DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware vSAN comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

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.
To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. VMware vSAN Report (Updated: September 2023).
735,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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."

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"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."

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"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."

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Cons
"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."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

"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."

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"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."

More VMware vSAN Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
  • "If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "The solution is cost effective."
  • "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."
  • "DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."
  • More DataCore SANsymphony Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It is not that expensive, and it is not even cheap. If it is designed in a proper way, it has good pricing, but if you do oversizing, the price will be high. There are different licensing models."
  • "We pay for a license to use the solution through our company CapEx and then we continue to pay annually."
  • "This solution requires the purchase of a license."
  • "VMware vSAN is a little bit expensive and we pay annually. We have an educational institute where we receive discount prices from VMware. We do receive a reasonable discount but it's still expensive."
  • "The product is quite expensive, regarding the open source solution."
  • "There is a license to use this solution and we pay approximately $30,000 annually. There were not any additional fees required other than the license. The solution is expensive."
  • "We pay a yearly licensing fee."
  • "I have been told that if I used VxRail it would be cheaper than the system we are using now with buying the products separately. The solution is expensive overall."
  • More VMware vSAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment.
    Top Answer:The Premium ProActive service price is a little high, yet worth the price.
    Top Answer:It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website. However, they have a fantastic technical… more »
    Top Answer:DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper. You buy a license of DataCore SANsymphony, and… more »
    Top Answer:It's difficult to say if something is missing in this solution. Maybe we'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly… more »
    Top Answer:While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an… more »
    Top Answer:We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface… more »
    Top Answer:HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We… more »
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    DataCore SANsymphony SDS, DataCore, SANsymphony-V, Hyperconverged Virtual SAN
    vSAN
    Learn More
    DataCore
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    Overview

    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.

    DataCore SANsymphony is a very powerful software-defined storage (SDS) solution that makes it easy for organizations to take control of their data storage operations. It makes it so that users can choose the way that their data storage infrastructure is built and operates. Businesses that choose DataCore SANsymphony find that potential threats to their data are either removed completely or mitigated.

    DataCore SANsymphony Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy DataCore SANsymphony include:

    • Low operation costs. DataCore SANsymphony is designed so that users can take full advantage of its many features and capabilities without having to pay large sums of money and allocate similarly large blocks of time. The solution enables organizations to leverage whatever storage hardware they are already using to store their data. DataCore SANsymphony is hardware agnostic and, as a result, users can easily integrate it with the physical infrastructure that is most convenient for them. Furthermore, businesses can manage all of their storage devices from a single management console. This cuts down on the costs associated with the administration of an organization’s storage operations.
    • Flexibility. Users of DataCore SANsymphony can conduct their storage operations with a high level of flexibility. They can gather all of their storage capabilities in one place and deliver them uniformly across all of their devices, regardless of the physical infrastructure. Organizations can deploy their storage operations in multiple ways and use many different types of architecture They can easily and seamlessly move between them as their business needs demand it. Should they desire to, they can stick with whatever system they had been using up until that point.
    • Continuous, uninterrupted operation. DataCore SANsymphony keeps the data that users store with it in a state where it can be accessed at any time. It comes with autonomous safeguards that save a user from experiencing a loss of data when their architecture experiences some sort of system failure. Data is saved beforehand and stored remotely so that it can be retrieved if necessary. It also enables users to recover lost digital architecture so that a business can continue running smoothly even if a disaster wipes out a part of or the entirety of their architecture.

    DataCore SANsymphony Features

    Some of the many features DataCore SANsymphony offers include:

    • Data security. DataCore SANsymphony provides users with a high level of data protection. Users can leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to scan for and analyze potential threats to their data. They can then receive recommendations that enable them to avoid or at least mitigate potential issues.
    • Auto-tiering. An organization’s data can be automatically assigned a hierarchical storage value. Users do not need to classify and create tiers to hold their data. This solution has a feature that classifies and hierarchically stores data without requiring users to intervene.
    • Automatic load balancing. DataCore SANsymphony is built with the ability to automatically balance workloads. The solution will bypass channels that are slow or that fail to ensure that operations run as smoothly as possible. This will take place without the intervention of system administrators.

    Reviews from Real Users

    DataCore SANsymphony is a solution that stands out even when compared to its top competitors. Two major advantages it offers are its synchronous mirroring capability and the high level of reliability that it provides.

