DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

DataCore and StarWind are both solutions in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category. DataCore is ranked #5 with an average rating of 9.6, while StarWind is ranked #1 with an average rating of 9.1. DataCore holds a 5.9% mindshare in SDS, compared to StarWind’s 5.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of StarWind users who would recommend it.

DataCore SANsymphony

Read 59 DataCore SANsymphony reviews

4,187 Views
2,052 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

StarWind Virtual SAN

Read 204 StarWind Virtual SAN reviews

5,744 Views
3,504 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

DataCore SANsymphony

StarWind Virtual SAN

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and StarWind Virtual SAN compete in the storage solutions category. DataCore has the upper hand in features with its advanced auto-tiering and synchronous mirroring, while StarWind leads in deployment simplicity.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony offers high availability, flexible hardware utilization, and auto-tiering to efficiently manage different storage tiers. It enables synchronous mirroring for robust redundancy and data protection. StarWind Virtual SAN provides active-active high availability, easy installation, and flexibility in deployment, making it cost-effective for various hardware configurations. It offers fast setup and strong integration capabilities, ensuring minimal downtime and reliable performance.

Room for Improvement: DataCore SANsymphony needs better integrated reporting tools, enhancements in enterprise support, and improved manageability. StarWind Virtual SAN could enhance its documentation, performance reporting, and management interface. It would benefit from more comprehensive monitoring capabilities to aid deployment and management processes efficiently.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DataCore SANsymphony is praised for exceptional technical support and rapid response times, which make deployment smoother despite its complex setup. StarWind Virtual SAN is valued for its straightforward deployment and minimal setup complexity, paired with a capable support team known for high responsiveness and expertise.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony provides a strong ROI with flexibility in hardware upgrades without altering licensing, though the subscription can become costly over time. StarWind Virtual SAN is recognized for cost-effectiveness, especially for SMBs, with simple pricing and excellent value, allowing affordable scaling as storage needs expand.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind Virtual SAN Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

March 2026

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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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.5

DataCore SANsymphony offers cost-effectiveness, high availability, and long-term benefits, with reuse, stability, and security contributing to financial advantages.

Sentiment score

6.9

StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective, flexible storage solutions reducing operational costs, downtime, and hardware needs, with rapid ROI.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the DataCore SANsymphony report

We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.

Kyle Buxton

Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

The cost benefits, as far as we consider, are much better with a StarWind VSAN solution, and the training requirements with the ease of administration simplify and reduce our administrator and professional services costs.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Regarding cost savings, for my client, it was about 20K USD for his specific use and as for extending capacity, StarWind made that process easy.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.5

DataCore SANsymphony is praised for industry-leading, efficient technical support with quick responses and effective problem-solving capabilities.

Sentiment score

7.8

StarWind Virtual SAN offers exceptional support with timely responses, expert staff, and 24/7 proactive monitoring for optimal performance.

They always help me quickly and with great knowledge, which is essential for central storage.

Thomas Grötz

System Engineer at Bechtle

I rate their technical support a 10.

Sigfrid CECILLON

Founder at EKIUM

I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10.

SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

For more quotes and insights, download the DataCore SANsymphony report

Even in the instances where my technical team does not have the ability to manage or troubleshoot or resolve an issue, StarWind's technical team supports and resolves on our behalf very quickly.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

The customer support from StarWind Virtual SAN is great, as the people are knowledgeable and have great knowledge about the product and the functionality we require in the system.

Jccerong Heron

System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

8.3

DataCore SANsymphony offers scalable storage expansion, accommodating diverse hardware and supporting substantial data management with high user satisfaction.

Sentiment score

7.6

StarWind Virtual SAN impresses users with seamless scalability, allowing effortless upgrades and configurations without downtime, supporting various setups.

There are no limits to scalability, which is essential for central storage.

Thomas Grötz

System Engineer at Bechtle

For more quotes and insights, download the DataCore SANsymphony report

If we want to expand our storage or add disks, it is easy to add them, configure the RAID, and then deploy it.

Christian Nissia

IT Support Engineer at a consultancy with 11-50 employees

I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.

WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

When you move from a two-node cluster to a three-node cluster, you have to completely redo the way that they are connected to each other with iSCSI.

Tyler Lejeune

Manager of Systems Administration at Monster Digital

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.3

Users praise DataCore SANsymphony's stability, citing reliability and minimal downtime when properly configured, with few user error issues.

