4 | vCenter Planning Guide
© 2019 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
VxRail Appliances
VxRail was jointly developed by Dell EMC and VMware and is the only fully integrated, pre-configured, and
tested HCI appliance powered by VMware Virtual SAN (vSAN). Managed through the vCenter Server interface,
VxRail provides a familiar vSphere experience that enables streamlined deployment and the ability to extend
the use of existing IT tools and processes.
VxRail Appliances are managed using VxRail Manager software for hardware and appliance maintenance
tasks as well as software lifecycle management. VxRail Manager incorporates ESRS and other serviceability
capabilities. Additionally, VxRail Appliances are discoverable and visible in Dell EMC Vision™ Intelligent
Operations.
The VxRail software bundle is preloaded and licensed onto hardware and consists of the following
components (specific software versions not shown):
•
VxRail Manager
•
VMware vCenter Server
•
VMware vRealize Log Insight™
1
•
VMware vSAN™
•
EMC Secure Remote Support (ESRS)/VE
Also preloaded is VMware vSphere®; however, licenses are required and can be purchased through Dell EMC,
VMware or your preferred VMware reseller partner.
The VxRail Clusters also include licenses for software that can be downloaded, installed and configured:
•
Dell EMC Recover Point for Virtual Machines (RP4VM) - 15 Full Licenses per G-series appliance chassis
or 5 Full Licenses per all other single node VxRail series appliances
VxRail is fully compatible with other software in the VMware ecosystem, including VMware NSX. Refer to the
VMware Product Interoperability Matrices
for specific versions of NSX supported on specific versions of
vSphere.
VxRail vCenter Server Options
The initial releases of VxRail deployed a vCenter Server Appliance on the VxRail Appliance. The license for
this vCenter Server Appliance was included with VxRail. This vCenter Server deployment has been referred to
as “internal” vCenter Server or “
embedded
” vCenter S
erver. For consistency, the term used throughout this
guide will be
VxRail vCenter Server.
VxRail orchestrates the deployment and lifecycle management of the
VxRail vCenter Server
. This
VxRail vCenter Server
can only manage the VxRail Cluster on which it is deployed.
Beginning with release 3.5, a VxRail Appliance can optionally join a compatible vCenter Server environment,
hosted outside of the VxRail Cluster. This allows for a central vCenter Server instance to manage multiple
VxRail Clusters. Each VxRail environment appears within vCenter Server as a cluster of hosts configured with
a vSAN datastore. This has been referred
to “external” vCenter Server or “existing” vCenter Server. For
consistency, the term used throughout this guide will be
Customer Supplied vCenter Server
. This instance of
vCenter Server must exist before you deploy the VxRail Appliance and requires a separate customer provided
license. The Customer is responsible for deployment, configuration and lifecycle management of the
Customer
Supplied vCenter Server.
1
Log Insight is a configuration option only if
VxRail vCenter Server
is used.
For day-to-day VM management, customers manage the VMware stack on the VxRail Appliance
directly through vCenter Server.
