CRN Exclusive: Scale Computing Forms Partnership With APC Giving Partners A 'Powerful' Micro Data Center 'In-A-Box' Solution

@ScaleComputing has formed a new partnership with @APC by @Schneider Electric to create a turnkey #hyperconverged 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. [Related: Nutanix CEO On Cisco's Hardware Problem, Dell's Dual Hyper-Converged Strategy And Why He Doesn't View HPE-SimpliVity 'As A Competitor'] On the Scale Computing side, the company touts its HC3 hyper-converged platform as a data center in a box with server, storage and virtualization integrated into a single appliance. With no virtualization software to license and no external storage to buy, HC3 products reduce out-of-pocket costs and simplify the infrastructure needed to keep applications running. "If you order a Scale system, we can have you deploying virtual machines within 30 minutes after you unbox it. What we want to do is reduce that even further now with APC," said Jason Collier, co-founder of Scale, in an interview with CRN. "Going in and being able to put in this system very rapidly gives the partner additional services and additional products that they can offer at higher margins." [Sponsored Suggested Post: Veeam honored as 2017 ISV Partner of the Year at Cisco Partner Summit 2017 Cisco Partner Summit Global awards reflect the top-performing partners within specific technology markets across all geographical regions.] "We want to give channel partners something where it is exceptionally easy to deploy this micro-data center or edge data center component, and we have several methods in which we're going to take that to market," said Collier. In one customer use case, Scale is looking to deploy its own hyper-converged solution with Xpress inside a grocery store chain in Europe with 9,000 locations. "If we can just drop one of these things in at each one of those locations and it takes no time to set up and can even be preconfigured to the point where you can drop it in and turn it on, then basically that store is up – that's where in these larger distributed deployments it's going to make the channel partners way more efficient in being able to deliver those services to the end customers," said Collier. Data Partner's Barnier said the packaged solution would open up the doors to new customers. "A lot of companies are looking to have the local feel and touch," said Barnier. "We're doing software-defined WAN and we're trying to build out and put things at the edge – even the firewalls are going that way – security at the edge. So this is a really good offer."
http://www.crn.com/news/data-center/300097121/crn-exclusive-scale-computing-forms-partnership-with-apc-giving-partners-a-powerful-micro-data-center-in-a-box-solution.htm?itc=most_pop

Comparing Top Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions: the 2017 Edition

I love working with #converged ( #CI) and #hyperconverged ( #HCI) infrastructure technologies. These types of #datacenter systems @DELLEMC @Hewlett @Scale @Nutanix @Simplivity @Cisco @VMware etc have allowed administrators from all sorts of environments realize some big benefits when it comes to optimization and architecture. First, it’s important to define and understand HCI and note that there are numerous similarities between HCI and CI environments. Both are deployed as blocks, and both converge critical resources to deliver higher levels of density. However, the biggest difference comes in how these environments are managed. In HCI, the management layer (storage for example) is controlled at the virtual layer. Specifically, HCI incorporates a virtual appliance that runs within the cluster. This virtual controller runs on each node within the cluster to ensure better failover capabilities, resiliency, and uptime.

Benefits of hyper-converged infrastructure include:

Integrated VDI, convergence, and hypervisor managementRapid-scale deployment of VMs and applicationsSmaller data center footprintGreater levels of application, desktop, and user densitiesDirect integration with the software layerCreation of hyper-scale capabilitiesLeveraging all-flash systemsIntegration with cloud systemsIncreased capabilities around resiliency, business continuity, and disaster recovery 

HCI is a quickly growing market. According to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Converged Systems Tracker, worldwide converged systems vendor revenues increased 6.2 percent year over year to $3.15 billion during the second quarter of 2017. The market consumed 1.78 exabytes of new storage capacity during the quarter, which was up 5.6 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

Related: Can Windows Server Make Hyper-Converged Infrastructure a Boring Commodity?

"The converged systems market is benefiting from an expansion into new environments and a new set of customers," said Eric Sheppard, research director, Enterprise Storage & Converged Systems. "This expansion is driven by products that are offering new levels of automation, tighter integration between technologies, and, in many cases, software-defined solutions based on scale-out architectures."

