Scale Computing Platform

Scale care support provides, by far, some of the best support of any issues that arise.

No downtime for Scale updates.

Migration of virtual machines and cloning machines is incredibly simple.

I'd really like an Android app where I can view the status of and manage nodes. Their GUI is perfect for this use case.

During sales, I would have liked to be up sold to SSD's in each node.

Easy to snapshot servers offsite and recover - We actually had to test this in real-time as we had a corrupted file server that had been snapshotted previously. Easy to log in and turn on the snapshot'd server, verify and re-replicate it back to replace the production server. What could have taken hours only took a few minutes.

Support - Scale has always been responsive to any questions or needs we have had and are easy to work with. We've done several os upgrades have had no issues.

Easy - it's just an easy platform to manage. Not too complicated. Visually appealing to manage through the GUI.

Using the GUI is good, however, when I have several servers on a box, it's sometimes hard to tell which node the server is connected to. It does not clearly, visibly display which node. If you hover over the node, it will give the name of the server.

Cost - very competitive on cost vs. the competition

Pre-sales support - very thorough in understanding the environment and providing assistance in right-sizing the solution

Post - sales support - very responsive with any issues

Migrating existing virtual workloads into the cluster could be easier. Relies on third-party software to work.

The main strength of the system is that the system is fault tolerant. We have had issues on one server in the HC3 cluster (it went down!), no production downtime, end users did not even know that we had issues.

The support from the ScaleComputing team has been excellent.

User interface to manage the cluster is simple, the migration from various sources (VMware, stand alone servers was simple).

Requires just common sense knowledge to manage the system.

Like to see an option to export a VM external to the cluster, like to a NAS.

Scale has focused on ease-of-management and it shows. Their UI is incredible and easily the best in the industry.

SCRIBE - the underlying storage layer is brilliant and if you are a techie, worth taking a closer look. The way SCALE has done storage for hyper-converged is very different from almost all of the other major players in a very good way. SCRIBE VM snapshots and cloning is incredible, very fast, very efficient.

Simplified licensing model - NO VMWARE - this is a big deal. Scale has built-the-entire-stack from almost the ground up. You only have one company to deal with when it comes to licensing your hyper-converged stack. Furthermore, all SCALE HC3 clusters have ALL FEATURES. There is no nickel-and-dime (and arm-n-leg) for additional functionality.

I think the company has been focused on the SMB market and as a result are not familiar with dealing with the issues and concerns of either larger companies/deployments and/or companies like ours which service larger clients. We have no tolerance for unscheduled downtime. When it comes to dealing with support they are mostly all very knowledgeable but they seem a bit green when it comes to understanding how "serious" uptime is for their customers that are running mission-critical systems.

I think the company has been focused on the SMB market, and as a result I get the impression they are not overly familiar with companies that run mixed and/or more highly-demanding workloads. We are pushing our cluster hard. We run a heavy mix of both virtualized SQL and WEB tier systems. Based on multiple interactions with the company, I don't think they have very many customers operating in this space and as a result, the platform hasn't been as well vetted based on these kinds of workloads. That said, I realize that virtualizing multiple busy database servers on a single platform is huge ask. All of the above being said... we have not had any system failures that have impacted any of our production VM's and by-and-large the platform is pretty darn solid. We are seeing some performance hits, particularly around storage, as our cluster gets more busy however we haven't done wide-spread performance testing to get an accurate measurement and I believe scribe is dynamically tiering data to keep our busiest systems running effectively. I guess I would like to just see a higher "low watermark" for storage performance on VM's.

Support is overall very responsive however in-depth issues can drag-on a bit, which is understandable.

They are still missing some features such as role-based administrative access which are important to, once again, larger companies and/or those who service larger companies.

All-in-all - Scale has historically targeted SMB - and as a result they have a ton of core strengths that are unique to their company and their product. However, in focusing on this market segment, I think they have a bit of tunnel-vision which has resulted in them missing some crucial areas for businesses that take their IT very serious because it is a critical part of their service delivery/day-to-day operations.

