Item: Scale Computing Platform
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Scale has been used in our environment to replace VMware. We decided to go with Scale because of the cost and the ease of use. All of our Server Infrastructure sits in Scale, and we also use a Secondary cluster at an offsite location for DR. This allows us to no longer have to support a Data Center full of physical servers or to pay obscene licensing fees for VMware, NetApp, and our Cisco UCS cluster.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Snapshots between clusters is fast, and functions without notice.
Management of all VMs through a single pane of glass in a web browser is very convenient.
Cloning machines from a "Golden" template is extremely quick and easy.

Cons

Scale could improve when it comes to increasing Virtual Disk size. Instead of having to create a second disk and then convert them into dynamic disks in Windows applications.
Allowing more than 4 HDDs to be assigned to a machine is also a pain point, as we have some DB servers that require at least 4 HDDs to function properly.
Making migration from a standard vmdk file easier than the current method would also be a good way to improve. Paying for Carbonite licensing is not something feasible for all organizations, and the other method is not guaranteed to work and can be quite tricky also.

Support Rating

Honestly, we have not had to deal much with Scale Computing Support, as the setup and the usage of Scale is pretty straight forward. Even most novice systems analysts or infrastructure specialists can easily navigate and configure infrastructure with ease in Scale. We have only needed to contact support maybe two times, and both times they resolved our issues pretty rapidly.

Alternatives Considered

VMware ESXi, VMware vCenter Server and Microsoft Azure

We did not evaluate any other Hyper-Converged solutions, but we previously used VMware vCenter, vSphere, ESXi and we piloted Microsoft Azure. All of them had higher costs and recurring costs that were not necessarily associated with Scale. We explored staying with VMware and also a couple of cloud solutions for migrating our data center, and none were as good of a fit as Scale was.

Likelihood to Recommend

Scale is well suited if you are looking to slim down a NOC or data center environment with large numbers of physical machines, to decrease the need for manually updating or upgrading machines on a regular basis. It also is well suited if you're looking for a way to escape the licensing costs associated with products like VMware. Also, if you cannot afford the ingress/egress fees of a Cloud solution, this also provides a reasonable alternative.

Comments

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Manish Ahuja
commented 6 years ago
Thank you for your candid feedback! We heard all the things you said there - Here is a fix to your "Scale could improve when it comes to increasing Virtual Disk size. Instead of having to create a second disk and then convert them into dynamic disks in Windows applications.", which is available in HyperCore version 8.5 https://www.scalecomputing.com/blog/live-disk-expansion-on-hc3-available-now About "Allowing more than 4 HDDs to be assigned to a machine is also a pain point, as we have some DB servers that require at least 4 HDDs to function properly" our current limit is 26, but if I've misunderstood the comment, I'd love to chat with you. 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 vs. VMware