Scale Computing Platform vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

Scale Computing Platform

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Scale Computing Platform	Score 8.0 out of 10	Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)	Scale Computing offers edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions for customers around the globe. Scale Computing HyperCore software promises to eliminate traditional virtualization software, disaster recovery software, servers, and shared storage, replacing these with a fully integrated, highly available system for running applications. The vendor says that, using patented HyperCore™ technology, the SC//HyperCore self-healing platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and…	$249 per year per core
StarWind HCA	Score 9.1 out of 10	N/A	The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution designed to reduce application downtime on a reasonable budget.	N/A

Pricing

Scale Computing Platform

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)

Editions & Modules

Standard: $249
per year per core
Professional: $312
per year per core
Professional Essentials: $5,600
one-time fee

No answers on this topic

Offerings

Pricing Offerings
Scale Computing Platform	StarWind HCA
Free Trial
Yes	No
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No	No

Entry-level Setup Fee

Optional

No setup fee

Additional Details

Pricing shown in U.S. Dollar. Pricing for other regions available on request.

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More Pricing Information

Community Pulse
	Scale Computing Platform	StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Considered Both Products	Scale Computing Platform Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform Scale is much less expensive than VMWare and much more user-friendly than Linux. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform The scale is as robust as VMware's but needs more vendor support, such as VEEAM, for backup. Scale overall costs caused us to move to the platform to reduce our overall costs from hardware and maintenance costs. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform I have found Scale Computing Platform to be a lot simpler. I don't need to have a vSphere server running. I don't have to worry about my predecessor leaving my SAN carved up into small buckets, etc. I also don't need hearing protection when I am in the server room now, so … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform I used VMware when it first came out and for several years after that but then took a break from it for years. When I came back, it was way too complicated and ultimately was too much work to learn and make useful in our environment. Scale Computing Platform was so attractive … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform These other alternatives are much more expensive and lack the ease of use that Scale Computing Platform provides. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform I'm fairly well versed in traditional VMWare installations on a variety of hardware, and even HP's first attempts at hyperconverged infrastructure. Scale Computing Platform is much easier to implement than any of those. 3 1U machines, no external storage, no SAN switch to … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform We used a mixture of VMWare and stand-alone servers prior to moving to the Scale Computing Platform. After the initial investment, this has lowered our cost to maintain our server environment. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform VM management is easier and faster. Snapshot management is easier and faster. User accounts are simpler to manage (though less granular). Basic alerts are easier to setup, though VMWare has a more granular approach. Updates to the Scale Computing Platform itself is so much … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform Proxmox VE, Azure VMware Solution, Azure VM Image Builder and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Incentivized Helpful? BO Bob OKeefe Director of Technologies Chose Scale Computing Platform We previously used Microsoft Hyper V and VMWare and, before that, a room for single-purpose servers. My satisfaction with Scale is because it is a more straightforward product to install and use; it has incredible speed and reliability. In the past, getting support from … Incentivized Helpful? CC Carlos Coque System Administrator Chose Scale Computing Platform We ended up choosing Scale Computing Platform 4 years ago because that had better pricing than the other players and would offer everything we elected as pre-requisite for our system to work. Today, after several years using their system with no major issues, we can say it was … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform This does everything I need with an on-prem server setup for virtual machines. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform We evaluated HP, VMware and Dell. These systems were all outside our budget (very substantially, in some cases) or required more management to deploy than Scale Computing Platform. