Life On The Edge: Why Micro Data Centers Are The Next Frontier
The edge computing phenomenon—powered by an Internet of Things revolution—has opened up a new frontier for solution providers working with hardware and software vendors of all sizes and shapes.
Indianapolis-based Scale Computing is one of a number of vendors retooling their product and partner strategies to drive edge computing sales growth.
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.
The Register added Scale to their storage roundup to discuss our partnership to bring Scale HC3 to South Africa.
Scale's @JeffReady was interviewed by The Register to discuss the impact of the Spectre and Meltdown issues and their impact specifically on storage.
We built our HC3 system with simplicity in mind, integrating storage, servers and virtualisation into one easy-to-use solution – a true data centre in a box. Last month, on November 23rd, the HC3 system was awarded “hyperconverged solution of the year” at the 2017 SVC Awards.
The annual SVC Awards took place in London to celebrate and reward this year’s leading companies in storage, cloud, and digitalisation. The awards recognised end user, channel, technology and innovation success. With thousands of public votes cast and the IT industry’s leading executives in attendance, the ceremony highlighted the achievements and excellence of organisations leading the way in the technology sector.
Combining servers, storage, virtualisation, and backup/DR, HC3 is an all-in-one, hyperconverged infrastructure solution for IT. The HC3 appliance-based design is simple, scalable, and highly available with a low price and low cost of ownership.
Scale Computing is leading the market with innovation in hyperconverged infrastructure, edge computing, hybrid cloud, and highly efficient storage architecture featuring NVMe. HC3 is not only a solution designed to lower costs and reduce infrastructure footprint – it is a whole new way of thinking about IT infrastructure incorporating cloud, on-prem, and IoT into a complete infrastructure solution.
We have always been committed to delivering a leading infrastructure solution, designed to meet customer needs. We are honoured to have been awarded hyperconverged solution of the year, which recognises and reinforces our continued efforts in the industry.
Scale Computing is constantly looking to work with new partners internationally. Please click here to find out more information.
It is Christmas season and one of the best known Christmas stories is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is visited by three ghosts representing Christmas past, present, and future. More than anything else, the glimpse of a grim future causes Scrooge to change his ways for a better future, or so the story implies.
I am not able to see the future and whether you are an IT professional, manager, or business owner, I’m guessing you can’t either. But I can share a few ideas on how to possibly change some of your ways to future-proof your IT infrastructure.
Have a solid DR plan
Nothing can ruin your future faster than a disaster from which you can’t easily recover. Take inventory to make sure you’ve covered all of the data and assets that need DR protection. Make sure your backup and recovery tools are adequate for your needs with DR testing. Make sure you have contingency plans for both local and regional disasters. Make sure you are regularly testing your DR plans. Make sure everyone knows how to execute the disaster recovery plan when needed. And last but not least, make sure your most important assets–your people–are covered in your disaster planning.
Eliminate complexity
Complexity can cause many problems in any IT infrastructure, not the least of which is instability. Complex systems always need more babysitting and break/fix which also means they are likely to experience more downtime and can be harder to recover from any problems. Complexity also can make scale out or replacement much more challenging. Too many components and too many vendors can exacerbate complexity. Simplicity is your friend.
Reduce costs
Sounds simple, right? Well, eliminating complexity is a good start, but it also means making sure you are not paying premium prices on solutions just because they have a big brand name markup or you are paying for features you aren’t really using. Many technologies that were innovative 10 years ago like virtualization are now just commodities that you shouldn’t be paying premiums for. Make sure your spending aligns with your needs and you are getting the best value for the technology you are buying and using.
Don’t over-provision
With technology changing as quickly as it does these days, buying infrastructure you’ll think you need in a few years seems like a bad investment. For the same price, you may well be able to get bigger, faster gear in a years time. Buying only what you need now and having the ability to scale out as needed is your best bet for the future. Scaling out doesn’t have to be a complex, cumbersome problem like it has been in the past. New IT infrastructure technologies make it much easier to scale out as needed.
Summary
No one can know the future but we can all take steps to prepare. Technology continues to advance in ways that make it easier to prepare for the future. HC3 hyperconverged infrastructure from Scale Computing helps our customers prepare with disaster recovery, simplicity, cost-savings, and scalability. Take the necessary steps that are right for your business or organization to avoid a grim future in IT.
http://www.scalecomputing.com/nvme/
Scale Computing, the market leader in hyperconverged solutions for midsized companies, has announce unprecedented results in hyperconverged virtual machine IO performance using NVM express (NVMe). The lab tests have achieved mean IO latencies as low as 20 microseconds delivered to a guest virtual machine. The unique architecture of Scale’s software defined storage engine (SCRIBE) coupled with highly responsive NVMe drives enables this extraordinary performance.
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.
The Virtual Desktops Solution page on our web site has many good resources about virtual desktops in general and specific partner solutions including our joint solution with Workspot
https://www.scalecomputing.com/solutions/virtual-desktop-infrastructure-vdi/
But to answer the simple question - yes, desktop OS's such as Windows 10 and Windows 7 can run on HC3 just like any other VM and can take advantage of built in HC3 capabilities like rapid / thin cloning and replication... for a moderate number of VM's, cloning one per user and using windows RDP (and remotefx) protocol to let them connect from a windows or mac desktop, phone or tablet works like a charm.
