DataCore SANsymphony Reviews

We're using SANsymphnony for our primary storage in a HA environment for sensitive production data. Storage nodes are HPE servers with SSD drives in them. They serve storage to two servers blades enclosures in a Fibre Channel storage network. We have a total of 50TB in a mirror. 16 servers use this storage in a VMware vSphere environment.

This infrastructure has run without any issues since 2017 and we update it twice a year.

Before that, we had other SANsymphony infrastructure running on an old HMP MSA storage array. We migrated without any interruption.

DataCore SANsymphony brings the ability to work on almost every hardware platform and to build a storage node with high precision (disks, interfaces, protocols). We can choose what hardware we want to put in and it brings a high-performance throughput from it. The ability to build exactly what you need is a major advantage of SANsymphony over other solutions.

Hardware maintenance is easy since it is a simple server. There's no need for a storage hardware expert. On top of that, the Software-Defined Storage is easy to manage.

We used the wizard to deploy SANsymphony in a virtual environment for hyper-converged infrastructure and it is quite useful. We can deploy virtual high-available infrastructure for running tests in less than an hour.

Continuous data protection is a powerful feature that can save your data in several cases. It is good protection against ransomware.

The ability to use the RAM of the server node as a read and write cache brings a lot of performance to the storage. We can reach high IOPS from slow disks through the huge amount of cache.

The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated.

We would like to see a real "sexy" storage dashboard with capacity, usage, performance, and error tracking.

The cloud reporting interface is quite poor compared to other vendors. We are far from an HPE Infosight, for example.

Using a classic storage array constructor allows clients to have a single point of contact in case of an issue. With DataCore, we have to deal with them for the software part and with the hardware vendor for the hardware part. Sometimes, in a complex environment, we have to deal with storage array vendors, servers vendors, and software vendors and that can be exhausting.

We've been using SANsymphony for almost 10 years now. We followed all of its great evolution so far.

This solution is stable. Depending on the two rooms' interconnection, we have to deal with redundancy and maybe a witness. Losing the connection completely between the nodes can lead to a complete rebuild of a side.

The scalability is almost infinite. I cannot think of a more scalable solution.

The customer service is quick and efficient. Sometimes we have to deal with some trivial questions but that seems to be the basis of every support query right now.

We previously used an HPE 3PAR storage array. We switched to have more performance and more flexibility. The maintenance is quite easier too.

The initial setup is easy via the use of a comprehensible wizard.

We implemented the solution ourselves after a formation from the vendor.

The ROI is high as we can change or update hardware without changing our licencing. 

The main work in building a SANsymphony solution is to design and select the correct hardware parts. The setup is quite easy and the configuration is too.

The licensing is by terabyte and can be quite expensive. 

We evaluated other hardware vendors but stuck to a software-defined solution.

VMware VSAN was not mature enough for us and we did not want to use a hardware vendor solution.

You must keep in mind that you'll have to qualify the hardware you use with SANsymphony compatibility.

SANsymphony is a software solution that enables storage virtualization.

We implemented SANsymphony due to its mirroring and continuous data protection features.

The installation is done independently of the hardware and even allows infrastructures in synchronous replication in active/active with different manufacturers.

The data is identical and accessible on both storage nodes. The solution also allows you to create a Disaster Recovery Site with an asynchronous and bidirectional mirror that is easier to test.

This solution allows us to have a business continuity plan for storage and as a first level of backup.

This solution allows us to have our IT production in two separate and autonomous rooms in active/active mode. The data is present in both rooms. In the event of scheduled shutdowns (works, updates, etc.) or incidents, the changeover is done manually or automatically.

The Continuous Data Protection feature and the logging of data changes allows a minimal level of data loss on incidents, human errors, or cyberattacks. This functionality makes it possible to restore the data to the moment before loss.

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.).

Continuous data protection reduces data loss. This functionality makes it possible to restore the data to the moment before loss.

Caching and parallel I/O offer more performance. The cache is done with the RAM of the server. To add cache you just have to add RAM.

The parallelization of the IOs allows us to have much better performance with the same hardware by accelerating the processing of the IOs.

The compression and deduplication are now suitable for a production environment. Additionally, this allows us to use logical RAID for NVMe drives in ZFS clusters.

The architecture has been revised with cache and metadata disks to improve overall performance.

The graphical interface is not always very stable. In a dense infrastructure with many volumes and disks, slowness and GUI crashes can be observed. Developments are still underway to continually improve this part.

The current graphical interface is ported to a web interface and not all features are available yet.

The eagerly awaited feature is tiering between deduplicated/compressed disk pools and performance pools. This will leave the possibility of activating by virtual disk the automatic movement of blocks according to their activity.

I've been using this solution since 2008.

I have been using this solution for over a decade and it is very stable.

The solution is highly scalable by adding disks or nodes.

Technical support is awesome and very reactive.

Positive

We used Dell/EMC, VNX, and UNITY. We switched due to vendor lock-in, overpriced drives, or upgrades.