The scalability is amazing.

The ease of use is great.

The flexibility of the VM's helps each department on a daily basis.

I can't think of any areas where it need improvement. The system does everything we need it to do.

Single pane of glass management console with the ability to 'Tag' virtual machines into separate groups for organization, making it easy to view resource utilization and VM state. Additionally, direct in-browser remote control without the use of a third party plugin makes direct control seamless.

Quick and easy cloning of virtual machines makes life easier, providing the ability to maintain a single master template for a given class of system.

Moving a VM from one node to another is as simple as clicking Move, then selecting the target node. Because of the way Scale backend the storage for their VMs, all migrations are Live.

Support reps are very friendly, and are available at varied hours of the day, thus not limiting you to a 9-5 window if there is a problem.

On high memory nodes, the current view pane does not provide an easy means by which to view a detailed list of VMs on a given node. I'd love to see an additional view which provides detailed list of VMs per node, or something on the VM 'card' itself with the host node information.

I'd like to see the ability to control how many replica copies of data are stored on a given cluster. The ability to configure the environment so that every node has a copy of every VM's data is something that I feel would be beneficial if you have the storage.

Scale currently lack a comprehensive in-built backup solution which can communicate with external storage. The snapshot system is good, but the ability to configure an external storage point for redundancy would be appreciated.

Stability is key! The HC3 platform allows us to almost never reboot. Thanks to its Linux operating system updates are rarely needed and when they are its a snap!

Better availability than others. Scales multi layered system environment ensures that you will not be left with VM getting destroyed.

I really can't say enough great things about how their customer service! They are always available when I need them and they provide a professional and quick solution.

The GUI is great, but sometimes I find that I can't do something I wish I could. Like cancelling an export job for example.

I marvel that I can create a new VM, give it an IP address, a name, and join it to the domain all in about 10 minutes. After the first 3 or 4 VMs, I realized that I can take that freshly installed VM and just clone it to have new VMs under two minutes! I now have a VM that is strictly for cloning to make a new VM servers.

If a user accidentally deletes a file, I can clone that VM from a snapshot in about two minutes to recover the file. Or, depending on the replication schedule, I can retrieve the file from another clusters just as quickly.

The dashboard for the cluster has great gauges to show the usages of the CPUs, RAM, Disk space, and IOPS. It also has a box for each node in the cluster to show which VMs are on which node and its RAM and disk usages.

There is a tile for each VM that also has its own set of gauges to Disk, CPU, and network usage.

I like that I manage the cluster from a web browser instead of a KVM in a rack.

The gauges for the cluster could be improved. The Disk Space usage shows the total disk space before the RAID and not the actual usable amount after the RAID. The RAM cluster show a total off 188GB but show be 192GB; each cluster has 64GB of RAM and I have three clusters.

We bought two HC3 so we have DR covered with ease by Scale Snapshots and Replication.

Tech support has been phenomenal. We have only called a few times but they have always been available and were able to immediately address our issues.

While we were not making the switch for improved performance reasons, our users have noticed speed improvements across several applications.

The time that Scale spent helping us with planning and implementation has been better than we have had with other vendors and far exceded our expectations.

If I could resize drive size without a VM shut down that would be great.

Very easy to use. Intuitive and simple web-based administration interface, all the necessary features that we'd expect without any of the clutter that's irrelevant in day-to-day use.

Flexible resource allocation between nodes and easy use of available processor, memory and storage capacities. Very fast on-the-fly changes of settings. No worries about separate storage management when compared to basic virtualization solutions (not hyper-converged).

N+1 node concept provides for ultimate expansion and contraction flexibilities when designing systems, building out systems, or splitting systems.

No integrated backbone. I'd rather see a node interconnect system similar to network switch stacking (loop of directly attached Twinax cables, for example) than a requirement for multi-gigabit switches with very narrow specification guidelines due to lack of support for some industry leader products.

