DataCore SANsymphony Reviews

The most useful feature of SANsymphony is that it's able to manage any brand of block storage.

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.

It's a very expensive solution, and the licensing costs should be lower.

I've been dealing with this solution for seven to eight months.

It's very stable, but you must know what you are doing because you need to have sufficient memory processing in order for SANsymphony to work properly. Once you have that down, it's actually quite easy to manage.

Scalability is easier because everything comes in pairs. Everything you need to do, you have to do in pairs. For DataCore SANsymphony, you don't need a witness node. You can actually run in pairs, and you can upgrade in pairs. You can find support for up to 64 nodes, if I'm not mistaken. It depends on how you want to design your architecture.

Based on my experience, their technical support is very good.

The initial setup is very straightforward.

One person can easily manage the entire software. There is a learning curve, and you need to understand the features, how it works, how to create your storage pool, and how to tier your storage pool. Once you understand those things, everything is actually quite easy and streamlined. You just need to know the basic architecture.

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.

If you have multiple block storage, as in a silo, then you can use SANsymphony to manage the storage from one management portal. You can also tier the data from storage, say, for example, from HP storage to Dell storage, transparently. You can also do storage migration without any downtime.

Compared to VMware vSAN on Nutanix or VxRail, you need a minimum of three nodes, two nodes and one witness. However, for DataCore SANsymphony you don't need a witness node.

DataCore SANsymphony is very good and very solid. In fact, it's almost 20 years old, but the pricing can be an issue.

We utilize the software-defined storage for our database systems and virtualization environments (we have multiple). One detail we utilize most is the HA provided by the vendor. We have two “legs” for connectivity to our SAN. This provides two logical locations in two physically separate data centers. This keeps our DBAs and admins happy. We can perform changes and updates on one side while the app (DB) data is accessible on the other. The data is synced almost instantly when both sides are up and operational. This allows us a lot of flexibility.

When you have to meet data latency and accessibility requirements you will need to look at this software offering. Our developers and DBAs require uptime and redundancy. This has improved our operational offering to our customers. The end-user finds it fast and reliable. The software works well no matter what storage vendor we put on the back end. We can check storage from startup ABD or price from vendor XYZ. This improves our flexibility and cost savings as we rely on the software and not on a product or manufacturer that locks us in.

Active-active is the most valuable aspect for us. The reason being, we can run our clusters on one side knowing our data is available in the other data center. There is simple management via GUI or command line. 

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 segment by application if needed. The bottom line is the software is what runs our applications on whatever storage vendor we choose - and it does so reliably.

One area the company can improve upon is the use of other software. 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. While the Windows server has gotten more reliable, I would like it more if it would not be dependent on Microsoft Windows Servers. 

Improving the GUI would be another feature where they could add to the software. They should make it more intuitive by simplifying the layout.

I have been working with the software for over five years. 

The software is very stable.

The scalability is very good. 

Customer support is hit or miss. There are good technicians, however, some are not so good.

Positive

We did not previously use a different solution. We have been using this software for some time now.

You may want to get professional services to start the setup if there are key features you want to be implemented.

We had a very good team implementation.

The software paid for itself long ago.

I'd advise users to do their homework. This software gives you good reliability and performance.

We did not evaluate other options.

I like the product and will continue to use it well into the future.

The product is primarily used for providing block storage space for the virtualization environment.

The server nodes caching algorithms will speed up your SAN storage performance, even if you are already using a high-class FC attached enterprise storage system.

The DataCore is open in order to attach a lot of different storage subcomponents.

The SDS is not dependent on a special hardware vendor. You will be able to mirror between different vendor systems if you like/need to. For example, to mirror data between one node with locally attached storage and the opposite node with an FC attached NetApp system. The data migration between old and new HW is quite simple.

The DataCore system has been rock solid since we have been using it - from 2007 on.

The caching functionality, which could speed up your attached storage, is great.

We use the reserved x% of space for free for new writes as additional speed improvement for multiple tier pools.

DataCore will reserve a percentage of your storage tier and tried to keep it free to write directly new data into it. In that case, your new writes will go directly in the free space of tier 1, which is the most common and fastest one. Afterward, data will be kept in tier1 or destaged to other tiers (2, 3, 4, etc.). This setting improved our SAN Speed for the complete pool.

