SOUTH EASTON, MA – October 01, 2026 – PRESSADVANTAGE –
One year after VxRail 7.0 reached end of life on September 30, 2025, many long-running clusters are still on it. Maven IT Solutions has published a guide on VxRail cluster scalability and node expansion rules that explains why the maximum node count Dell advertises for a VxRail cluster is not always the number that matters to an IT team already running one.
Standard VxRail clusters scale from three to 64 nodes in single-node increments. Stretched clusters, which split a deployment across two physical sites for disaster recovery, cap at 20 nodes per site plus a witness host at a third location, for 41 hosts total. A two-node edge cluster is a separate case: it does not expand incrementally, and converting one to a standard three-node cluster requires VxRail software version 7.0.130 or later.
Adding a node follows a consistent sequence: the new node is racked, discovered by VxRail Manager, imaged to match the cluster’s running software version, and joined to vCenter, after which its drives are absorbed into the shared vSAN datastore without interrupting existing workloads. vSAN then rebalances data across the enlarged datastore, a background process that can consume meaningful network and disk I/O on a cluster already running close to capacity.
Earlier VxRail generations were organized into six series built for different workload profiles: E Series for general-purpose workloads, P Series for performance-intensive databases, V Series for GPU-equipped graphics and AI inference, S Series for storage-dense archives and analytics, G Series for compute-dense deployments, and D Series for ruggedized edge deployments. The current generation carries a different naming pattern that reads similarly but means something else. VE-660 and VP-760, built on the R660 and R760 PowerEdge platforms, are the direct successors to the E and P Series, and VS-760 is the storage-dense model built on the same chassis as VP-760.
“Dell stopped supporting VxRail 7.0 a year ago. A lot of clusters are still on it. Most teams find out what that means the day they try to add a node,” said Brendan Finley, Managing Partner and Founder of Maven IT Solutions.
Maven advises customers to settle on a stable software version before moving off Dell support. Teams that expect to add nodes should complete the move to VxRail 8.0 while still under Dell support. Clusters already sized for their remaining life can stay on their current version.
Several rules stop an expansion. Processor families cannot mix; Intel nodes join Intel clusters and AMD nodes join AMD clusters. Storage configurations cannot mix either, so a hybrid node cannot join an all-flash or all-NVMe cluster. New nodes must also run a software version compatible with the cluster. Under current Broadcom licensing, vSAN storage capacity beyond the per-core entitlement is now billed per tebibyte, adding a cost to drive expansion that earlier licensing models did not carry.
The guide also covers dynamic nodes, which run no local vSAN storage and instead connect to external Dell storage systems such as PowerStore or PowerFlex, letting compute and storage scale on separate schedules, along with satellite nodes for single-site edge deployments managed centrally through VxRail Manager.
About Maven IT Solutions
Maven IT Solutions provides third-party hardware support for enterprise storage and hyperconverged infrastructure, including Dell VxRail. The company helps organizations plan cluster sizing and support transitions, and keeps existing environments stable after OEM support ends. Its resource library includes guides on VxRail architecture, high availability design, and total cost of ownership.
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For more information about MAVEN IT SOLUTIONS, INC., contact the company here:
MAVEN IT SOLUTIONS
Brendan Finley
(877) 245-4087
brendan@mavenitsolutions.com
24B Norfolk Ave Suite #3, South Easton, MA 02375