What’s Changed?

IDC’s numbers indicate that Dell EMC has taken the top spot when it comes to hyper-converged infrastructure. However, it needs to be noted that the Dell EMC XC appliances are powered by Nutanix software, which is arguably the engine that’s driving a lot of that growth. Also, let’s not forget that Nutanix sells its own hyper-converged infrastructure appliances too.

Here’s an overview of the top players in hyper-converged infrastructure and their solutions:

Cisco HyperFlex

In April of last year, I wrote a post about what HyperFlex was and wasn’t good at. Well, at version 2.5, I can honestly say that HyperFlex has come a long way. First of all, HyperFlex Connect, a standalone HTML5 interface for the management and orchestration of HyperFlex from any device, makes management way simpler. Connect acts as an extensible interface that is hypervisor agnostic and has built-in automation with RESTful API.

They also added higher-capacity all-flash nodes, which are now coupled with their 40-Gbps USC fabric. All of this translates to big performance enhancements, more density, better VDI multi-tenancy, and optimized resource controls. Another big add was native replication of clusters. This helps protect data and applications. HyperFlex now also includes data-at-rest security options using self-encrypting drives.

Cisco

Finally, remember that CLiQr acquisition? We’re seeing even deeper integration with Cisco CloudCenter and HyperFlex. That being said, integration with existing Cisco systems has been made much easier as well. That is, working with existing UCS domains and incorporating HyperFlex has been greatly simplified. So, if you’re a Cisco shop that wants to support remote office or leverage Cisco’s hyper-converged infrastructure, HyperFlex is a great option!

HPE (SimpliVity)

HPE has been in the CI space for quite some time. However, they became a real HCI player with the 2017 acquisition of SimpliVity. In its own space, SimpliVity was a solid product, going head-to-head with Nutanix. Starting out in 2009, they quickly gained more than a thousand partners with customers worldwide. They had some very cool innovation keys to success, which HPE is leveraging.

What is now called the “HPE” OmniStack Data Accelerator Card performs inline deduplication, compression, and data optimization across primary and backup storage repositories, offloading this processing so VMs suffer no performance penalty. As per HPE SimpliVity, the median data efficiency is rate 40:1.

HPE

From there, HPE SimpliVity Data Virtualization Platform operates as a virtual controller on vSphere ESXi and abstracts data from the underlying hardware. Designed for a bunch of use cases, the HPE SimpliVity 380 HCI architecture is a solid option for organizations looking to support remote office or new virtualization deployments.

Dell EMC

We’re seeing some real muscle-flexing from Dell EMC (and VMware). At the last VMworld, Dell EMC and VMware announced two joint solutions, VxRail 4.5 and VxRack. In its newest version, VxRail 4.5 includes automation and lifecycle management for VMware’s vSAN and vSphere. The really cool part here is that upgrading and patching software is now highly automated. This helps reduce configuration errors and allow admins to focus on more valuable operations. This level of automation is awesome for DevOps, higher levels of scale, and fast deployments.

Updates also include multi-node scaling, which automates the scaling of a single VxRail appliance to multi-node environments. Finally, you’ll see some cool updates around REST-based APIs for programmatic lifecycle management. You can now manage a single appliance or entire clusters.

I didn’t forget about VxRack, the beefier version of VxRail. At VMworld we saw improved capabilities around a self-contained system via integration with VMware Cloud Foundation for simplified management of VMware vSphere 6.5, vSAN 6.6, and the network virtualization product NSX 6.3.

Dell EMC

The other cool part here is the hybrid cloud option. You can now run Dell EMC’s Enterprise Hybrid Cloud (EHC) on top of VxRack. When it comes to Dell EMC, whether you’re a smaller shop or a large data center, there are options for use cases here. Plus, deep integration with your underlying VMware environment make, this tech a must when examining HCI.

