This is why Scale Computing worked with Spiceworks to run a survey with VMware customers to understand their opinions and feelings about VMware. As many of you at some time were VMware customers, or are current customers, it likely won’t be any surprise to you that the survey found that VMware is too complex, unreliable, painful to manage, and expensive.
Looking for a VMware alternative?
Migrate to a more reliable, simpler IT infrastructure at a fraction of the cost. Customers are looking for an alternative to costly and complex legacy virtualization solutions.
What is HC3?
The HC3 virtualization platform brings together servers, storage, virtualization, and disaster recovery into a single, feature rich solution. This guide describes all of the features that make HC3 the perfect infrastructure solution for any datacenter.
Hypercore
The heart of the HC3 platform is the HyperCore operating system which includes a fully integrated KVM-based hypervisor with our patented block access, direct attached storage system called SCRIBE.
Scribe
SCRIBE is a wide-striped storage architecture that combines all disks in the cluster into a single storage pool that is tiered between flash SSD and spinning HDD storage.
Heat
HyperCore Enhanced Automated Tiering is the part of SCRIBE that manages data efficiently between the flash SSD tier and the spinning HDD tier in the cluster storage pool.
VM High Availability
If a node fails within the cluster, all VMs running on that node are automatically failed over to one of the remaining nodes.
Remote Cluster Management
Multiple clusters or single nodes across multiple sites may be managed within the HC3 Web Interface.
Multi-User Management
For clusters and sites with multiple administrators, HC3 features multi-user administration to allow each administrator a unique account and login.
Self Healing
The HC3 architecture is built with layers of redundancy, such as dual active/passive network ports, redundant power supplies, and redundant block storage striped across all cluster nodes.
Non-Disruptive Rolling Updates
HC3 receives software/firmware updates directly to the HC3 Web Interface where they can be applied automatically with no downtime.
Deduplication
SCRIBE includes data deduplication that eliminates duplicate blocks on virtual disks, significantly increasing disk capacity. Deduplication is done with minimal impact to running VMs.
Snapshot Scheduling
VM snapshots can be scheduled intuitively and flexibly from the HC3 Web Interface.
File-Level And Disk-Level Recovery
With one click, HC3 administrators can clone a virtual disk from a snapshot and mount it to a live VM.
Live VM Migration
VMs on HC3 clusters can be non-disruptively migrated between nodes with no downtime.
Thin VM Cloning
HC3 uses a unique thin cloning technique that allows cloned VMs to share the same data blocks as their parent VM for storage optimization, but with no dependencies.
Rapid, Easy Deployment
An HC3 cluster can be racked, cabled, powered on, configured in a matter of minutes, and VMs can be deployed and running in under an hour.
VM Backup And Quick Recovery
Full agentless snapshot-based VM backup can protect your VMs to a local or remote site or to our ScaleCare Remote Recovery hosted datacenter.
Cluster To Cluster Replication
VMs can be replicated between two HC3 clusters with native, built-in replication. Replication can be local or remote across any distance and can be configured to replicate changes as often as every 5 minutes.
Non_Disruptive Scale-Out
When a cluster needs more resources, a new node can be added within minutes without any downtime to the existing nodes or VMs.
Mix And Match Nodes
With HC3, any two cluster nodes across all HC3 families (1000, 2000, and 4000) can coexist in the same cluster and contribute to the cluster storage pool.
HC3 Web Interface
Multiple The entire HC3 solution including hardware and software is managed from a single web interface that can be accessed from any node in a cluster. The simple interface design allows both storage and compute resource management and virtual machine management from a single pane of glass. Resource statistics are displayed in real-time along with IOPS, both per VM and cluster wide.
Role-Based Access Control
Administrators can manage users by assigning varying customized levels of access starting with full administrator access or controlled down to specific functions or read-only access. Role-based access control combined with user logging gives administrators powerful control over user activity.