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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
4.6
Pure Storage FlashArray boosts efficiency and cuts costs with simplified management, improved performance, and reduced storage needs via Evergreen program.
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.
Works at a consultancy with self employed
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.
Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Pure Storage FlashArray integrates with APIs and other systems.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
 

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's support is praised for responsiveness, expertise, proactive problem-solving, and exceptional real-time assistance.
They always help me quickly and with great knowledge, which is essential for central storage.
System Engineer at Bechtle
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10.
Owner at Arsium
The customer support is perfect.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
Pure's support organization is responsive with minimal bureaucracy, making support a key factor in customer retention.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate the technical support an 11 out of 10.
Cyber Security Consultant at Jonkoping Energi AB
The support from Pure Storage is excellent.
Presales Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

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
7.1
Pure Storage FlashArray offers scalable, modular upgrades with seamless expansion, supporting diverse workloads and both scale-up and scale-out methods.
There are no limits to scalability, which is essential for central storage.
System Engineer at Bechtle
A big banking client had around 300 petabytes of data on Pure Storage.
Works at a consultancy with self employed
The solution is highly scalable, particularly when there is a need to expand capacity.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
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.
Consultant at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
DataCore SANsymphony is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, requiring proper configuration and minimal maintenance.
Sentiment score
8.4
Pure Storage FlashArray is highly reliable with minimal downtime, excelling in performance and seamless integration for enterprise storage.
For stability, I rate it a ten out of ten.
Senior Storage Administrator at a comms service provider with 5,001-10,000 employees
We have continuous 99.9% uptime and do not experience any users reporting performance issues due to latency.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
The vision Pure Storage FlashArray offers through the GUI is clearer; we can discern the status, what is cabled, and how direct flash is enabled.
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
 

Room For Improvement

DataCore SANsymphony struggles with tech support, pricing, Windows dependence, and needs better integration, interface, and enterprise features.
Users want Pure Storage FlashArray enhancements in scalability, cloud integration, analytics, cost, documentation, and seamless management features.
there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs
System Engineer at Bechtle
The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support.
Owner at Arsium
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.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
Integrating object storage into the FlashArray would benefit entry-level and SMB customers by offering a more unified solution.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
Storing cold data on expensive arrays doesn't make financial sense, and tiering to any of the big three cloud providers would be advantageous.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
As a technical professional, I lack visibility into the system logs.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
 

Setup Cost

DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is high, but offers favorable price-performance, with careful planning advised to optimize costs.
Pure Storage FlashArray offers cost-effective performance with inclusive pricing and upgrades, despite higher initial costs than competitors.
They have made some improvements regarding the pricing, but it's still too expensive.
Owner at Arsium
The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model.
System Engineer at Bechtle
They're expensive.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
While they say it's free, we actually pay for support upfront.
Senior Network Engineer at Holy Redeemer Health System, Inc.
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.
Senior Storage Engineer at Ensono
 

Valuable Features

DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage management, performance, and reliability with high availability, flexibility, scalability, and hardware-agnostic versatility.
Pure Storage FlashArray offers speed, simplicity, and data protection with user-friendly interface and seamless non-disruptive upgrades.
Customers can extend storage with flexibility, as one is not obligated to purchase hard disks or controllers from the same storage vendor.
System Engineer at Bechtle
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.
Owner at Arsium
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.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
FlashArray's integration with the Pure One instrument provides a centralized platform for efficient management of all arrays.
Presales Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
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.
Lead Technical Architect at ePlus Technology, inc.
It handles internal data migration seamlessly in the background without going offline, achieving a hundred percent uptime.
Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

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 (3rd)
Pure Storage FlashArray
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
211
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 23.9%, down 30.5% compared to last year.
Pure Storage FlashArray, on the other hand, focuses on All-Flash Storage, holds 6.7% mindshare, up 6.4% since last year.
Storage Software Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony23.9%
NetApp ONTAP27.8%
Dell PowerPath15.4%
Other32.89999999999999%
Storage Software
All-Flash Storage Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Pure Storage FlashArray6.7%
Dell PowerStore14.7%
HPE Alletra Storage9.2%
Other69.4%
All-Flash Storage
 

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.
Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
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 Business63
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise143
 

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?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Evergreen, the way they do it, Evergreen One, for example, is a utility model. So the...
 

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
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