Hardware; Vsphere; Vmware Vcenter Server - Dell EMC VxRail Appliance Operation Manual

Hardware

The VxRail Appliance consists of nodes in a rackmount chassis. Each node has compute and
storage resources. For a list of available VxRail Appliance models, refer to the Dell EMC VxRail
website. One or more network switches (10GbE or 1GbE depending on the model), appropriate
cables, and a workstation/laptop for the user interface are also required.

vSphere

The VMware vSphere software suite delivers virtualization in a highly available, resilient, on-
demand infrastructure — making it the ideal software foundation for the VxRail Appliance. ESXi
and vCenter Server are core components of vSphere. ESXi is a hypervisor installed on a
physical VxRail server node in the factory and enables a single physical server to host multiple
logical servers or virtual machines (VMs). VMware vCenter server is the management
application for ESXi hosts and VMs.
Customers can use existing eligible vSphere licenses with their VxRail, or the licenses can be
purchased with a VxRail Appliance. This VxRail vSphere license-independent model (also
called "bring your own" or BYO vSphere License model) allows customers to leverage a wide
variety of vSphere licenses they have already purchased.
Several vSphere license editions are supported with VxRail including Enterprise+, Standard,
and ROBO editions. (vSphere Enterprise is also supported, but is no longer available from
VMware). Also supported are vSphere licenses from Horizon bundles or add-ons when the
appliance is dedicated to VDI.
If vSphere licenses need to be purchased, they can be ordered through Dell EMC, the
customer's preferred VMware channel partner, or from VMware directly. Licenses acquired
through VMware ELA, VMware partners, or Dell EMC receive single-call support from Dell EMC.

VMware vCenter Server

vCenter Server is the primary point of management for both server virtualization and vSAN
storage. A single vCenter instance can scale to enterprise levels, supporting hundreds of VxRail
nodes and thousands of virtual machines. See vCenter Server Maximums documentation from
VMware at https://docs.vmware.com/
vCenter supports a logical hierarchy of datacenters, clusters, and hosts. This hierarchy
facilitates resources being segregated by use case or lines of business, and allows resources to
move dynamically as needed. This is all done from a single intuitive interface.
vCenter Server provides VM and resource services, such as inventory service, task scheduling,
statistics logging, alarm and event management, and VM provisioning and configuration.
vCenter Server is also responsible for advanced features including:
vSphere vMotion - Enables live VM workload migration with zero downtime

 vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) - Continuously balances and optimizes VM
compute resource allocation across nodes in the cluster
7 | Dell EMC VxRail Appliance Operations Guide
© 2017 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.
for current limits.