We performed a comparison between DataCore SANsymphony and NetApp ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Storage Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."SANsymphony is flexible, with many potential options for implementation. SANsymphony's can be used with VMware, Hyper-V, or even with a hypervisor agnostic approach. It can also be used for strictly physical non-virtualized solutions."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its versatility, with there being support for all new hardware technologies and platforms, disc mirroring and very effective auto tiering."
"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."
"DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable."
"Good security with this solution."
"The synchronous mirror allows us to operate a fully redundant storage solution that is distributed across two sites."
"Active-active is the most valuable aspect for us."
"I'd have to say that the biggest improvement gained by using SANsymphony has to be the performance of the product."
"You can scale the product up or out."
"We over-allocate our aggregates and it still works, it's great, it's fun. We dedupe everywhere, we get huge savings. We went back and deduped the whole thing again, we could get more, so that's what we do. We go back and look to see if there's an option we can set and do it from the beginning, but still 13 terabytes, that's a lot of dedupe savings. Sometimes we get 50% or more in our savings, so we love dedupe."
"We bought it for a couple reasons. One, it took advantage of our existing storage because we could front-end that storage. It also allowed us, through native replication, to set up a DR site, which we're working towards. And three, that DR site, in 2020, is going to the cloud. NetApp has a nice solution for that. And our production in 2022 may actually go to the cloud. So all that is already in place, no additional tools. You can use the same SnapMirror and SnapVault technology to get there."
"We are saving more disk space which saves us more money."
"Scalability is awesome with a cluster node, not only can you scale up, but you can also scale out."
"Today, because NetApp listened to their customers and improved their GUI, we can perform a firmware upgrade within minutes."
"It's very fast, NetApp is always dependable, so if we have an issue, they're very responsive."
"One of the things I find most valuable is the way they do the Snapshots, taking incrementals at points in time... Often someone will say, "Hey, I deleted this thing yesterday, can you get this back for me?" It's good that we have all those incremental Snapshots at different points in time that we can refer back to, to get them whatever they need."
"One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine. It relies on Windows and that is a limitation because there are some customers who are looking for non Windows systems."
"I would like to see reporting added, such as a monthly connectivity report."
"Its interface could be better."
"Right now, the version used is run on Microsoft Windows Server. Having a Linux version or even an appliance would be better as it would eliminate the use of additional licensing for another piece of hardware."
"I still see room for improvement with DataCore SANsymphony in the area of alarm and task management."
"I think the performance reporting can be improved by adding historical statistics into a database for the purpose of comparing."
"Problem detection could be easier. It should help customers identify problems very quickly because it's not easy to analyze on the platform today."
"If you're dealing with big databases or transactional databases, it might not be the best-suited solution. The design of DataCore's solution isn't oriented towards this type of data."
"Sometimes, we face problems with support."
"Some of their products have been really good for us, on certain versions. We've run into a bunch of verts, though. That's NetApp's word for their bugs. Stability has been the main complaint that I've had with the product. Because it's so feature-rich and has so much software related to it, it does come with a decent amount of bugs so we do a lot of upgrades to patch bugs."
"I would like to see more integration of the features with the CIFS and SMB Protocols. We also want integration with iSCSI."
"It's very expensive."
"Especially with the all-flash arrays, we would like to see better storage efficiency and deduplication. In terms of manageability, it would be great if NetApp would add more native reporting tools into the dashboard so that we don't need to use the third-party tool for analyzing our environments or to generate any reports. This would be especially helpful for companies that need to generate some chargeback for the customers."
"I would like the ability to perform backups in the cloud. That way you don't have to worry about building the data center. Everything's already in the cloud."
"We would like to be able to provide feedback immediately after receiving technical support."
"Sometimes, we have had some delays, on holidays and weekends, getting the right resource for a specific problem."
DataCore SANsymphony is ranked 2nd in Storage Software with 54 reviews while NetApp ONTAP is ranked 1st in Storage Software with 73 reviews. DataCore SANsymphony is rated 9.2, while NetApp ONTAP is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of DataCore SANsymphony writes "Robust with good replication and access protection ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp ONTAP writes "The on-ramp for all things Netapp". DataCore SANsymphony is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, StorMagic SvSAN, Red Hat Ceph Storage and Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, whereas NetApp ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Dell PowerPath, StorONE Storage-as-a-Service and Kodjin FHIR Server. See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp ONTAP report.
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