Item: Scale Computing Platform
Rating: 5
Author: Jason Grilo

Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We started working with a client that recently deployed a 4 node SCALE HC3 cluster. Our role was to help transition them from VMware/HyperV VM's to be on Scale HC3 instead.

It is being used now for 90% of all services/vms within the company. They still have a couple physical servers due to the complexity of moving those to Scale Computing HC3, this in addition to using the volume of storage they have on the physical servers.

The main business problem it addressed was stability and simplifying the environment. The HC3 cluster gives them the stability and redundancy they needed to ensure they have great uptime!

Pros and Cons

Pros

Simplifying building and running a Hypervisor Cluster for redundancy and uptime.
Fast deployment/snapshotting
Great technical support, really fast.

Cons

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.

Support Rating

All my interactions thus far have been really good. Fast chat support and phone support at a moment's notice. I know our client contact has had phone calls after hours in more emergency moments with little to no pain or frustrations. Some advanced things you want to be done on your Scale HC3 will require a support ticket but we understand why.

Return on Investment

The company will not need to purchase new hardware for 5 years or as long as Scale will support the nodes.
The yearly software/maintenance costs are high and after a couple years running we may consider looking at another direction
ROI on needing a tier 3 tech on staff is good. The cluster just works and requires little babysitting.

Alternatives Considered

hyperv and VMware ESXi

HC3 is powerful and user friendly but as an experienced tech I do much some of the power features we have in the VMWare/HyperV world.

Likelihood to Recommend

We would recommend a customer look at Scale HC3 if they want a simple/fast way to deploy a clustered environment. The price point on a Scale Computing HC3 cluster isn't very appealing compared to a HyperV cluster build with a SAN, but we understand the power behind the all-in-one approach of Scale HC3.

Comments

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Manish Ahuja
commented 6 years ago
Jason, Thank you for your candid feedback! We heard all the things you said there - Here is a fix to your "Expanding volumes is cumbersome (have to clone the vm and make the drive bigger)", which is available in HyperCore version 8.5 https://www.scalecomputing.com/blog/live-disk-expansion-on-hc3-available-now We on the product management team would love to chat with you more about your other requests. Some of your requests are already on the roadmap and will arrive soon in future releases. We routinely run 45 minute sessions with our current customers to see if there are any pain points or changes they would like to recommend to us for future releases. Please reach out to us at pm at scalecomputing dot com to set up some time.

Scale HC3 First Impressions