Nutanix

I’d call Nutanix of the original companies behind the hyper-converged infrastructure revolution. And, they’re still here and making waves. The Acropolis Operating System (AOS), formerly known as the Nutanix Operating System, has continued to see updates and improvements. Their recent 5.1 release allows customers to add performance to their clusters simply by increasing their SSD tier for example. This is accomplished by adding an all-flash node to an existing hybrid cluster, and the new SSDs are seamlessly added to existing storage containers.

Furthermore, instead of doing forklift migrations from hybrid systems to all-flash systems, users can add all-flash nodes to existing clusters and retire their older hybrid gear.

In 5.1, we also saw capacity optimization improvements. According to Nutanix, the erasure coding algorithm is more intelligent in 5.1, where every time a node gets added new EC strips or existing EC strips on writes will automatically take advantage of the new nodes. This functionality improves capacity utilization across while still maintaining the same protection levels as the cluster grows and shrinks.

Nutanix

Another really cool function has been the further enhancement around containerization. In 5.0 we saw some cool support for things like Docker. In 5.1 we see even deeper integration with the Acropolis Container Services.

Another cool addition is general availability for support of XenServer. This helps further support workloads like XenApp, XenDesktop, and virtual NetScaler appliances.

Overall, Nutanix is an absolute leader in the hyper-converged infrastructure space. However, their strength isn’t just in the hardware. Their software architecture around AOS is truly impressive. Nutanix should be a consideration in almost any HCI scenario.

Scale Computing

Staring out in 2007, Scale Computing is one of the last standalone HCI vendors on the market. With thousands of customers and deployments, this is a mature solution offering serious benefits to the customer. The new HC3 architecture has big improvements around storage deduplication, multi-cluster remote management, disaster recovery capabilities, and even user management. Plus, HC3 allows you to deploy single appliances – instead of the previously required minimum of three. You’d still want a cluster for HA and primary production systems, but if you’re a smaller business and have no need for all that extra horsepower, the single appliance will work for you.

Scale has also done a solid job getting into the automation space. They’ve created an automated an intelligent mechanism to allocate storage across the tiers. According to the company, this tuning capacity allows you to increase the allocation of flash for workloads that have higher I/O requirements while decreasing the allocation for virtual disks and workloads that have minimal I/O needs. I’ve always been a fan of Scale Computing. If you’re looking to support smaller offices and are on a budget (but still want awesome tech), look to Scale as a solid option.

Scale Computing

Let’s be clear -- I know this isn’t the full list of hyper-converged infrastructure vendors. Plus, there are going to be more hardware vendors supporting CI using software (like Pivot3 or Nutanix OEM) to deliver HCI solutions. Lenovo is a great example of that. Furthermore, we’re seeing a broadening market around whitebox integration with HCI software options. Whichever way you approach it, the HCI landscape continues to change and evolve.

Goodbye Atlantis Computing; Hello Hive-IO

Atlantis computing has been in the market for a long time. If you’ve worked with virtualization technologies (XenAppp and XenDesktop in particular) you’ll know about Atlantis. They came to market with their ILIO products and then further impacted the industry with USX. Then, they released their Hyperscale HCI appliance and attempted to enter a very volatile market. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Its concepts behind hyper-scale were actually really awesome, but there were challenges with the hardware, where it could be deployed, and issues with the deployment itself.

And so, Atlantis Computing’s assets were sold to Hive-IO, a young software-defined focused organization. According to Hive-IO, they’ll continue to support all of Atlantis products and work to retain its essence and technology to help expand Hive-IO's storage offering to include intelligent software-defined solutions. The focus will revolve around an area which both Hive-IO and Atlantis know very well: VDI.

Final Thoughts

Over the past few quarters, I can honestly say that CI and HCI have dominated a lot of the projects we’ve been working on. We’ve seen use cases in healthcare, government, pharma, education, manufacturing, and other verticals. Furthermore, we’re seeing growth in how HCI is being deployed within remote and branch locations.

