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DataCore SANsymphony vs Sunlight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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
7.3
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Storage Performance (1st)
Sunlight
Ranking in HCI
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 2.2%, up from 1.8% 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

OliverPalz - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides efficient synchronous mirroring capability and dynamic data management functionality
The initial setup is relatively easy but requires a certified DataCore implementation engineer to deploy the solution in a production environment. The deployment following the qualified procedure, typically takes about a week, depending on the amount of storage and the specific environment. With my experience, I can set up the system within two to four hours; however, the qualification process, which includes detailed planning and testing, adds additional time. It involves gathering the customer's requirements, preparing comprehensive documentation for validation, and conducting tests in collaboration with the customer. This documentation includes a site planning checklist, a pre-installation checklist, and a functional test plan to ensure everything is in order before deployment. Overall, I rate the process an eight.
RajeshKANUMURY - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."
"During the maintenance periods, on any part of the storage or VMware migration, we have had no downtime."
"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 ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs."
"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."
"Continuous data protection (CDP), can be used to "protect" again ransomware by recording all write on disk in a log. You can recover your data with incredible time granularity."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."
"Problem detection could be easier. It should help customers identify problems very quickly because it's not easy to analyze on the platform today."
"The cost is becoming prohibitive since they moved to a subscription model."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes."
"Management could be improved. The management console sometimes reacts very slowly."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."
"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."
"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."
"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."
"The solution is cost effective."
"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."
"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."
"There is an operating cost for the VDIs, which is an additional cost. However, the licensing fee is half that of VMware or Nutanix."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Government
7%
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.
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?
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...
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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.
Lavazza, Infraspace
Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. Sunlight and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.