Last week, we held a webinar to talk about what is new in HC3 these days. We are doing these “What’s New” webinars every six months so if you want to be informed and have the chance to ask questions to our product management team, you should attend. Today I am going to summarize some of the topics from last week’s webinar for you.

If you have been following along closely, you’ll have noticed we’ve been leaking mentions of our newest HC3 models in previous webinars.

HC1150DF

The first new model we have available is the HC1150DF, our first ALL-FLASH appliance. If your applications need screaming fast performance, you can’t get much faster than the HC1150DF. Like the HC1150D, the HC1150DF has dual processors for higher performance computing. The HC1150DF can be mixed and matched with existing HC3 product lines which allows users to dial in the exact amount of flash needed in their environment. See the latest support matrix for specifics.

HC5150D

The new HC5150D is a storage-heavy HC3 appliance with 12 drives including 3 SSDs and 9 NL-SAS drives for 3X the storage capacity of the HC1150s. It is a dual processor appliance with plenty of storage capacity to pack in the VMs. The HC5150D can be mixed and matched with other HC3 appliances including the new HC1150DF (see the latest support matrix for specifics).

There are the baseline specs and U.S. pricing. Regional pricing is available upon request. Click the image to make it a bit bigger and easier to read.

Along with these new models comes the new HyperCore version 7.3 with new features and functionality.

Storage Deduplication and Improved Detail

HyperCore 7.3 added storage deduplication to reduce the storage footprint of data stored on virtual machines. Virtual disks are deduplicated, post-process to eliminate duplicate data blocks and free up storage with minimal impact to running VMs. With deduplication, disks can hold considerably more data than previously allowed within the same physical disk capacity. Along with the deduplication, the storage details available in the HC3 Web interface have significantly improved with more information on utilization and efficiency.

Multi-Cluster Remote Management

With HyperCore 7.3, we’ve made available the ability to monitor multiple clusters within the HC3 Web Interface. The intuitive design shows the status of multiple clusters that can be local or remote to keep tabs on your entire enterprise of HC3 nodes and clusters. Whether they are single nodes in remote offices or DR targets, or multi-node clusters, the new multi-cluster view provides at-a-glance monitoring of all your HC3 assets.

Multi-User Administration and Logging

With HyperCore 7.3, we’ve introduced multi-user login and administration so you can better manage your multiple admins. Multiple users may login with their own credentials to perform their own administrative functions. Logging keeps track of administrator access to assist in management and troubleshooting.

Important note: HyperCore version 7.3 is not yet generally available, but is in restricted availability and will be made available to other HC3 users later this year.

Those were the new models and features in a nutshell. If you would like more information about what is new with HC3, you can use the links below to get access to a recording of last week’s webinar and our What’s New guide.

August 3rd Webinar Recording

What’s New in HC3 Guide

This week, on Monday, there was an alignment of the Earth, Moon, and Sun that caused a total solar eclipse across North America. Here in Indiana we didn’t get the total eclipse, but I sat on my porch and watched it with my eclipse glasses, anyway. It was pretty cool. Another thing that happened this week was a call with an IT shop that wasn’t ready to adopt hyperconvergence because of too many sunk costs. These seemingly unrelated events clicked with me on a topic I have been talking about a lot recently. When is it time to make a change.

Here is a photo of the partial eclipse peeking through the clouds, taken from southern Indiana and courtesy of Jana Bowers.

Many years ago, my best friend called me to ask for advice. He and his wife were thinking about having kids but weren’t sure if they were ready. He needed some guidance and I got the impression he was waiting for the stars or planets to align. I still don’t know why he asked me. I was not married and did not have kids at the time. I was not even close to be married or having any kids. But, I gave him the best advice I had. I told him, “You are never going to be ready. You will always be able to find a reason not to do it. So just go for it and figure it out as you go.” It seems to have been great advice because they have 2 great kids and make a great family.

The stars and planets occasionally do align and those looking up get to see some cool astronomical effects. However, if your business plans include waiting for a number of factors to align naturally before you take action, you are probably costing yourself more than you think. What makes things worse, is that many of these factors are controllable, but you might feel trapped by decisions you’ve made in the past like the sunk costs I mentioned earlier.

What is a sunk cost? It could be a number of things. It could be some equipment you purchased that has not yet been fully depreciated. It could be an employee you hired with a specific set of skills. It could be a contract you signed with a service provider to maintain some current systems. It could be a specific software solution you implemented that has proven complex enough to dictate many of your other IT solution decisions. The burden of these past decisions can make it seem impossible to change, especially when these decisions have only made your IT environment more and more complex.

