Three year review of Scale's HC3
Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3
The HC3 was implemented by a client as a company-wide infrastructure replacement for both physical systems as well as an existing VMware cluster. It replaced 7 physical servers that were quite old, and the two node VMware cluster had one host that was past it's prime. VMware needed to be upgraded, and after looking at the hardware and software costs, the HC3 was a simple decision.
- Ease of Use - the interface is simple, clean, and intuitive enough that if you have ever used any virtualization platform you really don't need any training to get going.
- Ease of Implementation - Once the hardware is mounted, a configuration was performed remotely by scale. They assisted in switch setup by providing requirements, and the cluster itself was done by a technician on the phone with you. It was really running a few commands to initialize the cluster and after that, anything that came up they took care of.
- We had a node failure, and nobody knew. The system kept chugging along without interruption (that anyone could tell). After one phone call, we had the replacement the next day. The cluster was reinitialized and everything worked without having to schedule any downtime.
- System updates are essentially a click of a button. Everything then is handled behind the scenes. I had one update timeout, and a quick call later (on a Saturday no less), it was deduced that it was a timeout issue. After adjusting the timeout, the update ran fine.
- The trade off for many of the complexities of management are taken care of behind the scenes, is that you are limited on many of the configuration options one is used to in other virtualization platforms. That is not to say it is by any means simplistic or inflexible and if you are looking for a system that does not require weeks of training and experience to manage, this is it.
- With the simplicity of the interface, troubleshooting some issues like email notifications can become difficult.
- If you have a small infrastructure that is moving into a hybrid cloud environment, it can be a bit cost prohibitive.
We've run everything from Domain Controllers, to file services to ERP systems without any issues. The fact that the cluster holds up well during a node failure has really helped, especially mission critical software such as Syspro. Reboot times are very fast on virtual systems, so even if there is a software based issue, rebooting is not the inconvenience that it used to be.
- The system has reduced downtime significantly, saving the client thousands of dollars in lost productivity.
- The reduction of power usage, although not a high dollar amount monthly, does add up to several thousand dollars over a three year period.
When the HC3 system was considered it was replacing a lot of hardware. The cost ended up being lower than all other options.