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DataCore SANsymphony vs Pure Storage FlashArray 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
DataCore SANsymphony enhances security and availability, offering high ROI through hardware reuse and cost-effective storage and uptime savings.
Sentiment score
5.0
Pure Storage FlashArray reduces costs and boosts efficiency with reliable performance, simplified management, and long-term savings through Evergreen Storage.
In the long term, spanning three to five years, the total cost of ownership becomes cheaper, considering power consumption, data center footprint, and NVMe technology usage.
Our current workload, particularly the SQL use case, would not be possible on mechanical storage, and the ease of use for the small team for the array is important for supporting that workload.
Pure Storage FlashArray integrates with APIs and other systems.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
DataCore SANsymphony's support is praised for being rapid, knowledgeable, effective, and highly rated, despite occasional inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
8.2
Pure Storage FlashArray is praised for exceptional support, proactive measures, real-time monitoring, and minimal bureaucracy, surpassing expectations.
They always help me quickly and with great knowledge, which is essential for central storage.
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10.
The customer support is perfect.
Pure's support organization is responsive with minimal bureaucracy, making support a key factor in customer retention.
I would rate the technical support an 11 out of 10.
The support from Pure Storage is excellent.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
DataCore SANsymphony is praised for its scalability, hardware independence, and adaptability to both small and large environments.
Sentiment score
7.5
Pure Storage FlashArray offers scalable storage with modular expansion, but high-volume constraints may need investment for large expansions.
There are no limits to scalability, which is essential for central storage.
A big banking client had around 300 petabytes of data on Pure Storage.
The solution is highly scalable, particularly when there is a need to expand capacity.
Theoretically, we can do controller upgrades and get into a larger chassis, but there was a limit to how far we could go without needing to do a full migration.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
DataCore SANsymphony is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, requiring proper configuration and minimal maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.5
Pure Storage FlashArray is praised for stability, minimal downtime, easy upgrades, robust data reduction, and effective support.
For stability, I rate it a ten out of ten.
We have continuous 99.9% uptime and do not experience any users reporting performance issues due to latency.
I have not encountered any significant issues, such as applying firmware that introduces bugs.
 

Room For Improvement

DataCore SANsymphony struggles with tech support, pricing, Windows dependence, and needs better integration, interface, and enterprise features.
Users seek improved NAS integration, scalability, performance, reporting, cloud features, data protection, VMware support, and customer service.
there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs
The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support.
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.
Integrating object storage into the FlashArray would benefit entry-level and SMB customers by offering a more unified solution.
Storing cold data on expensive arrays doesn't make financial sense, and tiering to any of the big three cloud providers would be advantageous.
As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs.
 

Setup Cost

DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is high, but offers favorable price-performance, with careful planning advised to optimize costs.
Pure Storage FlashArray provides competitive all-inclusive pricing with standard features and Evergreen upgrades, appealing to enterprises despite initial costs.
They have made some improvements regarding the pricing, but it's still too expensive.
The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model.
They're expensive.
While they say it's free, we actually pay for support upfront.
Some smaller organizations may find it slightly expensive, but for enterprises, when considering performance, future hardware investments, and overall benefits, it is a very cost-effective solution for mid and enterprise organizations.
 

Valuable Features

DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage management, performance, and reliability with high availability, flexibility, scalability, and hardware-agnostic versatility.
Pure Storage FlashArray offers speed, ease, scalability, and cost-effective maintenance, praised for reliability and efficient data management.
Customers can extend storage with flexibility, as one is not obligated to purchase hard disks or controllers from the same storage vendor.
DataCore SANsymphony's ability to enhance storage utilization is very good because it's agnostic and it can be deployed on every environment, which is perfect for my clients.
This flexibility and scalability have helped our organization in practice because it is important for us as it decouples the storage management software from the physical hardware, creating a software layer of intelligence.
FlashArray's integration with the Pure One instrument provides a centralized platform for efficient management of all arrays.
Another noteworthy aspect is their platform, Pure One, a cloud-based analytics platform that automatically creates a case and sends out a part if a disk or controller fails.
It handles internal data migration seamlessly in the background without going offline, achieving a hundred percent uptime.
 

Categories and Ranking

DataCore SANsymphony
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (7th), Storage Performance (2nd)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
207
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Storage Solutions solutions, they serve different purposes. DataCore SANsymphony is designed for Storage Software and holds a mindshare of 26.1%, down 29.5% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.5% mindshare, down 6.8% since last year.
Storage Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony26.1%
NetApp ONTAP35.1%
Dell PowerPath15.5%
Other23.299999999999997%
Storage Software
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashArray6.5%
Dell PowerStore15.6%
HPE Alletra Storage9.8%
Other68.1%
All-Flash Storage
 

Featured Reviews

SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Parul-Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Expands capacity and requires minimal management
The main drawback is the support. I’ve been working for four years without a local representative, and although I’ve submitted many requests, nothing has changed. They sometimes call me in the middle of the night, even though I’ve informed them about my working hours. I often raise cases to speak with someone directly because I prefer to discuss issues over the phone rather than via email. I specifically request them to call me when I open a ticket, but they continually reply by email instead. This ongoing situation has been very frustrating in terms of the support I receive. As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs. Whenever an issue arises, a ticket is opened for us. While I'm glad they take this step, it can be frustrating. They inform me, “Hey, we opened this ticket for you. It’s critical. Call me so we can discuss what’s going on.” However, as a product manager for my institution, I don’t have access to the logs, which are withheld due to, as they say, proprietary code. I understand that, but I have been working in storage for many years and am not new to this field. In fact, I spent 17 years at IBM Storage, dealing with large enterprise systems, not just small vendor products. I wish I could access the normal logs to diagnose issues myself, rather than relying solely on their information. Before I can escalate issues or open a checklist, I need to have a clear understanding of what’s happening based on the logs. Sometimes the situation feels rushed, and I end up having to push my support team for answers. There are moments when I feel like I’m left in the dark about the log details until I actually call them for clarification. It can be quite challenging. Pure Storage can improve FlashArray by providing more logging visibility to customers. Currently, there is no log visibility. They could include an audit log, but I cannot see any system logs when problems occur.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise35
Large Enterprise141
 

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...
Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Storage. It may be more expensive, but it should pay for itself for its functionalit...
What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashArray?
We consume less physical storage because of the solution’s deduplication and compression.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
The pricing and licensing are straightforward, but I do consider it to be expensive.
 

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.
Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
Find out what your peers are saying about NetApp, DataCore, Dell Technologies and others in Storage Software. Updated: October 2025.
872,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.