Hyperconvergence takes the approach of simplifying IT infrastructure. Maybe you hired Bob because of his expert storage skills and Susan because of her expert virtualization skills. Moving to a hyperconverged infractructure (HCI) solution that simplifies both storage and virtualization will undermine your investment in Bob and Susan, right? Well, you probably also hired Bob and Susan because they were expert problem solvers and innovators, as well. They likely have the capacity to add great value beyond their initial skill sets. Instead of having to use their skills to maintain an overly complex storage and virtualization system, wouldn’t you rather they focus their energies on improving IT and business processes and implementing a better set of applications?

What about that hardware you already bought? Was it servers? Was it storage appliances? Both? It hasn’t lived out it’s useful life yet so why replace it? Well, you have to replace it eventually. Are you really getting the value out of it that you intended, or is it just another part of an overly complex architecture for which you needed to employ those experts like Bob and Susan to maintain? When you bought that hardware, you probably didn’t know how much you could potentially save by switching to HCI because HCI was still emerging in the market. Could the savings of HCI actually offset the sunk costs of the hardware even without depreciation? They very well might.

And what about that service provider you are contracted with for your IT solutions? That relationship doesn’t necessarily need to go away, but as with Bob and Susan, perhaps the focus of the work can be shifted to more productive activity than maintaining complex, expensive systems. Your service provider still wants your business, and you likely have more power than you think in dictating how their side of the service contract can be utilized more effectively for you.

Finally you may have that one software system that seems to only work with that complex IT infrastructure behind it. Is it really worth continuing to let that system drag so much complexity and cost behind it or are there alternative solutions you can look to that can be implemented in truly software-defined, virtualized environment without specialized storage, servers, or networking?

If you are waiting for all of these factors to align themselves at some point so that you can change to a simpler, more cost-effective solution that will start saving you now and in the future, you’ll likely end up continuing down the same path. Instead, you really have the ability to decide to start simplifying and saving now, forcing those other factors to align as you go forward. As for the eclipse, that happened at it’s own time and place, completely out of your control. With your IT infrastructure, you have the control over when change happens regardless of sunk costs. It’s up to you to align those factors by being bold and making simplicity and cost savings a priority over feeling trapped by past decisions.

Okay, I’m not really a doctor, but my nickname here at Scale Computing is Doctor P. Regardless, your trust is very important to me and everyone else here at Scale. We work hard to provide products like HC3 along with services and support you can trust.

Trust can be hard to quantify but I believe our ratings and reviews we receive from our users and partners are a good reflection of that trust. Having been involved for several years in the online user community of Spiceworks, we have received 49 reviews from users and partners. All 49 reviews have given Scale Computing a 5 out of 5 star rating. Those reviews are all available on Spiceworks here.

More recently, we’ve joined TrustRadius to learn how our users and partners rate us in a more comprehensive way. So far on TrustRadius, we’ve received 56 ratings and reviews. As a result of these ratings and reviews, we’ve earned an overall rating of 9.4 out of 10 on TrustRadius. Those ratings and reviews are available on TrustRadius here.

If you’re still on the fence about hyperconverged infrastructure or HC3 from Scale Computing, we welcome you to let us earn your trust. The trust and satisfaction of our users and partners is what keeps us working hard each day to keep improving our products and services. We’re committed to revolutionizing IT infrastructure with simplicity, efficiency, and lower costs of ownership. If you haven’t already, join one of our live demos to see for yourself what makes Scale Computing different.

IT departments are cost centers. Technology is necessary to do business in the 21st century economy. We accept it but we should also do our best to control our costs in acquiring the technology we need. Too often IT spending can get out of control and we end up with lots of pricey extra features and functions that we don’t really need. How does this happen so easily? Let me explain with couple metaphors.

On a hot summer day you may feel like having some ice cream to cool off. You order two scoops or your favorite flavor and the ice cream vendor asks if you would like whipped cream and a cherry on top. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. You didn’t know you needed it or even thought about it until the vendor mentioned it. It is available at no extra charge, so why not? Well, whether you get it or not, the cost is already factored into the price of the ice cream. You end up paying for it whether you use it or not.

Maybe you are just someone who lives for the whipped cream and cherry, so let me try another metaphor, the McRib. The McRib is a pork sandwich from McDonalds that has barbecue sauce and is roughly rib shaped. It seems like people love or hate the McRib but when it comes down to it, it is just a pork sandwich. I happen to like it and think it is very tasty. I have no illusions about it being equal to a slow cooked, succulent rack of ribs, but if I were hungry it meets the need. I don’t need to spend $20 on a rack of ribs every time I am hungry. I can be perfectly fine with a McRib for a few bucks.

In business expenditures, we rarely need the whipped cream and cherry or the $20 rack of ribs. Instead, we need to control costs everywhere we can to prop up the bottom line. Make sure you are looking closely at the real needs of the IT infrastructure and that you are not wasting money on unnecessary features, products, and services. Be careful though, because being frugal should not prevent you from investing in new technologies. In many cases, new technologies can be a better investment in lowering costs than holding on to older technologies.

