Scale Computing HC3 - Excellent and Unique Hyper-Converged Platform with a few Rough Edges
Updated December 23, 2017
Scale Computing HC3 - Excellent and Unique Hyper-Converged Platform with a few Rough Edges
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3
Scale HC3 is being used to virtualize a large portion of our physical IT stack.
We purchased it for the following reasons:
1. Simplify administration of our infrastructure.
2. Provide out-of-the box High-Availability and/or near High-Availability for critical systems
3. Decrease TCO for our physical infrastructure
4. Simplify our infrastructure by collapsing all of the requirements for a clustered virtualization solution down into one software/hardware stack, including compute, storage, and networking.
5. Decrease deployment time for new environments. Using near-instant thin-cloning we can deploy multiple systems in a very short amount of time.
6. SCALE provided a solid platform alternative to other traditional high-availability solutions, like SQL Clustering. In this case we simplify life by deploying SQL server's as stand-alone but because they are virtual and on a Hyper-Converged platform, they are HA by default. So we get a lot of the benefits of SQL clustering without the headache and complexity of actual SQL clustering.
We purchased it for the following reasons:
1. Simplify administration of our infrastructure.
2. Provide out-of-the box High-Availability and/or near High-Availability for critical systems
3. Decrease TCO for our physical infrastructure
4. Simplify our infrastructure by collapsing all of the requirements for a clustered virtualization solution down into one software/hardware stack, including compute, storage, and networking.
5. Decrease deployment time for new environments. Using near-instant thin-cloning we can deploy multiple systems in a very short amount of time.
6. SCALE provided a solid platform alternative to other traditional high-availability solutions, like SQL Clustering. In this case we simplify life by deploying SQL server's as stand-alone but because they are virtual and on a Hyper-Converged platform, they are HA by default. So we get a lot of the benefits of SQL clustering without the headache and complexity of actual SQL clustering.
- 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.
We have several applications that are "mission critical" that were candidates for more complex solutions like SQL Clustering. We opted to virtualize those on SCALE instead which was drastically easier and honestly "less fragile" because there are few "moving parts".
Scale has also decreased our dependency on more complex and typically much more expensive TCO, SAN storage.
We have drastically simplified our onsite backup and recovery by using scheduled snapshots.
Scale has also decreased our dependency on more complex and typically much more expensive TCO, SAN storage.
We have drastically simplified our onsite backup and recovery by using scheduled snapshots.
- We have virtualized ~25 systems at this point and dropped two older SAN arrays from our environment. This has drastically reduced administrative complexity in our environment.
- Things are just "more stable" - we were often putting out fires with failing hardware across multiple systems. With scale, we have one platform which is highly-redundant and this allows me to finally get some sleep at night. Sleep is priceless.
- For new projects, we have cut new environment deployment time drastically. Setting up a new hosted environment for a project used to take 2 - 4 weeks, it now takes 2 - 4 days. It also cuts down expense. When we need dedicated environments we now spin-up VM's on a platform that is already budgeted and paid for vs. having to buy new dedicated hardware.
- An Active-Passive SQL cluster with SAN storage can run anywhere from $20K (assuming you already have the SAN) --> $60k or even $100k if you need to put in the SAN and supporting infrastructure. A SCALE cluster however can support multiple SQL servers and provide almost the same level of redundancy/high-availability with drastically lower cost and complexity vs a traditional cluster.
I don't have any real-world experience with Nutanix but we did demo their product and I did a fair bit of research. I also looked heavily at other products in the hyper-converged space.
My "end of the day" analysis is that SCALE HC3 is one of the few "full stack" platforms. What I mean by that is that most other products are just some re-mix of existing storage technologies (SAN) that have been virtualized and put into the hyper-visor stack. As a result, the management of the system is fragmented. HC3 on the other hand was built "from the ground up" to be a Hyper-Converged product and as a result, everything is managed under one roof. You don't have to "worry" about 10 different components all being configured correctly to work together, SCALE is a single, unified product and that makes them different than 90% of the other players out there which are pretty much borrowing VMware and then tacking on some kind of VSAN to make a Hyper-Converged stack. This might sound intangible but it results in real-world differences in how the product works and is managed on a day-to-day basis.
My "end of the day" analysis is that SCALE HC3 is one of the few "full stack" platforms. What I mean by that is that most other products are just some re-mix of existing storage technologies (SAN) that have been virtualized and put into the hyper-visor stack. As a result, the management of the system is fragmented. HC3 on the other hand was built "from the ground up" to be a Hyper-Converged product and as a result, everything is managed under one roof. You don't have to "worry" about 10 different components all being configured correctly to work together, SCALE is a single, unified product and that makes them different than 90% of the other players out there which are pretty much borrowing VMware and then tacking on some kind of VSAN to make a Hyper-Converged stack. This might sound intangible but it results in real-world differences in how the product works and is managed on a day-to-day basis.