DataCore SANsymphony vs SteelFusion comparison

DataCore and Riverbed are both solutions in the HCI category. DataCore is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.4, while Riverbed is ranked #30. DataCore holds a 2.7% mindshare in HCI, compared to Riverbed’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Riverbed users who would recommend it.

DataCore SANsymphony

Read 59 DataCore SANsymphony reviews

5,660 Views
2,773 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

SteelFusion

Read 2 SteelFusion reviews

754 Views
694 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

DataCore SANsymphony

SteelFusion

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and SteelFusion are competing products in the software-defined storage space. SteelFusion has the upper hand due to its robust feature set, making it worthwhile for those prioritizing advanced capabilities.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony is recognized for performance optimization, flexible storage pooling, and scalability. SteelFusion is noted for its integrated hyperconverged infrastructure, seamless branch recovery, and efficient global file cache. The main difference is SANsymphony's flexibility in existing environments, while SteelFusion focuses on comprehensive branch management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DataCore SANsymphony offers an adaptable deployment model emphasizing compatibility with various infrastructures, paired with personalized customer service. SteelFusion presents a straightforward deployment with specialized support aimed at simplified management and reducing remote office complexities, beneficial for companies with distributed environments.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony is seen as cost-effective, appealing to businesses prioritizing lower up-front investments with good ROI. SteelFusion requires a higher initial cost but promises significant ROI through operational efficiency and reduced remote site complexities. The contrast lies in SANsymphony's budget-friendly setup for economical expansion, whereas SteelFusion justifies higher costs with superior long-term operational benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed HCI Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 894,738 peers since 2012

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

DataCore SANsymphony

Ranking in HCI

9th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Storage Performance (1st)

SteelFusion

Ranking in HCI

30th

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 2.7%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SteelFusion is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
DataCore SANsymphony	2.7%
SteelFusion	1.1%
Other	96.2%

HCI

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

it_user866178

Chief Technology Officer at MAZZETTI+GBA

Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices

The level of tech support depends on who you get. There are some techs that just read the script and ask you if you’ve rebooted, but once you get past that - or if you have a very technical issue - the support is great. They really know the product and get you up and running again ASAP.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."

"The support is excellent."

"Technical support is amazing; it is very fast and always has a solution in no time."

"Excellent performance and reliability, and very low cost using home hardware."

"I recommend taking a look at DataCore because it is a simple-to-use product that saved us from spending more money on additional hardware and support."

"DataCore is very fast storage, applications start faster, and database access is improved."

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

"DataCore has been doing software-defined storage since back before SDS was even a buzzword, and it has provided a great deal of flexibility, performance, and efficiency for our Enterprise SAN."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"Sync to Central and edge protection mitigate my risk in our branch offices. All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers. Users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central, and protected. If an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."

"All services that need to be local to the user exist on local servers, so users run applications and access data locally while the data is constantly being synced to Central and protected, and if an edge device fails, we can recover quickly."

"That is why Riverbed SteelFusion has delivered a masterclass technology that not only abstracted and virtualized the storage vendors’ unique logical storage structures, it has made it logically closer and seamless to the branch applications from a performance and experience perspective."

Cons

"Unified storage (all block, objects, and files) should be in a single storage pool with unified storage concepts, hence providing the user with whatever they want."

"Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that can show capacity, usage, performance, and any issues would be very beneficial."

"It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes."

"Its interface could be better."

"One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine."

"I think the performance reporting can be improved by adding historical statistics into a database for the purpose of comparison."

"The main problem is there is no DataCore OS."

"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."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"Setting up disks for use is a multi-step process that could use some refinement. Setting up a core-to-core replication or DR strategy is also cumbersome."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

"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."

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

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

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

"The solution is cost effective."

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

"We have licensing costs on a yearly basis. They charge per terabyte, so in terms of cost, it can be very costly. They have three different features, and you have to pay extra for those."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"Price is an issue – this is expensive stuff. My advice is to beat up Riverbed as much as possible on price. These things are expensive and there is room for negotiation."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Comms Service Provider

13%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Outsourcing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	37
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	22

No data available

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for DataCore SANsymphony?