For HCI to be successful, make sure you know your use case and where you’re deploying the environment. Do your best to reduce complexity and fragmentation by leveraging hyper-converged infrastructure systems that easily integrate with existing data center and virtualization components. Finally, I always recommend testing these systems out. Deploying HCI in parallel with your existing environment can help you better understand utilization, best practices, and where the design can positively impact your specific requirements.

http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/hyper-convergence/comparing-top-hyper-converged-infrastructure-solutions-2017-edition

Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Market worth 12000+ Million USD by 2022, Covering Top Players – Nimboxx, Simplivity, Gridstore, Vmware, Maxta

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) is a marketing term to describe a fully software-defined IT infrastructure that virtualizes all of the elements of conventional ‘hardware-defined’ systems. HCI includes, at a minimum, virtualized computing (a Hypervisor), a virtualised SAN (software-defined storage) and virtualized networking (Software-defined networking). HCI typically runs on industry-standard Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) servers. The report on the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Market is a complete overview of the market, covering various aspects product definition, segmentation based on various parameters, and the prevailing vendor landscape. The report also presents a round-up of vulnerabilities which companies operating in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market must avoid in order to enjoy sustainable growth through the course of the forecast period.  This study provides an evaluation of aspects that are expected to impact growth of market in an undesired or constructive method. The research study further presents the past performance of the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market, coupled with the statistics from 2017 to 2022 on the basis of volume and revenue. This research report on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure provides detailed analysis on the main growth prospects and challenges in the market. Download PDF Sample Copy: https://www.researchnreports.com/request_sample.php?id=151818 The report on Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market is a source of expansive ideas, statistical data, and detailed information, which has the potency to ensure profit of an enterprises. The research report additionally addresses some of the very important questions regarding the development and latest trends in the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market. Key Questions this study will answer: -What are the current trends, challenges, and drivers for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure in APAC? What will be the most promising Growth Opportunities and key investment areas over the next five years? -Are the currently available solutions and vendors adequately meeting market needs? What are the gaps, if any? Are there any early market movers in this direction? -What will be the impact and adoption of new technologies? How will these change current industry paradigms and / or bring in new business models? -How expectations from vendors changing and what are some emerging vendor selection criteria? The modest scenario amongst the top players in the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market has been studied through the market share evaluation within the competitive landscape section of the report. The top strategies adopted by the chief players operating in the market for better business into the global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market have also been included under this study. Key #HyperConvergedInfrastructure market Players: #Vmware #Nutanix #Simplivity #ScaleComputing #Pivot3 #Maxta #Nimboxx #CiscoSystems #Gridstore #HewlettPackardEnterprise Inquiry for Buying This  An additional regional data of the key geographic segments with respect to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market is explained in detail. This gives an idea about which region is leading in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure market helping make better future investment plan. This helps gain better idea about the spread of this particular market in respective regions.

http://www.satprnews.com/2017/09/09/global-hyper-converged-infrastructure-market-worth-12000-million-usd-by-2022-covering-top-players-nimboxx-simplivity-gridstore-vmware-maxta/

Scale unveils ludicrously fast HCIA with 20μs latencies

#ScaleComputing has run lab tests showing #hyperconverged virtual machine IO performance using #NVM express ( #NVMe ), achieving mean #IOlatencies as low as #20μs delivered to a guest virtual machine. Scale sells #HC1000, #HC2000, #HC4000 and #HC5000 series #hyperconvergedinfrastructure appliances ( #HCIA ) with a #HyperCore operating system and #SCRIBE software storage engine. Scale says guest virtual machines may communicate directly with SCRIBE (using standard Virtio compatible drivers) without involving a hypervisor in any way. This reduces CPU bottlenecks, context switches and system calls, all of which would add latency to each IO. The company has been checking out the use of NVMe flash and 3D XPoint drives and announced the lab test results at VMworld, which is a bit cheeky since it uses the KVM hypervisor. The results are good enough for it to be introducing HyperCore-Direct products, using NVMe drives, in the next few months. Testing of HyperCore-Direct has shown that apps running with VMs can expect near bare-metal NVMe IO performance from mirrored, highly-available, software-defined storage. An example 4-node HyperCore-Direct configuration with all-flash media is able to provide mean IO latencies of 150μs on a mixed (90 per cent read / 10 per cent write) random workload to 24 virtual machines (at a total 240,000 IOPS). With faster Opane media, the same workload achieves mean latencies of 65 microseconds. The 4-node all-flash system has also demonstrated over 2.6m IOPS with under 290μs mean latency, as delivered to a virtualised benchmark application. Windows 7 running IOMeter on a HyperCore-Direct system is able to obtain average latencies of 101μs for a 4k random read workload with a queue depth of 1. Frank Ober, an Intel Optane technology solution architect, said: “Scale Computing’s solution using Intel Optane SSD P4800X is approaching the 10µs or lower bare metal latency for classic virtualisation.” A canned quote from Howard Marks, chief scientist at DeepStorage, LLC, adds: “Scale Computing’s new HyperCore-Direct solution brings the ultra-low latency performance of NVMe to the masses. Less than a year ago, users requiring the sub-500µs latency and low overhead NVMe promised were limited to NVMe SSDs in servers or leading-edge Tier-0 systems that had no data services. Scale’s now delivering that performance on a hyperconverged platform with snapshots, and the other services enterprise applications require.” This is possibly the fastest HCIA system seen in the industry. More info on the test results here, where you can check out a HyperCore-Direct white paper.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/30/scales_ludicrous_mode_hcia_with_20_microsecond_responsiveness/

