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February 16, 2016




This is great! Our customers have been waiting for this. A true game changer!


This does not sufficiently explain if one can/must buy one box or four.
Even at $60k to start, this is a lot of money for most SMBs, for running, say, 20-50 VMs.
You need to tell us that one VxRail is enough or if we must buy 4 of them for $240k.

Chet Walters

The 60k referenced price is one node. You don't need 4 nodes to start. You need 1.


To clarify, this is EVO RAIL / VSPEX BLUE launched just over a year ago and re-branded as VxRail? http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2015/02/vspex-blue-hello-world.html. Is this still the EVO RAIL UI or is it something new for installation/management?

Chet Walters

@Tom - It's 60k LIST. You'll get it for less than that. Also, that's for 4 nodes in a single 2u appliance. I don't think you can beat that building your own.

Chad Sakac

Thanks all!

@Tom - that's $60K list, for a 4 node appliance. List = you will get it for less than $60K (a frustrating but universal IT model is this discounting model). Also, FWIW - we will be introducing 3 node configurations that will go even lower.

@Vince - no it is not EVO:RAIL. Not in price, not in packaging, not in hardware, and certainly not in the software layer. Back last year, we decided we needed to go in a different direction (more details are in the blog), that EVO RAIL had good ideas, but for various reasons wasn’t working as well as we wanted. The EVO RAIL team merged into the VxRail team (a single product team with VMware and EMC people – not an arms length partner model), along with the EVO RAIL manager engine IP. What’s in VxRail is already quite evolved from that moment, and is already accelerating quickly from there. It has all the great parts from EVO RAIL (super simple install, update, patch), but doesn’t have the weaknesses (narrow single config support, constraining package and licensing).


Sorry I am a bit confused you say both

"The 60k referenced price is one node."


"that's $60K list, for a 4 node appliance."

Is 60k for a single node or for the 4 node appliance?

Brendan Clover

Are there any, or will there be any options for nodes with GPUs?


Wondering what comes with the $60k version in terms of VSphere licensing. Does it include 4 CPUs of Enterprise Plus, 4 CPUs of VSAN, and VCenter? Or is there a catch I am missing?

This looks pretty appealing on the surface. Can we get a website with some fair and consistent pricing (not varying by if it's the end of the quarter, etc) that allows us to buy these with the click of a few buttons and a PO? Please don't hide this great technology offering that's innovative, easy to use, rapid to deploy behind archaic sales processes.

Also, would love to see a two node offering for a really small branch. Still don't think VMWare/EMC have addressed small ROBO budget. Two node VSAN with a remote watcher was a good step. Take the next step and give us a $10-15k 2 node appliance we can drop in a remote office and achieve HA, centralized management, standard Vsphere, etc. Something like 1-3 TB in a hybrid config would be fine. Don't need much for local domain controller, print server, virtual firewall, etc, but at the same time, deploying these things physically leads to a long day when something fails. Closest thing I've seen to meeting this need at a good budget is StorMagic's sVSan on top of a couple Dell or Lenovo servers.

Justin M

Is there plans to release reference architectures showing workloads such as server virtualization and VDI?

Is VCE providing any sort of guarantee's with all flash configuration such as a IOPS or availability such as 5, 9's?

If All Flash is scheduled for Q2 release will it be at beginning or end of Q2?


GPL price?

Petter Glenstrup

Great post, i am a Mellanox and EMC disti, i was wandering about networking, you mention network but i would always recomend the best performing network to a given solution. What are the features that a VxRAIL customers should look for in a network for the solution.

We tested ScaleIO with Micron SSDs, NVMe drives, with 10, 40 and 56G Mellanox networking, and the performance was the best i have ever seen, and the price point was extremely low.

I would love to try and put Mellanox 56G HBA card, Mellanox cables, and Mellanox switching gear into a 2 x 120F solution ot see the performance vs. price vs. solution setup.


I'm curious, I keep seeing this 60k list price number mentioned. Is there anything that doesn't include? Is some level of support included in that number?



According to this article, it requires a minimum of 4-nodes and does not include Vsphere licenses

Chad Sakac

@Nick - thanks for the questions! The initial offer is a 2U appliance with 4 nodes, and does include the necessary vSphere licenses (and if people bring their own, the entry price is even lower). What others might say is not accurate.

BTW - expect us to introduce over time the ability to start even smaller, and scale in even smaller increments.


Wow so well explained☺ I don't have to go through 3 hours of videos on vxrail 😉 thanks Chad

Anonymous For Now

I've been following your site for a while now. I have read all the great things that you tout about with the VXrail so I have purchased our first VXrail AF120 a month ago.

I'm not happy with VXRail and your support. To be frank, they both suck. VXrail is buggy. During my POC I found that changing MTU size on the VXRail causes a ton of problems. 1) VSAN would not show the correct SAN size 2) There were VSAN errors that would not go away. 3) The only fix was to reboot all the nodes. Recently I had to make a change to a distributed switch setting. I changed multicast filtering mode from basic to IGMP/MLD snooping. This one change crashed the entire VXrail. All four nodes crashed with purple screens. This is a single point of failure. It's hard to imagine that this time and age that something like this could happen. That's a real bad bug or flawed design.

Service support is useless. Prior to making the multicast filtering setting I had opened a severity one case to make sure because I know how sensitive the VXrail is. The response I received from VCE support was very generic. I interpret it as "we recommend it but it depends, go ahead try it out and see". I emailed for clarity, no response. I called back in the queue only to find out the case owner had already left for the day. What company handles ticket like that? One case owner working on a sev1 case and leaves for the day without any handoffs or notification to the customer?

We purchased 4hour software & hardware support with the VXrail. It has been 15 hours since the support technician identified that one node needs to be replaced after the crash. Do you have a supply problem?

The one number to call for both hardware and software is not true. First, there is no dedicated number for VXrail. I had to call VCE and get routed to VXrail. If it's a VMWare problem VXRail tech has to tie in VMWare engineers. There is no difference if I were to purchase a Nutanix HCI. I'm not seeing one number, one owner for both hardware and software. I'm only seeing a call center to accept tickets and transfer people around.

As you can tell I'm quite disappointed. I am losing faith in the VXrail. I wouldn't recommend VXrail to anyone today. If anything I'd say to look elsewhere. I am going to put a pause to my plan to standardize our infrastructure with VXrail. I don't think the product is ready and I know your support is not ready. Track SR 05172240 so you can see for yourself.

Chad Sakac

@Anonymous For Now - thank you for the blunt, direct feedback. Listening to things we don't like to hear is the only way to improve. And, while there are thousands of delighted customers, it doesn't matter - to each and every one (like you), the only thing that matters (correctly!) is how we're serving you.

Jumping on the case, will get the team engaged, and you have my personal commitment that we will improve.

Thank you!

Anonymous For Now


Thank you for being proactive and transparent. After reviewing our options with Dell EMC, we have decided to go with Dell FX2 and EMC Unity. I am glad your team pulled through and delivered what was right for the customer. It matters!

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