Scale Computing is an alternative hyperconverged solution that cover the entire stack: from the hardware, to the hypervisor and storage, to the management part. Their HC3 platform is an hyperconverged solution that can be used for small- and medium-sized businesses but also in some enterprise departments with a simple (and different) approach to virtualization and storage.

Now the HC3 family is growing with the announce of the HE500 series of appliances.

This new model is designed for organisations requiring reliable, easy to deploy, and affordable infrastructure at the edge of the network, the HE500 series delivers a highly available, self-healing and simple to operate solution. The series is highly-suited for remote multi-site deployments across industries, including healthcare, retail and manufacturing. 

Edge computing describes a physical computing infrastructure, intentionally located outside the four walls of the data centre, so storage compute resources can be placed where they are needed. Run on a small or tiny hardware footprint, infrastructure at the edge collects, processes, and reduces vast quantities of data, and can be further uploaded to either a centralised data centre or the cloud. Edge computing acts as a high-performance bridge from local compute resources to both private and public clouds.

The HE500 series is a set of different sized HCI appliances that provide enterprise-class features to remote locations and boost edge computing capabilities with disaster recovery depending on the different needs.

Each HE500 appliance model can be deployed quickly, managed locally or remotely, and is fitted with self-healing technology to provide almost instant failover and minimal downtime. In addition, the HE500 series provides a low-cost option for disaster recovery infrastructure that is easy to deploy, easy-to-use, and runs disaster recovery workloads reliably.

“Unlike other HCI solutions that reserve large compute resources to run their Virtual Storage Appliances, the HE500 series takes advantage of the efficient, hypervisor-embedded HC3 storage stack to free up RAM and CPU for running workloads. This dramatically lowers the hardware and software investment needed to provide high availability to edge workloads,” said Eric Slack, senior analyst, Evaluator Group.

The HE500 series appliances are more light-weight than the other appliances in the HC1000 and HC5000 series that Scale Computing offers today, and they fully enable the delivery of maximum HCI functionality. Each of the five models in the HE500 series is pre-installed with Scale Computing’s HC3 HyperCore Software, providing an intelligent and automated layer that results in simple to operate functionality and the necessary performance to meet modern edge computing requirements.

“An increasing number of organisations need infrastructure at the edge of the network, as this is where their data is actually being created. However, complexity and cost have been significant barriers to implementing and maintaining this technology,” said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder, Scale Computing. “The HE500 series addresses both these concerns, making edge computing a financially viable and practical option for more organisations. Our ability to deliver HCI technology at a lower price point will dramatically boost edge computing capabilities and resources for businesses across the board.”

The HE500 series is available as either a 1U rack-mount or in a tower configuration. Units can be configured with spinning disk, all-flash, or hybrid storage options, with either 32GB or 64GB RAM per appliance. Customers can choose between 1GbE or 10GbE SFP+ networking interfaces and three different processor options.

Andrea Mauro

Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.