Worldwide Hyperconverged Integrated System Market: Steady Need for Data Center Consolidation to Give Impetus, Finds TMR

Key players in the global hyperconverged integrated systems market include #Nutanix, #Pivot3, #HewlettPackardEnterprise, #ScaleComputing, #VMware, Inc., #Simplivity Corporation, #Cisco Systems, Inc., #Oracle Corporation, #NetApp Inc., #Fujitsu Limited, and #Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. The global #hyperconverged integrated system market is highly fragmented due to the rapid rise of the sector and is likely to witness steady entry of numerous new players in the near future. The competition in the market is thus likely to escalate steadily over the coming years. According to Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global hyperconverged integrated system market is likely to rise to a valuation of close to US$31 bn by 2025. The market was valued at US$1.5 bn in 2016 and is expected to exhibit a robust 37.3% CAGR between 2017 and 2025.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/worldwide-hyperconverged-integrated-system-market-steady-need-for-data-center-consolidation-to-give-impetus-finds-tmr-639828623.html

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Market Report 2017: Competitive Landscape Analysis of International Market Including Development Trends with Forecast 2022

Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Market Report Is a Proficient and Detail Research on Latest Technological Advancements with Market Share Analysis of The Top Players In Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Industry. This Report Provides Strategic Recommendations in Key Business Segments Based on the Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Market Estimations along with Growth Factors and Investment Opportunities Worldwide.

The Global Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Market is accounted for $804.56 million in 2015 and is expected to reach $12,812.64 million by 2022 growing at a CAGR of 48.4% from 2015 to 2022.

The key factors that are driving the market growth include increased usage for virtualization, rising demand for data protection and disaster recovery, highly scalable solutions and low capital expenditure and total cost of ownership (TOC) owing to hyper converged infrastructure. Moreover, growing acceptance of hyper convergence solutions in coming years would be a significant growth opportunity for the market.

APAC commanded the largest market share during the forecast period attributed to increasing focus towards VDI, server virtualization and growing popularity of using infrastructure-as-a-services (IaaS) in this region.

Key Players Leading #HyperConvergedInfrastructure ( #HCI ) market:

#HewlettPackardEnterprise Company

#Cisco Systems Inc.

#Maxta Inc.

#ScaleComputing

#Nutanix Inc.

#Gridstore Inc.

#Nimboxx Inc.

And More. .

