DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind HyperConverged Appliance comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between DataCore SANsymphony and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The features that I found most valuable are ease of use of the software that StarWind offers - with the first setup being a bit painful.""The fact that I can now count on a true failover solution is what is most appealing.""VSAN works great; it's very easy to install, configure, and manage.""The ease of reaching the support team and their promptness for support is great.""The failover redundancy is why we bought this product and it has never let us down.""The ability to run a two-node cluster without a dedicated witness has made this an excellent product for small deployments, which is right on target for our needs in regional offices.""The ability for us to manage all of our nodes from the same console makes systems administration very easy.""Quick setup, great support, stability is great"

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

"The synchronous mirror allows us to operate a fully redundant storage solution that is distributed across two sites.""It is a well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O​, cache speed mechanism, etc.""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.""The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated.""The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability.""An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system.""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.""The features I have found most valuable are the active-active, or so-called grid technology, and the integration into our VMware-vCenter."

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"The product runs wonderfully and has already gone through several failure tests.""The easy way everything can be configured and ready to run in less than a day is great.""Reliability and overall uptime are key as we're also hosting client environments in addition to our own.""High-availability is what I bought it for.""We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant.""The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide.""We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network.""Repair efforts have been reduced to nearly nothing."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pros →

Cons
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct.""For me, the product could be improved by it being made cheaper.""I see no need for major improvements but there could be some improvements in the form of notifications and the simplifying of maintenance mode.""A web management interface would be good, especially for those coming from other solutions that have one.""A great feature would be a wizard and to include a new disk in the SAN. At the moment, including a new disk requires several steps - some that must be done at the OS level and others in each node.""An extended trial period would serve as a way to get clean insights into the technology's adaptability and alignment with their specific needs before committing to long-term integration.""Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful.""I would definitely like to see quite a bit more on the monitoring side of things."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"Its interface could be better.""DataCore needs a more efficient and better way to keep track of metrics and counters so that we can do baseline analysis to measure performance.""DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution.""The alert system could have more features.""SANsymphony is missing some features that vSAN has. For example, vSAN has a special feature called continuous data protection. It provides the ability to go back in time to a given moment. You can see what was on your disk in the past up to two weeks. That's a great feature because ransomware attacks are increasingly common, and that provides you some kind of protection.""Datacore is developing a new WebUI with new dashboards. It is a good idea as the classic GUI is lacking dashboards.""I would like to see reporting added, such as a monthly connectivity report.""I would like for it to improve into a more ergonomic management console and a translation into the French language. It should have some process for a shutdown of a VM properly in case of a problem."

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"It would be nice if it were possible to do the ISCSI setup that you do on Windows directly in the management GUI of StarWind.""It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date.""One area for improvement of the solution is that I had to get Windows, which I really didn't want because of the extra maintenance or overhead, as well as viruses, etc. It's going to take time for them to get their Linux to that point. They already have Linux but it's not as mature and they don't really support it on HCAs. They have it for individuals who want to use it on their servers, but not on HCAs.""That situation, where Dell EMC servers were going down, has been my only real difficulty... it ended up being something that the wider audience of Dell EMC was actually aware of as an issue. Neither the StarWind technicians nor the Dell EMC technicians were able to actually identify that problem sooner than a week or so... The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me. I did express those concerns to StarWind and they were very responsive to that.""It would be nice to have some kind of GUI interface implemented to give you an overall view of the system's health at a glance.""There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started.""The StarWind Command Center web portal could use some work.""The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."

