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We are looking to move from a 2 HP Server/MSA Hyper-V solution which the hardware needs replacing to an HC3 HC2000. Our Microsoft licensing is also up for renewal. Anyone have any pros / cons to share with me?

I see some 2013 posts, but no recent posts.

Thanks in advance.

@Scale_Computing

15 Spice ups
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We’ve been using our 4 node HC3 cluster now for over a year now and are very happy with it. No VMware licensing involved, and no need to manually balance the VM servers across the nodes.

Our old hosts were ready for a refresh, our SAN was EOL and we were unable to get support any longer for it, and to top it off, our VMware Enterprise licensing was up for renewal. Our backup software was also up for renewal, but that’s another story.

The transition from VMware to Scale was simple, quick, and without issue. All in all we were very happy with the ease of it all and the fact we didn’t need hand holding to get it setup was a bonus. Scale even includes a nice screwdriver with each node!

Highly recommended!

8 Spice ups
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Was lack of VMware tax a deal breaker for you?

P.S. Just curious what would be the giveaway you;d consider as good replacement for the screwdriver in every cluster box?

3 Spice ups
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Not having to pay the VMware maintenance fees was a considerable savings. Had we decided to continue with a more traditional virtual environment, we would have paid it. Our policy here is to purchase maintenance for everything we use in production.
The screwdriver included in the node boxes is a nice bit of swag. If Scale were to replace it, a Mag light might be a nice choice!

5 Spice ups
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We are running a Scale HC3 and we love it. Super easy to use, tons of power and everything is supported from top to bottom.

6 Spice ups
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Last year, I was looking at another Dell R720 to eliminate the single point of failure in our Hyper-V environment as we only had 1 physical host. I priced out a Dell, along with everything needed to setup HA and failover. I also priced out several other options, including a Scale HC3 cluster. We were also looking for some performance improvement for our file server VM, as well as moving our backups from our office in San Ramon to a colo facility.

We are a small but growing company, I’m the sole infrastructure support, and with all the projects going on, I don’t have a lot of time to devote to micro managing the environment, which is what appealed to me about the Scale HC3 solution.

After pricing things out, we were able to purchase a primary Scale HC3 cluster, and a secondary HC3 cluster the Primary replicates to that is now located at an off-site data center (part of our backup/DR project) for just a bit more than the additional Dell server, and shared storage. (To be fair, the price of the Hyper-V solution included consultant time to come in and get the HA and Failover setup).

Once I had the nodes and switches setup and cabled into the network, it took only 2 hours to get the nodes initialized, the cluster initialized, and our first VM (Fresh install of Windows Server 2012 R2). up and running.

And once we got the secondary cluster up, and a few hardware issues resolved, it just works. Our file server performance was noticeably improved, replication to the secondary cluster is smooth, I’ve added more server VMs and 5 Win 7 workstation VMs. It doesn’t require a lot of handholding, and the most work I do is logging into the console to watch the replications take place, and no alerts, unless we lose the connection the the secondary site.

Their tech support is very good. The only issue I’ve run into was when adding more drive space to several very large drives. They way they currently do it, it does take quite a lot of time, as they have to clone and copy, but they are working on a faster process that we can do from the console.

Definitely worth looking into, especially if you don’t have a lot of time to manage your virtual environment. I love it as well.

8 Spice ups
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Dennis,

I don’t know if you’ve seen but they’ve got fully integrated backups with scheduling about to be available too :slight_smile: It’s not available yet in a public release, but it is just around the corner.

6 Spice ups
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Cool, I’ll have to check that out!

2 Spice ups
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Scale HC3 is a nice and well-rounded option. Are you considering alternatives, though? We have a Hyper-V based appliance, which is very native to the one you know

Pros:

  • By default has preinstalled Hyper-V server, so Microsoft licensing is not obligatory.
  • Single point of support for everything
  • Well rounded specs, providing a balance of performance and redundancy
  • StarWind doing the clustering and caching, 5nine managing the VMs and Veeam handling the backup

Cons would depend on having more details about the environment in question

Adding some documents:

1 Spice up
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Absolutely! Most other guys enjoy OEM-ed or bundled options from industry leaders and Scale comes ups with a whole stack written for themselves and by themselves. 100% guaranteed it’s tested option!

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We’re using a 3rd party for backups, StorageCraft, both to local and to the cloud with our Scale Cluster. No complaints so far. We will be doing a DR test soon, so we will find out just how well it works.

2 Spice ups
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Thanks for everyone’s input. Got some great references from SCALE and we are moving to their platform.

4 Spice ups
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Awesome, looking forward to hearing your experiences with it. Ours has been great.

4 Spice ups
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We are mostly migrated to Scale. Has anyone determined how to let SpiceWorks inventory the hardware? Thanks,

Brian

1 Spice up
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Is it agent;less or you have some reasonable amount of VMs where you can run agents?

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Why would you want to? Is there value to that?

Like any hardware, to investory it you need root access. It’s Linux on the managment console, so you would need to get root access via SSH. Scale doesn’t normally give that out, it is not meant to be used that way.

Spiceworks will not get much info as the filesystem for example, doesn’t use the VFS so it will report all kinds of funky, incorrect data.

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You can use Scale’s built-in log viewer or conditions viewer to see anything necessary. You also have to manually go in to check for updates (I saw one today and the update was non-disruptive). SpiceWorks really doesn’t need to see anything on the Scale infrastructure.

2 Spice ups
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Just to have a complete inventory of all my hardware in one place. Since SW and Scale have a partnership, I figured it could be done.

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I did the update yesterday. Worked great.

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Scale, like many other vendors have representatives on SpiceWorks - doesn’t mean that they are in bed with each other (from a technical point of view, that is).

2 Spice ups