Get PDF Sample with more detail information at: https://www.absolutereports.com/enquiry/request-sample/10499878

Geographically, Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) market report studies in Global market, especially in North America(US, Canada, Mexico), Europe(Germany, France, Italy, UK , Spain , Rest of Europe), Asia-Pacific(Japan , China , India , Australia , New Zealand),and Rest of the World(Middle East, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, Egypt)

Hypervisors Covered in Hyper-Converged Infrastructure (HCI) Market Report:

#HyperV

#Vmware (ESX/ESXI/Vsphere)

#KVM

http://www.satprnews.com/2017/07/24/hyper-converged-infrastructure-hci-market-report-2017-competitive-landscape-analysis-of-international-market-including-development-trends-with-forecast-2022/

Global Hyper-converged Integrated System Market 2017 - Scale Computing, Pivot3, Maxta Inc, Nimboxx Inc

The #Hyperconverged Integrated System Market 2017 examines the performance of the Hyper-converged Integrated System market, enclosing an in-depth judgment of the Hyper-converged Integrated System market state and the competitive landscape globally. This report analyzes the potential of Hyper-converged Integrated System market in the present as well as the future prospects from various angles in detail. The Global Hyper-converged Integrated System Market 2017 report includes Hyper-converged Integrated System industry volume, market Share, market Trends, Hyper-converged Integrated System Growth aspects, a wide range of applications, Utilization ratio, Supply and demand analysis, manufacturing capacity, Hyper-converged Integrated System Price during the Forecast period from 2017 to 2022.

Manufacturers Analysis and Top Sellers of Global Hyper-converged Integrated System Market 2017:

1 #Vmware Inc 2 #Nutanix Inc 3 #Simplivity Corporation 4 #Scale Computing 5 #Pivot3 6 #Maxta Inc 7 #Nimboxx Inc 8 #Cisco Systems, Inc 9 #Gridstore, Inc

Hyper-converged Integrated System Market Analysis: By Product

VMware
KVM
Hyper-V

Hyper-converged Integrated System Market Analysis: By Application

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
Server Virtualization
Data Protection
Remote Office/Branch Office
Cloud

At the beginning, the report covers the top Hyper-converged Integrated System manufacturing industry players from regions like United States, EU, Japan, and China. It also characterizes the market based on topographical regions.

Further, the Hyper-converged Integrated System report gives information on the company profile, market share and contact details along with value chain analysis of Hyper-converged Integrated System industry, Hyper-converged Integrated System industry rules and policies, circumstances driving the growth of the market and compulsion blocking the growth. Hyper-converged Integrated System Market development scope and various business strategies are also mentioned in this report.

To Buy Complete Report Click Here: market.biz/report/global-hyper-converged-integrated-syste...

The Hyper-converged Integrated System research report includes the products that are currently in demand and available in the market along with their cost breakup, manufacturing volume, import/export scheme and contribution to the Hyper-converged Integrated System market revenue worldwide.

Finally, Hyper-converged Integrated System market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.

http://www.openpr.com/news/552591/Global-Hyper-converged-Integrated-System-Market-2017-Scale-Computing-Pivot3-Maxta-Inc-Nimboxx-Inc.html

Scale Computing Transforms its Channel Partner Program

INDIANAPOLIS, IN--(Marketwired - February 28, 2017) -  #Scale Computing, the market leader in hyperconverged solutions for midsized companies, today announced its #ScalePartnerCommunity (SPC), a newly reimagined channel program. The new strategic program will allow Scale to work closely with partners both in North America and EMEA to expand its reach of hyperconvergence. Scale Computing has a 100% channel-focused model and has revamped its channel partner program, making it more simple and profitable. Through this development, Scale is better positioned to offer partners the products, programs and services they require to address their customers' infrastructure needs, while simultaneously growing their businesses. Scale Computing focuses on reducing costs, simplifying deployment and data center management, consequently helping both partners and customers save time and money. As part of the program Scale will be offering three tiers: Silver, Gold and Platinum

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scale-computing-transforms-channel-partner-133500755.html

Scale Computing Launches First Multi-Tier Channel Program In Massive Midmarket Hyper-convergence Blitz

Fast-growing #hyperconverged virtualization appliance maker #Scale Computing is rolling out its first multi-tier channel program as part of a massive mid-market offensive. Scale Computing CEO Jeff Ready said the channel expansion will boost the company's fervent following among small- and mid-size business customers anxious to avoid what he calls exorbitant #VMware licensing fees.

http://m.crn.com/news/data-center/300083585/scale-computing-launches-first-multi-tier-channel-program-in-massive-midmarket-hyper-convergence-blitz.htm