Technology changes quickly. From mainframes to servers, from virtualization to cloud, it can be harder to change our habits and way of thinking than it can be to change our hardware and software. We’d once gotten used to the idea that IT had to be complicated and now, as traditional virtualization gives way to hyperconverged infrastructure which will give way to hybrid cloud, many struggle to adapt. Software, hardware, virtualization, and storage no longer have to be the separate, complex components they once were.

Take a good look at your current expenditures on servers, SANs, hypervisors, and especially software licensing on infrastructure and then compare to a hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) solution like HC3 from Scale Computing. Don’t buy another SAN and hypervisor, no matter how much whipped cream and cherries the vendors put on top, until you see what HCI can do and what it can save you. Take a look at how HCI is making hybrid cloud and hybrid IT more accessible to business of all sizes. That’s the only way your next IT investment story is going to have a happy ending.

Introduction

One common question we get at Scale Computing is, “Are my applications supported on HC3?” The answer to that
question, at least 99% of the time, is “Yes, the application is supported and works great on HC3.” In most cases, Scale
Computing can reference numerous HC3 users running the applications in question. There are exceptions to every rule
(such as applications that require proprietary hardware, for example), but if the application being inquired about is
designed to run on Windows or Linux and on x86/x64 platforms, then it is almost always supported.

Scale Computing tests and supports a broad range of operating systems and versions running as virtual machines on
HC3 (see Scale Computing HyperCore Support Matrix for complete details). The actual applications running in those
VM’s are generally completely transparent to the HC3 system. Occasionally when the question of support is asked to
the application vendor, the answers can vary and sometimes cause confusion. There are a number of reasons why
application vendors may waver in their support for applications on platforms like HC3 and they all need to be considered.

Applications Run on Operating Systems

Between the computing hardware and the business applications that run our industries, there lies the operating system.
Most of these applications are designed to run on Windows or Linux operating systems. A small number of these applications

are designed to work directly with specific pieces of hardware, but the majority are designed to work only with the
logical abstraction of the hardware from the operating system. In other words, the applications don’t care what kind of
processor, memory, or storage is in the physical hardware of the server, only that there is CPU, RAM, network access,
and storage available.

Application abstraction from physical hardware is practically the basis for the popularity of server virtualization. If an
application can run in any virtualized environment then there is little reason to believe it cannot run on HC3. This is
because HC3 is a virtualization platform like VMware, Hyper-V, or XenServer. HC3 uses a KVM-based hypervisor
designed to support Windows and Linux operating systems. Users install the same Windows and Linux operating systems
on HC3 that they install on VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer, or even physical servers.

In addition to exceptions for hardware specific applications, there may also be exceptions for hypervisor specific applications

or utilities. There are utilities designed to interact with specific hypervisors. An example of such an application is Zerto, a
replication solution first designed specifically for VMware, and then later designed also for Hyper-V. Zerto interacts directly
with the hypervisors it is designed to run on, and no other hypervisors.

Before asking whether an application will be supported on HC3, a few other questions should be answered first:
• Is the application tied to any specific server hardware components?
• Is the application licensing tied to any specific hardware components?
• Is the application specifically designed to interact with the virtualization hypervisor?

If the answer to these questions is no, which is true for most applications, then the the only remaining question should be:
• Is the application supported on Windows or Linux?

If the answer to this question is yes, then it will run on HC3.

Why Applications Vendors Might Say No

The primary reason why an application vendor would say no to application support on HC3 or any other virtualization
platform is lack of testing. Simply testing on the various supported editions, versions, and service pack levels of Windows
or Linux can be daunting for many software vendors. For this reason, some application vendors are sometimes wary to
claim support for anything they aren’t actively testing. In reality, it would never be possible to fully test and therefore
“officially” support an application on all these variations of Windows and Linux operating systems across the various
hardware platforms and hypervisors available.

Application vendors get asked everyday about support outside of what they can test. Commonly, they are asked if their
application is supported running alongside another application. There are thousands of applications that users will want
to run alongside any other application. Complexity of combining different applications on different platforms is a reality in
IT. Do vendors have the ability to test all these applications and platforms together to make sure they are “supported”?
No way.

When virtualization platforms like VMware were first being introduced into IT markets, application vendors were often
unwilling to support VMware for their applications even though early adopters were spinning up VMs with those applications

and happily plugging away. Many vendors are often slower to adapt to users which in turn causes mainstream users to
slow adoption. Today, every Windows and Linux application is expected to be supported on VMware, and really on any
hypervisor. Hyperconverged infrastructure solutions like HC3 with hypervisors designed specifically for hyperconvergence
are a new technology that is going through the same slow vendor support adoption as VMware did. It’s a cycle the industry
can’t seem to break out of.
There are so many unknowns with application support that vendors usually have a better idea of what is not supported
than what is. They likely are aware of some actual limitations and conflicts with specific operating systems, hypervisors,
or even hardware components. Vendors likely have a list tucked away somewhere of the known issues that will prevent
the application from working successfully. This is why for application vendors, instead of asking if the application is
supported with another vendor product, it can be more useful to ask if there are any known issues with said product. If
there are, you know right where you stand; if not, then you likely have nothing to fear.

