Item: Scale Computing Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Joshua Clark

Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

HC3 is running almost the entirety of our server workload. The IT department (2 employees) are really the only direct users.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Spooling up a new virtual machine is crazy easy. Our setup for our 4-server infrastructure was done (OS install and configuration included) inside of 2 hours! Granularity, speed, and ease of use make for a very potent combination.
Monitoring and managing from the HC3 console is excellent. The intuitive interface has just the right amount of detail. Changes - from changing a backup/replication schedule to adding a new drive to a VM - are done in a snap.
Rolling updates are awesome.

Cons

The snapshot scheduling interface could use a bit of work to become as intuitive as the rest of HC3. The granularity is beautiful, as is the ability to make live changes, but it took a bit of time to understand how to create a nightly *and* hourly schedule for the same machine.

And now we come to a US-based, quick-to-respond, confident, professional support team.
Their assistance during initial setup was patient and informative. Their training is excellent. Our couple of support incidents in the first 2 months (involving things like cluster notifications we simply didn't understand yet) were handled quickly and very satisfactorily.

Return on Investment

With our hyperconverged, node-based solution, we don't see a need to examine hardware or hypervisors at any time in the foreseeable future. Nor do we find ourselves worrying about imminent hardware deterioration. These are massive weights off the server administrator's mind.
Our Senior Sys Analyst has the objective of "leaving this place in such good shape that you could run it all by yourself." HC3 has been a measurable and significant step toward that end.

Alternatives Considered

VMware ESXi and Hyper-V

Scale took their goal of targeting small-to-medium businesses and made an awesome product out of it. The big dogs certainly have quality solutions for virtual server administration; however, they lack the single-minded focus on that issue. Enter Scale's HC3. Not an OS manufacturer, not an early VM implementation, a purpose-built, scale-able, easy-to-work-with solution.

Likelihood to Recommend

Small-to-medium businesses need Scale. The ability to add compute/storage/everything nodes that are 1 rack unit high is fantastic. We went into our purchase with the intention of 1 3-node cluster. Scale's pricing and features were great enough that we instead purchased 4 nodes (1 3-node cluster and 1 1-node cluster) and have a disaster and recovery solution ready to go. This is alongside our confidence that we can add a new node if we need more capacity/compute or if the machines just need a refresh down the road.

Meanwhile, server administration ticks along in the virtual sphere. Creating, moving, monitoring the VMs is very easy to do. What used to be a remote connection to resource monitor is now a glance at the HC3 console.

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Scale's cracked it. Here's a quality product that fits just right.