Scale Computing Platform vs. VMware vSAN

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Scale Computing Platform
Score 9.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
Scale Computing offers edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions for customers around the globe. Scale Computing HyperCore software promises to eliminate traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these with a fully integrated, highly available system for running applications. The vendor says that, using patented HyperCore™ technology, the SC//HyperCore self-healing platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and…
$3,300
per node
VMware vSAN
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
VMware vSAN is an enterprise-class storage virtualization software that provides a simple path to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and multi cloud. VMware vSAN is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud Foundation.N/A
Pricing
Scale Computing PlatformVMware vSAN
Editions & Modules
HE151
$3,300
per node
HE501
$6,800
per node
HC1300
$11,900
per node
HC3350F
$13,400
per node
HC5450D
$26,500
per node
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Scale Computing PlatformVMware vSAN
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing shown in U.S. Dollar. Pricing for other regions available on request.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Scale Computing PlatformVMware vSAN
Considered Both Products
Scale Computing Platform
Chose Scale Computing Platform
Under 10 nodes and less than 2 sites, I would rather sell and support Scale. It's just as fast as any other HCI and more stable then VXRail. It's easier to setup and deploy, and get VM's running, and replicating between CLUSTERS. The only reason I would not consider Scale …
Chose Scale Computing Platform
Scale Computing Platform provided all the functionalities we needed for our daily operations, with features that align with our processes. It has the advantage of a unified software package, without add-ons, which proved to be a financial advantage during the acquisition. It …
Chose Scale Computing Platform
We purchased about 3 years ago. At the time the pricing of these other options was massively higher than Scale HC3. Most of the other options have steep learning curves. Nutanix like HC3 runs on a KVM architecture making it similar but other than a few bells and whistles I …
Chose Scale Computing Platform
As a long-time HPE shop, we did look at Simplivity (even knowing that HPE's lackadaisical support was likely to poison Simplivity post-acquisition), but we were very underwhelmed by the demonstrator's lack of expertise in the product, and some basic limitations surrounding the …
VMware vSAN

