VxRail is a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) appliance that combines VMware’s vSAN software with vSphere and vCenter, running on clustered, Dell PowerEdge servers. This product, first released in 2016, leverages the on-going advancements of VMware’s vSAN and Dell server technology.
VxRail uses a modular, scale-out architecture of 1U and 2U appliance chassis each containing one, two or four multicore processors and either all-flash solid-state disks (SSDs) or a hybrid mix of flash SSDs and hard disk drives (HDDs). VxRail clusters are usually comprised of at least three and as many as sixty-four nodes and can be scaled non-disruptively by adding appliances. Two nodes can also be direct-connected for smaller environments, and VxRail Satellite nodes are single-node edge devices. Each node is configured with 2.5” drive form-factor SSDs and 2.5” or 3.5” HDDs (S Series only) in either hybrid or all-flash configurations.
vSAN is embedded in the VMware hypervisor kernel, allowing for more optimization of the data path and simpler management. This integration also leverages the features of vSphere, such as High Availability (HA), vMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), Site Recovery Manager, VMware Aria Automation (formerly vRealize Automation), etc.
Dell VxRail Product Review Includes:
- Overview
- Highlights
- Usage
- Architecture Deployment
- EvaluScale Product Review Methodology
- Evaluator Group’s Opinion
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