastructure and unique automated life cycle management capabilities. VxRail API can be used with VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell  VxRail API, which is supported since version 4.0 of the platform. Most of the operations that required SDDC Manager UI can now be performed using API. This is an area of extensive development with new capabilities growing over time important especially for service providers, who are leveraging VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail as a platform to deliver cloud-based services for their customers.

To learn more about VxRail API, see this solution overview. For additional information on VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail API, consult the API reference guide.