HC3, a small business hyper-converged solution.
June 26, 2017
HC3, a small business hyper-converged solution.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3
Our Scale HC3 cluster is our main server unit for our company. It hosts almost all of our network services, including AD, FTP, IIS (Website), file sharing and more. The biggest business problems that it addresses are, since we don't have a dedicated IT team, the simplicity to manage everything is great, and offsite replication is a breeze. I don't have to worry about losing any critical data.
- Setting up a cluster is very simple. The interface is intuitive and does not require being a system expert to run.
- Managing VMs and settings is easy. An admin just needs to login to one of the local nodes, and they have access to view status, setting, and even remote into all installed VMs.
- Redundancy. In the HC3 setup, there are three nodes that connect through a back plane. If one node goes down, it's simple to spin up a lost VM on another node to continue running business.
- It does not offer the same level of logical networking, like that of VMware.
- We have had issues with some software not being able to activate because of the virtual environment.
- We have to run a separate hardware device for network license dongles.
Our whole business depends on the HC3 cluster working. Currently, the most critical apps that we run, are a suite of home built modules for interfacing with our ERP system. Just the other day, we started running out of resources with our VM, and in a matter of about 2 minutes, I was able to go in and allocate more resources to eliminate any problems.
- Unfortunately, I was not working here when our HC3 system was purchased and installed. I did however assist in the migration of servers. I don't have hard numbers, but I know that support costs have dropped significantly, because the hardware that we are running on reliable, and predictable.
- Our previous server was a stand alone box, and we had to have an online backup solution. Now, our entire cluster is synchronized to an identical offsite cluster, and we don't have to pay for the monthly costs for the backup.
I have some limited exposure to using VMware ESXi while in school. Scale is not as robust and powerful as VMware, but it makes up for it in simplicity and usability.