In these cases where a vendor is unwilling to state specific support for a platform or product, they should be asked for a
specific reason. If in the unlikely event that there is a problem, they should be willing to work to resolve any issue.

Application vendors who don’t support platforms like HC3 are probably trying to limit their liability on support costs, but
in doing so, they are really limiting their users. That’s not the way multi-vendor support is supposed to work. It should be
a shared responsibility and shared goal of customer satisfaction.

How Multi-Vendor Support Should Work

Multi-vendor support can be a messy business, especially when vendors are looking out for number one rather than their
customers. As IT professionals, we’ve all run into situations where a problem of unknown origin goes through a troubleshooting

cycle of finger-pointing between various vendors. The application vendor blames the operating system vendor,
the operating system vendor blames the hypervisor vendor, the hypervisor vendor blames the storage vendor, and the
storage vendor blames the application vendor resulting in a vicious cycle of downtime and despair. No one in these
situations wants to take responsibility for even getting to the root cause of the problem, much less fixing it.

This is a problem because even with hyperconverged infrastructure solutions like HC3, which eliminate most multi-vendor
issues from the infrastructure, IT is always going to be a multi-vendor environment with application vendors mixed in.
Vendors who don’t have either the right resources or the right approach to working with other vendors on support are
often a bigger problem than the actual technical problem trying to be fixed.

This is not how multi-vendor support is supposed to work. The vendors should work together to cooperatively find the root
cause and then when the root cause is known, the vendor solution(s) causing the problem should take responsibility for a fix.

While the customer is involved, the customer does not need to be a switchboard operator connecting the communications
between the various vendors. Vendors should take the initiative to reach out to each other to resolve the issue, which is why organizations like TSANet exist.

TSANet is a multi-vendor support community for vendors to work together in a neutral community environment. Scale
Computing is a member of TSANet because it speeds the support process and leads to quicker resolutions for multivendor issues. Each vendor adequately supporting their own product in a multi-vendor IT environment is what alleviates the burden of the unknown from support. Will the application run on an untested platform? It should and if it doesn’t, vendors can work together to quickly find out why not and offer a resolution.

What Does Scale Computing Support?

Scale Computing supports the HC3 hardware and virtualization platform. This includes the HyperCore operating system
which includes software-defined storage and the virtualization hypervisor. Scale Computing provides a clear list of
supported operating systems including Windows and Linux operating system versions and editions in the HyperCore
Support Matrix.

For applications, Scale Computing is fully prepared to support Windows and Linux operating systems running on HC3 and
therefore applications designed to run on Windows and Linux should be supported by their vendors for HC3. Scale
Computing supports and offers fixes for the hardware and virtualization platform we provide. Operating system vendors
offer fixes for operating system issues. Application vendors offer fixes for application issues. Working together, each doing his part, there should be no issue supporting applications on HC3 that are designed to run on Windows or Linux.

Conclusion

IT is a complex system of hardware and software working together to provide the services that run our modern industries
and economies. It is impossible for any single vendor to know every combination of IT solutions that might be supported or

unsupported. For this reason, some choose to err on the side of caution and declare perfectly valid solutions unsupported.
These practices are inhibitors to innovators and IT departments that want to take advantage of groundbreaking new
technologies.

If it wasn’t for early adopters ignoring the ambiguous rules of supported or unsupported, new technologies would never get

off the ground. It often only takes common sense to overcome the barriers of misinformation surrounding application
support. At Scale Computing, trust is placed on the ability of IT vendors to come together to ensure support for applications,

operating systems, virtualization, and hardware with customers as the first priority.

In real world situations, Scale Computing has never heard of application vendors refusing to support and remedy issues
with their applications, regardless of where they are running. In reality, most application vendors don’t know or bother to
ask on what platform it is running, as long as it is running on their supported OS. HC3 is a platform designed to run
Windows and Linux operating systems and applications and that is what Scale Computing is committed to support.

Scale Computing, a market leader in hyperconverged solutions, today announced it has been honored at The Channel Company’s Midsize Enterprise Summit (MES) 2017 Fall Conference with XCellence Awards for “Best Midmarket Solution: Hardware,” “Best Boardroom” and “Best-of-Show.” With three award wins, Scale bested other hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) vendors at the show, including Nutanix and HPE SimpliVity.

This sold-out event attracted more than 200 CIOs and senior IT executives who voted for the most distinguished midmarket products, services and presentations. With this prestigious award, Scale Computing continues to demonstrate its commitment to provide innovative products and solutions that boost productivity and accelerate ROI for the midmarket.

