DataCore SANsymphony vs Sunlight comparison

DataCore and Sunlight.io are both solutions in the HCI category. DataCore is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.4, while Sunlight.io is ranked #30. DataCore holds a 2.1% mindshare in HCI, compared to Sunlight.io’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sunlight.io users who would recommend it.

DataCore SANsymphony

Read 56 DataCore SANsymphony reviews

2,098 Views
1,141 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Sunlight

Read 2 Sunlight reviews

203 Views
93 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

DataCore SANsymphony

Sunlight

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

DataCore SANsymphony and Sunlight are in the data storage and hyperconverged infrastructure market. Sunlight appears to have an edge with its comprehensive features, although DataCore is strong in support and scalability.

Features: DataCore SANsymphony offers high availability, unlimited scalability, and efficient management of mixed storage resources. It is versatile in deployment and known for its robust performance. Sunlight stands out with lightweight hyperconverged infrastructure and extraordinary performance on minimal resources. Its unique edge computing potential is appealing to resource-constrained or distributed operations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: DataCore SANsymphony ensures a straightforward deployment process within existing environments with seamless hardware integration, supported by knowledgeable customer service. Sunlight's compact design offers deployment ease for edge environments, although its customer support lacks some depth compared to DataCore.

Pricing and ROI: DataCore SANsymphony provides a flexible pricing structure with costs scaling based on deployment size, achieving strong ROI by reducing storage overhead. Sunlight may require a higher initial investment due to specific infrastructure needs but promises significant ROI by minimizing footprint and operational costs. DataCore is more cost-effective for larger enterprises, whereas Sunlight's benefits offset its cost for specific use cases.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. Sunlight Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Sunlight

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 850,028 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

7th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), Storage Performance (2nd)

Sunlight

Ranking in HCI

30th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sunlight is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

HCI

Featured Reviews

TempreviewerD

Architecte Principal at Orange

Robust with good replication and access protection

The solution is constantly evolving. Recently, deduplication and compression have been further improved to meet customer needs, and updates are easily implemented without stopping production. The update assistant checks the state of health before using good practices, during checks that the data is still presented for service continuity, and afterward, if the actions carried out are indeed active. Technical support is truly available even without a production incident. This is really essential right now.

Read full review

RajeshKANUMURY

Chief Executive Officer at GniYes Inc.

Performs well, effective, and has responsive remote technical support

Sunlight is a scalable solution. It supports on-premises and distributed deployments, as well as public deployments. It has a single pane of management so I can manage all of my VM installations in a distributed manner. It also has a footprint, that allows me to operate on Edge. If for example, you have a retail shop with 2,000 locations and they use a networked point of sale system, or if you are Chipotle and they have so many locations and they have to use a backend system at each location. At the moment, these are all standalone systems that operate with very little connection to the central. We could, however, connect and create a network using Sunlight. We can virtualize and run with Edge thanks to Sunlight. This allows us to operate and obtain high-end computing on Edge for retail. Sunlight is a startup. I am not sure how many users they have, but we have been using it constantly and using the technology to bring in customers.

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

"I am very happy with this product's ability to adapt, increase, and modify existing infrastructures."

"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 most valuable feature for us is that we can adjust the size of the storage very easily, without stopping production."

"The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated."

"During the maintenance periods, on any part of the storage or VMware migration, we have had no downtime."

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

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

"Active-active is the most valuable aspect for us."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"It supports the latest technology of NVMe SSD, which is PCIe-based SSD. It has a very good IOPS performance as compared to vSAN. For the same system, I get 1,000 IOPS with vSAN, and with Sunlight, I am able to get almost 10,000 IOPS. In terms of features, it has almost all the features, such as HA and centralized dashboards. It can be managed centrally, and the visibility of the system is very good. They also have very good technical support and customer or partner training."

"The performance and small footprint of this solution are its most valuable features. I am able to obtain and use more than 90 percent of the physical hardware capacity."

Cons

"The alert system could have more features."

"We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API."

"One area where the solution could improve is its software platform. Many customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the software running on Microsoft Windows."

"Right now, the version used is run on Microsoft Windows Server. Having a Linux version or even an appliance would be better as it would eliminate the use of additional licensing for another piece of hardware."

"Problem detection could be easier. It should help customers identify problems very quickly because it's not easy to analyze on the platform today."

"When I sometimes reboot for maintenance, the connectivity from the iSCSI initiator host could be improved."

"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."

"If you're dealing with big databases or transactional databases, it might not be the best-suited solution. The design of DataCore's solution isn't oriented towards this type of data."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"My recommendation would be to add this technology to Azure, Microsoft Azure so that we can bring it to the market, or deploy it on public clouds such as Microsoft Azure and Google. It is currently only available on Amazon's public cloud."

"Its reporting and dashboards need to be improved. It currently has very basic reporting options. It should also be made easier to deploy on Unix operating systems. It is easy to deploy on Windows and Linux, but it is currently not easy to deploy on Unix."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

"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."

"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."

"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."

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

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."

See which vendors are best for you

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

See recommendations

850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

19%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model, and it seems reasonable. I am technical personnel and not deeply involved in sales, but the pricing appears fine.

See all answers

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).

See all answers

What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

In my opinion, there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs. However, this is not a frequent need because they have great support that offers quick and knowledgeable assistance. Other...

See all answers

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 13% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 11% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 10% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 9% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 9% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

VMware vSAN vs Sunlight

Compared 100% of the time

More Sunlight Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

April 2025

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

HCI

April 2025

Download Sunlight product report

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN

No data available

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

Sunlight is a complete HCI stack that can be deployed on-premise on standard data center hardware, in AWS and on resource-constrained far-edge devices.

Sunlight.io

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.

Lavazza, Infraspace

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Sunlight

April 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. Sunlight

Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. Sunlight and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. Sunlight report.

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.