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DataCore SANsymphony vs Dell vSAN Ready Nodes comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
DataCore SANsymphony enhances security and availability, offering high ROI through hardware reuse and cost-effective storage and uptime savings.
Sentiment score
3.7
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes offer 30-40% savings despite integration issues, leveraging existing staff to reduce operating expenses.
The OPEX benefits are around 30 to 40% because the same engineer who manages vSphere can handle Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, eliminating the need for additional support engineers.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
DataCore SANsymphony's support is praised for being rapid, knowledgeable, effective, and highly rated, despite occasional inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
4.0
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes support is rated positively, though response times can be slow, with varying service quality.
They always help me quickly and with great knowledge, which is essential for central storage.
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10.
Whether we have pro support plus or just the basic level, they are helpful and reliable as long as we provide the necessary details.
If we require a replacement part, the engagement is usually within four hours
There is always room for improvement in terms of response time and reaching knowledgeable staff quickly.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
DataCore SANsymphony is praised for its scalability, hardware independence, and adaptability to both small and large environments.
Sentiment score
6.2
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes offer scalability and flexibility, though costs and resource needs pose challenges for larger deployments.
There are no limits to scalability, which is essential for central storage.
With VCF we have significant automation built-in within the VCF console within SDDC manager as the primary management console.
I would rate scalability around seven because when customers want to expand capacity but all the drive slots are full, they are forced to buy new servers or nodes which adds more costs with licenses and hardware.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
DataCore SANsymphony is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, requiring proper configuration and minimal maintenance.
Sentiment score
5.1
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are stable and reliable, with high stability ratings, though performance and disk issues require management.
A disk group for five disks can be problematic, and customers need to tolerate downtime if the disk is not available.
 

Room For Improvement

DataCore SANsymphony struggles with tech support, pricing, Windows dependence, and needs better integration, interface, and enterprise features.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes need better scalability, automation, cost-efficiency, integration, support, and updates to address current customer challenges.
there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs
The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are useful as a product, but the lack of expansion with VMware has led customers to refrain from further upgrades.
A faster firmware lifecycle with the release of validated firmware catalogs more quickly would be a desired improvement.
I would want VMware to ensure that when there's a hardware failure on a host, it should gracefully migrate the VMs to another host available in the cluster without restarting, which would be a great improvement.
 

Setup Cost

DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is high, but offers favorable price-performance, with careful planning advised to optimize costs.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes are initially costly but cost-effective long-term, with competitive pricing and annual licensing considerations.
They have made some improvements regarding the pricing, but it's still too expensive.
The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model.
As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to our considerable business dealings.
 

Valuable Features

DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage management, performance, and reliability with high availability, flexibility, scalability, and hardware-agnostic versatility.
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes offer compact design, scalability, and robust security, enhancing performance and user experience with single-vendor support.
Customers can extend storage with flexibility, as one is not obligated to purchase hard disks or controllers from the same storage vendor.
DataCore SANsymphony's ability to enhance storage utilization is very good because it's agnostic and it can be deployed on every environment, which is perfect for my clients.
The benefit of using vSAN is that it's easy to manage on vCenter. You can see if there are issues, get recommendations, and overall, it's highly fault-free which is beneficial because we want to minimize downtime.
The ability for single-team management without requiring a separate storage team for managing arrays and fiber channel switches is also a valuable feature.
Dell's technical support is generally very good.
 

Categories and Ranking

DataCore SANsymphony
Ranking in HCI
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
57
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Storage Performance (2nd)
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes
Ranking in HCI
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 2.3%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell vSAN Ready Nodes is 2.8%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony2.3%
Dell vSAN Ready Nodes2.8%
Other94.9%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
High availability and user-friendliness enhance infrastructure health and redundancy
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10. Each time I contact the technical support, it's when I don't have a choice because it's very difficult for me on site, and each time, I have good people online who are able to help me solve the problem. Usually, the problems are not very technically difficult, but sometimes they are, and the support team is still there to help us resolve them. The majority of the problems are linked to licensing, so when the license has expired or the number is not correct, they are proactive and change things live, which is very good.
KuldeepSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Experience improved efficiency and customer satisfaction with enhanced integration and management capabilities
Scalability involves two types of environments: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and non-VCF environment where we use VMware Validated Foundation. With VCF we have significant automation built-in within the VCF console within SDDC manager as the primary management console. For non-VCF environments, it depends on customer choice. For small environments, we do manual scalability and sometimes use Terraform scripts to keep the host ready and add in the cluster automatically. For large environments with frequent scalability actions, we propose the Terraform solution that builds ESXi, does necessary configuration, and automatically starts up for associating with the existing environment. If scaling is infrequent, with one or two hosts per month, it is a manual job. From a challenge perspective, it seems easier, with just a few pre-checks regarding make and model compatibility, disks, and server health on the hardware level.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?
The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model, and it seems reasonable. I am technical personnel and not deeply involved in sales, but the pricing appears fine.
What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?
The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like when a backup is in progress).
What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?
In my opinion, there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs. However, this is not a frequent need because they have great support that offers quick and knowledgeable assistance. Other...
What do you like most about Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
If I consider the overall product, I would say that it is an excellent solution that offers very good performance and stability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
There is no specific licensing model for vSAN ReadyNodes as it is linked with Broadcom VMware's solutions rather than Dell's. As a group under Comcast, we receive very good pricing from Dell due to...
What needs improvement with Dell vSAN Ready Nodes?
The Dell vSAN Ready Nodes can be improved if Broadcom reverts to VMware's previous licensing approach because they've made it difficult for smaller environments to consume the product. Most of our ...
 

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN
vSAN Ready Nodes
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.
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