Scale Computing’s HC3 virtualization platform is a complete ‘datacenter in a box’ with server, storage and virtualization integrated in a single appliance to deliver simplicity, availability and scalability at a fraction of the cost. Scale Computing distinguished itself from peers with the simplicity of its HC3 systems, which install in minutes, requiring no virtualization software to license and no external storage to buy.

“The MES XCellence Awards showcase tech suppliers whose innovation and expertise provide IT executives with the solutions they need to succeed in the midmarket,” said Lisa MacKenzie, senior vice president, The Channel Company. “The winners of these awards are the midmarket IT industry’s vote of confidence in the winners’ products, solutions and services. We congratulate the winning companies for their exceptional commitment to the midmarket and look forward to their continued success.”

“As former IT pros who understand the inherent frustrations in the enterprise tech world, Scale Computing has always operated with the mission to make life easier for IT in an underserved segment of the market,” said Jeff Ready, CEO of Scale Computing. “Receiving these three prestigious awards demonstrates our commitment to help businesses achieve their goals, at a fraction of the price of our competitors.”

The Channel Company hosted the Midsize Enterprise Summit Fall 2017 Conference at the JW Marriott Hill Country in San Antonio, Sept. 17-19. More than 200 midmarket CIOs and senior-level IT decision-makers gathered at this sold-out event to meet with top technology vendors, solution providers and Gartner industry analysts to forge new contacts and discuss technology’s role in the midmarket landscape.

We are all trying to get the most out of our IT investments, but the IT industry has developed some bad habits when it comes to spending, especially on IT infrastructure. In honor of Halloween, here are 5 terrifying IT habits that can wreak havoc with your datacenter budget.

1 – Holding on Too Long

Like a sturdy house or a reliable car, it makes sense to hold onto some purchases in life long after they are paid off, but that way of thinking doesn’t compute in IT. Technology changes so quickly that equipment and even software can become a liability more quickly than you can plan for. It can be better to think of technology solutions as perishable rather than durable goods that can go bad even before their expiration dates

It is important to stay abreast of new IT technologies and constantly look at the benefits of adopting emerging solutions. Older solutions will lead to inefficiencies and higher costs compared to competitors who have implemented faster, more efficient systems. IT is not just supposed to be a cost center, but an investment center that drives business forward with better technology. Holding on to older technologies may cost you much more by holding you back than continuing to invest in technologies that will propel you past the competition.

2- Buying only Big Brands

There is something to be said for buying from trusted brands to deliver solid solutions, but IT is also an innovation industry that is fueled by startups and entrepreneurs. The big brands are often nothing more than startups who traded innovation for a focus on profits, leveraging their brand name recognition to raise prices and lock in customers to lengthy contracts and high maintenance and support fees.

These big brands often only innovate by acquiring smaller innovative companies and affixing their name and logo on the packaging along with a higher price tag. Instead just being a consumer to the big brands, you should pay attention to the startups. You’ll get newer, more innovative technologies with startups and better deals because these companies don’t charge you for the brand name, just for the merits of the solution.

3 – Dividing IT into Technology Silos

Maybe somewhere along the line it made some sense to divide IT up based on technology components like storage, servers, networking, virtualization, and disaster recovery to name a few. Unfortunately, this division can prevent IT professionals from seeing the big picture of how these varying components are supposed to work together for the maximum benefit to the business. Without the whole IT department focusing on the whole IT vision, none of the individual technology silos is going to operating efficiently.

Look for opportunities to simplify technologies to avoid over-specialization by IT professionals. The final end-game for IT involves combining all of the varying technologies into solutions that make business more efficient and more profitable. Complexity and isolated silos can make that end-game much harder to achieve and end up costing far too much.

4 – Having Too Many Vendors

As with technology silos, having too many different vendors can over-complicate IT and increase costs. Each vendor represents a different management interface, a different set of documentation, a different contact for support, and different training and certification. Different vendors also means different versions and different maintenance and patch schedules which can cause incompatibilities and instability in the overall solution.

Although it is important to keep your options open for new vendor technologies that can help your business, each component in IT does not have to be from a different vendor. If you can combine some technologies (servers, storage, virtualization, etc) into single vendor solutions, you can simplify training, management, and support in order to lower costs.

5 – Over-Provisioning

For a long-time, vendors have tried to convince us to buy more than we need to plan for future growth. In IT, though, it is very difficult to determine technology needs 3-5 years down the line. Prices and technology change frequently and in 2-3 years, you’ll likely be able to get new and better technologies for less than what you are purchasing now. Over-provisioning now to fulfill your needs 3-5 years from now is likely a bad investment.

Look for solutions that can scale up or scale out easily so you can buy just what you need, when you need it. Make sure that in the future, you can scale with faster and bigger capacity as needed, not just more of the same. You’ll want to be able to take advantage of future technology when it becomes available.

