As most of you know I’ve been involved in Virtual SAN in some shape or form since the very first release. Reason I was very excited about Virtual SAN is because I felt it would provide anyone the ability to develop a hyper-converged offering. Many VMware partners have already done this, and with the VSAN Ready Node program growing and enhancing every day (more about this soon) customers have an endless list of options to chose from. Today EMC and VMware introduce a new hyper-converged appliance: VxRail.
I am not going to make this an extremely long post, as my friend Chad has already done that of course and there is no point in repeating his blog word for word. I do feel however that VxRail truly is the best both EMC and VMware have to offer. The great thing about VxRail in my opinion is that it can be configured in anyway you like. From 6 all the way up to 28 cores per CPU, from 64GB of memory all the way up to 512GB of memory, from 3.6TB of storage all the way up to 19TB of storage. And yes that was per “node” not per appliance. And considering the roadmap, I can see those numbers increasing fast as well. Also note that we are talking “hybrid” and “all-flash” models here. I have to agree with Chad, I think that all-flash will be preferably to hybrid. The tipping point in terms of economics have definitely been reached, especially when you take the various data services in to account that VSAN has to offer.
These are the models which VCE will offer for All-Flash. Note that you can start with 3 nodes and scale up in 1 node increments.
What I think is great about VxRail is the fact (besides that it comes with vSphere and VSAN) that it comes with additional services like for instance RecoverPoint for VM (15 VMs for free per appliance), which is completely integrated with the Web Client by the way. (For those who don’t know, RecoverPoint provides sync and a-sync replication.) Or for instance S-3 compliant object storage is provided out of the box, 10TB license is included for free per appliance. On top of that there is integration built in with Data Domain.
Must be expensive right? Well actually it isn’t. Smallest configuration starts at $60k list price… Great price point, and I can’t wait for the first boxes to hit the street. Heck I need to talk Chad in to sending me one of those All-Flash models for our lab at some point.