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform Even though SCP uses parts of KVM, their approach is an engineers dream: you order, you deploy, you are productive. oVirt is also a very sophisticated product, but the learning curve for us was a bit steep Incentivized Helpful? KC KC Casto Sr. Network Admin Chose Scale Computing Platform Scale has all the required features for failover and system availability that any other product has at a better price point. User interface is much easier to understand and is not cluttered with things you don't need. Incentivized Helpful? Syed Fahad Hussain IT Busniess Partner_HR Chose Scale Computing Platform Scale computing platform fix all our problem that's one shop solution for us. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform Under 10 nodes and less than 2 sites, I would rather sell and support Scale. It's just as fast as any other HCI and more stable then VXRail. It's easier to setup and deploy, and get VM's running, and replicating between clusters. The only reason I would not consider Scale … Incentivized Helpful? Alois Höller CIO (Chief Information Officer) Chose Scale Computing Platform VMware ESXi Incentivized Helpful? JC Joao Camargo System Administrator Chose Scale Computing Platform Scale Computing Platform provided all the functionalities we needed for our daily operations, with features that align with our processes. It has the advantage of a unified software package, without add-ons, which proved to be a financial advantage during the acquisition. It … Incentivized Helpful? RI Romuel Imperial Product Sales Manager Chose Scale Computing Platform I have chosen Scale Computing Platform over the Nutanix for this reasons, #1 is the price difference between Scale Computing Platform and Nutanix. #2 is the complexity and ease of use of both solutions. In my opinion, Scale Computing Platform is way above nutanix as to the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform Overall Scale may not have the advertised name as the others but it surpasses the competition in all areas. Incentivized Helpful? Chad Mayton Network Analyst Chose Scale Computing Platform Price was outstanding, and competitive equipment wasn't an issue due to them using various brands and models. Sales reps were responsive, professional, and jumped through time hurdles with ease. Partnership with Acronis is a huge benefit, and the Carbonite license to move … Incentivized Helpful? SF Sara Fair Information Technology Manager Chose Scale Computing Platform Easier to use, better performance. Incentivized Helpful? Rob Honma CTO Chose Scale Computing Platform Cheaper, better, us-based support. Easier Administration. Lacks 3rd party backup and disaster recovery (bare-metal) A lot of people just have never heard of Scale Computing Platform so it's tough to figure out what the best on-prem, cloud-based DR services to use. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose Scale Computing Platform I have used both Hyper-V and VMWare. I continue to run a Hyper-V cluster and think it's great. More work to setup than the Scale nodes. VMWare is too expensive for education and not worth the time in my opinion. Incentivized Helpful?	StarWind HCA DB Dominic Bolger Head of IT Chose StarWind HCA In terms of features its not quite were Nutanix is as the market leader, but It stacks up well against HPE Simplivity and Azure Stack HCI. If you want to go down the Edge route and you are an MS shop then there is potential to still do this with StarWind HyperConverged … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA VMware ESXi, VMware vSphere and Proxmox VE Incentivized Helpful? JB Josh Bowen IT Enterprise Engineer Chose StarWind HCA As a school district, price is generally what it always comes down to for us. In this case with StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA), it is nice to not only find a very cost-effective solution but also one that still maintains a very high level of performance. We have been … Incentivized Helpful? TW Thomas Weil Network System Administrator Chose StarWind HCA Thanks to the finished hardware concept, the HCA is quickly ready for use and requires less configuration effort.The high speed and low failure rate are unbeatable in comparison to the virtual SAN.After a detailed examination, the costs balance each other out. In my opinion, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA Scale seemed like a good solution also. The problem from my side was how different the end result would be from our current environment. Scale uses it's own proprietary hypervisor, so no VMware. This would save on licenses but would require a new set of skills and possibly a … Incentivized Helpful? DC Daniel Chapman Information Technology Director Chose StarWind HCA We looked at Scale Computing as another option that was more expensive. There may have been a couple more bells and whistles but for our organization and pricepoint, Starwind fit