    A Systems and Network Engineer at a computer software company writes, “The synchronous mirroring is great. Storage is always available. This is the main feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS which allows very high storage availability and better protection against environmental incidents (electrical, flooding, etc.).”

    Fernando V., a LAN Engineer at Maimonides Medical Center, says, “The software just works and is reliable. Downtime due to storage maintenance or upgrades is long gone. We have multiple types of software running to differentiate our applications. This gives us more value due to the fact that we can use the application to segment workloads if needed. The bottom line is that the software runs our applications on whatever storage vendor we choose - and it does so reliably.”

    VMware vSAN is a software-defined storage product that is used in collaboration with VMware ESXi hypervisor and that provisions and manages storage based on policies, regardless of the underlying hardware. The solution enables you to prime your business for growth through its seamless evolution (it is integrated with vSphere and requires no new tools), its flexibility, and its multi-cloud capabilities. As an industry-leading software, VMware vSAN provides high levels of performance with minimal impact on CPU and memory.

    VMware vSAN Features

    VMware vSAN has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Storage policy-based management (SPBM): VMware vSAN supports storage policy-based management for automated management of storage profiles.
    • Software-defined data-at-rest encryption: With this VMware vSAN feature, you can prevent unauthorized access of data at rest.
    • Multiple nodes: VMware vSAN provides clusters that can include as few as 2 nodes or as many as 64 nodes.
    • High security and availability: VMware vSAN offers stretched clusters, allowing more than one virtualization host server to be used in the same setup, promoting higher security as well as availability.
    • Deduplication: VMware vSAN’s deduplication compresses data to ensure efficient storage management and security.
    • HCI mesh updates: VMware vSAN clusters can share storage capacity with non-HCI Sphere clusters and can adopt HCI without having to scale computing resources and storage or replace existing servers.
    • Simplified file services: With VMware vSAN’s file services, backup of file shares is simplified. You can use APIs that allow backup and recovery software vendors to integrate with your VMware vSAN file services, which enables backup software to track new data and add scalability enhancements to files.

    VMware vSAN Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing VMware vSAN. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Reduced total cost of ownership (TCO): VMware vSAN helps you reduce upfront costs for businesses because it can be easily deployed on inexpensive x86 servers. In addition, its highly scalable infrastructure and quick deployment also save organizations time and money, making it an efficient storage solution. 
    • Good manageability: VMWare vSAN is easy to set up, manage, and provision, without sacrificing performance. 
    • Scalability: VMware vSAN is agile and allows administrators to scale storage on demand, quickly, and efficiently via policies and rules.
    • Simplicity: VMWare vSAN is simple to configure since it is embedded in the vSphere hypervisor. Installing it using the vSphere Web Client can be done quickly. 
    • Reduced risk: VMWare vSAN reduces the risk associated with digital transformations by utilizing existing tools, skill sets, and solutions.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the VMware vSAN solution.

    PeerSpot user Yves S., CEO, Cloud Evangelist at Comdivision Consulting GmbH, says, “vSAN gives us a lot of advantages when we need to expand resources. We have an overall larger host infrastructure, and we split that up for specific customer test and use cases. In that specific scenario, we can easily add more hosts or reduce the number of hosts in the environment.”

    A reviewer who works in Infrastructure Security explains, “The ease of use is great. The initial setup and upgrade process was pretty straightforward. And, technical support is great.”

    Laurent N., Director at Softlogic, comments, "The feature that I have found most valuable is that it is easy to deploy. It is easy to create and delete virtual servers. It is easy to create the load balancing and the clustering."

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    Learn more about DataCore SANsymphony
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    Sample Customers
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    Volkswagen, Maimonides Medical Center, The Biodesign Institute, 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.
    Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company9%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Government9%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    REVIEWERS
    Non Profit30%
    Computer Software Company12%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Government6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Financial Services Firm6%
    Healthcare Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Comms Service Provider12%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Healthcare Company10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization44%
    Computer Software Company10%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Government5%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business63%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise15%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business49%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business41%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise46%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Midsize Enterprise23%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise51%
    Large Enterprise35%
    Buyer's Guide
    DataCore SANsymphony vs. VMware vSAN
    September 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    735,226 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    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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    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.