Item: Scale Computing Platform
Rating: 10
Author: Todd Naveau

Overall Satisfaction with Scale Computing HC3

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is being used across the whole company and also being used by a sister company. Each company has their own HC3 system in place, and each company uses the other for Disaster Recovery.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Backups. I love how I can create multiple scheduled backups for one machine so I can have hourly, daily, and weekly backups of our SQL and then can set lower backup schedule for something as simple and the Domain Controller to once a week.
Updates. Because we have multiple nodes, we can do the updates and the machines will auto load a balance so nothing has to be down while updating.
Speed. These units are fast, like bringing up a fresh install of Windows Server 2016 in 20 minutes. Including the install! I find myself duplicating machines all the time just to run small tests because creating a duplicate only takes like 1 minute.

Cons

I did notice when we were switching from our old servers to the HC3 that the importing process was not all that easy unless you were already running on a newer hypervisor.

Support Rating

Each time I have needed their assistance I have gotten a response the same day.

Return on Investment

The response time of our internal servers has doubled, and our Public web server has increased by 45%.
Our time for managing backups has gone from 2 hours a week to 0. After the schedules are set there's no need to do anything else besides changing the schedule if your needs change.

HC3 blows XenServer out of the water. The backup process is so much easier, the interface is much easier to follow, and Scale has a built-in portal in the background to remote in and help with issues.

Likelihood to Recommend

I believe it is well suited for small to medium-sized businesses that need local servers for employees, web servers, and even FTP sites to store data. Large businesses who need Terabytes of storage for each machine to store data for thousands of employees would be able to use the units, but not to the full effect because that would leave them with no storage to run backups or Disaster Recovery.

User Experience with Scale Computing

Key Insights

Do you think Scale Computing Platform delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Scale Computing Platform's feature set?

Yes

Did Scale Computing Platform live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Scale Computing Platform go as expected?

Would you buy Scale Computing Platform again?

Yes

Usability

Runs great and it may be an OS issue and a Scale issue but wish I could add RAM on the fly.

Exceptional Examples of Scale Computing Platform Support

When I was having issues migrating from XenServer, they stayed on the phone with me for hours helping me figure out what was causing the errors on the import. They pointed me in the right direction and together we made a step by step walkthrough on this process.

Scale Computing HC3 Support

Scale Computing Platform Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Bug Resolution

Yes - I had trouble moving servers out of XenServer to HC3. We contacted support and we all worked on it until we had figured it out. I was among one of the first to make the move from XenServer to HC3, so we wrote the migration procedure as we worked on mine. There was a small bug with the XenTools coming over from XenServer, and in setting up drivers for the hard drives.

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