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DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp HCI [EOL] comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (8th), Storage Performance (1st)
NetApp HCI [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MB
Chief Information Officer at Lucart S.p.A.
Crashed continuously, complex to deploy, and bad after-sales support - NETAPP FIXED the problems in 2022
Their after-sales support, SLA, and third-parties availability should be improved. NetApp's support is very difficult to engage. We have an SLA of onsite support within 24 hours. but they don't respect the SLA. Its stability was very bad. It has been crashing continuously. In one year, we got three crashes, which is unbelievable for an appliance that is guaranteed for 10 years without any crashes. In 2022, NetApp Italy, driven by the country manager Davide Marini, fixed all our issues and added additional computation power for free. This is a great example of customer care. They could have done it right the first time of course, but admitting the errors and putting in place such a remediation plan has been a very professional behavior.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Auto-tiering to obtain performance at a lower cost without the customer having to purchase ultra-fast storage is great."
"The platform's most valuable feature is its synchronous mirroring capability, which ensures bit-identical copies of data and offers excellent failover capacity."
"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."
"The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs."
"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."
"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 DataCore system has been rock solid since we have been using it - from 2007 on."
"During the maintenance periods, on any part of the storage or VMware migration, we have had no downtime."
"It's an all-flash solution. NetApp guarantees 3-to-1 or more than 3-to-1. It has guaranteed performance, like 15K IOPS per node."
"Scalability was another thing I was looking at. The solution, by its very nature, is designed to be expandable and flexible, so you don't have to buy performance you don't need today, but you're also not stuck with something you can't expand."
"The most valuable feature is the convergence."
"The multi-vertical aspect is what is most valuable for us. The main reason we wanted a multi protocol was because Amazon was not able to provide us with access to the same data as we could get from Linux and Windows lengths. That was our value proposition for this solution."
"We like SnapMirror and we've been using it for many years. We also like the object storage tools, as well as cloud sync for customers wanting to integrate between the cloud and local."
"It is easy to set up, and you don't have to do much work to get it to do what it needs to do."
"The NetApp Deployment Engine that comes with it makes the actual deployment and usage very easy. That's our primary focus and it's hyper-converged. That's something that we want to use as well."
"It is easy to administrate the solution, and the company handles its technical support well."
 

Cons

"Unified storage (all block, objects, and files) should be in a single storage pool with unified storage concepts, hence providing the user with whatever they want."
"DataCore needs a more efficient and better way to keep track of metrics and counters so that we can do baseline analysis to measure performance."
"We'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony."
"The main problem is there is no DataCore OS."
"When I sometimes reboot for maintenance, the connectivity from the iSCSI initiator host could be improved."
"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."
"For customers or technicians that don't speak and understand English, it could be great to have other languages support, all the more so given the number of countries in which SanSymphony is used."
"I think the performance reporting can be improved by adding historical statistics into a database for the purpose of comparing."
"It would be great if they took something like kernel storage and integrated straight into the NetApp as well."
"I would like to have the ability to replicate to multiple sites."
"I would like to see higher level graphics support because we are going to be doing some virtual desktop for our CAD software, and I want to be able to support AutoCAD and Cantillo on remote desktop machines."
"I would like for them to fall a little closer to like the VMware release model. The new features and new solutions tend to come from the VMware side. I would like for NetApp to follow along closely with VMware's release schedule."
"It would be nice to have better access to tutorials and a test environment for simulations."
"It is easy to install now, but could potentially be even simpler."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"My biggest pain point is the installation part. I would like to see the appliance itself remove the entire switch that goes behind it and figure out how to do all the cluster interconnects within the box itself."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."
"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."
"The solution is cost effective."
"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."
"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."
"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."
"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 solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
"This solution reduced our maintenance costs. We were going to have to pay one to two million dollars to put in compute nodes. We are avoiding those costs."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"Its price is comparable to the competitors in the market."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"The licensing fees are renewed annually."
"This solution saved our organization time (35 percent) and money. We have a hefty group of developers, and if you multiply that by 30 to 35 percent, that is quite a bit of money."
"There are the overall infrastructure costs. Even though the initial costing was higher, we calculated for year-to-year for five years. That brought us into a position where we decided, we have to go for HCI rather than having distributor systems."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Government
6%
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise19
 

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.
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?
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...
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Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN
No data available
 

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.
American Showa, Children's Mercy, Coca-Cola, Consultel Cloud, Evangelische Landeskirche in Wurttemberg, Imperva, Surface Mount Technology
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