Dell VxRail vs. SANsymphony vs. Scale Computing Platform

As Dell EMC VxRail comes as pre-built, the deployment process is simple and easy. It is possible to scale out easily and will get support from the vendor instantly. As it is a Hyperconverged Infrastructure and it is also the integration of Dell EMC hardware and Vmware, the flexibility that VxRail provides is effective. An organization that is looking for all in one place like data management, network management, Integration, and backup software ecosystem can go for this product.

Incentivized

Now that you have virtualized your server's CPU and memory resources, you should look to do the same for your storage. Separation of hardware and software has many added benefits not only for CPUs and memory but for storage as well. Without this solution, we would not have been able to afford black-box type SANs at every location. This allowed us to virtualize over 90% of the server environment saving costs and power consumption/cooling and provides all the features costly black-box SANs, including true-HA (which most SAN vendors don't have). Migration from variant SAN storage and using mixed back-end storage solutions is as easier than ever before because the storage being virtualized.

Incentivized

Scale is best suited to environments that do not have excessive external or proprietary peripherals. Integrating with tape drive backups or robot tape libraries can be problematic. The most effective use of Scale systems is for companies running multiple instances of the same operating system. The hypervisor's code/file-sharing nature does an excellent job managing new instances while keeping the increase in storage to a minimum.

• VxRail gives us a standard, predictable, unit of scale and purchase.
• Infrastructure maintenance and upgrades are much easier than on a traditional infrastructure stack.
• Performance tuning is much easier and more straightforward than on a traditional infrastructure stack

Incentivized

• Fast pools should go to your most used data, and not static files.
• Redundancy is a must for all aspects of our IT jobs. Who wants to explain when there's no data?
• Works on Windows server 2012/2016 much better. Solid stability.

• Simplicity - I do not have to create storage buckets or micromanage anything.
• Efficiency - Lower power use since moving to a hyperconverged environment.
• Scalability - Adding additional hardware is easy, and increasing things like the amount of RAM or number of cores is easy.

Incentivized

• The software release cycle is slow compared to general release of software. Particularly with VMware based releases.

Incentivized

• Our needs are very small when compared to what this product can do. We don't use all of what it is capable of doing. Honestly, I have no cons.

Incentivized

• Dedicated Lights-Out Solution for low-end systems
• Ability to replace smaller storage drives with larger ones, rather than requiring the addition of an entire node for storage increases
• Different UI views for VMs: ability to minimize certain groups and have that persist through log-ins

I'm currently in the process of renewing my support.

Incentivized

Since I have had no issues with downtime; easier management of my cluster and the ability to lower the number of devices in my Infrastructure, I will gladly renew my support contract with Scale Computing HC3 and upgrade my equipment with them when it comes time for it.

Incentivized

Everything you need to do is point-and-click easy. If you are the kind of admin who wants to edit every config file and endlessly customize your environment, then Scale may not be for you. On the other hand, if you just want it to work really well, and do what they told you it will do, then Scale is the ideal system.

Incentivized

Never had an outage or an error. Once a hard drive failed, but Scale kept on working flawlessly without interruption.

Incentivized

Performance has been just as outstanding as reliability. I have never experienced delays in any aspect of usage.

Incentivized

In the 3 years I have been running this, I have contacted support around 4 or 5 times and that was for minor questions with exception of one time when I was performing an update on the system. And in that one time, they were very timely in assisting me with correcting the problem. Top notch customer support!

Incentivized

They are very knowledgeable about their own products and hardware addressing my concerns or issues very quickly and on the first contact. Calls concerning VMware migrations and Acronis backup took a little more time for more complicated issues, but the Scale Computing Platform techs were diligent to stay on top of issues until they were resolved. Most of my issues have been with the initial setup/migration.

Incentivized

I did not do in-person training.

Incentivized

Because Scale is so simple, the training is just as quick and easy.

Incentivized

The implementation was very easy. We had Scale support on standby and they were ready and eager to help if needed. The process went so fast the employees in the organization did not even know it was done.

Incentivized

All of these solutions scored very close together in our testing. Nutanix actually was the highest scoring in ease-of-use, but the integration with Vmware and the pricepoint led us to choose VxRail.

Incentivized

DataCore is far easier to manage as well as deal with when it comes to hardware (as DataCore works with any hardware). It also seems way more affordable.

Incentivized

We previously used Microsoft Hyper V and VMWare and, before that, a room for single-purpose servers. My satisfaction with Scale is because it is a more straightforward product to install and use; it has incredible speed and reliability. In the past, getting support from Microsoft was labor intensive, and with VMWare, there was a language accent barrier.

Incentivized

HC3 is one of the best products I have purchased for our district. It is unbelievably reliable to the point that they shoot themselves in the foot on support contracts.

Incentivized

• We were able to exponentially reduce the cost spending to buy different components.
• As it has VMWare integration, possible to work on different operating systems.
• Automation of IT operations helped the colleagues to work on different manual tasks.

Incentivized

• More uptime - Typical SANs have redundant controllers, redundant power supply's and can make the drives redundant by leveraging RAID-0, 5, 6, and 10. The claim to be HA but they are not. That is because if I spay water all over them or catch the SAN on fire, the storage will go down. With DataCore's solution we have identical systems (maybe even at different datacenters connected with long-haul-fiber) including duplicate storage. So one side of the solution can totally be taken offline by water, fire, etc. and the other side will remain up providing true-HA storage. Because of this, we can upgrade the SANs during the day and still keep storage services running (zero-downtime).
• Lower Costs - Ability to use 3rd party hardware which lowers the costs, not only for the initial investment but as storage capacity grows.
• All the features one can want - High Availability, Thin Provisioning, Asynchronous and Synchronous mirroring/replication, snap-shotting, continues data protection, deduplication, storage reporting, trending with graphs, centralized console for easier management and many more.

Incentivized

• With the high cost of the leading competitor the savings starts day one and saves every year after.
• Scale can be administered by a tier one technician so cost of labor is reduced.
• If there is a problem like a cyber attack, the savings kick in with the least amount of downtime.

Incentivized