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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) (4th), 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
CEO 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

"An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system."
"The synchronous mirror allows us to operate a fully redundant storage solution that is distributed across two sites."
"Excellent performance and reliability, and very low cost using home hardware."
"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."
"Auto-tiering to obtain performance at a lower cost without the customer having to purchase ultra-fast storage is great."
"Redundancy and improved performance in terms of storage with auto-tiering are the most valuable features."
"The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are many counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like when a backup is in progress)."
"DataCore SANsymphony's stability is okay."
"The scalability is great, because it can scale independently."
"It allows me to move a VM set and require extra performance. I can easily move them onto it and have it just run."
"The best thing about the product is this is the only appliance in the market that separates control of storage from compute."
"HCI has helped with storage persistence across private and hybrid clouds for the last year. It's faster and more reliable with minimal downtime, as it doesn't require any maintenance."
"I like how the solution gives you the ability to basically grow compute and storage separately, and there is no compute processing used for storage IO so that means that the compute is purely satisfying user workloads."
"Stability is one of the things we absolutely have to have, because if the HCI is down, our assembly lines are down, and that could potentially lead to our customer being down. If our customer is down, that's $10,000 a minute; and any time the assembly line is down, that could potentially lead to overtime. We don't get to charge one and a half times for something we billed just because you happened to build it on overtime. Any technology we bring in, has to be built for what I call "three in the morning." It can't be built for whenever everybody's in the plant, everybody can watch it, and everybody can babysit. It has to be built for three a.m. when you've got a skeletal staff there, and you just have to know that it's just running. As I stand here, right now, I don't have to check my phone, I don't have to check my email. I know it's running. Period"
"It is a unique product with simplified setup and independent control over storage and compute."
"The most valuable feature, currently, is the density of the system as hardware. I'm able to leverage the density of the product and remove bigger hardware which requires more space, cooling, and power costs, obviously. There are cost savings, obviously."
 

Cons

"Pricing can be confounding with many options"
"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."
"I would like to see SMPA (Shared Multi-Port Array) technology developed with the aim of allowing a configuration identical to other storage arrays."
"I think an easier way to open a service call, right through the DataCore GUI, would be an improvement, especially when there is an urgent issue."
"SANsymphony is missing some features that vSAN has."
"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."
"The management should take place via OS-independent access; here a web-based client would be desirable."
"One area where the solution could improve is its software platform. Many customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the software running on Microsoft Windows."
"It doesn't have all the data points we need and all the historical data that I would like."
"I would like to see the implementation process improved."
"Because I like block mode, I'd like to see SAN connectivity. I would like to be able to easily put it into my current environment."
"They could improve the packaging."
"The reason I give it a nine instead of a ten is because of the need for pre-check work. While it is simpler than most products, there is still a lot of configuration that needs to be done."
"There's a limitation with a block in the file. That's where I see that it's not very efficient for upgrades and for management."
"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."
"The initial setup is very painful. It's not straightforward, requires a lot of knowledge to get it going."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."
"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."
"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."
"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."
"The solution is cost effective."
"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."
"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."
"You still have to pay for the licensing for VMware and Red Hat licenses separately. It's not all inclusive at this point."
"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."
"Its price is aligned with the market. In addition to the standard licensing fees, there is an integrator cost."
"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."
"The price of the solution is okay but could improve."
"Licenses run on a yearly basis, and there aren't any additional fees other than the standard licensing fee."
"All the licenses are included when you buy the program."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
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?
I am saying that the pricing is reasonable. It's not that expensive, and the product is also pretty stable. It's a good solution and the price is okay regarding the other products.
What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?
It's difficult to know how DataCore SANsymphony can be improved. I think DataCore SANsymphony could be deployed on Linux environments, which could be a great thing for clients. I would like to see ...
What is your primary use case for DataCore SANsymphony?
I usually recommend DataCore SANsymphony for companies in the domain of research, energy, governmental, and education.
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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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