DataCore SANsymphony vs Dell XC Appliance comparison

DataCore and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the HCI category. DataCore is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.4, while Dell Technologies is ranked #17 with an average rating of 9.0. DataCore holds a 2.6% mindshare in HCI, compared to Dell Technologies’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

DataCore SANsymphony

Read 58 DataCore SANsymphony reviews

3,905 Views
2,070 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Dell XC Appliance

Read 8 Dell XC Appliance reviews

555 Views
549 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

DataCore SANsymphony

Dell XC Appliance

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and Dell XC Appliance compete in the storage solutions category. DataCore SANsymphony appears to have the upper hand in terms of flexibility and a broad feature set, while Dell XC Appliance stands out for integration and simplicity.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony offers features like synchronous mirroring, auto-tiering, and parallel I/O, making it suitable for varied storage environments. It allows the use of commodity hardware, reducing costs and enhancing flexibility. Dell XC Appliance is noted for its seamless integration with VMware environments, robust hardware integration, and efficient storage management, which particularly benefits vSAN operations.

Room for Improvement: DataCore SANsymphony could improve its integration with backup software and enhance its graphical interface. The switch to a subscription pricing model has raised concerns about cost-effectiveness. Dell XC Appliance needs better multi-hypervisor support and streamlined lifecycle management processes to enhance usability and operational efficiency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DataCore SANsymphony is lauded for its superior technical support and responsive service, which users deem industry-leading. Dell XC Appliance is easier to deploy, with strong integration capabilities that simplify the deployment process. Customer service for both products is favorable, with DataCore's support noted for its exceptional responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony's per-terabyte licensing makes it costly, but users justify the expense through its scalability and efficiency. Its ROI is realized via enhanced redundancy and flexibility. Dell XC Appliance's pricing, suitable for medium to large businesses, offers a balance between its robust features and value, with users perceiving lower TCO compared to other architectures.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell XC Appliance Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell XC Appliance

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

DataCore SANsymphony

Ranking in HCI

7th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Storage Performance (3rd)

Dell XC Appliance

Ranking in HCI

17th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 2.6%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell XC Appliance is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony	2.6%
Dell XC Appliance	1.1%
Other	96.3%

HCI

Featured Reviews

SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

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.

Read full review

reviewer2644977

Works

Enables seamless integration with multiple software and outstanding AI tools

The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it. I find it overly reliant on VMware. In cases of company mergers involving different platforms, software that can handle a multi-hypervisor environment would facilitate quicker integration.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated."

"An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system."

"The features I have found most valuable are the active-active, or so-called grid technology, and the integration into our VMware-vCenter."

"It's a software storage solution that can scale as we like. There is also has a parallel feature that enhances the performance of the storage solution. We can separate storage and computing, and we can scale these two parts of the platform to meet business needs efficiently."

"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)."

"It is a well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O, cache speed mechanism, etc."

"Continuous data protection (CDP), can be used to "protect" again ransomware by recording all write on disk in a log. You can recover your data with incredible time granularity."

"It allows data to be available from two DataCore servers."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"From a single screen, I can view VM details, performance, and hardware issues, such as power supply or fan malfunctions, along with RAM module problems."

"What I like the most is that it is easy to implement, easy deployment and that it's easy to manage."

"The most valuable feature is the low management overhead, and the lower skill set required to manage it."

"When we compare it to normal hardware servers, I'd say it is quite easy to configure and deploy."

"It's an extremely stable solution, and I highly recommend it."

"The solution's best feature is its simplicity. It's so simple to deploy it. You've got the VMware, and it's own appliance. It is really helpful. The system is online within half a day and saves so much time."

"The most valuable features are the deduplication and the compression features."

"The solution's hardware is great."

More Dell XC Appliance pros

Cons

"SANsymphony is missing some features that vSAN has. For example, vSAN has a special feature called continuous data protection. It provides the ability to go back in time to a given moment. You can see what was on your disk in the past up to two weeks. That's a great feature because ransomware attacks are increasingly common, and that provides you some kind of protection."

"If it could integrate to a cloud gateway, then we could carry it directly to storage, instead of having middleware in between the storage and the cloud."

"NVMeoF should be implemented. This protocol will play a major role in storage infrastructure in the future."

"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."

"There is no way of quickly matching the exact size of a vDisk to a disk pool."

"I would like for it to improve into a more ergonomic management console and a translation into the French language. It should have some process for a shutdown of a VM properly in case of a problem."

"One area where the solution could improve is its software platform. Many customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the software running on Microsoft Windows."

"When I sometimes reboot for maintenance, the connectivity from the iSCSI initiator host could be improved."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"Currently, there is no support for the servers that are not in the cluster."

"The solution's storage size could be improved."

"We are not always advised of new features or updates, so we must research to stay up to date."

"Dell needs to do a lot of work to simplify the maintenance and life-cycle upgrades for the product."

"In the next release, I would like to see support for Docker and containers."

"The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor."

"The cost of using the public cloud deployment is astronomical."

"The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it."

More Dell XC Appliance cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."

"The solution is cost effective."

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."

"We have licensing costs on a yearly basis. They charge per terabyte, so in terms of cost, it can be very costly. They have three different features, and you have to pay extra for those."

"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is good."

"The price point is very fair for a product in this category but can vary depending on the components selected within the family of products."

"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."

"The pricing is dependent on the technology and is in direct relation to the manufacturer and the components."

"We received a good price from Dell."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	2

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

Before choosing DataCore SANsymphony, I did not evaluate other options.

See all answers

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).

See all answers

What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and separate sites to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery. I do not have...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Dell XC Appliance?

My advice for people who are selling this product is to first make sure that you educate the customers. The customer doesn't often know much about HCI and what the need to be using it for. If they ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Dell XC Appliance?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Dell XC Appliance?

Dell offers several benefits with its appliances. Primarily, I can combine them horizontally and vertically, reaching up to sixty-four nodes. Additionally, Dell employs its own artificial intellige...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

NetApp ONTAP vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 6% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 28% of the time

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

Lenovo ThinkAgile HX Series vs Dell XC Appliance

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Verge.io vs Dell XC Appliance

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

January 2026

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

December 2025

Download Dell XC Appliance product report

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN

No data available

Overview

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

DataCore

XC Series hyper-converged appliances integrate Dell EMC 14th generation PowerEdge servers with Nutanix software to offer one of the industry’s most versatile and scalable hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) platforms. By supporting a choice of hypervisors, XC Series appliances can be deployed quickly for all virtualized workloads to reduce management complexity and total cost of ownership.

Dell Technologies

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.

Cardlytics, AEW Energie, Aubert, Zhongtong Information Service, Commune de Villepinte, Teikyo University Hospital

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell XC Appliance

December 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell XC Appliance

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