We performed a comparison between Scale Computing HC3 and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"The ability for us to manage all of our nodes from the same console makes systems administration very easy."
"High Availability is the best feature of product."
"I've had to open a few support cases over the years due to administrator errors, and the support received was top-notch."
"The license price is one of the cheapest in the market."
"The most valuable feature is the reliable storage replication, which enables me to create a robust infrastructure to run our business."
"This has helped to improve the reliability of service and operation in all departments, without having to stop in case of emergency situations."
"The product only requires two VMWare ESXi host servers versus three host servers for VMware's comparable solution."
"Virtualizing data infrastructure with StarWind Virtual SAN improves efficiency and reduces operational costs."
"The product's initial setup phase is too easy."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The most valuable feature of Scale Computing HC3 is if one of the devices fails, you won't even notice, the service maintains operation. The customers don't have to waste two, or three days on delays. Additionally, you do not have to waste time with recovery software, it is a lot easier."
"The solution is scalable."
"The most valuable features are the appliance-type feel and that you don't need additional licenses as everything is built-in."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the nice GUI."
"I rate Scale Computing support 10 out of 10. They're accessible and responsive."
"I like that Scale Computing HCR is slimmed down and gives me the features I need and not features that I don't need."
"It has a single pane of glass for management and operational control, which is the most valuable feature. The integrated storage is also valuable."
"One of the valuable features of vSAN is it has a universal type of technology that allows you to deploy it on any server or hardware. Competitors, such as Nutanix, provides the AOS and can be deployed only on certified hardware. For vSAN, it does not require any kind of certified hardware."
"We can scale it very easily for a test environment. We were able to segment our DMZ so it wasn't connected to anything, which we really liked."
"We don't have to order a storage system, we can just use whatever we have on hand and roll it into our virtualization system."
"vSAN is scalable for us. If any additional capacity needs to be included, we just add to the host and configure the vSAN cluster."
"VMware vSAN has greatly reduced refresh spending."
"I like the orchestration feature."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads."
"Regular updates to the software are required, and subtle design changes would be welcome."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"The most disappointing side of the application is the free edition. There used to be GUI attached. That has recently changed to only CLI management of the application."
"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline."
"This product would benefit from having automated alerting functionality."
"Scale Computing HC3 said in an announcement they were going to integrate with a backup service which would be good. If they could do this it would be beneficial."
"The product could use a better control center."
"The snapshot technology takes up 500 times more space compared to other solutions."
"I've had so many issues with the sales team when I was looking to make some improvements, and improve the performance. They would create so many excuses to force me to buy new nodes all the time and not let me add more memory to each node."
"On the fly, you cannot do anything on Scale Computing HC3, though it is a very rarely needed area."
"Scale HC3 improvements would involve literally fixing up the replication."
"The product struggles to cope with bigger workloads. In the next release, I'd like some backup solutions to be added."
"I would like bigger clusters with more than eight nodes."
"Integration could be better."
"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good. From a scalability point of view, scaling the storage from network or compute should be easier. It is again all around the cost, and it would be good if it was easier to scale your storage separately from your compute."
"vSAN does not have online dedup. When opening the inline dedupe, the performance will be lower than off inline."
"I would have liked it to have been more scalable. It's scalable but not as much as, for example, the ScaleIO systems were or the Kaminario"
"The only negative point relates to the licensing. If you want multiple, different servers, it costs money, but you have all the capacity for vSAN. You do not reach the data, but the processor arrays and the current architecture."
"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."
"They can package it in a way that is specific to the hardware infrastructure and the hardware platform. It should stay fairly up to date with the drivers and the manufacturer issues. The problem with uncoupling the proprietary technology and component capabilities is that by uncoupling them, you run into some concerns or challenges over the poor performance model. These concerns really come when you start talking about high performance, high bandwidth, and high availability types of environments. While vSAN is a leader, in a critical view, it is not about being cost-effective. It is more about the immediate impact of money loss to the business in critical applications where we want to maintain a continuous operational 59 model. It is, however, good for QA/QC tasks. I don't necessarily know how it works in regards to VDI or virtual desktop infrastructure."
"The platform's cost affects the business. This particular area needs improvement."
Scale Computing HC3 is ranked 19th in HCI with 8 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 2nd in HCI with 227 reviews. Scale Computing HC3 is rated 7.8, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Scale Computing HC3 writes "A reliable stripped-down solution that comes with excellent support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Very stable, easy to set up, and easy to use". Scale Computing HC3 is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), VxRail, Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure, HPE SimpliVity and Dell PowerFlex, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Pure Storage FlashArray. See our Scale Computing HC3 vs. VMware vSAN report.
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