Hyper-converged hyper-contender ZeroStack starts connecting clouds

#HyperConverged HyperContender #ZeroStack has started connecting public clouds to its on-premises kit. ZeroStack promises the usual “Our beautiful GUI and cunning plumbing means that if you turn on our boxes and go make a cup of coffee there's be VMs running before the cappuccino foam falls” experience. The likes of #VMware, #VCE, #Scale Computing #Nutanix and #SimpliVity say that too. And like ZeroStack they all rely on dense 2U servers to make the magic happen. ZeroStack's schtick is that it works with #KVM – hello, low acquisition cost – and says it can get you to a complex hybrid cloud without the need to hire any expensive architecture folks. It's validated servers from #Dell, #HPE , #Supermicro and plans more hardware partners real soon now. It also emphasises analytics that warn you in advance when storage is running low or something is awry before it ruins your weekend. The company's been selling this stuff since March 2016, has Series B finance to help it along and claims “double digit” customer numbers but didn't tell The Register if it's closer to 10 than 99. The company will say it's just released some code that moves workloads from ESX into its own environment. It promises dependencies will make the jump, too, without need for re-plumbing. And makes the same promise for workloads flowing from its own boxen to #Amazon Web Services, then back again. HyperConverged systems are a busy market with clear and cashed-up leaders, general agreement on the need for tight coupling between hardware and software and a known Big Moment on the way in the form of #Microsoft 's #Azure Stack arriving. So good luck, ZeroStack! ®

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/14/zerostack_hybrid_cloud/

ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service Provides Offsite Protection to Ensure Business Continuity

#Scale Computing, the market leader in #hyperconverged storage, server and virtualization solutions for midsized companies, today launched its #ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service, a Disaster Recovery as a Service ( #DRaaS ) offering that provides offsite protection for businesses at a price that fits the size and budget of their datacenter needs. Building on the resiliency and high availability of the HC3 Virtualization Platform, ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service is the final layer of protection from Scale Computing needed to ensure business continuity for organizations of all sizes. ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service is a cost-effective alternative to backup and offsite shipping of physical media or third-party vendor hosted backup options. Built into the HC3 management interface, users can quickly and easily set up protection for any number of virtual machines to Scale Computing's SAEE-16 SOC 2 certified, PCI compliant, remote datacenter hosted by LightBound. "The ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service has put my mind at ease when it comes to recovery," said David Reynolds, IT manager at Lectrodryer LLC. "Setting up automatic monthly, weekly, daily and minute snapshots of my VMs is unbelievably easy. All these are pushed to the cloud automatically and removed on the date you set them to expire. Highly recommended." ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service provides all the services and support businesses need without having to manage and pay for a private remote disaster recovery site. Whether protecting only critical workloads or an entire HC3 environment, users pay for only the VM protection they need without any upfront capital expense. Built on snapshot technology already built into the HC3 HyperCore architecture, ScaleCare Remote Recovery Service allows users to customize their replication schedules to maximize protection, retention and bandwidth efficiency. After the initial replica is made, only changed blocks are sent to the remote data center. Remote availability of failover VMs within minutes, failback to on-site local HC3 clusters and rollbacks to point-in-time snapshots as needed provide ultimate data protection and availability.

 http://www.hostreview.com/news/160727-scale-computing-radically-simplifies-disaster-recovery-with-launch-of-draas-offering#ixzz4FeuXyuD9

Scale Computing makes play for Nutanix's entry level market

Storage startup #Scale Computing is offering a hyper-converged three-node cluster for less than $25,000, and undercuts #Nutanix 's Xpress SMB entry-level offering by $500.

The company, which is is focussed on the SMB/mid-market, has replaced its entry-level HC1000 with an all-disk HC1100 and a hybrid flash/disk HC1150 featuring automated tiering.

The HC1100 has 64GB of DRAM per node instead of the HC1000's 32GB; per-node CPU core count increases from four to six (1.7GHz Broadwell E5-2620 v4) cores, and the SATA disks change to four 1TB SAS 7,200rpm drives.

