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Hands-Off Simplified Enterprise approach to Server Management
June 23, 2017

Hands-Off Simplified Enterprise approach to Server Management

John Brainard | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3

Due to the success of the first scale cluster installation and the ease of use and administration, we actually have two different dedicated clusters. One runs the business servers and daily operations, the other runs the core of the refinery operation servers. The Scale Platform streamlined how we handled VMs in our company. Previously there was a lot of mismatched hardware, VMWare, Hyper-V, and dedicated hardware servers. The backup solution and redundancy started becoming an issue along with heat load and just sheer hardware management. The stress of having critical 24/7 process servers running on mismatched hardware was a daily stress. Scale has removed all of that and it really does just work. Plain and simple.
  • Super simplified interface. I like to tinker around like any true IT minded person, but I don't have the time to learn all the details on all new systems we implement. I was up and running and fully knew my system in less than a day.
  • The tech and setup department knowing we are an oil refinery and rarely, if ever, get a chance for a full shutdown. We got that chance unexpectedly and they literally customized and overnighted a cluster system in 2 days. It took us less than 72 hours from initial contact to have all servers migrated and online in the new cluster. Support engineers worked with us all weekend; they were amazing. They are truly their for their customers, not just a 9-5 company.
  • The only thing I can think of, and its to their service or systems, but the cost of some small upgrades seems excessive. a simple ram upgrade to one node was between $1100 - $1500. The actual hardware cost for that is about 25-30% of that.

3 things in big bold letters as loud as I can shout it:

1. North American Technical support with people that have used and designed it

2. 72 hours turn around for build, shipping, configuration, migration, and online status

3. Engineers helped us all weekend long, into the morning hours until we were 100% status. not just online, but 100% running smooth.

The most critical thing we run here is an actual refinery. We are 24/7/365 staffed and data logging, HMI, and analytics servers MUST be online and safe running. That is what scale provides for us. A low-overhead, secure, robust system that just works.
  • The biggest thing for us was the time savings in management. There are only two IT personnel onsite and as you can image, running 30-40 servers and the users is a time consuming process. Scale takes literally all the management of hardware and servers away. The system alerts us if there are any issues and we just keep working on the business drivers rather than taking care of hardware and cluster management.

VMWare & Hyper-V while is obviously enterprise class ready, they have LOT of features. While those may be necessary in some instances, I've found we'd rather fix problems and drive business than attend to that detail of the cluster. Scale simplifies the management to use by seemingly 90%! We are in a pattern of where we don't actively monitor it anymore. It has been over a year and it alerts and lets us know if anything needs checking out.



For anyone looking to virtualize or organize their virtual environment, Scale has been amazing. The only thing we have found that we couldn't use Scale for was with VMWare specific machines. An example is a scenario we ran into during our implementation. Cisco Prime and WIFI servers run either on really expensive Cisco hardware or a VMWare based machine. I couldn't migrate that machine to scale and thus have to keep a VMWare cluster just for that. Now, that isn't Scale's fault by any means, but having the ability to have a VMWare virtual environment in Scale would open it to the world. Even if it was a Scale virtual server that hosted VMWare on it. At this time and my understanding, that isn't possible...yet!

Using Scale Computing HC3

70 - The servers are used by Account, HR, Sales, Operations, Engineering, & Maintenance.
2 - With ongoing support with Scale, you don't need much of an IT department for the cluster itself. The cluster adds almost zero load to our internal department, and in point of clarity, actually took load off from our previous VM solutions. The Scale solution is so simple to manage, you forget you are running a virtualized cluster. Just a super simple interface which gives you all the tools you need.
  • Running an oil refinery process that never shuts down.
  • Cut down on hardware complication and continual licensing costs
  • Cut down on IT department involvement in management of VM's in different enviroments
  • I absolutely love the fact that the Scale system can not only take its normal server snapshots, but can automatically send its backup to another NAS onsite all by only adding it to one naming group. Click to add the group, and boom, remote backups occurring along with snapshots.
  • Virtualize the heavy processor desktop users. Allowing Scale to absorb the process and ram costs of high demand applications will keep future IT users costs to a minimum.
A+ friendly customer support. Hands down.