VCF3.7: VxRail vs. ReadyNode

[victorzhanglian]

Hi Gurus,

We are proposing VCF3.7 Advanced (on VxRail or ReadyNode) for a customer.  And the customer have some concern as below:  Is it officially supported (by Dell or VMware) to use different HW between Management domain and VI Workload domains? That is:

-- If the customer would like to deploy VCF3.7 on VxRail for management domain, can he use ReadyNode for VI workload domains?

-- If the customer would like to deploy VCF3.7 on VxRail for management domain and VI workload domain 1, can he use ReadyNode for for any new VI workload domains in the future (like: used ReadyNode for VI workload domain2)?

-- If the customer would like to deploy VCF3.7 on ReadyNode for management domain, can he use VxRail for VI workload domains?

-- If the customer would like to deploy VCF3.7 on ReadyNode for management domain and VI workload domain 1, can he use VxRail for for any new VI workload domains in the future (like: used VxRail for VI workload domain2)?

If the answer is yes for any of above questions, is there any official document/certification-matrix that we can show to prove this?

Thanks so much and Best Regards!

-- Victor

[frank_wegner]

You cannot mix VxRail nodes and Ready Nodes in the same installation. The answer is "no" to all your questions.

[KrishSivakumar]

Victor,

We have supported mixed mode deployments in a vSAN ready mode only deployment mode for a while.

Given the advancements in capabilities such as automated HW inventory and firmware upgrades that VCF on VxRail has, the customer will end up with an unbalanced user experience in mixing a VxRail environment with a vSAN ready node environment. Hence it is NOT supported currently.

We would be interested in knowing the “why” here on your customer’s interest so that we can develop a position for the future if/when we need to look into this kind of mixed mode.

[victorzhanglian]

Thanks a lot, Frank!

[victorzhanglian]

Hi Krish,

Thanks a lot for your answer!

We are aligning with Dell-EMC in an account, and we are proposing VCF on VxRail. So far, the customer are very interested in our combined solution.  However, since the VxRail is much much more expensive than ReadyNode, the customer have some concern: 

-- For long-term:  the customer does have significant expansion requirement for VCF, expanding current workload domains (for OA systems and production systems) as well as creating new workload domains (like: for testing env and for Horizon VDI env) , however, due to the budget constraint, the customer can not commit to always purchase VxRail in the future, also they do not think some kinds of workload are costly worthy to use VxRail, so they want to know whether the mixed mode deployments is possible: use VxRail for some WLD to hold their critical systems, while use ReadyNode for other WLDs to hold less-critical systems and testing env.

-- So this leads to their short-term concern:  depending on whether stretched cluster is used, we are proposing 16/32 C VCF and "8(=4 for MD, 4 for WLD) or 16(=8 for MD, 8 for WLD, with stretched cluster)" VxRails for the current project.  If the above (long-term) mixed deployment mode is not supported, the customer have to re-think whether it is worthy to purchase 4-8 expensive VxRail for just setting up a VCF management domain to manage VxRails WLDs ONLY, and they will have to purchase another 16C VCF + 8 ReadyNode hosts for another VCF management domain to manage ReadyNode WLDs ONLY. ==> That is, 32 C VCF + 8 VxRails + 8 ReadyNodes in total for 2 different management domains, the customer does think this costs too much for just management. So they are re-balancing whether to downgrade SW from VCF to VCloud+NSX or to downgrade HW from VxRail to ReadyNode.

-- Regarding "the unbalanced user experience in mixing a VxRail environment with a vSAN ready node environment":  for your consideration, from some point of view, this is apparently an important selling point for VxRail against ReadyNode.

Thanks and Best Regards

-- Victor