Yes, yes, I know it was a little while ago now. I’ve been occupied by other things and wanted to let the dust settle on the announcement before I covered it off here. And it was really a VCE announcement. But anyway. I’ve been doing work internally around all things hyperconverged and, as I work for a big EMC partner, people have been asking me about VxRail. So I thought I’d cover some of the more interesting bits.

So, let’s start with the reasonably useful summary links:

• The VxRail datasheet (PDF) is here;
• The VCE landing page for VxRail is here;
• Chad’s take (worth the read!) can be found here; and
• Simon from El Reg did a write-up here.

So what is it?

Well it’s a re-envisioning of VMware’s EVO:RAIL hyperconverged infrastructure in a way. But it’s a bit better than that, a bit more flexible, and potentially more cost effective. Here’s a box shot, because it’s what you want to see.

Basically it’s a 2RU appliance housing 4 nodes. You can scale these nodes out in increments as required. There’s a range of hybrid configurations available.

As well as some all flash versions.

By default the initial configuration must be fully populated with 4 nodes, with the ability to scale up to 64 nodes (with qualification from VCE). Here are a few other notes on clusters:

• You can’t mix All Flash and Hybrid nodes in the same cluster (this messes up performance);
• All nodes within the cluster must have the same license type (Full License or BYO/ELA); and
• First generation VSPEX BLUE appliances can be used in the same cluster with second generation appliances but EVC must be set to align with the G1 appliances for the whole cluster.

On VMware Virtual SAN

I haven’t used VSAN/Virtual SAN enough in production to have really firm opinions on it, but I’ve always enjoyed tracking its progress in the marketplace. VMware claim that the use of Virtual SAN over other approaches has the following advantages:

• No need to install Virtual Storage Appliances (VSA);
• CPU utilization <10%;
• No reserved memory required;
• Provides the shortest path for I/O; and
• Seamlessly handles VM migrations.

If that sounds a bit like some marketing stuff, it sort of is. But that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily wrong either. VMware state that the placement of Virtual SAN directly in the hypervisor kernel allows it to “be fast, highly efficient, and be able to scale with flash and modern CPU architectures”.

While I can’t comment on this one way or another, I’d like to point out that this appliance is really a VMware play. The focus here is on the benefit of using an established hypervisor (vSphere), and established management solution (vCenter) and a (soon-to-be) established software defined storage solution (Virtual SAN). If you’re looking for the flexibility of multiple hypervisors or incorporating other storage solutions this really isn’t for you.

Further Reading and Final Thoughts

Enrico has a good write-up on El Reg about Virtual SAN 6.2 that I think is worth a look. You might also be keen to try something that’s NSX-ready. This is as close as you’ll get to that (although I can’t comment on the reality of one of those configurations). You’ve probably noticed there have been a tonne of pissing matches on the Twitters recently between VMware and Nutanix about their HCI offerings and the relative merits (or lack thereof) of their respective architectures. I’m not telling you to go one way or another. The HCI market is reasonably young, and I think there’s still plenty of change to come before the market has determined whether this really is the future of data centre infrastructure. In the meantime though, if you’re already slow-dancing with EMC or VCE and get all fluttery when people mention VMware, then the VxRail is worth a look if you’re HCI-curious but looking to stay with your current partner. It may not be for the adventurous amongst you, but you already know where to get your kicks. In any case, have a look at the datasheet and talk to your local EMC and VCE folk to see if this is the right choice for you.