The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
With a Dell/HP/Sun Micro or most systems, I can buy parts through a third party supplier.
Maybe you are not aware that Scale is 100% Dell enterprise hardware? All stock (very specific parts, but all stock.) Even the firmware is Dell stock, just very tightly version controlled. Our cluster, for example, is Dell R430 nodes.
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But, in that same vein, how do you get Dell parts? There is only one vendor, Dell. You might be able to find third party components, but mostly you are just talking about "different Dell stores." It's still Dell as the supplier. If Dell stock runs out, that impacts all Dells everywhere.
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@scottalanmiller said
Maybe you are not aware that Scale is 100% Dell enterprise hardware?
No. Because they don't say it anywhere on their marketing. So it looks like a vendor lock in magic box with software only they know the ins and outs of.
There's too much "black magic" speak in Scale's marketing. "Our Hyper-core HC3 amazing thing will..." - Yes but a few more facts would be helpful.
@scottalanmiller said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
But, in that same vein, how do you get Dell parts? There is only one vendor, Dell.
Sure but Dell are not the only vendor for Servers in the world.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
@scottalanmiller said
Maybe you are not aware that Scale is 100% Dell enterprise hardware?
No. Because they don't say it anywhere on their marketing. So it looks like a vendor lock in magic box with software only they know the ins and outs of.
I feel like that's a weird thing to market, but I could see some value there. But I don't think any reasonable customer is really worried about getting third party parts - buying into ANY system like this (I have an article planned around this) means, 100%, that you are buying into trust and reliance on their system. Same as any enterprise SAN, any hyperconverged solution, any NAS, etc. If you are thinking about third party parts, you are missing the goals. That's not how these systems work. Is it a downside? Yes. Is it also the selling point? Yes.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
Sure but Dell are not the only vendor for Servers in the world.
And... like I said, Scale isn't either. So if that is an okay answer for Dell, it is for Scale too.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
There's too much "black magic" speak in Scale's marketing. "Our Hyper-core HC3 amazing thing will..." - Yes but a few more facts would be helpful.
Maybe we've seen different marketing. It was very clear that it was all standard Dell hardware the first time that I looked at Scale, long before using one. I never thought of that as being hidden in any way. Not that they promoted it, it's an appliance and what's under the hood isn't relevant, but it was at least well known. Maybe it was an assumption that that information was common, but it was pretty common when I first was introduced to it.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
@scottalanmiller said
Maybe you are not aware that Scale is 100% Dell enterprise hardware?
No. Because they don't say it anywhere on their marketing. So it looks like a vendor lock in magic box with software only they know the ins and outs of.
I feel like that's a weird thing to market, but I could see some value there. But I don't think any reasonable customer is really worried about getting third party parts
I'm not talking about third party, I'm talking about the process of getting parts.
About 5 minutes from me, There is a warehouse, not owned by Dell or HP, they sell genuine parts from both vendors and they have lines from other vendors as well.
Where can I buy parts for Scale systems? Can I keep spares on the shelf in the event of a failure ala hard drives?
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@scottalanmiller said
Maybe it was an assumption that that information was common, but it was pretty common when I first was introduced to it.
As the outsider looking in. None of their docs, marketing or website says that.
Now, I could "Look" at the box and go "That's a Dell chassis" and assume...but assumptions are dangerous. It could be a re-badged Acer under the hood.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
Where can I buy parts for Scale systems? Can I keep spares on the shelf in the event of a failure ala hard drives?
Sure. You could order them from Scale and have spares on hand. I feel like doing that, though, means that you are attempting to overcompensate for an underspecced system, though. Under what condition do you feel having spare hard drives on the shelf would be necessary since the system is designed to protect you in such a way that you should not want to do that?
I feel like you are overthinking this... approaching it like you are a consultant and want to provide the mitigation that you get by buying a box like this (same with EMC or 3PAR systems.) You simply don't do that. The system is designed to protect you as is, you just spec it correctly and let it do its job. There are very special circumstances (if you were putting this on a cruise ship or Antarctica) but in general, it is designed specifically to make you not have to consider these things.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
@scottalanmiller said
Maybe it was an assumption that that information was common, but it was pretty common when I first was introduced to it.
As the outsider looking in. None of their docs, marketing or website says that.
Now, I could "Look" at the box and go "That's a Dell chassis" and assume...but assumptions are dangerous. It could be a re-badged Acer under the hood.
