We performed a comparison between DataCore SANsymphony and VMware vSAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The support team is available to solve any problem efficiently."
"We are able to execute maintenance on one server while the other is still running."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"The fact that we can expand our storage and add on to our compute nodes easily and how amazing the StarWind technical support team is really adding value to our purchase."
"The available GUI is excellent for monitoring and operating the system in an easy and direct way."
"Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"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 to keep data accessible even in the event of hardware failures is highly valued, as it ensures business continuity."
"I am very happy with this product's ability to adapt, increase, and modify existing infrastructures."
"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."
"The DataCore system has been rock solid since we have been using it - from 2007 on."
"The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated."
"It is a stable solution."
"DataCore SANsymphony's stability is okay."
"Storage is always available."
"I found the solution to be very stable."
"Allows us to implement more quickly, and to ease the maintenance."
"Easy-to-use, and easy-to-scale product."
"vSAN is integrated into VMware."
"The performance of VMware vSAN is very good."
"If we decide to expand, vSAN could offer us some flexibility. We are researching ways to set this up from a new data center, which is located somewhere different from the current location right now."
"The main advantage is that it's all in the box, with VMware vCenter Server product."
"High availability is a valuable aspect of this solution."
"The most valuable thing about vSAN is that all of its features have been working well for us for the past two years. We haven't had an issue with them."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"It is not very clear within the StarWind Management Console or the StarWind support documentation how to perform maintenance on a single node in a two-node HA cluster."
"I would like them to invest time in reducing the complexity of the startup and shutdown procedure."
"Proper training sessions should be included with the licensing."
"Besides not being able to use any filesystem, I do not have any additional cons."
"I wish the sync after a failure, such as hardware failure or power-related issues, for example, was faster."
"The software could benefit from more tooling to help with initial deployment."
"The console is something that I believe could be enhanced."
"The solution could be better packaged and marketed."
"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."
"If it could integrate to a cloud gateway, then we could carry it directly to storage, instead of having middleware in between the storage and the cloud."
"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."
"There is room for improvement in the graphical interface."
"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."
"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."
"NVMeoF should be implemented. This protocol will play a major role in storage infrastructure in the future."
"They can improve the manageability of the solution to make it more simple. It is not that complicated, but it will be good if they can make it more simple."
"The interface is a little complicated, it could be simplified with more graphical gadgets. We have many servers, and the built-in functions, such as rate configuration, are a bit complex."
"I would like to see more support for applications. I think currently it only supports applications between two vSAN clusters."
"This product is very expensive."
"The big thing is pricing, and the rest of it is mostly good. From a scalability point of view, scaling the storage from network or compute should be easier. It is again all around the cost, and it would be good if it was easier to scale your storage separately from your compute."
"This solution could be improved by having more than one controller for the environment. VMware depends on one controller for the whole environment, whereas Nutanix has one controller for each node. Because there is only one controller with VMware, if there was any drop, then the whole environment would stop working. In Nutanix, I have five nodes—there is one controller for each node and it depends on a virtual controller—so if the controller of any node is down, the whole environment will still work."
"We would like to see additional backup and recovery options added. In particular, integration with popular applications like databases."
"It could have some automation. We haven't involved ourselves in a lot of automation around the vSAN environment capabilities. We're still running it using a very traditional setup. So, there could be some plugins to automate it using third-party environments, such as Jenkins."
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DataCore SANsymphony is ranked 8th in HCI with 14 reviews while VMware vSAN is ranked 3rd in HCI with 52 reviews. DataCore SANsymphony is rated 9.2, while VMware vSAN is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of DataCore SANsymphony writes "Easily scalable with great technical support and very good snapshot capabilities". On the other hand, the top reviewer of VMware vSAN writes "Gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources". DataCore SANsymphony is most compared with HPE SimpliVity, StorMagic SvSAN, Pure Storage FlashArray, Red Hat Ceph Storage and VxRail, whereas VMware vSAN is most compared with VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and HPE SimpliVity. See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. VMware vSAN report.
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