The initial setup is very simple as there are many wizards.

We handled the implementation in-house.

You get to ROI quickly by reusing material.

Users need to remember that they just need to buy what they use.

We evaluated VMware vSAN.

The support team is awesome.

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.

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 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. 

DataCore is our main Enterprise SAN solution. We serve all workloads among five different DataCore server groups. These workloads include all hypervisors, SQL and Oracle Databases, file shares, archive, and backups. DataCore helps us achieve disaster recovery by allowing us to mirror our data between two sites.

DataCore has been doing software-defined storage since back before SDS was even a buzzword. It has provided a great deal of flexibility, performance, and efficiency for our Enterprise SAN. We are not tied to any one hardware vendor and over the nineteen years that we've had DataCore, we have gone through various models of IBM servers to Dell servers as well as various storage arrays from IBM, Dot Hill, XIO, Kaminario, and Dell (all with some of the same data from year one).

DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable. DataCore's auto-tiering feature also allows us to use our SSD arrays efficiently.

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. Datacore has some functionality where you can send performance metrics to a SQL database however it has not always worked well for us. We actually had to turn it off because we were actually collecting too much data, but in my opinion we sometimes want this data. Ideally if there was a way to see metrics for current and specific points in time it would be great for troubleshooting and any type of trend analysis.

I used to say the problem with DataCore was that it ran on Windows. However, with 2012 R2 and now Windows 2016, things have become much more stable. In general, stability has improved over the years. Most of the problems we've had in the past were due to Windows blue screen errors stemming from our HBA cards.

Scalability has worked well so far. We are up to managing about 2PB of data across five different DataCore Groups.

Technical Support is responsive. They could be a little faster when there is a critical emergency, but for the most part, technical support is good.

We have always had DataCore as our Enterprise SAN.

We've always had DataCore come in with Professional Services to do the initial setup.

In regards to Fibre Channel, buy a server that can handle the highest number of Quad Port HBA cards. Purchase as much memory for the server as you can afford. Anything you spec out, you will need to double if you want redundancy.

We did not evaluate other solutions prior to selecting this one.

I work with many customers that ask us to put their solution near the production because they can't stop the production. It's easier to protect the network this way.

It has helped my customers because it's an SDS solution, and we can use all components that you put in a server. You have many options that meet customer needs, and you can find the best way in relation to performance and price. 

It's a software storage solution that can scale as we like. There is also has a parallel feature that enhances the performance of the storage solution. We can separate storage and computing, and we can scale these two parts of the platform to meet business needs efficiently.

The most important thing is the work we do on the new management interface called DIS. You can follow the evolution of this platform, and it's very important for me because the customer has to manage the platform. 

We add the workload on this platform, and they need the platform to evolve. It's very important to the customer, and we have to work on the DIS to realize the customer's this vision.

Problem detection could be easier. It should help customers identify problems very quickly because it's not easy to analyze on the platform today.

I have been using DataCore SANsymphony SDS for about six years.

DataCore SANsymphony SDS is a very robust and stable solution.

Technical support is very good. For example, their system engineer came down to help my customer resolve a problem.

I can't say that the installation is difficult, but it's impossible for a customer who doesn't know the product or the installation process. You will need the help of a consultant or a reseller to install and deploy this solution.

This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give DataCore SANsymphony SDS a ten.

I run two servers with DataCore doing what it does. I then run VMware on top of that for my Window servers. I currently have roughly 50 users that are constantly using the various servers.

DataCore gave us speed, redundancy, reliability, and works great with our backup system.

It is easy to create storage and assign them to the various datastores in my VMware environment.

Installing updates could be a bit more straightforward and easier to install. I have only installed one update on the systems, and for that, I had to bring in outside help that was more knowledgeable with the product than I currently am. He also had to contact DataCore support for assistance as the update did not go smooth. I also did Windows updates at this same time as it was strongly suggested to me not to do the Windows updates as they are released. The Windows updates were installed with no problems and caused no problems to the system.

Very pleased. This system should last me for another five years. That is my hope.

I only run two systems, and I have not had any problems. Nor have I needed to add additional hard drives, but I have been informed that they can be added as needed. I have talked with other DataCore users in my area that have hundreds of terabytes, and they are very happy with the scalability.

I have only needed to contact them once, and they were quick to assist. Excellent support was provided locally and directly from DataCore.

No. This is my first time using software-defined storage.

I had to bring in outside support as I was not familiar with the setup. I believe it took about two days to set everything up.

Vendor team did the setup, and the individual that did the setup was a complete professional. I will continue to use this same individual.

I'm sorry, I don't know this.

I had the vendor that sold me the software and hardware assist with setting up the systems. I also paid for three years of support at the same time when I purchased the software. Again, I found it affordable.

I did look at using VSAN from VMware, but that was going to be more money, hardware, and time involved to implement.

As a side note, I use Veeam to backup my servers, including the DataCore servers, and I have had no problem doing so.