More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "The setup cost is very low. The pricing is great."
  • "We are happy with the price."
  • "The license is reusable. We can always rebuild it and apply the license. Then, boom, we get new servers, apply the license, and we're back up and running."
  • "The pricing is fine for the work that it does."
  • "When we did all the analysis for StarWind, it was approximately 20 percent less than any of the other solutions that we looked at."
  • "The scalability limitation for us is its licensing. At some point in the fairly near future, we will probably have to upgrade our license so we can store eight terabytes instead of four. We are currently at four terabytes, but we're starting to knock on the door of that capacity."
  • "The pricing is excellent. It will run on anything. You don't have to buy a $100,000 server, with hardware you don't need. You just pay for the license and you're good to go."
  • "The licensing is a bit weird. If you license the standard version of StarWind, it allows you four terabytes. Then, they have a pro version, but with the pro version, the only difference is it doubles the terabytes to eight."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."
  • "The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."
  • "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."
  • "Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."
  • "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."
  • "This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
  • "The solution is cost effective."
  • More DataCore SANsymphony Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "A desired feature or service would be the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with hyper-converged software."
  • "Its cost was reasonable."
  • "This was all completed at an affordable price point for an SMB, which was also a key element for an NPO."
  • "When I researched they came the most cost-effective."
  • "The other solutions we were looking at were priced much higher than this and they didn't necessarily have full redundancy... Nutanix and VxRail were in the final running... but it came down to our price point."
  • "I honestly feel that there's no one else in the market doing what they're doing for the price point that they're doing it at. That's why I asked them about investing in their company. I think that the options they're providing and the software that they have is sort of revolutionary for the price point... The total cost was $24,400."
  • "The Nutanix piece was about $45,000, getting close to $50,000 with all the licensing involved, whereas the StarWind was less than half of that, after Microsoft licensing and such."
  • "We looked at Nutanix and found it did almost the same thing but for more money. In fact, StarWind was nearly one-third of the price; it cost us £36,000. That includes five years of monitoring... The Nutanix was near enough £110,000 for relatively the same amount of performance and storage."
  • More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines… more »
    Top Answer:The cost of this is less than you expect. Since they're selling a software stack, you do need to consider your own… more »
    Top Answer:You can maintain and update it with little to no fuss, even the free version is incredibly capable whilst it brings the… more »
    Top Answer:Good sizing is the basis for a stable and high-performance environment. It is important to plan in sufficient reserves… more »
    Top Answer:It's difficult to say if something is missing in this solution. Maybe we'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly… more »
    Top Answer:StarWind's proactive support is my favorite feature.
    Top Answer:Keep in mind that StarWind VMs for the vSAN will take up 24GB of memory per host. If you do decide to go with StarWind… more »
    Top Answer:I honestly don't have anything to complain about. Nothing is perfect, though, over the past three years, there were two… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    DataCore Virtual SAN
    Learn More
    Overview

    StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    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.

    For SMB, ROBO and Enterprises, who look to bring in quick deployment and operation simplicity to virtualization workloads and reduce related expenses, our solution is StarWind HyperConverged Appliance (HCA). It unifies commodity servers, disks and flash, hypervisor of choice, StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN and associated software into a single manageable layer. The HCA supports scale-up by adding disks and flash, and scale-out by adding extra nodes.

    StarWind HyperConverged Appliance consists of StarWind Virtual SAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct or VMware Virtual SAN “Ready Nodes”, targeting those, who are building their virtualization infrastructure from scratch. In case there is an existing set of servers, we offer a “software only version”, which is essentially our years proven StarWind Virtual SAN. Basically, it’s the fuel powering StarWind HCA. 

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    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    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.
    Sears Home and Franchise Business
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company8%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    REVIEWERS
    Non Profit27%
    Government11%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Analyst Firm5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Government6%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Construction Company12%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Transportation Company8%
    Real Estate/Law Firm7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company20%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Retailer6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business64%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise13%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business49%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business42%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise43%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business65%
    Midsize Enterprise27%
    Large Enterprise8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business38%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise47%
    Buyer's Guide
    DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    DataCore SANsymphony is ranked 4th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 53 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews. DataCore SANsymphony is rated 9.2, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of DataCore SANsymphony writes "Robust with good replication and access protection ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". DataCore SANsymphony is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, StorMagic SvSAN, Red Hat Ceph Storage and VxRail, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, VMware vSAN, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.

    See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors and best HCI vendors.

    We monitor all Software Defined Storage (SDS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.