DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between DataCore SANsymphony and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP Report (Updated: March 2023).
685,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Active-active is the most valuable aspect for us.""The most useful feature of SANsymphony is that it's able to manage any brand of block storage.""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.""The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs.""CDP is an important feature for avoiding data loss in the event of ransomware attacks. You need more storage capacity, however, you get the possibility to return at any time and use the data saved up to that point. The recovery is much faster than with a classic restore.""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 DataCore system has been rock solid since we have been using it - from 2007 on.""The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."

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"Its scalability is very good.""ONTAP is great for helping you migrate on-premise workflows to cloud environments.""The most valuable features are that it's reliable, simple, and performs well.""I like how you can easily pair on-prem with the cloud and the cloud backup feature. I like the whole integration with on-prem and the cloud for SnapMirror relationships.""One of the features our customers like is that it can be used from one cloud provider to another. They can use it from Azure to AWS or vice versa. That way, they don't need to use the same provider for backups. If something goes wrong on the primary site, having the same data in another cloud service provider is important.""The Cloud Manager application that's on the NetApp cloud site is easy to use. You can set up and schedule replications from there, so you don't have to go into the ONTAP system. Another feature we've recently started using is the scheduled power off. We started with one client and have been slowly implementing it with others. We can cut costs by not having the VM run all the time. It's only on when it's doing replication, but it powers off after.""The ability to see things going back and forth has been quite useful.""It is much easier to control data since we can run queries across all our platforms with just one solution. Not only that, we can also monitor all the platforms with Active IQ, where we can see all the alerts, messages, and space consumption through a single application. This is regardless if the data is on-prem or AWS. It is much more efficient."

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Cons
"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.""The solution could be better packaged and marketed.""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.""The graphical interface is not always very stable.""The cloud reporting interface is quite poor compared to other vendors.""We'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony.""NVMeoF should be implemented. This protocol will play a major role in storage infrastructure in the future.""Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that can show capacity, usage, performance, and any issues would be very beneficial."

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"The encryption and deduplication features still have a lot of room for improvement.""The only area for improvement would be some guidance in terms of the future products that NetApp is planning on releasing. I would like to see communication around that or advice such as, "Hey, the world is moving towards this particular trend, and NetApp can help you do that." I do get promotional emails from NetApp, but customer-specific advice would be helpful, based on our use cases.""We've just been dealing with general pre-requisite infrastructure configuration challenges. Once those are out of the way, it is easy.""Something we would like to see is the ability to better manage the setup and tie it to our configuration management database. We manage our whole IT infrastructure out of that database.""We have customers that are still using IBM mainframes and that very old SNA architecture from IBM. There are questions about how you interconnect the data on the mainframe side... But I don't know if it's worth it for NetApp to invest in developing products to include mainframes for a few customers.""The solution is not stable when using single nodes. This is a problem. NetApp should work on this solution to make it more stable with HA nodes and resolve this issue.""Cloud Volumes ONTAP's interface could use an overhaul. Sometimes you have to dig around in Cloud Manager a little bit to find certain things. The layout could be more intuitive.""The solution could be better when we're connecting to our S3 side of the house. Right now, it doesn't see it, and I'm not sure why."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
  • "The solution is cost effective."
  • "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."
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  • "It is expensive. There are no costs in addition to their standard licensing fees."
  • "The pricing of this solution is definitely higher than what the typical Azure Files and AWS solutions charge, but given the features and the stability NetApp has provided, we are okay with it. We are not complaining about the pricing."
  • "If we wanted to use the AWS solution, we would have to manage two or three different platforms and pay more money than what we should have to pay, as some of the features don't even exist. If we wanted to, we could use AWS cloning, but it is useless because it uses more space, is more expensive, and takes more time."
  • "Overall, the pricing of NetApp is aggressive and the pricing becomes more aggressive as the amount of data increases. The cost for a given volume of data that you are storing becomes lower. The greater the volume of data, the cheaper the license."
  • "Make sure you investigate what your requirements are going to cost you using the native cloud solutions versus what NetApp is going to cost you, to make sure you have a business case to go with NetApp."
  • "The pricing could be improved. It is a good product, but it is very expensive for me."
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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It's difficult to say if something is missing in this solution. Maybe we'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony. We essentially use RAID5 for our SAS disk and SSD, and now we… more »
    Top Answer:We're able to use the SnapMirror function and SnapMirror data from our on-prem environment into Azure. That is super-helpful. SnapMirror allows you to take data that exists on one NetApp, on a… more »
    Top Answer:Our licensing is based on a yearly subscription. That is an additional cost, but because of the storage efficiencies that the NetApp gives, even with the additional cost of the NetApp license, you… more »
    Top Answer:I think this is more of a limitation of how it operates in Azure, but the solution is affected by this limitation. There's something about how the different availability zones, the different regions… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    5,358
    Comparisons
    3,105
    Reviews
    13
    Average Words per Review
    634
    Rating
    9.4
    Views
    12,025
    Comparisons
    7,477
    Reviews
    10
    Average Words per Review
    833
    Rating
    8.8
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    DataCore SANsymphony SDS, DataCore, SANsymphony-V, Hyperconverged Virtual SAN
    ONTAP Cloud, CVO, NetApp CVO
    Learn More
    Overview

    DataCore SANsymphony is a very powerful software-defined storage (SDS) solution that makes it easy for organizations to take control of their data storage operations. It makes it so that users can choose the way that their data storage infrastructure is built and operates. Businesses that choose DataCore SANsymphony find that potential threats to their data are either removed completely or mitigated.