I usually recommend DataCore SANsymphony for companies in the domain of research, energy, governmental, and education.

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 4% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 4% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs SteelFusion

Compared 13% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs SteelFusion

Compared 12% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs SteelFusion

Compared 10% of the time

Pivot3 vs SteelFusion

Compared 8% of the time

StarWind HyperConverged Appliance vs SteelFusion

Compared 8% of the time

More SteelFusion Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

May 2026

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2026

Download SteelFusion product report

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN

No data available

Overview

DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage environments with features like synchronous mirroring, scalability, and flexibility. It optimizes performance through parallel I/O, ensuring high availability, efficiency, and protection against data loss with hardware independence and user-friendly management.

DataCore SANsymphony offers a robust platform for managing storage in VMware environments and beyond, enabling high-performance storage with disaster recovery features and synchronous mirroring. With hardware independence and real-time data replication, SANsymphony supports virtualization and data protection across distributed data centers, ensuring seamless data access. Users benefit from its ease of use, storage pooling, and auto-tiering, managing different storage speeds efficiently and maximizing uptime. DataCore's hardware-independent active-active setup and management tools add value, though improvements in container support, web capabilities, API robustness, and Linux support are needed. Pricing, licensing, tech support, backup integration with Veeam, iSCSI connectivity, and performance reporting are areas for enhancement.

What are the key features of DataCore SANsymphony?

Synchronous Mirroring: Ensures data protection with high-availability mirroring.
Scalability and Flexibility: Adapts to changing storage needs efficiently.
Parallel I/O: Boosts speed significantly through enhanced performance.
Storage Pooling: Simplifies management across different storage resources.
Auto-Tiering: Manages storage speeds efficiently for optimized performance.

What benefits should users consider in DataCore SANsymphony?

High Availability: Ensures continuous data access with synchronous mirroring.
Disaster Recovery: Provides robust data protection strategies.
Performance Optimization: Parallel I/O boosts overall system speed.
Ease of Use: User-friendly features enhance management and operational efficiency.
Hardware Independence: Offers flexibility in choosing storage hardware.

DataCore SANsymphony finds application in industries focusing on high-performance storage requirements, particularly those in VMware environments. Utilized for managing storage across virtual machines and applications, it supports seamless data access within distributed data centers. The platform's real-time data replication, synchronous and asynchronous mirroring, and auto-tiering contribute significantly to optimizing performance and maintaining business continuity.

DataCore

SteelFusion is a high-performance converged infrastructure solution designed to streamline and secure data management in branch office environments, combining server, storage, and network functionalities in a single platform.

SteelFusion enhances efficiency in remote IT operations by integrating with existing IT systems to deliver seamless data centralization and protection. Its architecture supports diverse applications without compromising on performance, making it essential for enterprises looking to optimize their remote branch office operations. Organizations can reduce data footprint, improve resiliency, and ensure data compliance across dispersed locations.

What are the key features of SteelFusion?

Edge Servers: Deliver high-speed performance with robust compute capabilities.
FusionSync: Offers real-time data replication to maintain data consistency.
Virtual Services Platform: Simplifies branch IT with centralized management.
Branch Recovery: Minimizes downtime with rapid recovery options.
Hybrid Cloud Support: Integrates seamlessly with cloud services for extended scalability.

What benefits can users expect in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces overall IT costs by consolidating infrastructure.
Data Security: Enhances data protection through centralized monitoring.
Operational Simplicity: Lowers complexity in management and deployment.
Performance Optimization: Ensures consistent application delivery across branches.
Risk Mitigation: Decreases risk with improved disaster recovery processes.

SteelFusion is prominently implemented in industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, where secure data access and rapid recovery are critical. These environments benefit from its robust data management capabilities, enabling them to maintain continuous operations while reducing operational burdens. Its deployment allows businesses to adapt quickly and remain competitive in fast-paced markets.

Riverbed

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.

Roxtec, Engen, Bobst, CBP, IUCN, Mahoning County, Kentucky Transportation Cabinet

Find out what your peers are saying about Dell Technologies, Broadcom, Nutanix and others in HCI. Updated: April 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

894,738 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best HCI vendors.

We monitor all HCI 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.