Well advertising it would certainly encourage people to stop thinking of this as a management black box and make them start trying to do things that they should not be doing with an appliance. So I would not expect them to "push" the info, that would result in people trying to work around the closed system nature.
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@scottalanmiller said
You simply don't do that. The system is designed to protect you as is, you just spec it correctly and let it do its job.
Yes and as I said earlier 3 times, I understand that model and after looking at it it's a great looking product.
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@scottalanmiller said
I feel like you are overthinking this... approaching it like you are a consultant and want to provide the mitigation..
Actually no.
If I was an MSP, I'd love to do that. All the monthly fees, call out charges, oh revenues!
I want to recommend a box, put it in, have a happy customer and never touch it again but it needs to be bullet proof to do that.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
@scottalanmiller said
You simply don't do that. The system is designed to protect you as is, you just spec it correctly and let it do its job.
Yes and as I said earlier 3 times, I understand that model and after looking at it it's a great looking product.
I think the problem is.... they can't address your "other" concerns without breaking that model themselves. If you talk to them, you can definitely find out what the hardware is (they talk about it in the speccing process), especially as drives have to be chosen for capacity and performance needs, and you can certainly ask to get spares or whatever. That's all just "ask your rep" kind of stuff, not things to have on their website, I don't think. You would feel that it was weird if you saw it there, I think.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
@scottalanmiller said
I feel like you are overthinking this... approaching it like you are a consultant and want to provide the mitigation..
Actually no.
If I was an MSP, I'd love to do that. All the monthly fees, call out charges, oh revenues!
I want to recommend a box, put it in, have a happy customer and never touch it again but it needs to be bullet proof to do that.
Right, and the questions that you are asking are not about if it is bulletproof or not, but how you can work around it not being bulletproof. That's why I feel that you are overthinking it. If it is bulletproof and their support works, you don't care if they are on Dell or a whitebox or Acer, you don't care about third party suppliers and you don't need spares.
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Imagine having this same conversation about an EMC VMAX or an HPE 3PAR... it would feel silly. And in those cases you know that they are on proprietary everything and that you cannot get parts at the local supplier. Yet you assume that they are bulletproof (and they are, literally in the case of the 3PAR... they've actually put an artillery round through it.) When dealing with enterprise appliances, you care about the quality of the support, the reliability of the product.... but you don't care about mitigating those things should that fail.
And in the case of 3PAR or EMC, if they just disappeared you'd be in horrific shape. But with the Scale, you just take a backup, restore to another box and away you go. The lock in risk is fractional in comparison.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Imagine having this same conversation about an EMC VMAX or an HPE 3PAR... it would feel silly.
I have this conversation about any and every product I look at. Assumptions are stupid.
Take Webroot. The conversation was exactly the same, what ifs, ands or buts. Now it's my favourite endpoint product but there is a level of scepticism the product (and the people promoting it) had to pass.
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If I was building and supporting my own XenServer cluster, then the questions that you are asking are exactly what you would need to ask... where do I get my parts, how quick will it be, have I set it up to be reliable enough until the parts arrive and so forth. That makes total sense.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
@scottalanmiller said:
Imagine having this same conversation about an EMC VMAX or an HPE 3PAR... it would feel silly.
I have this conversation about any and every product I look at. Assumptions are stupid.
Take Webroot. The conversation was exactly the same, what ifs, ands or buts. Now it's my favourite endpoint product but there is a level of scepticism the product (and the people promoting it) had to pass.
You are missing my point, I think. My point is that the questions that you are asking are not sceptical ones, but unrelated ones. That's the difference. You aren't asking sceptical questions about if the product is bulletproof, which is what you were actually concerned about, right? You are asking questions based on the assumption that it is not going to be bulletproof and how will you work around a system you are expecting to fail when the entire point of the product is to rely on that system.
No matter what the answers are to your questions, they should not change your faith in the system itself, hence why I am confused by them being asked.
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But the problem is, a Scale system is too expensive to take a leap of faith with, you need to get it right the first time. It's not like I'm buying a toy tablet I can mess around with or a demo or some software.
There's only 1 place in the UK I can even see a Scale system at the moment. It's a risky risky thing to even be thinking about looking into them. They've got maybe 12 installs when I last checked. Versus how many non Scale deployments.
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@Breffni-Potter said in The Four Things That You Lose with Scale Computing HC3:
They've got maybe 12 installs when I last checked. Versus how many non Scale deployments.
12? I know more than that many customers personally. They have lots of deployments.