Sentiment score

8.4

StarWind Virtual SAN offers stable, reliable performance with minimal issues, seamless updates, and efficient VM migrations, even during failures.

The implementation process is easy for DataCore SANsymphony.

Sigfrid CECILLON

Founder at EKIUM

For more quotes and insights, download the DataCore SANsymphony report

In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

I ran it on a two-node Hyper-V cluster setup, and I didn't experience any unexpected crashes or major issues.

Daniel Philot

Hosting Operations Senior Analyst at Equinix Brasil

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Room For Improvement

DataCore SANsymphony improves disaster recovery and availability, but needs better integration, tools, and simplified pricing for enhanced user experience.

StarWind Virtual SAN needs better documentation, automation, integration, setup simplification, monitoring, and feature enhancements like deduplication and encryption.

I would like to see the stabilization of the Veeam implementation in the future, and perhaps the integration or officialization of compatibility with Proxmox and XCP-ng.

Sigfrid CECILLON

Founder at EKIUM

there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs

Thomas Grötz

System Engineer at Bechtle

The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support.

SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

For more quotes and insights, download the DataCore SANsymphony report

A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.

WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.

Kyle Buxton

Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Setup Cost

DataCore SANsymphony offers a flexible, cost-effective solution, yet requires careful assessment of licensing and feature expenses for enterprises.

StarWind Virtual SAN is competitively priced, simple to license, easy to implement, and offers excellent value with flexible options.

It's not that expensive, and the product is also pretty stable.

Sigfrid CECILLON

Founder at EKIUM

They have made some improvements regarding the pricing, but it's still too expensive.

SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model.

Thomas Grötz

System Engineer at Bechtle

For more quotes and insights, download the DataCore SANsymphony report

The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.

Vladimir Simion

Pre Post Sales Engineer at Logiccomputer

This is a great product and good support even you are using free version!

Jose Escario

Infrastructure Manager at Beacon Fronline Solutions Inc

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Valuable Features

DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage management with features like rollback, scalability, synchronous mirroring, auto-tiering, and high data availability.

StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective, high performance solutions with easy management, excellent support, and seamless integration for various platforms.

Customers can extend storage with flexibility, as one is not obligated to purchase hard disks or controllers from the same storage vendor.

Thomas Grötz

System Engineer at Bechtle

DataCore SANsymphony is improving the access speed of data, the reading, and the writing significantly.

Sigfrid CECILLON

Founder at EKIUM

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.

SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

For more quotes and insights, download the DataCore SANsymphony report

Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.

WJHG

Soporte IT at Sildan Security

StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.

Kyle Buxton

Manager, Field Support at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees

StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.

Julian Clarke

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the StarWind Virtual SAN report

Categories and Ranking

DataCore SANsymphony

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

5th

Ranking in HCI

8th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Storage Software (2nd), Storage Performance (1st)

StarWind Virtual SAN

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

1st

Ranking in HCI

4th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

204

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 5.9%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 5.5%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
StarWind Virtual SAN	5.5%
DataCore SANsymphony	5.9%
Other	88.6%

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

SigfridCecillon

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.

Read full review

Jccerong Heron

System Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Support team has guided us through deploying virtual storage on legacy hardware and reducing operational costs

The reason I chose StarWind Virtual SAN for this particular scenario is really the features, the ease of use, and most importantly, the price. In my opinion, the best features StarWind Virtual SAN offers are easy integration with the system installed in the data center. The integration with my existing systems in the data center works well, especially with VMware, as we already have a big cluster in VMware, and the easy integration with that is helpful to solve some problems with the platform. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization by reducing OPEX costs. My OPEX costs have gone down as we reutilize some old servers, and this reduces the CAPEX of hardware in the data center.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	22

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	165
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	34

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.

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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 when a backup is in progress).

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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 ...

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What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?

It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was very good. We were able to get the software at a good cost. I did most of the setup, so there wasn't really any cost there. The professiona...

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What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?

The only thing that I would say about documentation is there are some aspects of the documentation that are a little bit unclear. However, when I worked through those issues with their professional...

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Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 4% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 4% of the time

NetApp ONTAP vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 4% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

StorMagic SvSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 19% of the time

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSAN vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 6% of the time

Scale Computing Platform vs StarWind Virtual SAN

Compared 5% of the time

More StarWind Virtual SAN Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

March 2026

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

StarWind Virtual SAN

February 2026

Download StarWind Virtual SAN product report

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN

StarWind SAN & NAS

Overview

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

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.

StarWind

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.

Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind Virtual SAN

March 2026

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