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DataCore SANsymphony vs VMware vSAN 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
DataCore SANsymphony enhances security and availability, offering high ROI through hardware reuse and cost-effective storage and uptime savings.
Sentiment score
3.2
VMware vSAN reduces hardware costs, increases efficiency, and boosts ROI despite high operational expenses and upfront costs.
Starting with a smaller infrastructure and scaling as required allows us to save costs initially.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment; it's satisfactory in the long run.
Deputy Manager at Mannai
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.4
DataCore SANsymphony's support is praised for being rapid, knowledgeable, effective, and highly rated, despite occasional inconsistencies.
Sentiment score
4.9
VMware vSAN support is knowledgeable but response times vary, with resources helping reduce direct contact needs for clients.
They always help me quickly and with great knowledge, which is essential for central storage.
System Engineer at Bechtle
The customer support is perfect.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10.
Owner at Arsium
I would rate their support nine points.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Sometimes the issue is that you don't get the best experience, whether it's the response time or first-level support quality.
Deputy Manager at Mannai
I am not satisfied with VMware support, particularly with the reaction times, SLAs, and those kinds of issues.
private cloud team at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.5
DataCore SANsymphony is praised for its scalability, hardware independence, and adaptability to both small and large environments.
Sentiment score
4.8
VMware vSAN offers seamless scalability, enabling efficient node addition and storage expansion to meet evolving business capacity demands.
There are no limits to scalability, which is essential for central storage.
System Engineer at Bechtle
If you have already bought it, you need specific servers, and it is easier with a SAN.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
It supports up to 64 nodes in a cluster, allowing us to add nodes and expand the cluster as needed.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
DataCore SANsymphony is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, requiring proper configuration and minimal maintenance.
Sentiment score
5.9
VMware vSAN reliability improves with updates, strong support, and adherence to hardware compatibility lists, ensuring stable performance.
From my perspective, I would rate VMware vSAN's stability as extremely high, perhaps a nine.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
In terms of stability, I give VMware vSAN nine points.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

DataCore SANsymphony struggles with tech support, pricing, Windows dependence, and needs better integration, interface, and enterprise features.
VMware vSAN requires better management tools, integration, and hardware support, with improved stability, scalability, and enhanced disaster recovery features.
there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs
System Engineer at Bechtle
DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and separate sites to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support.
Owner at Arsium
I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features.
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Discussing the pricing model is significant as Broadcom creates many discussions worldwide regarding pricing.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
A proper monitoring tool that encompasses both applications and infrastructure would help in quickly resolving issues.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is high, but offers favorable price-performance, with careful planning advised to optimize costs.
VMware vSAN offers long-term savings, but initial costs and licensing complexity concern small businesses, especially post-Broadcom acquisition.
They have made some improvements regarding the pricing, but it's still too expensive.
Owner at Arsium
The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model.
System Engineer at Bechtle
This has resulted in a slight cost increase.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage management, performance, and reliability with high availability, flexibility, scalability, and hardware-agnostic versatility.
VMware vSAN provides high-performance, scalable storage with cost-effective integration, using existing hardware and offering advanced features.
Customers can extend storage with flexibility, as one is not obligated to purchase hard disks or controllers from the same storage vendor.
System Engineer at Bechtle
This flexibility and scalability have helped our organization in practice because it is important for us as it decouples the storage management software from the physical hardware, creating a software layer of intelligence.
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
DataCore SANsymphony's ability to enhance storage utilization is very good because it's agnostic and it can be deployed on every environment, which is perfect for my clients.
Owner at Arsium
The performance is excellent, handling workloads better than direct-attached or legacy storage solutions.
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Hot add features are available by default in vSphere, allowing us to immediately increase memory, CPU, and hard drive without any downtime.
Sr Service Engineer at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Everything is integrated, allowing for more automation and ease of use.
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

DataCore SANsymphony
Ranking in HCI
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Storage Performance (3rd)
VMware vSAN
Ranking in HCI
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
234
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 2.6%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware vSAN is 11.4%, down from 16.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware vSAN11.4%
DataCore SANsymphony2.6%
Other86.0%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
ShyamikaThamel - PeerSpot reviewer
Associate Tech Specialists at Seatrium
Managing mixed RAID workloads has improved data protection and delivers strong performance
VMware vSAN can be improved in certain areas. In cases involving our large data stores with large VMs, we experience some latency, not during normal operation, but during database backup operations. We observed latency due to buffer issues from the top-of-the-rack switches. These issues are mostly network-related because all storage data traffic travels through the network. I have recently used Nutanix, and I observed that Nutanix provides better performance than VMware vSAN due to its data locality features. VMware vSAN is now providing data locality, but we did not use that option. If VMware vSAN provides additional features in the next release, such as the VM balancing feature called DRS on the cluster that VMware previously had, it would be beneficial. With DRS, VMs can move easily from one node to another within the same cluster. Nutanix does not provide that flexibility. When placing a VM on a cluster in Nutanix, the placement uses a balancing component. After that, the VM remains on the same host. If any contention occurs on the CPU or memory side, the VM stays in place until contention happens. If issues occur, the VM migrates to another host while transferring all objects to the same host. This is how their data locality is maintained. When a VM moves to any host, it moves with all VM objects. VMware vSAN does not currently offer this option. If a VM moves to another host, it accesses the disk object through the network, which increases latency. VMware vSAN now offers an option to select data locality, but it does not function like Nutanix. This is why some latency remains. If VMware vSAN can improve this feature, it would be very helpful and VMware would regain its top position.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Performing Arts
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business100
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise129
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?
Before choosing DataCore SANsymphony, I did not evaluate other options.
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?
DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and separate sites to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery. I do not have...
What Is The Biggest Difference Between vSAN And VxRail?
While both run on the vSAN technology from VMware, vSAN needs to be deployed on vSAN ready nodes while VxRail is an engineered system. The choice to choose which technology depends on two major fac...
How does HPE Simplivity compare with VMware vSAN?
HPE SimpliVity is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that is primarily geared to mid-sized companies. We researched VMware vSAN but found HPE was a better option for us. HPE SimpliVity has ...
How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?
We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...
 

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN
vSAN
 

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.
Read Some Case Studies At Home Cloud CaribCINgroupDiscovery Check out the Rest of our Customer Stories Here
Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. VMware vSAN and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
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