the bill. With Scale your needed three nodes and with StarWind only 2. Also, StarWind offered … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) offers a product that is comparable to other high-quality systems but at a much more attractive price. Other providers are not so transparent and want to sell hardware for an expensive service. You have to be active yourself and make … Incentivized Helpful? Mikel Reber IT Manager Chose StarWind HCA Honestly using Starwind was our first jump into Clusterd services. We utilized standalone business grade hardware/software prior to moving to them. It was a great migration. Everything wen't smooth, support was great, the hardware is great, and performance is perfect. If you're … Incentivized Helpful? Nick Casagrande Director of Information Technology Chose StarWind HCA vmware vsan, nutanix Incentivized Helpful? Dan Reynolds Senior System Administrator Chose StarWind HCA Because I was using StarWind VSAN previously I had no intention at looking at other products. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) is a complete different beast to storage solution such as dell Equallogic PS Series equipment as it allows for all storage to be housed locally to the processing server, having less kit to have to maintain in turn using less power and … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA StarWind provided the best value for money against the other solutions we looked at, while providing all the functionality we needed. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA Unfortunately, I haven't used any others but I am pretty happy with StarWind. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA Scale was a proprietary SAN software/hardware and outrageously high priced. The StarWind HyperConverged Appliance was just Dell servers with VMWare ESXi Hypervisor installed running two Windows Servers virtual machines where the StarWind SAN software is installed on. The only … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA StarWind is a major player in this space and competes at every level. The one place that shoots them to the top of my list is their AMAZING technical support. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA Main reason for swapping away from VMware was cost. Our servers at the point of swapping away from VMware were already old so performance wasn't a consideration. We wanted to have something that Microsoft already provided so being able to leverage HyperV was a solid sell for us. Incentivized Helpful? Mike Struck DIrector of IT Chose StarWind HCA We looked at some tradtional solutions from HP and Dell along with Nutanix. StarWind had the best solution and price overall. Incentivized Helpful? CM Carl Marshall Network Administrator Chose StarWind HCA I didn't spend a lot of time looking at other solutions. I did check out Dell's VxRail offerings, but didn't want to switch from Hyper-V to VMWare. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA Not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, as one is used as a general NAS type array, but we have had multiple drives out in our EMC product over the same course of life as the StawWind HCAs, which have had zero failures. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA StarWind HyperConverged Appliance was the only option that offered the performance, reliability, and high availability that we were looking for. It's also the solution that is tailored for small organizations and removes a lot of the complexities and extra components needed to … Incentivized Helpful? PT Paul Thacker Network & Information Systems Engineer Chose StarWind HCA We evaluated both of these systems and obtained quotes for comparison. Unfortunately both were way out of budget. StarWind however was well within budget! I have also used Nutanix, and the complexity of the management and the setup of the nodes is way more difficult to set up … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA The price, StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) had a much more attractive price. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Anonymous Chose StarWind HCA They offer the same core functions as them but with a much better price and with the ability to supply hardware, "software" and support. Incentivized Helpful? CM Charles Marcus I.T. Director Chose StarWind HCA In our simple two-host environment, StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA) won out hands down in cost, and while I had no prior experience with the technology, I have been extremely pleased with the result. I wouldn't hesitate to go with them again in the future, although our … Incentivized Helpful? BM Brendan McEnnerney Information Technology Manager Chose StarWind HCA I've never used a Scale appliance, but I've researched them and talked to their sales team and engineers. I decided to go with StarWind vs Scale largely because of price, but I also wanted to use Hyper-V and didn't really want to go with a proprietary hypervisor, which is what … Incentivized Helpful?