    DataCore SANsymphony Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy DataCore SANsymphony include:

    • Low operation costs. DataCore SANsymphony is designed so that users can take full advantage of its many features and capabilities without having to pay large sums of money and allocate similarly large blocks of time. The solution enables organizations to leverage whatever storage hardware they are already using to store their data. DataCore SANsymphony is hardware agnostic and, as a result, users can easily integrate it with the physical infrastructure that is most convenient for them. Furthermore, businesses can manage all of their storage devices from a single management console. This cuts down on the costs associated with the administration of an organization’s storage operations.
    • Flexibility. Users of DataCore SANsymphony can conduct their storage operations with a high level of flexibility. They can gather all of their storage capabilities in one place and deliver them uniformly across all of their devices, regardless of the physical infrastructure. Organizations can deploy their storage operations in multiple ways and use many different types of architecture They can easily and seamlessly move between them as their business needs demand it. Should they desire to, they can stick with whatever system they had been using up until that point.
    • Continuous, uninterrupted operation. DataCore SANsymphony keeps the data that users store with it in a state where it can be accessed at any time. It comes with autonomous safeguards that save a user from experiencing a loss of data when their architecture experiences some sort of system failure. Data is saved beforehand and stored remotely so that it can be retrieved if necessary. It also enables users to recover lost digital architecture so that a business can continue running smoothly even if a disaster wipes out a part of or the entirety of their architecture.

    DataCore SANsymphony Features

    Some of the many features DataCore SANsymphony offers include:

    • Data security. DataCore SANsymphony provides users with a high level of data protection. Users can leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to scan for and analyze potential threats to their data. They can then receive recommendations that enable them to avoid or at least mitigate potential issues.
    • Auto-tiering. An organization’s data can be automatically assigned a hierarchical storage value. Users do not need to classify and create tiers to hold their data. This solution has a feature that classifies and hierarchically stores data without requiring users to intervene.
    • Automatic load balancing. DataCore SANsymphony is built with the ability to automatically balance workloads. The solution will bypass channels that are slow or that fail to ensure that operations run as smoothly as possible. This will take place without the intervention of system administrators.

    Reviews from Real Users

    DataCore SANsymphony is a solution that stands out even when compared to its top competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its synchronous mirroring capability and the high level of reliability that it provides.

    A Systems and Network Engineer at a computer software company writes, “The synchronous mirroring is great. Storage is always available. This is the main feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS which allows very high storage availability and better protection against environmental incidents (electrical, flooding, etc.).”

    Fernando V., a LAN Engineer at Maimonides Medical Center, says, “The software just works and is reliable. Downtime due to storage maintenance or upgrades is long gone. We have multiple types of software running to differentiate our applications. This gives us more value due to the fact that we can use the application to segment workloads if needed. The bottom line is that the software runs our applications on whatever storage vendor we choose - and it does so reliably.”

    The leading enterprise-grade storage management solution, delivers secure, proven storage management services and supports up to a capacity of 368TB. Software service supports various use cases, such as: File shares and block-level storage serving NAS (NFS, SMB / CIFS) and SAN (iSCSI) Disaster Recovery, Backup, and Archive DevOps Databases (SQL, Oracle, NoSQL) Cloud Volumes ONTAP is offered in a standard single-node configuration or in a High Availability (HA) configuration.

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    Sample Customers
    Volkswagen, Maimonides Medical Center, The Biodesign Institute, 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.
    Rohit, AdvacnedMD, D2L, Trinity Mirror, Eidos Media, WireStorm, Cordant Group, JFK Medical Center, ALD Automotive, Healthix, City of Baton Rouge, ON Semiconductor
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Non Profit33%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Government7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Comms Service Provider15%
    Government8%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    REVIEWERS
    Healthcare Company22%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Insurance Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company22%
    Comms Service Provider14%
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business53%
    Midsize Enterprise7%
    Large Enterprise40%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business37%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise48%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business12%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise75%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business19%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise66%
    Buyer's Guide
    DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
    685,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    DataCore SANsymphony is ranked 4th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 13 reviews while NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is ranked 1st in Cloud Software Defined Storage with 12 reviews. DataCore SANsymphony is rated 9.4, while NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is rated 8.8. The top reviewer of DataCore SANsymphony writes "Provides HA virtualized storage independent of storage type or vendor". On the other hand, the top reviewer of NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP writes "It's easy to set up and schedule replications from the cloud manager". DataCore SANsymphony is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Pure Storage FlashArray and StorMagic SvSAN, whereas NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP is most compared with Azure NetApp Files, Amazon S3, NetApp Cloud Volumes Service for Google Cloud, Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) and Portworx Enterprise. See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP report.

    We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.