Summary

IT constantly poses new challenges to do more with less. Don’t let bad IT industry habits developed over the last few decades turn your IT department into a horror show. New hyperconverged infrastructure technologies like HC3 from Scale Computing allow you to break these bad IT habits and do more with less, radically simplifying IT. Make the decision to start investing in technology that changes the way we think about and manage IT for a better, more efficient IT future.

Market Biz reports on the state of the integrated hyperconvergence market with Scale leading the pack of vendors in this space.

Speaking at Schneider Electric’s recent partner event at their HQ, Le Hive, in Paris, Alastair Edwards, chief analyst at Canalys, looked to the future of technology, predicting that we are entering a new era of IT investment. IT optimization, agility, and innovation, he argued, are driving interest in a range of technologies – from hybrid IT and automation to hyperconvergence, cloud, and edge computing – among others.

For those at the sharp end – the organizations investing in these technologies to bring new products and services to market – the opportunities are enormous. But rapid change like this also brings major challenges, chief among them being cost control and the exploding levels of complexity. If that wasn’t enough, our collective focus on progress comes in the face of ubiquitous security risks and the fact that many organizations just can’t find or build the skillsets they need fast enough to meet their needs.

And that’s just where we are right now. Looking ahead, Edwards examined how in just 10 years we have seen major new trends arrive and become established in the mainstream. The 2010s were all about cloud computing – the next decade will see a shift in focus to computing at the edge. In particular, hybrid cloud, public cloud and on-premises technologies will develop further – with on-prem in particular evolving to focus on latency, manageability, compliance, and costs.

“Microdatacenters” at the edge will replace traditional rack volumes at centralized datacenters as the area of explosive growth. While today’s datacenters will retain importance as the place where data is collected, key vertical markets such as government, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, and agriculture will drive the creation of these edge datacenters.

Changing roles in changing times
This evolution in IT infrastructure also means that the traditional concept of vendors and channel partners will change. A shortage of technical skills in the channel is shifting customer focus toward pre-integrated solutions rather than piecemeal integration of disparate vendor technologies. This will be accompanied by continued growth in subscription business in the channel.

At the heart of all of this is the technology itself and its ability to support business needs in a distributed future. As Jonathan Healey, from the Office of the CTO of Schneider observed, there are a range of challenges in delivering high availability in a hybrid world. If both public cloud and on-prem need to be online for things to work, then true uptime is the product of the individual uptimes. To illustrate, public cloud uptime of 99.6% multiplied by on-prem uptime of 99.2% yields actual hybrid uptime of 98.8%. By its nature, hybrid is the sum of its parts and organizations will need to invest in technology which minimize pain points across the board to capitalize on this wave of change.

Hyperconverged infrastructure solutions like HC3 from Scale Computing are already matching the hybrid cloud and edge computing needs of many organizations. These systems, designed for simplicity, scalability, and high availability are small enough to meet the needs of the microdatacenters and scalable enough to meet the needs of growing business. These on-prem infrastructure solutions have already been evolving alongside the growing needs of present and future hybrid IT.

From our perspective at Scale Computing, looking to the future is a key part of our success. It is inspiring to work with partners and attend events with companies who have the same vision. It also reminds us why we placed the objectives of reducing complexity and controlling costs at the heart of our tech philosophy. We went into business to help deliver on this digital future and organizations should approach it with the confidence that the technology is out there which can balance the need to innovate against the imperatives of managing complexity and cost.

@JeffReady

Did you know you can add hyperlinks into the VM description field in the web UI to launch application specific web based management tools (or anything really) ... currently it does require a valid DNS name (IP addresses aren't allowed currently) but does support specifying the port to connect to and even multiple hyperlinks per VM ... just click the hyperlink and away you go ...

While HC3 provides both a great built in "at a glance" view of active conditions that require attention as well as proactive remote notification emails to find you if you are out on the golf course ... or just doing other things Sometimes you also want those events and actions to be monitored elsewhere as well. Fortunately - all activity that is displayed in the "Cluster Log" portion of the UI can also be sent to a remote syslog server for collection, reporting and analysis

For my own "lab" I have used the free edition of Splunk Light to collect syslog events from multiple HC3 clusters and even build a crude little dashboard to highlight what I care about (perhaps another post some time) ... but we have been asked about Microsoft System Center a few times so I decided to try it out. Turns out it is pretty easy to configure SCOM to receive and process / filter syslog events sent from a HC3 cluster as shown below... and obviously there are tons of other tools that could do the same. If there is a need I could probably share the steps I went through to create rules but I'm guessing SCOM admins are already way ahead of me there...

There are a few useful docs on our portal relating to syslog in general
Partners
Customers

and Splunk LIght proof of concept that may be of interest
Partners
Customers

and after some rule creation to categorize different severity levels

Scale Computing wins ‘hyperconverged solution of the year’ award at the 2017 SVC Awards

London, U.K., -- Scale Computing, the market leader in hyperconverged solutions for midsized companies, today announced that its innovative HC3 appliance has been awarded ‘hyperconverged solution of the year’, at the 2017 SVC Awards. Built with simplicity in mind, the HC3 appliance integrates storage, servers and virtualisation software into one easy-to-use solution, providing a complete data centre in a box.