It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes. Maybe they could do it with limited max IO and/or without auto-tiering capabilities for the archive pool - to avoid interference with the performance pool.

I've used the solution since 2007 when the product was called SAN Melody.

The solution has 100% storage availability and we've had that for more than ten years.

There is scalability without any limit.

Customer Service is very fast. There is a high level of expertise and they are willing to help and assist you. They are industry-leading, I would say.

Positive

The local storage was used before and we found that it was not flexible enough.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. With good planning and knowledge of your own environment, the setup works like a charm.

DataCore provides well-documented configuration guides.

It was a combined installation. Would like to say that the vendor assisted us.
Their knowledge and support were great, as was our internal expertise.

The availability is the best ROI.

DataCore is a good and valuable solution. The licensing costs depend on the storage and the volume of use. They were leveling on a good basis.

We did not evaluate any other solution.

DataCore is only as good as your plan for your environment. First, you need to know your own environment, including: 
- storage space
- throughput
- burst IO
- avarage IO. 
- good planning and testing.

Perfect choosen hardware is one that fits your needs. If you have that combined with DataCore, you will guarantee a success story.

The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability.

I also like that this solution has high stability and good performance.

One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine. It relies on Windows and that is a limitation because we have some customers who are looking for non Windows systems.

What we'd like to see in the future is for this software to support more operating systems.

We've been working with DataCore SANsymphony SDS for 10 years.

Based on customer opinion, DataCore SANsymphony SDS has very high stability. It's a good and stable solution.

The scalability of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is okay. I never had an issue with the scalability of this software, but it could be because we're working with medium-sized customers, not large-sized customers. I'm not sure if scalability would be a concern when dealing with large-sized customers.

Technical support for this software is good. We ran into a few issues and their technical support team were on time helping us, including our customers. I would rate the support for DataCore SANsymphony SDS five out of five.

We are not using software-defined storage, but we are partners with some vendors. We are distributors and resellers of software-defined storage solutions. We're working with DataCore SANsymphony SDS.

As DataCore SANsymphony SDS is a good software, it doesn't need to improve much.

Someone else set the software up, and I wasn't involved in the process of setting it up.

The advice I would give to a company that's thinking of implementing this solution is for them to have a good understanding of the documentation, and for them to be trained before installing the software in their production environment.

I'm giving DataCore SANsymphony SDS eight points out of ten. If they are able to support more OS (operating systems), I would give them a perfect score.

SANsymphony is a hardware-independent solution that provides storage virtualization. We implemented SANsymphony because of its mirrors feature. So it allows you to store the data on two sides synchronously on a single storage server. However, that single storage server consists of two independent hardware boxes in two data centers, but it behaves like one storage server because it's mirrored. No other vendor was offering that kind of transparent behavior when we implemented it.

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.

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.

I've been using different DataCore solutions for about 15 years.

SANsymphony's scalability is huge. 

I rate SANSymphony eight out of 10. I believe it's a great product with many excellent features. 

We work with the enterprise edition, SANsymphony V SDS.

The solution is geared towards small and medium-sized businesses, with two or three node clusters supporting business continuity and nonstop operations of virtual machines or servers. This makes the solution very stable, cost effective and simple to administer and maintain. 

The solution's most valuable feature is its versatility, with there being support for all new hardware technologies and platforms, disc mirroring and very effective auto tiering. This translates into very advanced storage features, accompanied by a cost effective application or license.

The so-called hyperconverged infrastructure edition, sometimes knows as vSan, should be addressed. It is one component of the solution. Yet, DataCore is less competitive than certain other manufacturers, such as EMC, Cisco, and VMware vSan. It is competitive when it comes to a general purpose software defined storage solution. As such, a hyperconverged infrastructure solution could be improved.   

The solution could be better packaged and marketed. 

When it comes to a simple 2 node cluster business continuity solution for SMB companies, the downtime can be expensive.

We have been working with DataCore SANsymphony SDS for eight or nine years, although we are talking about a relatively new edition which was published several years ago, possessing similar technology. 

We have worked with the solution over the course of the past 12 months. 

DataCore SANsymphony SDSOne should not hurry with Microsoft patching and should try to use newer, stable versions of DataCore and Microsoft Windows server.