Manufacturer-dependent initial deployments and configurations. The customer is required to coordinate with manufacturer/vendor, which can be inconvenient to arrange.

While we have seen perfect reliability in pure storage and backup scenarios we did observe occasional "mysterious" application issues that we do not see on non-HC3 systems. So far we have been unable to better isolate problems and perform root-cause analysis but it has lead to a diminished trust and prevents us from more aggressively deploying the product.

Their raid set up is pretty neat. When a drive goes out, it permanently moves the information to another. One the drive is replaced, it builds on the new drive instead of transferring information back to the new drive.

We were able to cut our server room down from 4 racks to 2.

We were able to cut our energy consumption in half.

3 words. Redundancy, redundancy, and redundancy. Excellent setup.

There are some things on the UI that can be implemented.

Ease in creating a new virtual host. Amazingly simple for our support people to create new VMs quickly and efficiently.

Easy to manage. Everything for the cluster is on one screen and easily to read and manage.

Great support team to help us troubleshoot issues.

Easy installation.

Would love to be able to manage all my clusters from one device.

Would love to make certain changes live without having to shut down a VM.

Scale Computing provides a simple and easy to use graphical interface.

The VM export feature makes it easy to backup VM images to remote storage servers without having to use external tools.

Resource allocation to various VMs is easy and seamless using the graphical interface.

The VM Disk usage meter seems to be broken, we have an in house work around to track this.

The cluster logs could provide a little more feedback and be more verbose.

Automating VM export would also be extreamly helpful.

Simplifies deployment of a resilient virtual platform with minimal dedicated resource commitment on our part.

Excellent tech support.

Very stable environment that recovers well from unexpected system glitches.

Reverting to a previous snapshot is a bit convoluted, not as straightforward as in VMWare.

Increase granularity of visibility into VM operations - they have been adding details to the main GUI, and are making progress, but still leaves a bit to be done as far as monitoring/managing individual VMs - overall system monitoring is good, but would be more useful if we could also drill down to individual BMs.

Currently there are unexpected issues with changing networking after the system has been deployed (for example: we need to change our default gateway - same subnet, but a different IP, and under the current version, we are required to take the entire system down for that one small change. SCALE is working on a better modification policy and we are hopeful they can develop a different solution so we do not have to totally shut down the system).

Simple

Fast

Always update for better use of the HC3

UI is too simple and not always giving the right info

Possibility to have 1 main interface to manage all the Scale/cluster

Nest Virtualization

The ease of use of the Scale interface is fantastic. All the basics are within easy reach and more complex tools are readily accessible. I'm used to simple interfaces meaning limited scope and simplistic products. But the scale interface is on top of a very sophisticated and powerful system. The interface works so well it needs no training to use - having said that training always helps.

Scale's Remote replication is fantastic. Setting up and applying a schedule and setting a lifespan for the replicated images was a breeze. Initiating the replication was a single click and the replication was fast. Replicated VM's could be cloned and started in seconds. Restoring data for users was so fast my users were not ready to deal with the quick results.

Scales continually impresses me with the way the product is maturing. Their product road map is not merely a future wish list. New features are regularly being delivered and delivered on schedule.

Installation and set up is FAST. the longest part was mounting the hardware and connecting the interfaces. Scale technicians held my hand from power on to instantiating a new VM. It mas more of a formality than a necessity.

Their tech support is effective. The best I have ever seen. Their staff are astute and great communicators. Follow up is quick, and they often log in and resolve the problem without my having to generate and upload logs. They minimise my work and maximise interaction. The unusual part is how they communicate among themselves. On a single issue i spoke to multiple staff and they all were aware of case. I never had to repeat the details of the problem or the steps taken.

