DataCore SANsymphony vs Nexenta comparison

DataCore and Nexenta by DDN are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. DataCore is ranked #4 with an average rating of 9.4, while Nexenta by DDN is ranked #16 with an average rating of 9.0. DataCore holds a 6.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to Nexenta by DDN’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Nexenta by DDN users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 5, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and Nexenta compete in storage virtualization. SANsymphony generally has stronger pricing and support, while Nexenta offers superior features.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony provides exceptional storage virtualization with auto-tiering, synchronous mirroring, and high performance. Nexenta offers unified file and block storage, integrated data management tools, and a diverse feature set.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SANsymphony has straightforward deployment and responsive customer service, facilitating easier implementation. Nexenta allows scalable deployment but often involves more setup complexity and expertise, with customer service less responsive than DataCore.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony has competitive pricing with substantial ROI, benefiting from low entry costs. Nexenta has higher initial setup costs justified by its extensive data management features, potentially leading to higher ROI in feature-rich environments.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. Nexenta Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Nexenta

June 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

Pure Storage FlashBlade

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 4.2%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 6.9%, up from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nexenta is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

Eric Black

Solutions Architect at Recovery Point Systems

The ability to leverage multi-tenancy along with immutability is a huge benefit for us

The only thing I feel FlashBlade is missing is the SOS API. If it had SOS API, that would put it well over the top. Veeam Backup specifically has started to streamline their API, and they are doing that with SOS API. They have optimized it. Any of the S3 devices out there that support this SOS API can have far more API calls at once. On our side, that translates to better restoration. With SOS API, it can leverage far more restorations at a single given time or read from the device in simple terms. That results in maximizing the output and throughput from the device itself.

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OliverPalz

Senior Consultant at SJT SOLUTIONS GMBH

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.

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Anil Rahulwar

Storage Engineer at Movate

Offers good features like Fusion and stable product with better customer service

Fusion is the only best feature, but it's a very good feature. Nexenta is a very old product. Nexenta is a well-established product used in the UK, US, India, Dubai, Qatar, and other countries. It is very good. The interface is up to date. Everything is up to date. The OS version was recently upgraded to 5.5 FP3. AI features: DataDirect Networks owns Nexenta and has won awards for AI. They continuously work on AI features. DDN also has a product called Tintri Infinia with AI features. And NVIDIA product also has AI features. I look forward to working on those products.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"FlashBlade offers low latency, high throughput, and seamless scalability."

"The performance of FlashBlade is excellent. It does not necessarily leverage the SOS API that some of the newer products leverage, but I found its speed pretty much on par and comparable. It is fast, and it does what it is supposed to do."

"What I like best about Pure Storage FlashBlade is its object storage functionality, plus it has fast underlying hardware. Pure Storage FlashBlade is also very stable. I find its stability one of its valuable features."

"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."

"Using this solution has made our backups more reliable."

"The tool's most valuable features are data warehousing, speedy recovery, and analytics. Its latest release is cost-effective."

"It helps simplify our storage, because the user interface is very simple and the installation is easy."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pros

"DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable."

"Active-active is the most valuable aspect for us."

"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."

"Auto-tiering to obtain performance at a lower cost without the customer having to purchase ultra-fast storage is great."

"Oracle OLTP benchmark to test how it improves the performance while using flash drive NVMe."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its versatility, with there being support for all new hardware technologies and platforms, disc mirroring and very effective auto tiering."

"The synchronous mirror allows us to operate a fully redundant storage solution that is distributed across two sites."

"The use of the RAM cache allows you to speed up the writing and reading of data while also allowing for a possible increase in performance by increasing the RAM on the servers."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"It has a feature called Fusion that makes it more secure and productive."

Cons

"We haven't been able to use much of the cloud area of Pure Storage. We have a storage server and it would be better if it could integrate with other cloud features of this solution."

"On our dedupe during our initial buy, we were expecting a number a little higher like 4x. However, we are getting about 3.6. While it is close enough, it doesn't quite hit the numbers. So, this has been a challenge."

"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."

"Commvault has mainly driven the Analytics, providing data and reports. However, the product has room for improvement, especially regarding storage analytics. Upgrading firmware has caused issues, requiring feature disabling to revert to traditional backups. The firmware upgrades sometimes affect Commvault backups."

"I would also like to see better support for CIFS workloads."

"The feature that we're waiting on is better integration with the cell services."

"Its configuration should be easier."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade cons

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

"I'd like to see the company make the renewal of the software cheaper."

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

"I would like to see reporting added, such as a monthly connectivity report."

"I found it a little unnecessary to have to rename the configurations within the graphics console in order to have unique names."

"Datacore is developing a new WebUI with new dashboards. It is a good idea as the classic GUI is lacking dashboards."

"We'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony."

"The solution is constantly evolving."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be cheaper."

"The price is a little high."

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."

"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."

"Pure Storage FlashBlade is a hardware appliance, and it's very expensive if you compare its price with other solutions. You can get the same features and benefits from its competitor, VAST Data, but for half the price of Pure Storage FlashBlade."

"The product is very expensive."

"Licensing fees are paid yearly."

"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."

More Pure Storage FlashBlade pricing and cost advice

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

"The solution is cost effective."

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

"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."

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

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

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

"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."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Government

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?

The pricing for FlashBlade is between cheap and moderate. FlashBlade is worth the money due to the experience and per...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?

Its configuration should be easier. There should be easier language for the configuration.

See all answers

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 ...

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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...

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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 becau...

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What needs improvement with Nexenta?

There were some SMB issues, but they were resolved in the latest version. Four to five customers faced intermittent i...

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What is your primary use case for Nexenta?

It's for file systems. It's a NAS solution, and it has flexibility. There shouldn't be any outages because if one nod...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Nexenta?

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would recommend using it.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerScale (Isilon) vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 20% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

MinIO vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 11% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

VAST Data vs Pure Storage FlashBlade

Compared 10% of the time

More Pure Storage FlashBlade Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 12% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 11% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 11% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 9% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 8% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Nexenta

Compared 71% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nexenta

Compared 29% of the time

More Nexenta Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure Storage FlashBlade

June 2025

Download Pure Storage FlashBlade product report

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

June 2025

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

May 2025

Download Nexenta product report

Also Known As

No data available

DataCore Virtual SAN

No data available

Overview

FlashBlade is the industry’s most advanced scale-out storage for unstructured data, powered by a modern, massively parallel architecture to consolidate complex data silos (like backup appliances and data lakes) and accelerate tomorrow’s discoveries and insights.

Pure Storage

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

Nexenta is the global leader in Open Source-driven Software-Defined Storage - what we call Open Software-Defined Storage (OpenSDS).We uniquely integrate software-only "Open Source" collaboration with commodity hardware-centric "Software-Defined Storage" (SDS) innovation.

Nexenta by DDN

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL

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.

GMO, Northern Backup, Cox Communications, University of Toronto, ScaleMatrix, Wipro, Ruhr University, Drillinginfo, George Washington University, Walton Electric, Faculty of Physics, NAU, ServerCentral

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Nexenta

June 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. Nexenta

Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. Nexenta and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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