The annual SVC Awards recently took place in London to celebrate and reward this year’s leading companies in storage, cloud and digitalisation. The awards recognise end user, channel, technology and innovation success. With thousands of public votes cast and the IT industry’s leading executives in attendance, the ceremony highlights the achievements and excellence of organisations leading the way in the technology sector.

Scale Computing’s HC3 appliance provides availability, scalability and affordability. It is self-healing and as easy to manage as a single server. Using industry standard components, the HC3 appliance can be installed in under an hour and expanded and upgraded with no downtime. In addition, with no external virtualisation software to licence the appliance lowers out of pocket expenses.

“Scale Computing is committed to delivering a leading hyperconverged solution that is built and designed to meet our customers’ needs, commented Johan Pellicaan, Managing Director and VP EMEA at Scale Computing. “We are honoured to have been awarded hyperconverged solution of the year, and this reinforces our continued efforts in the industry. We are seeing more customers require a converged solution, and Scale is uniquely positioned to offer a scalable, easy to use and cost-effective appliance that will meet growing business demands.”

2017 was an exciting year here at Scale Computing. It was a year of growth, big announcements, and some overdue recognition. So much happened in 2017, I can’t possibly list it all but here are some of the highlights.

HC3 Cloud Unity

Nothing may have been more exciting in 2017 than finally announcing our partnership with Google in September to provide a hyperconverged, hybrid cloud solution unlike any other. Nested virtualization on Google Cloud Platform allowed us to extend the HC3 platform into the cloud and we began this journey into hybrid cloud with the announcement of our HC3 Cloud Unity DRaaS solution.

HC3 Edge

If you haven’t yet heard the term ‘edge computing’ then you will be hearing it a lot in the near future. We’ve all figured out by now that Cloud is not the end all solution in IT and that on-prem infrastructure will continue to exist in many forms. Edge computing is when that on-prem infrastructure is needed on a small scale in remote offices, manufacturing facilities, medical facilities, point of sale locations, and many more similar locations. In November, we announced HC3 Edge, a hyperconverged solution that can be customized to fit nearly any edge computing need from IoT devices to micro-datacenters.

HyperCore Direct

NVMe is the fastest flash storage out there and we made a big announcement in August for NVMe-based hyperconverged systems called HyperCore Direct that were getting unprecedented performance results. With I/O latency of only 20 microseconds (yes, that is micro, not milliseconds), we were able to show that our efficient SCRIBE storage architecture in our HyperCore operating system was a perfect fit for NVMe. While these incredible speeds are not really needed for most computing use cases – yet – there are existing needs and we anticipate those needs growing rapidly in the near future.

New Partnerships

2017 was a big year for new partnerships for Scale Computing. Here are just a handful of the other tech leaders we’ve announced new partnerships within 2017.

• Google
• Lenovo
• APC
• WinMagic
• NComputing

Awards

It’s always good to be recognized for technology leadership and 2017 was a year that Scale Computing got some well-deserved recognition through some awards and industry call outs. Here are a few.

SVC Awards – In November, HC3 was awarded ‘Hyperconverged Solution of the Year’ at the SVC awards in London. This was a great honor and highlighted the great work our EMEA teams have been doing in spreading the hyperconvergence love internationally.
CRN Top 100 Executives – Our CEO, Jeff Ready, was recognized as one of the top 100 IT executives by CRN. You don’t get a great company without a great leader, so it was very fitting to see Jeff get recognized for his excellent leadership and vision.
Midmarket Champions – Scale Computing continued its midmarket dominance by winning multiple awards at both the Midmarket Enterprise Summit and Midmarket CIO Forums both in the Spring and Fall of 2017. Repeat winning of awards such as ‘Best Midmarket Strategy’, ‘Best Midmarket Solution: Hardware’, and ‘Best of Show’ over competitors such as HPE Simplivity and Nutanix show just how well HC3 fits in small and midmarket IT.

New Indianapolis Headquarters Office

Scale Computing calls Indianapolis its home and this year we upgraded our headquarters with a move to downtown Indy. For those who aren’t in the know when it comes to U.S. geography, Indianapolis is in the heart of the Midwest and the center of a growing technology market we sometimes jokingly call, “Silicon Prairie”. We moved into “The Union”, a renovated office co-located with a number of other growing technology companies. Although we love our new offices, based on the way our market is growing it may only be a short time before we outgrow our new home.

Well, that is your quick summary of the big announcements in 2017. We look forward to another big year in 2018 with many more announcements to come. From everyone at Scale Computing, we wish you a very Happy New Year!

The Product Team at Scale Computing has put together another great video showing the newest storage deduplication features on HC3.