These are the perquisites. When fulfilled, DataCore works really well and is stable.

The stability is high and extremely good. Once set up properly, the stability really works. 

The scalability is excellent. 

We provide support. As such, we usually help to resolve issues arising with vendor DataCore.

DataCore's technical support is very good and I rate it as a nine out of ten. 

The installation is nice and straightforward. 

The length of deployment varies with the complexity of the customer's environment and can last from three to five days, including the planning and optimization.

Generally speaking, we do installation.

There are usually two people involved in the deployment and the main channels of the solution, one of whom is experienced with the Microsoft infrastructure and server, the set up and the configuration. The other person has experience in networking and the configuration of the network, interconnecting the nodes. So, there are not a lot of people involved. 

The solution is cost effective. 

When it comes to a simple 2 node cluster business continuity solution for SMB companies, the downtime can be expensive.

The solution has very advanced storage features, accompanied by a cost effective application or license.

We are a reseller.

There is DataCore and we are Datatek. We are just talking about similar names, Datatek being a DataCore reseller.

I rate DataCore SANsymphony SDS as a nine out of ten. 

SANSymphony is used to provide HA storage block services to the vSphere Streched Cluster. The backend virtualized storage is a mix of internal node storage and SAN (Dell Compellent, IBM Storwize). It can be fiberchannel connected or iscsi or both.

By using this solution we provide a High Availability storage solution.

We can do the running of VMs in classic Windows or Linux workload and Citrix virtual Apps.

This is a software solution, so new functionality does not rely on any hardware.

SANSymphony allows us to separate the storage software from the hardware. That way, we can replace or add any backend in the cluster without downtime.

This ease of adding or removing storage allows us to control costs.

All maintening operations can be done without downtime as well. The team is happy due to the fact that they can do the operational tasks during day without impact on the production.

It helps us control storage costs.

This solution is very flexible. We can have 2 physical DataCore nodes with backend storage virtualized or we can have internal disks on the main site and hyper-converged 2 nodes on Robo sites. All this is managed from the same console and with the same functionnalities.

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 parallel I/O function is very useful to have good storage performance.

The ability to do asynchronous replication to a third site is a easy way to create a disaster recovery plan. 

Veeam Backup integration is a good new option. Now we can leverage a Datacore storage snapshot to do our backup without VM by using vsphere snapshot.

Datacore is developing a new WebUI with new dashboards. It is a good idea as the classic GUI is lacking dashboards. 

We need a better view to analyze the auto-tiering feature (like in DIS) to easier decide what type of storage we need to add. The current view in the GUI is too simple and we cannot see clearly cold data or hot data.

You can report all you want. There are a lot of counters usable in the console. However, there are too many. They need to create some pre-defined graphs or reports.

We have been using this solution since 2016.

It is a very robust solution. I have never experienced to total crash. I would like it if it continues this way.

Due to the design, the product has unlimited scalability.

The support team is really good. The product is frequently updated.

We previously used IBM Hyerswap and SVC. We had to switch due to the Vendor lock-in and poor flexibility.

The design is the more complex part due to all use case you can address with the product. That said, the setup is simpler if you are a SAN Storage admin.

We did look at vSphere vSan.

We use this solution for providing software-defined storage that is virtualized, in a true HA configuration. It provides SAN storage services to VMware vCenter hosts and VMware Horizon hosts, as well as some physical Windows and Linux servers. This platform allows us to leverage any storage that Windows can leverage, including other vendor SAN devices.  This allows us to keep existing storage, mirror SANs from 2 different vendors and even allow very easy migration from one vendor to another.  Most of our locations just use RAID attached storage (as it is the least expensive) with enterprise-class drives (both HDD and SSD).

This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage. So, we can throw in our own enterprise-class hardware (including SSDs) and not pay any extra based on the type of storage we use. This is the same model used with server virtualization.

This has allowed us to keep the hardware separate from software. It is true "storage virtualization" at its finest. It has all the features of any high-end SAN such as fiber channel, iSCSI, thin provisioning, storage tiering, snapshots, continuous data protection/recovery, synchronous and asynchronous mirroring, performance reporting/graphing, and true HA design.