Of particular note - for customers considering running a large number of individual virtual desktop VMs - the Reference Architecture document is a useful guide for sizing and estimating how many virtual desktop VM's a particular HC3 cluster could support with acceptable user experience https://www.scalecomputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/HC3-workspot-reference-architecture.pdf
Scale has also been tested with various Citrix VDI solutions and is listed in the Citrix ready marketplace https://citrixready.citrix.com/scale-computing-inc.html For "how to" guidelines - search Citrix on our customer or partner portal to find a quick start guide on using Citrix XenDesktop with HC3 or use the following links
Partner Portal
Customer Portal
If you are interested in delivering multi user "session based" virtual desktops, aka "terminal services" - search for RDSH on our partner or customer portal to access a quick start guide on using Microsoft Remote Desktop Session host (RSDH) with HC3 or use the following links
Partner Portal
Customer Portal
There are others out there as well ...
nComputing vSpace Pro combined with their cost effective thin client endpoints works nicely on HC3
Ericom Connect is simple to set up and provides a very nice web-based client to access HC3 desktops.
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
Data Sheet: Exchange on Scale HC3 Datasheet
tl/dr - even our old entry level HC1000 can support a sizable Exchange deployment ... the Exchange Loadgen tool can be used to simulate and size your own exchange environment.
Entry Level Reference Architecture 250-500 users (requires support portal login)
This application note describes a validated reference architecture designed to support approximately 250 – 500 Microsoft Exchange users on an entry level Scale HC3 cluster of 3 nodes. Design objectives include sizing the system to operate in degraded scenarios with one of the 3 nodes offline. User mailboxes and roles are distributed across multiple virtual machines (VMs) to allow for load to be distributed across all nodes of the HC3 cluster.
to access: log in to portal and search "Microsoft Exchange on the Scale HC3 Cluster 250 - 500 Users" in the Search Knowledge box or click links below
Veeam also has a Linux based recovery environment that can provide full recovery of Linux VM's into the HC3 system.
Unlike windows, the virtio drivers are already built in to the Veeam Linux Recovery ISO so there is no additional step required for it to see the disk to recover to ... so in this example, I just want to restore all of disk vda from the backup repostory to the blank vda disk.
Restore the entire disk.
Virtually any backup product that provides "Bare Metal Recovery" can be used to backup and restore HC3 VM's either for ongoing protection or to provide P2V or V2V Migration. (veeam, acronis, unitrends, barracuda, storagecraft are just some of the systems that have been tested and while this focuses on full vm restores - of course all also make file level restores from backup easy as well)
In the case of Veeam - this could mean also mean restoring hypervisor level backups of VM's made while running on VMware or Hyper-V systems or OS level backups of systems running on physical / cloud or other hypervisors such as HC3 ... all would work the same way.
The key is allowing the Veeam Recovery Media (ISO) to access the HC3 virtual hard drives which is easily accomplished by loading the Scale HC3 performance (virtio) drivers during the recovery process as shown here. Further, if you are restoring a VM from a backup made on another platform, Veeam provides the option to permanently "inject" the virtio drivers into the restored image on HC3 after the recovery.
to get their recovery ISO access to the virtio disk - need to select and inject virtio drivers. It will then see the virtual disks provided by the HC3 VM you want to restore into and allow the backup data to be restored into the VM.
then it's just a normal full system recovery ...
at the end of the process, the VM will reboot into the just restored OS image
If the original backup was of a VM running on HC3 where the virtio drivers are already present - it is not necessary to "inject" new drivers during the recovery as they are already installed in the restored image.
I've also done some testing with the Veeam Backup Agent for Linux and the Veeam Linux Based System Recovery ISO as well and will post some examples of that.
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.
CRN Announcement: Scale Partners with APC
Scale Computing Forms Partnership With APC Giving Partners A 'Powerful' Micro Data Center 'In-A-Box' Solution
Scale Computing has formed a new partnership with APC by Schneider Electric to create a turnkey hyper-converged solution that executives say will lead to higher margins for channel partners and enable solution providers to scale capacity and computing power at the edge quickly.
"This is pretty powerful," said Bill Barnier, sales manager at Bloomfield Hills, Mich.- based solution provider Data Partner, who partners with Scale. "They can do power back up, the compute and the storage, all in one box. That's powerful to be able to put all of that in one appliance at the remote edge. That will definitely be something that customers would have interest in, especially those who have a lot of remote sites."
Hyper-converged specialist Scale Computing has been chosen as an Alliance Partner by APC by Schneider Electric to support its hyper-converged Micro Data Center Xpress solution, which combines a purpose-built infrastructure with a physical management wrapper for hyper-converged architectures. Xpress is a complete and energy-efficient IT solution that is pre-tested, optimized, and able to be rapidly deployed. APC said it creates a reliable and robust environment to leverage the best of on-premises and multi-cloud infrastructures.
Scale HC3 was used in an eWeek case study this week about system consolidation.
This article is about virtual infrastructure provider Scale Computing and one of its customers, Long & McQuade. Indianapolis-based Scale Computing develops scale-out clustered IT infrastructure products for enterprises, based on its patented ICOS technology.
In September, Scale announcing a partnership with Google to provide a hyperconverged, hybrid cloud solution. Nested virtualization on Google Cloud Platform allows Scale to extend the HC3 platform into the cloud; the journey into hybrid cloud came the announcement of the HC3 Cloud Unity DRaaS solution.
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With its Scale system working just as expected with zero downtime, no speed complaints and no network troubles...
Love seeing articles like this 
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.
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!