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Scale Computing PlatformVMware vSAN
Small Businesses
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 9.0 out of 10
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Scale Computing PlatformVMware vSAN
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(234 ratings)
8.8
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(22 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(40 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(234 ratings)
7.5
(5 ratings)
In-Person Training
1.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.1
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Scale Computing PlatformVMware vSAN
Likelihood to Recommend
Scale Computing
I would recommend it to anyone who has three or more servers. We just received another quote as I am about to deploy Scale at City Hall as well. This will replace my 8-year-old VMware cluster that hosts 20 servers.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
The product is a must for enterprise & SMB segments as this gives a good value for money and the licensing policy is very well defined and cost effective for the feature set it provides. This is very well suited for organization which have multiple brand storage systems and would like to consolidate them all together, thus providing a huge storage capacity for the organizations data growth. The product becomes less appropriate in organization where they have single storage platform as the service provider would have the ability to consilidate all the storage systems. Hence this products may be under utilized.
Read full review
Pros
Scale Computing
  • Snapshots are lean and fast, so restore time is simply amazing. When you don't have time to wait after a crypto attack to restore, I have found nothing faster!
  • Clients can never fully know their growth for years to come, and sometimes it is only a year after the original install. This is no problem we can build on to the system like Lego blocks. Just simply adding a node or two and there is no downtime!
  • There are many functions that can be done while servers are running that help to maintain the most uptime, as an example disk size on the primary disk can be expanded without shutting down the server.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • VMware runs VSAN certification programs to make sure the OEM sells validated nodes. It helps customers to select appropriate certified ready nodes like Lenovo ThinkAgile VX which comes factory configured and easy to set up.
  • Hyperconverged solutions reduce real estate space and networking costs when compare with shared storage. The host overhead also less.
  • Supports All-Flash (SATA and NVMe SSDs) and Hybrid vSAN with HDD and SSD. So customers can choose cost-effective solutions appropriate to their workloads.
  • Supports different storage policies, RAID and duplication, and compression features and it makes a complete storage solution.
Read full review
Cons
Scale Computing
  • It exposes no backup API. You have to treat VMs as physical machines, with all the drawbacks. This is a huge problem, since the official partner Acronis can't deliver. If you ever worked with Veeam you want it back very very badly.
  • Assigned RAM is used RAM. The hypervisor can't share memory or only allocate what is used etc. It's wasted RAM most of the time.
  • No logging and auditing. (There is, but not visible to the customer).
  • The GUI is quite bad. It looks like done by a designer instead of an IT expert. But it's improving constantly.
  • The company relies heavily on KVM, but seems to have no developer in the open source community. This leads to answers like "we can't do anything about QEMU drivers". Yes, you can. Have delevopers working on it.
  • You can't do basic things like list all of your VMs and see how much RAM/disk, etc. they are using (e.g. in a list view).
  • No rules on which VMs start on which nodes, which VMs to prioritize, etc.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • We were a fairly early adopter of VMware vSAN and as such experienced several growing pains.
  • We experienced a few bugs that took a few software versions upgrades to go mostly away.
  • The biggest issue we had overall was with host drivers. Even with vSAN ready node compatible hosts, you have to be very careful that the drivers for NIC and RAID controllers are right.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Scale Computing
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.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Usability
Scale Computing
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.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
Deploying and configuring VSAN is a relatively simple process for people that are already used to working in virtual environments, primarily for those that are familiar with vSphere. The compatibility of those two products is amazing. You shouldn't really encounter any issues and if you do, you surely did something wrong.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Scale Computing
Never had an outage or an error. Once a hard drive failed, but Scale kept on working flawlessly without interruption.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Performance
Scale Computing
Performance has been just as outstanding as reliability. I have never experienced delays in any aspect of usage.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Scale Computing
The support team deserves major props for how cordial and professional they were with our implementation. We were assigned a project manager and engineer. Everything was scheduled with our kick-off call, and our engineer got us up and running in no time.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
Support is (as always forVMware) top notch and easy to work with. The majority of computer companies are outsourcing their tech staff, and it seems they do as well. But their guys know the product well and are quick to respond to your ticket (if the severity is right!).
Read full review
In-Person Training
Scale Computing
I did not do in-person training.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Online Training
Scale Computing
Because Scale is so simple, the training is just as quick and easy.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Scale Computing
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.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Scale Computing
At the end of the day, and in the environment we are in, Scale just fits the bill, both price-wise and functionality-wise. Upgrading our VM environment was always a week-long process, now, it is a twenty-minute process, implementing, converting VMs, and rolling everything over to Scale was completed in less than a week's time, and that included training.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
Our VMware solution is built in-house for the organization's private application, we don't want to put our data on cloud premises. Also, vSAN is a cost-effective solution for our environment. We have done the POC with both products to understand the Flexibility, Management, and cost. After the successful POC, we have chosen the VMware vSAN.
Read full review
Scalability
Scale Computing
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.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Scale Computing
  • 0% downtime or loss of revenue due to downtime.
  • The simplicity of testing backups in a live environment in the event of a technical catastrophe.
  • Ease of mind and a lot less stress worrying about a raid system within a standalone server dying in the middle of the night.
Read full review
VMware by Broadcom
  • we have realized savings in the licensing compared to traditional storage (over $500,000 over the last 5 years)
  • we have realized ROI through efficiencies in our staff of approx $1MM (over the last 5 years)
  • also, positive impact on the time to value/speed of implementation allowed us to realize business objectives (Over $1MM of ROI)
Read full review
ScreenShots

Scale Computing Platform Screenshots

Screenshot of Scale Computing Fleet Management Dashboard - 
At-a-glance summary of the health of the fleet upon login.Screenshot of Cluster Details -
Details of a particular cluster, including health, fleet manager connectivity, nodes, and VMsScreenshot of Scale Computing Fleet Manager -
Manages an organization’s fleet of Clusters.Screenshot of Hypercore UI -
Simple Web Interface for Local Management of the Cluster and its Workloads