Item: Scale Computing Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Kelly Mumm

Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Scale to host our Windows and Linux Server VM environment.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Scale is easy to use.
Scale has a single web-based interface that allows you to manage all the operations of your VM.
Tech support at Scale is responsive and very knowledgeable.

Cons

Some of the advanced features of the KVM Hyper-visor are not available.
Memory overcommit would be nice.
The console for the VMs is very basic. I.E. no copy/paste

The support from implementation to daily questions is great. We struggled to get a few VMs brought over from our previous Xen server environment. Scale's support spent multiple days on the phone with me diving pretty deep into the Windows OS to resolve issues that had nothing to do with Scale.

Return on Investment

We now have one server provider.
Scale was cheaper then cloud services after about the 18 month mark.
Scale allows us to easily add new server VMs without a new hardware purchase.

Alternatives Considered

Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer)

We previously used XenServer and had constant issues with reliability and management of the VMs. It was a pain dealing with three different entities when an issue came up. We had the server vendor, Citrix, and the NAS vendor. When there was an incompatibility issue or an issue with an upgrade I would spend days trying to track down what entity could help even though we used Citrix approved hardware. Now, I make one call to Scale for any issue.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you are a small to medium-sized business that wants a dead simple, redundant setup for a VM environment, then Scale is great. The fact that you can drop in a new node at any time to grow the cluster is great. If you are a larger organization that requires more advanced or exotic hyper-visor settings, then Scale may not be for you.

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

Dumped Xen for Scale