A new version of the Dell EMC VxRail™ Appliance, a jointly Dell EMC and VMware developed Hyper-Converged Appliance, was announced this week at Dell EMC World.
I’ve had to opportunity to have a training in this product at DELL EMC BEZON, and implement it last week in our infrastructure, today I want to share with you the essential to know about it :
Launched in February 2016 VxRail has taken the market by storm and its well on its way to becoming the leader in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI). Barely three quarters from first shipment, petabytes of storage and thousands of cores are being consumed every day by a rapidly growing VxRail customer base in 90+ countries.
The Dell EMC VxRail™ Appliance is the easiest and fastest way to extend and simplify a VMware environment. Powered by VMware Virtual SANTM and managed through the vCenter interface, it provides VMware customers an experience they are already familiar with. And, seamless integration with existing VMware tools, such as vRealize Operations, lets you leverage and extend your current IT tools and processes.
What’s New: VxRail 4.0
New for Q4 is VxRail 4.0. This is a very exciting update for VxRail.
With the addition of the Dell PowerEdge portfolio, VxRail offers 250-times more configurations to support a wide-range of use cases and increased configure-to-order flexibility.
If you’re looking for more horsepower, VxRail 4.0 delivers 2 times more flash storage and up to 40 percent more CPU performance vs. VxRail 3.5. And the portfolio has been refreshed with the new Intel Broadwell processors for more performance and value at roughly the same price.
You can now start a cluster with 3 nodes at 25% lower entry price to support smaller deployments. VxRail can now support storage-heavy workloads with storage dense nodes, graphics-heavy VDI workloads with GPU hardware, and entry-level nodes for remote and branch office environments Finally, you can upgrade from VxRail 3.5 to 4.0 software with a single click.
Flexibility and Choice with Extended Portfolio
VxRail now includes Dell PowerEdge servers in its portfolio allowing wide range of platforms and configure-to-order hardware to address any use case.
The VxRail portfolio now includes:
- G Series – General purpose 2U/4Node chassis refreshed from the current VxRail platform. The G Series is best suited for a broad range of hyper-converged use cases, and continues to be available in all-flash and hybrid configurations.
- V Series – VDI-optimized 2U/1Node appliance with GPU hardware for graphics-intensive desktop deployments. If your customer may want GPU acceleration in the future, order a V Series now and they can add GPU cards later.
- S Series – Storage dense 2U/1Node appliance for demanding applications such as virtualized Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, big data, and analytics.
- P Series – Performance intensive 2U/1Node appliances optimized for heavy workloads such as databases.
- E Series – Entry level, cost-effective 1U/1Node offering for small and remote deployments.
VxRail Appliances Portfolio
We can now start small and scale massively with this portfolio. As an example, a 4-node appliance can have up to 6 TB of memory, 176 core and 192 TB of raw storage. To me, this is monster configuration!
3-node VMware Virtual SAN Support
VxRail Appliances can now be deployed with just three nodes in a cluster, making them more accessible than ever before. 3-node entry brings in even lower price and scale point for distributed environments or smaller deployments.
Based on industry-leading VMware vSphere and Virtual SAN software, the VxRail Appliance allows customers to start small and grow, scaling capacity and performance easily and non-disruptively. Single node scaling and storage capacity expansion provide a predictable, “pay-as-you-grow” approach for future growth as needed.
More Value with the Latest Intel Technology
VxRail is now powered by the latest Intel Broadwell processors and 12Gb/s SAS architecture, offering greater value and deliver increased performance at similar prices. VxRail continues the journey of all-flash VSAN with high performance flash devices and new generation of updated portfolio continues to have the storage data services such as deduplication, compression, and erasure coding.
In addition, a wide range of backup and recovery options continues to protect VxRail Appliances and ensure business continuity for your customers. VMware Data Protection (VDP) and RecoverPoint for VMs are included. For more comprehensive data protection or for larger environments, your customers can also add Data Protection Suite for VMware and Data Domain Virtual Edition (DD VE).
Extended Use Case Support
VxRail delivers resiliency, QoS, and centralized management functionality enabling faster, better, and simpler management and addresses many general use cases such as consolidated workloads, virtual desktops, business-critical applications, and remote office infrastructure. VxRail now has an extended portfolio to serve a wider set of use cases including Big Data & Analytics, Collaboration, High End 2D/3D Visualization, Performance intensive applications and Cost-optimized entry deployments.
To conclude, VxRail 4.0 with Dell EMC and VMware enhance the portfolio featuring new Dell PowerEdge based models, powered by VMware Virtual SAN, that offer extreme configuration flexibility allowing customers to choose performance, graphics and capacity as required for VMware environments to benefit from industry-leading VxRail hyper-converged appliances in more use cases.