DataCore recently added a hardware appliance for customers who what a turnkey, easy to install solution.  So if engineering the underlying-storage is not your cup of tea, their appliance, which is built on top of Dell server/storage hardware, is the way to go.

No more vendor lock-in, overpriced drives, or forklift upgrades. With DataCore SANsymphony, you can utilize just about any storage you wish with this product such as another SAN, NAS, JBOD, FusionIO, etc. If Windows can see it as a non-removable drive, you can use it with SANsymphony. Also, you can use this to mirror any of these various types of storage, which is awesome for migration. Say, for example, you have an HP SAN and you want to migrate off it to your own JBOD-type storage, or you have two sites with two different storage SANs that you want to replicate data between. With DataCore, it is possible to mix and match just about any storage platform you want to use.

As software-defined storage, the system is designed to run on top of Windows Server OS (which can be virtual or physical) and can utilize the server's RAM to provide disk cache. This makes our 7.2K HDDs class storage run really fast, allowing us to use a bottom-tier class of drive and get the performance of a much higher class of drive. Also, if we have to add capacity or replace drives then we can just order replacement drives off the web, saving us quite a bit of money. Of course, we still use "enterprise-class" drives but we don't pay through the nose to buy hardware. If we want to upgrade the Ethernet ports from 1Gb to 10Gb then we just do it. The same goes for FC. If we want to upgrade from 4Gb FC to 16Gb, we don't have to do a forklift upgrade. We just buy the HBAs and we're off the to races.

The other great thing is DataCore keeps their product on VMware's approved HCL. So even if you have a SAN (backend storage) that falls off the HCL with VMware, because it's virtualized storage behind DataCore, you're covered. If you put the storage behind DataCore then you won't have to worry about VMware's HCL any longer. Because of this fundamental practice, DataCore was one of the first storage vendors to support VVOLs.

The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs.

There's very little that I can find in their software that I would say needs to be improved. Sometimes the updates are too frequent, where just as we finish updating all of our sites, another update comes out.

The de-dup console is not yet integrated inside the main SANsymphony console. They are working on it but it's not there yet.

While their console allows you to connect to each of the nodes without closing the interface, you have to log out and back in when you switch between different storage server groups. It would be nice if they had an interface more like vCenter, where you see all of the server groups in a list and can just click on each group. It would be nice to be able to see multiple groups at the same time.

Having more of an Enterprise approach (v/s a local storage cluster) view would provide better management of the environment. For example, their current reports can only be run for each storage server group. There is currently not a way to run the same reports or look at performance across the enterprise (only the local site).

Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that can show capacity, usage, performance, and any issues would be very beneficial. Currently, DataCore does not have this. They recently added a web-based dashboard called DataCore Insight Services (DIS) to their product. However, you will need to be on their subscription-based model v/s their traditional yearly maintenance-based model. Also, the current DIS product does not span multiple storage groups and is in its infancy and is still very rudimentary in nature.  However, knowing DataCore's track record for fast, innovative development, I know it won't be long before they get it right.

We have been using this solution since 2008 (over 12 years).

The software over the years has matured to be very robust and allows you to build a very high-performing storage platform.

This product in unlimited in scalability.

DataCore Support is OUTSTANDING and they release new updates and features frequently (sometimes almost too frequently).  Their support department is a well-oiled machine and is the gold standard for how all vendors should be. Their online ticketing system allows us to not just see individual cases but for anyone in our enterprise/storage team.

Yes - We had a mix of various, black-box, type SANs (Dell, HP, Lefthand, DottHill, and EMC to name a few).  We switched to standardize the storage across the enterprise, maintain VMware supported storage, reduce costs, and add flexibility.

If you're an experienced SAN administrator you'll have no problems understanding their setup.  It is very straight forward.  The design of what you can do, because it's so flexible, is the most complex part.  You have LOTS of options. 

In-House

Within the first year, the product has paid for itself.

I would recommend sending administrators through DataCore's DCIE training/certification.  DataCore has many options from hyper-converged solution, to even providing their own storage appliances if that's what you are looking for. 

Yes - Dell, EMC, and HP.

While they support de-dup, it is recommended that you not de-dup the storage used for operating systems or high-change rated type data. The requires some planning to ensure the storage that is targeted for de-dup only have data that end users would be using (such as MS Office files, etc.)