Scale Computing Platform vs. VMware vSAN

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.

vSAN is well suited for any application that can run in Virtual Environment. vSAN serves better for VDI, NSX, and vSphere on Cloud solutions. vSAN is a good fit for small and medium business companies. vSAN can't be a good solution where you have Oracle Solaris or IBM power systems. vSAN can't provide storage space using FCP protocol.

Incentivized

• 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

• VMware runs VSAN certification programs to make sure the OEM sells validated nodes. It helps customers to select appropriate certified ready nodes like Lenovo ThinkAgile VX which comes factory configured and easy to set up.
• Hyperconverged solutions reduce real estate space and networking costs when compare with shared storage. The host overhead also less.
• Supports All-Flash (SATA and NVMe SSDs) and Hybrid vSAN with HDD and SSD. So customers can choose cost-effective solutions appropriate to their workloads.
• Supports different storage policies, RAID and duplication, and compression features and it makes a complete storage solution.

Incentivized

• 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

• It would be nice to have fabric-based storage acceptance to disaggregate storage and expand beyond the node concept. The assumption that increased storage needs require increased compute or ram is simply not true.
• The licensing costs are high but you do get what you pay for.

Incentivized

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

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

Deploying and configuring VSAN is a relatively simple process for people that are already used to working in virtual environments, primarily for those that are familiar with vSphere. The compatibility of those two products is amazing. You shouldn't really encounter any issues and if you do, you surely did something wrong.

Incentivized

Never had an outage or an error. Once a hard drive failed, but Scale kept on working flawlessly without interruption.

Incentivized

Performance has been just as outstanding as reliability. I have never experienced delays in any aspect of usage.

Incentivized

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

Support is (as always forVMware) top notch and easy to work with. The majority of computer companies are outsourcing their tech staff, and it seems they do as well. But their guys know the product well and are quick to respond to your ticket (if the severity is right!).

Incentivized

I did not do in-person training.

Incentivized

Because Scale is so simple, the training is just as quick and easy.

Incentivized

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

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.

VMWare stand out compared to all the products. However, it is worthwhile mentioning the following products can be used to achive similar results. Hitachi Virtual Storage Systems Nutanix Cloud Infrastrucure. In case if we are using Nuatinux at the Hypervisor level then it would be recommended to use their very own product for storage virtulization even though the vendors say that all their products are cross platform supportable. However, during tests we have found high performance when using same products accross virtualization.

Incentivized

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

• 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

• The ROI for VMware vSAN seems very positive. We have yet to need to upgrade since we put it in a few years ago, but without the heavy cost of dedicated storage, we have already seen reduced hardware maintenance costs and reduced management time spent.
• With the cost of dedicated storage and its separate maintenance costs, all this is rolled back into the hosts. The hosts cost more with drives in them, but not near as much as the separate dedicated storage did.
• Before VMware vSAN, you had hosts and storage devices aging out, running out of capacity, or underperforming. With vSAN you only have to worry about the hosts.

Incentivized