We have been importing all of our VM's fairly easily. There is a need for improvement with the import process for non HC3 VMs. It works but is the only poorly executed part of the HC3 environment i have come across. It's as if in the design of the product Scale only thought companies would be creating and working with new VM's., and forgot completely about migrations from other systems. HC3 easily imports and exports Scale VM's directly from the Interface in a single step. But, non HC3 images, even if they are qcow2 images just like HC3's, require a multi-step process. Having said that, the process is not complex at all. Apparently this will be corrected in a future release.

Pricing. Wow! A friend in another company opted for a competing HCI system. It took about 3 months to get the system fully installed and stable. But the ongoing costs of licensing Vmware and paying hardware maintenance have forced them to reconsider their purchase. They are desperate to cut costs and are planning to pull out VMware and go with KVM. With Scale I paid less and got at least equal performance without any configuration headaches.

That raises another point. The HC3 system is fully integrated all in one solution. All the components needed for HCI, Virtualisation, VM Management, Integrated and distributed storage, and redundancy are included and fully supported. One neck to wring.

As mentioned, Scale needs to refine the rocess used for importing non-native VM's. It is a multi step process that "fools" HC3 into thinking it a native VM. All of our VMs, except for one, are KVM. I can't comment on importing other image formats.

HC3 has all the basics covered and does a fantastic job under the sheets. but is lagging in more modern features .Scale needs to provide applications under HC3. A "cloud" type storage service that VM's could tap into directly. A database service which would reduce the need for us to maintain database servers. A containerisation service would be an excellent addition. Currently we have to run containers in a VM, which is not optimal.

Missing is a simple way of upgrading storage. Disks are hot swappable., but upgrading storage requires a lot of work.

Simple UI

Reduced complexity

Serial Drivers

Recognize USB

Very simple to use and requires minimal training to operate.

Streamlined upgrade process that can update entire site with click of button.

Shared storage is present across Scale Computing HC3 system has allowed us to limit investment in expensive SAN storage systems and add resources on demand.

Increased support with VMWare and Hyper-V for customers that are migrating from these systems to Scale over time.

More robust backup support with vendors already in the industry. Very little support with existing players in this market.

Snapshots are very good and give you peace of mind that you can go back to as many points in time as you wish

Incredibly easy to set up initially

Support line very good

Ability to increase disk sizes of VMs "on the fly"

You currently need to shut down the server and clone before you can

Being able to plug in USB drive and get files off

Ease of installation. Took us longer to rack and cable than initialize the nodes. I was adding my first system 30 minutes after power on!

Ease of use. Being an IT generalist, building out any other similar setup would have taken longer and cost much more $$. I could have the least knowledgeable user in this office adding VM's in 5 minutes with their product!

Scale Support. A phone call away from the answers your looking for. No multi vendor support situation with Scale, they support from the hardware up the stack.

Lack of vendor backup support. Due to the APIs in use, there are no backup vendors at this time that can reach in and back up a VM. Have to use client/file level.

Little more robust on system history statistics reporting. Can't really see trending system info (past), only whats happening real time.

Easy to start up and migrate systems.

Failover capabilities.

The display of usable hard drive storage shows actual space left not the usable space.

I would like to have the ability for the snap shots to be stored on a NAS as well as on the cluster.

SCALE Computing HC3 is easy to manage

Has a great support system when needed

Provides great built in disaster recovery options

Graphics hardware to support intensive graphic oriented software

The user interface is well laid out and easy to use.

Replication is easy to set up and works particularly well.

Recovering VMs that that been replicated to storage is quick and easy.

Currently, there is not a straightforward way to add disk space to virtual machines.

With the latest release, we are having some issues with increased replication traffic to our branch DR site.

Simplifying building and running a Hypervisor Cluster for redundancy and uptime.

Fast deployment/snapshotting

Great technical support, really fast.

Expanding volumes is cumbersome (have to clone the vm and make the drive bigger)

Little support for UPS and network shutdowns

Tricky to migrate VM's to HC3 unless you use their paid software product

GUI is pretty simple and barebones, feels like it limits what you can do.