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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
7.3
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (7th), 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

OliverPalz - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides efficient synchronous mirroring capability and dynamic data management functionality
The initial setup is relatively easy but requires a certified DataCore implementation engineer to deploy the solution in a production environment. The deployment following the qualified procedure, typically takes about a week, depending on the amount of storage and the specific environment. With my experience, I can set up the system within two to four hours; however, the qualification process, which includes detailed planning and testing, adds additional time. It involves gathering the customer's requirements, preparing comprehensive documentation for validation, and conducting tests in collaboration with the customer. This documentation includes a site planning checklist, a pre-installation checklist, and a functional test plan to ensure everything is in order before deployment. Overall, I rate the process an eight.
MB
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

"Mirroring is the most valuable feature because I can provide a high-level of service and optimize the use of obsolete storage."
"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."
"It is a very stable solution."
"DataCore SANsymphony's stability is okay."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."
"I found the solution to be very stable."
"For us, fault tolerance is the most important feature of DataCore."
"The most valuable feature is the software design storage that really provided a faster, agile, easier to scale up and out storage path."
"Our goal with NetApp HCI is to have no single point of failure."
"It has reduced our hypervisor footprint by around 20%."
"The most valuable feature is the convergence."
"This is a strong product and it works very well, and the processes around it continue to grow and mature."
"When you are doing lifecycles for your equipment, you can just swap out pieces of equipment. We used to do one big iron to another big iron, and that's a major migration hassle. Whereas, with this environment, you can go with small nodes, one at a time, and do a refresh."
"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."
"The ability to size the available space in a way that matches our company's needs is most valuable. For instance, you can decide if you want 80/20, 70/30, or 60/40 space. Redundancy depends on your needs without changing the appliance. You just add space and decide the percentage of space that you need free and the percentage of space that you need for backup. It is all automatic, and you don't have to do anything. You just add space, and the system automatically configures itself with the chosen option."
 

Cons

"For customers or technicians who don't speak and understand English, it would be great to have other language support, all the more so given the number of countries in which SanSymphony is used."
"The solution is constantly evolving."
"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 SMPA (Shared Multi-Port Array) technology developed with the aim of allowing a configuration identical to other storage arrays."
"It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes."
"The main problem is there is no DataCore OS."
"There is no way of quickly matching the exact size of a vDisk to a disk pool."
"There is room for improvement in the graphical interface."
"It is easy to install now, but could potentially be even simpler."
"I would like to see a better upgrade process, like the one that ONTAP has."
"It is difficult to get acclimated to all the new features quickly. The onboard process could be improved to bring clients up to speed faster."
"In the next version I would like to see bigger GPU types and insurance for including transparency."
"The product needs better support for installing the operating system on the machine."
"The administration side of it needs to be improved. We expect an easier interface and a single upgrade for updating the infrastructure."
"The problem is that it needs to be much more stable, for example, when I want to do the upgrade to 1.7 that just released, I also need to issue a ticket to the support guy in India and he asked me to deploy another mlock. There are a lot of manual steps compared with other products."
"Its stability is 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 crash."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."
"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."
"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
"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."
"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."
"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."
"Its pricing is lower than our previous solution."
"The licensing fees are renewed annually."
"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."
"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."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"Where we lost nearly 75 percent of our infrastructure due to a malicious attack and were able to recover two and a half hours into it due to the integration, it saved us and all of our customers. Because we were able to recover so fast from the attack, the solution paid for itself right there."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Government
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
19%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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...
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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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