I mentioned in this post that we just passed the one year anniversary of VxRail, and it is cooking.  8,000+ nodes.  100K cores.   65+ PBs of storage.   70+ countries.    And we’re just getting started.  

We’ve resolved some of the “we can’t ship them fast enough” issues.   Believe it or not, we still have some configurations only available in 14 countries and not available in fed.  On it – global availability is soon.   We’re working on the “we can’t install them fast enough” (backlog) issues ourselves and with our partners.   It’s been amazing even with all those challenges – people like the formula.    And now, like all successful products we have our first major “everyone deploy this right now patch”.

VxRail customers – read this and follow.

If you go to the VxRail support page: http://www.emc.com/vxrailsupport, you will see this in the “Advisory” section.

There is also a formal ETA (EMC Technical Advisory – suppose this needs to become a “DETA”):

ETA 496692: VxRail: Upgrade VxRail systems running version 3.5 or 4.0.x to VxRail version 4.0.132 to incorporate VMware ESXi 6.0, Patch U3 ESXi 600-201702201, which addresses potential data unavailability or performance issues.

This is important enough that we are also issuing an FCO (Field Change Order).   This means that we will immediately change every one leaving the factory, every one that gets installed, and engage with each customer to make sure they upgrade.   It’s important.

We work to make sure that the VMware team and our VxRail/VxRack SDDC teams work as one (they are one).   The goal of that team is to have THE BEST HCI Appliances (VxRail) and Rack Scale Systems (VxRack SDDC) for customers who have standardized on VMware.   It’s not for everyone (some want “heterogenous HCI offers” like Dell EMC XC and Dell EMC VxRack FLEX) – but customers want to know we’re tight.   We are – we work furiously to be near-synchronous and plan many, many quarters in advance.   The team is ONE TEAM.    Amongst other fixes in VxRail 4.0.132, there are critical performance improvements and DU fixes due to the fact that the update rolls up vSAN 6.0u3.

Beautiful thing about HCI is updating is cake.  Any customers running 4.0 with Enterprise licensing don’t need any help – they can simply do it themselves – and that’s the majority of customers.  

If you are running older versions, or have Standard edition licensing (this has to do with dVS vs. the standard vSwitch) – just contact Dell EMC Support, who will help you.

If you want more details (again, there’s more in 4.0.132 than just the vSAN update, but that’s the key piece behind the urgency), it’s available through VMware KB article vSAN performance enhancements delivered with vSphere 6.0 Update 3.

Additional information on fixes and enhancements in vSphere or vSAN can be found at:

Refer to the following VMware KB articles for information on issues referred to in this ETA.

Have you updated?  How did it go?   What (as always) can we do better?