Best Alternatives
	Scale Computing Platform	StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Small Businesses	StarWind HCA Score 9.1 out of 10	No answers on this topic
Medium-sized Companies	StarWind HCA Score 9.1 out of 10	Scale Computing Platform Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises	Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure Score 8.3 out of 10	Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure Score 8.3 out of 10
All Alternatives	View all alternatives	View all alternatives

User Ratings
	Scale Computing Platform	StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Likelihood to Recommend	9.9 (0 ratings)	8.4 (0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	9.4 (0 ratings)	8.2 (0 ratings)
Usability	7.5 (0 ratings)	7.3 (0 ratings)
Availability	9.1 (0 ratings)	9.7 (0 ratings)
Performance	9.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Support Rating	9.1 (0 ratings)	9.5 (0 ratings)
In-Person Training	1.0 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Online Training	9.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Implementation Rating	9.1 (0 ratings)	7.3 (0 ratings)
Configurability	9.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	9.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	9.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	9.1 (0 ratings)	- (0 ratings)

User Testimonials
	Scale Computing Platform	StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA)
Likelihood to Recommend	Scale is best suited to environments that do not have excessive external or proprietary peripherals. Integrating with tape drive backups or robot tape libraries can be problematic. The most effective use of Scale systems is for companies running multiple instances of the same operating system. The hypervisor's code/file-sharing nature does an excellent job managing new instances while keeping the increase in storage to a minimum. Verified User Anonymous Read full review	As a nonprofit, we needed a virtualization platform that was reliable, cost effective, and simple to administer. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance checked all the boxes for us. We went with their refurbished models to lower the cost, and they've been rock solid. We were able to simplify our environment and the platform has been so reliable that I really don't have to think about it. This has been great for me as the sole sysadmin. There are a lot of pieces to manage, and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance have allowed me to focus less on the platform and more on the VM's themselves and the other pieces of our network environment. I think as long as you get the "right size" of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance that this platform could work well for many organizations. Incentivized RB Ryan Butler Senior System Administrator Read full review
Pros	Simplicity - I do not have to create storage buckets or micromanage anything. Efficiency - Lower power use since moving to a hyperconverged environment. Scalability - Adding additional hardware is easy, and increasing things like the amount of RAM or number of cores is easy. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	It is extremely easy to set up, it comes with most options pre-configured for you. But the support group will walk through your entire setup and migration. It is monitored by StarWind 24x7. Instead of issues being reactive with the monitoring I'm hoping things will be more proactive. The performance has been outstanding. I think disk was our main limiting factor with our hold hardware. Incentivized Dan Reynolds Senior System Administrator Read full review
Cons	Display the IP address of the node on which the VM is running on the Devices (gear icon) tab. This would allow me to manage my Microsoft license easier. During the on-boarding I missed the step to install the Scale Computing Platform tools, and we didn't notice this until I had issues with backups. It would be helpful if some kind of alert notification would display on a VM card if the tools were not installed. Add a new health or diagnostics tab that would display alerts, diagnostic tools, performance concerns or pattern anomalies. Some kind of email/alert when a disk reaches near capacity Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	Since Hyper-V Failover Clusters require Cluster Shared Volumes, the appliances have to be configured to access their local storage through an iSCSI connection. It adds a small amount of overhead, but is still much faster than an actual SAN. ProActive Support is sometimes a little too much. We were having issues with our Backup/DR software that was generating errors in the appliances' event logs, and we had a new series of emails from StarWind every morning until they were sorted out. Lead time on receiving the appliances was pretty long. Dell provides the hardware, so their delays are StarWind's delays as well. Each appliance has to be able to be able to support all of the VMs' storage/compute needs, so enough disk space needs to be purchased to house all the storage needs on each appliance. If you require 10TB of storage before taking a RAID into account, you would need to purchase 20TB of storage. CM Carl Marshall Network Administrator Read full review
Likelihood to Renew	I'm on the fence about renewing the support contract. The reliability of the HC3 makes it difficult to spend the cost of the renewal which is higher than the costs prior to Scale. I'm convinced if we were a larger district that the savings would be tremendous and I wouldn't hesitate to renew. In our specific situation, it may be more feasible to pay per incident. Incentivized Mark Simmons Director Of Technology Read full review	The hardware appliance convinced me. It is also good to use as a product in the box.Experience of the speed and security of the storage and the data on the storage is important.Installation is relatively easy and support is supportive. You are not left alone.Therefore a clear recommendation Incentivized TW Thomas Weil Network System Administrator Read full review
