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sc2317
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Suggestion on Hyperconverged Solution

Hi Guys,

I am looking for some best hyperconverged solutions available in market. Can someone please suggest which one is best based on the experience, performance & cost perspecive. I know there are multiple solutions from different vendors and have myself worked on Cisco Hyperflex. However, want to know if there is any other better solution.

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dashutosh
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

There are a lot of Solutions out there is market like: HP SimpliVity and Maxta Hyper-convergence.

However i will recommend you to look for Dell EMC VxRack, Dell EMC XC Core.

They have a good verity of products available and the kind is support that you get with your product is exceptional.

Please visit the link below for more information:

Dell EMC VxFlex | Dell EMC India 

Dell EMC XC Core | Dell EMC US

Also if you have your existing Hardware which you want to use to configure your Hyper Converged Environment.

You can use Storage Spaces Direct Feature which comes with Windows Server 2016 and 2019 Operating System.

This Technology uses your Existing Infrastructure and Configure a Hyper Converged Environment For you:

Please refer to the below links for more information:

Storage Spaces Direct overview | Microsoft Docs

Deploy Storage Spaces Direct | Microsoft Docs


Please let me know if this is helpful for you.

Regards

Ashutosh Dixit

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sc2317
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

Thanks for suggestion. Is there any other good hyperconverged solution apart from Dell VxFlex ? We already have Dell server with VMware VSAN configured on it and we are not happy with it. So, Just wanted to know if there is any other good hyperconverged solution that is famous and not very expensive.

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sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

Look at Netapp's "HCI", we don't have a full load on it yet but it was cheaper the vxrail, and lets you attach outside storage which no one else really does. We replaced our vdi  storage array with this and are in progress of replacing our vdi hosts soon.

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nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

I have worked with the folllowing solutions

Considering they all come in full SSD and Hybrid mode and they have plenty of memory, network and cpu configs i will give you my opinions from other perspective.

Nutanix
Pros:
- Best support service in the market.

- Easy to configure and rack
- Easy to install
- Possibly the best HCI solution that I am aware of.

- Almost plug and play

Cons:
It is very expensive

EMC Vxrail

Pros:
- Local support worldwide
- Very easy to install.

Cons:
- Relies very much on PSC, if PSC crashes or deleted you lose the entire VxRail and need to reinstall the entire solution (Been there done that)
- I get the feeling (and been told by former EMC's engineers) that there is not a lot of expertise on this product.

- I had a few disk failures.

Intel HCI


Pros:
- Cheaper than the other 2 options
- Local support and RMA.  (At least in argentina)

Cons:
- You need to manually install and configure everything
- I don't particulary like intel's support.

- it is not HCI hardware, they are just normal blade severs, I get the feeling that Intel's techs do not have training on this.
- We had to replace several disks.

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sc2317
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for the suggestion.

What is your opinion on Cisco Hyperflex in terms of performance and price ?

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nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Sorry i can't respond as I don't have any experience with cisco Hyperflex

Regarding performance the three previous had several different layouts but the best overall performer would be Nutanix.

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sc2317
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Does VXRail use Nutanix software inside ?

Could you please suggest where I can compare the cost of both products like Nutanix and Dell ?

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sjesse
Leadership
Leadership

vxrail uses vmware vsan, nutanix uses there own software that no ones else has access to.

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jvalentine
Contributor
Contributor

OP,

This is a bit difficult to answer because you have some experience and have some solutions in place , but you don't list your requirements.

Do you have unlimited budget? Do you need 104 IOPS or 1.4 Million IOPS.

Do you require a single pane of glass to manage it?

What does your support staff already have experience with, are they willing to learn a new console?

We are a Cisco UCS shop and had been running with Fiber and iSCSI storage. We wanted a new HCI environment for our VDI upgrade and evaluated Hyperflex.. in our case the Hyperflex license added cost to the solution that we already had "paid" for because of our licensing on Horizon which included vSAN.

Ultimately we built a 5 Node VSAN cluster on Cisco M5 Hardware and we ended up with a really strong configuration. During our benchmark we exceeded 400,000 IOPS on one test which is more than adequate for our demand.

I would be interested to understand what it is about your Dell vSAN that you don't like.. because if you can't determine that I think it would be difficult for you to accept any other HCI.

Jason

Thank You, Jason Valentine
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sc2317
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Jason,

I have also worked on Cisco Hyperflex for VDI solution migration and performance was extra ordinary after we migrated to Cisco Hyperflex. Regarding VMware VSAN currently running on Dell Poweredge servers, we don't like that hard disks of server gets failed after few months and  support from Dell is also not very good. This is the reason we are exploring the new option.

I also have suggested Cisco Hyperflex but when it comes to cost, then Dell solution is I believe cheaper than Cisco. However, this time Dell is trying to sell Dell  Scale io which has been renamed to Dell VC Flex. I feel like if we implement Dell solution then we may again get into same trouble that we have now.

Therefore, I am looking for some other options that can compete with Dell solution in terms of cost and provide better performance.Also, any examples where customers have faced issues with Dell Hyperflex solutions and disk failures is the main problem that customers have faced.

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sc2317
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi Guys,


Can someone please suggest that if we need separate ESXi license for Cisco Hyperflex solution or is it included ?

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