Deduplication can significantly increase available storage on drives but can also complicate how used and available storage is perceived. With HC3, enhanced storage details make it easy to see what is being used and what is available.

Youtube Video

These points came from a planning discussion with a HC3 customer looking at various_ built in_ options for protecting and restoring SQL Server Databases running on their HC3 system. (of course using 3rd party backup software with SQL Server awareness is also an option)

Local DB VM Snapshots

• Make sure HC3 cluster is on 7.2 or higher and DB VM as Scale Guest Agent installed and running - this will coordinate VSS (volume shadow copy services) tasks with HC3 snapshots automatically
• If multiple DB's exist on the same VM - using processes for single file recovery from VM's snapshots may desirable to allow roll back of specific DB's vs. entire VM

Local Backup Only - Built in SQL Server DB backup to local dsk

• No snapshot and/or replication schedules configured for the target SQL backup volumes for best performance (requires support setup if other volumes are enabled for snapshots or replication only)
• Increase SSD Priority to exceed the largest backup file with some additional capacity.

Remote Backup Only - Built in SQL Server DB backup to remote file share (running on HC3 system)

• Create new backup VMs or migrate existing ones to the remote cluster.
• No snapshot and/or replication schedules configured for the target SQL backup volumes for best backup performance
• Best practice would be to run this VM on a separate HC3 system for isolation such as a single node system
• SQL Server agent needs to be run using windows account with access to backup share

Each option can utilize combinations of all these backup options

• Local snapshots of DB VMs (see guest agent / VSS discussion above)
• Replication of DB VMs
• Backups to local, remote, or local and remote VMs without snapshot schedules and/or replication
• Automated exports from Scale to a NAS device
• Any backups to a device external of Scale

The video below is a high-level overview of our dedupe implementation as well as the enhanced storage details that show the space saved from this new feature. These are two of the latest features introduced in HyperCore 7.4.

Youtube Video

IT Business Canada has an article on the CFL's Edmonton Eskimos and why they chose to go with a Scale HC3 hyperconverged solution for their business.

“IT professionals always want to simplify their jobs as much as possible, and this holds true even for IT departments on sports teams. This platform has been a joy to use since we got it and it has removed a lot of the headaches we used to deal with that. It offers hardware redundancy so on crucial game days, if anything goes wrong, I have extra peace of mind knowing that it won’t blow up in front of my eyes,” Woolston says.

Scale Computing’s Mann expands on this, adding that hyperconverged technology allows IT managers to rest a little easier and also plan for the future.

“Hyperconverged basically revolutionizes IT architecture and its future-proofed for new trends emerging in the industry because it can be easily and cost-effectively expanded whenever you need more storage. It’s also the best bang for your buck, not just in terms of dollar-to-dollar comparison with other systems, but also in terms of the benefits it offers. It’s integrated and intuitive, reliable, expandable, easy to use, makes disaster recovery a breeze, and has great return on investment,” Mann concludes.

Scale Computing's new website is now live. The old one was due for an overhaul and we are happy to announce that the new, modern one is now available. Come check us out and let us know what you think!

Abstract: One of our most common questions is "Will my application run on Scale?". If it runs of Windows or Linux then 99% of the time, the answer is yes. Still, information from some application vendors on support can be confusing. This paper explains how your HC3 system and applications are supported by the multiple vendors involved.

Third Party Apps on HC3

HC3 snapshots capture an entire VM and all of its data at a single point in time. And restoring (aka cloning) a previous snapshot creates a new bootable VM copy of that data as it existed at previous point in time. But there are many ways to use those snapshots to restore older versions of corrupted or deleted files and folders ... including database files, etc.

Here is just one documented example that uses a Linux Mint Live CD to boot a VM and access NTFS file systems from previous snapshots... https://www.scalecomputing.com/files/support/public/Win_File_Recovery_ISO.pdf

Youtube Video

Note that a similar process could also be done using a Windows (PE) based recovery ISO instead of Linux mint as long as that environment has the ability to manually load VIRTIO disk drivers (and virtio network drivers if needed) either when it is created or at boot time - which many tools like commercial Windows based Bare Metal Recovery ISO's for many full system backup products do allow...

because of the legality and licensing requirements of windows PE and various tools, we don't want to recommend any specific windows recovery ISO or windows "PE builder" tools ...

With the Linux Mint ISO - if for some reason you need or want to be able to mount the NTFS volume in read/write mode and get an error about "unclean file system" it is possible to do by first using the ntfsfix command which is included in the Linux mint iso. One case might be if you want to also install samba to share the mounted volume so it can be directly accessed across a network

Lastly - don't overlook the option of cloning the VM snapshot - disconnecting the virtual nic from the clone so you can boot it up without an IP address and name conflict, change the name/ip then shutdown and re-attach the nic and reboot the clone with a completely different VM name and IP ... copy the files you need from that VM to wherever you need them. when you are done shut down the cloned VM and delete it.