Usability	Everything you need to do is point-and-click easy. If you are the kind of admin who wants to edit every config file and endlessly customize your environment, then Scale may not be for you. On the other hand, if you just want it to work really well, and do what they told you it will do, then Scale is the ideal system. Incentivized David Roden Director Of Technology Read full review	Overall, the appliance is versatile. It covers the adaptation to all current hypervisors and can be addressed via different protocols. This prepares you for a wide range of uses.Rack mounting is also well thought out. And last but not least, apart from the technical performance, it is also an eye-catcher. Incentivized TW Thomas Weil Network System Administrator Read full review
Reliability and Availability	Never had an outage or an error. Once a hard drive failed, but Scale kept on working flawlessly without interruption. Incentivized Mark Simmons Director Of Technology Read full review	Working with the support team has been great. Connecting with somebody during and after business hours has been smooth, and they have always been responsive and professional. I don't have to wait very long to hear back from them when either sending out an email with a question or inquiry or when calling after business hours when we had to shutdown and bring back up the servers due to hurricanes here in Florida. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
Performance	Performance has been just as outstanding as reliability. I have never experienced delays in any aspect of usage. Incentivized Mark Simmons Director Of Technology Read full review	No answers on this topic
Support Rating	We had one need for support post-setup, and the person who answered the phone was the support person I needed. No transfer, no level one, and our accents were similar enough that we understood each other easily. The problem was actually in my switch, not with Scale, but the support person still assisted me and got the entire cluster up and running again in under 30 minutes. They are truly a partner not just a vendor. Incentivized BO Bob OKeefe Director of Technologies Read full review	StarWind's proactive support will notify us of any non-responsive issues that they may see on their end. Thankfully, no serious issues with the HCA's have occurred but several times network connectivity was lost to the HCAs and StarWind's proactive support notified us. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
In-Person Training	I did not do in-person training. Incentivized Mark Simmons Director Of Technology Read full review	No answers on this topic
Online Training	Because Scale is so simple, the training is just as quick and easy. Incentivized Mark Simmons Director Of Technology Read full review	No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating	The implementation was very easy. We had Scale support on standby and they were ready and eager to help if needed. The process went so fast the employees in the organization did not even know it was done. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	The old saying: Preparation is everything.It should be ensured in advance that the operating system is up-to-date and therefore suitable for the appliance.The recommended network adapters should also be used in the network and the firewall rules adjusted.If this is planned in advance and everything is prepared, then the installation can be carried out relatively quickly.The manuals and the StarWind website are also a very good help. Incentivized TW Thomas Weil Network System Administrator Read full review
Alternatives Considered	As mentioned previously, not having to worry about the compatibility between your hardware, hypervisor, and VM OS is a great help. On the downside, there is less ability to get deep in the weeds with your own system. Much of the Scale HyperCore OS is locked down intentionally, which prevents technical users from having much insight on broad error messages without support intervention. SW Seth Wheeler Systems Administrator I Read full review	Honestly using Starwind was our first jump into Clusterd services. We utilized standalone business grade hardware/software prior to moving to them. It was a great migration. Everything wen't smooth, support was great, the hardware is great, and performance is perfect. If you're hesitant, don't be. If you have worries, drop them. It'll be fine :) Mikel Reber IT Manager Read full review
Scalability	HC3 is one of the best products I have purchased for our district. It is unbelievably reliable to the point that they shoot themselves in the foot on support contracts. Incentivized Mark Simmons Director Of Technology Read full review	No answers on this topic
Return on Investment	With the high cost of the leading competitor the savings starts day one and saves every year after. Scale can be administered by a tier one technician so cost of labor is reduced. If there is a problem like a cyber attack, the savings kick in with the least amount of downtime. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review	StarWind came in much lower than competitors, so this was great. We chose to get a fully SSD system and performance was more than enough. The best impact was the ease of management. Only need to manage one product and one vendor. That is great. Incentivized Verified User Anonymous Read full review
ScreenShots	Scale Computing Platform Screenshots