The HC1150 nodes also have 64GB of DRAM, eight 2.1GHz Broadwell cores, three 1TB SAS disks, and a single 480GB SSD. Both HC1100 and HC1150 have two 1GbitE network ports, and their enclosures are 1U high.

Scale says its entry-level HC1150 offers the same set of features as its larger HC2000 and HC4000 clusters. The tiering uses its HyperCore Enhanced Automated Tiering (HEAT) tech with a combination of built-in intelligence, data access patterns, and workload priority used to automatically place data on a cluster's storage tiers.

It claims its hyper-converged tri-node cluster is as easy to adopt as a single node virtualisation system. Scale has passed the 1,500 customer count, and 5,500 nodes have been sold.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/20/scale_computing_takes_on_nutanix_entry_level/

HPE has released a Gen 2 hyperconverged... er, thingy. Here's the lowdown

#HPE is nothing if not persistent. Having launched a hyperconverged appliance that washalf the price of #Nutanix last August it’s now going to launch a better one – one that’s 20 per cent lower than Nutanix's cost. Sounds odd, and that’s not the only odd aspect.

The new HCIA was described in HPE’s Q1 fiscal year 2016 earnings call by CEO Meg Whitman: “Our new solution will offer customers installation in minutes, a consumer-inspired simple mobile array user experience, and automated IT operations, all at 20 per cent lower cost than Nutanix.”

Whitman continued: “We believe this new system will allow us to quickly become a top player in the $5bn high-growth hyper-converged market.”

This gen 2 HCIA uses a ProLiant virtualisation server, thought to be its Gen 9 ProLiant DL380 .

Here are the specific things we know about it:

To be announced in March but no ship dateDeveloped in-house with version 1.0 taking four months (Implies October 2015 start)Based on ProLiant virtualisation server - DL380Installation in minutesConsumer-inspired simple user experienceAutomated IT operationsA 20 per cent lower cost than NutanixMarket-changing

Now lets match that up with the existing ConvergedSystem 250-HC StoreVirtual (CS 250 HC) launched in August last year and derive a few implications:

The 20 per cent lower cost than Nutanix doesn't sound much at all when compared to HPE’s CS-250-HC that was claimed to be nearly half the price of the Nutanix 3360 G4The CS 250 HC was also configurable in minutes so nothing new thereThe four month development effort means nothing radical can be expected; there's been too little time for that. Probably the new UI is what the in-house development was aboutThe CS 250 HC uses gen 9 ProLiant Apollo servers whereas the new HCIA box uses DL380s"Automated IT operations" sounds like HPE's Operations ManagerMarket-changing could mean anything, from a new product to a radically different and better new product.

We think we’re looking at a relatively minor and straightforward enhancement to HPE’s HCIA product set, think CS 260 HC, with a new UI and different servers, but still using the StoreVirtual virtual SAN storage software, like the CS 250 HC. The short (four month) development cycle virtually guarantees that nothing radical is going to be announced.

HP's Whitman said: “We very much like this product from a side-by-side comparison and features and functionality to our competitors. Feel really good about it and I think it means that we can be a leader in this quite large and fast-growing part of the market.”

That could be a big ask as her competitors are many:

Atlantis and its HCIA softwareCisco HyperFlex with SpringPath softwareDell’s Nutanix software-powered XCEMC VxRailGridStore and its Hyper-V-focussed HCIAHDS HSP 400 Big Data hyper-converged systemHuawei FusionCubeMaxta and its HCIA softwareMarket leader NutanixPivot3Scale ComputingSimpliVity and its ASIC-accelerated HCIASpringPath and its HCIA softwareVMware VSAN partners

DataCore says customers can buy a DataCore software/Lenovo hardware HCIA system. So we have 15 competitors to HPE and its HCIAs, including major players such as Cisco, Dell, EMC, Nutanix and SimpliVity.

NetApp has yet to enter the market, and so far shows no signs of doing so.

HPE has quite a hyper-converged mountain to climb if it seriously wants to be a leader – one with a top three place – but it has all the pieces in-house (servers, storage, networking, and software) to build itself an HCIA mountain-climbing machine. Pun not intended.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/07/hpe_gen_2_hyperconverged_thingy/