DataCore SANsymphony Reviews

Usually, our clients want to replace some storage units from NetApp. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't because NetApp still has some features that DataCore SANsymphony would like to have.

DataCore SANsymphony's stability is okay.

DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution. The licensing is expensive, and you cannot manage a big file server with DataCore SANsymphony without paying a lot of money. NetApp is easier to sell, and we have had projects where NetApp was a lot cheaper than DataCore.

Our customers want their block storage to be fast, redundant, and highly available. You also might have a large fire storage for data that the customer does not need to access urgently. When you want to enclose this in the DataCore architecture, you have to pay the full amount of money as with block storage, which can be very expensive. Sometimes, it is very expensive to use DataCore SANsymphony.

I have been using DataCore SANsymphony for about one year.

I didn't notice any problems with the solution's stability. DataCore SANsymphony's stability is okay.

The first installation of DataCore SANsymphony took a long time. I am not sure if that was due to a lack of experience or software issues, as I was part of the sales team. I am not mounting DataCore SANsymphony. I am just selling the solution to the customers.

I rate DataCore SANsymphony a seven out of ten for stability.

You can scale DataCore SANsymphony as much as you want if you are willing to pay the price. The solution’s scalability is high and theoretically has no limit.

We won three or four projects last year but also lost some. In some cases, the decision was to go back to maintaining NetApp. Our clients are enterprise businesses.

I rate DataCore SANsymphony a six out of ten for scalability.

I have to contact the sales team and system engineers. I'm quite content with DataCore SANsymphony's system engineers.

Positive

I am not completely satisfied with the initial setup. I rate DataCore SANsymphony a five out of ten for its initial setup.

DataCore SANsymphony’s deployment takes around eight weeks.

DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper. You buy a license of DataCore SANsymphony, and then you have to add three or four times the price in hardware.

You have several SLAs. You have to buy the hardware equipment because DataCore SANsymphony doesn't run independently but on server hardware.

On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate DataCore SANsymphony's pricing a seven or eight out of ten.

We sell DataCore with the package that permits to use the latest version. We wouldn’t install another version.

NetApp is very good compared to DataCore SANsymphony in terms of flexibility and licensing.

I don’t know. I would ask them to compare.

DataCore SANsymphony is a good product, but there's room for improvement.

Overall, I rate DataCore SANsymphony a seven out of ten.

My primary use case for DataCore SANsymphony is SAN rapid storage for virtual machines and the high availability for infrastructure.

The feature I found most valuable was the high availability with mirroring.

There is room for improvement in the graphical interface. 

I have been using the DataCore solution for about 12 years.

My impression is that it is a very stable solution. However, I did have one encounter with this solution's crash as the result of a wrong action taken by a user. The crash resulted in some data being lost. We had to restore some data.

My opinion is that it's a very easy solution and that it's very scalable. I am very happy with this product's ability to adapt, increase, and modify existing infrastructures.

We have about 20 clients who are using this solution.

I would rate DataCore's technical support a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best. Each time I requested help, they would call me back in 20 minutes or less.

Positive

I think that the initial setup is quite simple.

The deployment of DataCore depends on many factors, but for us, it took about one day for each server.

The license is paid twice per year.

This solution is quite fluent and stable and very easy to administer and use. I would recommend it to other people.

We have two VMware servers attached to two DataCore SanSymphony servers. The two SanSymphony servers are in high availability. Each server has two NVMe cards and some SAS disk in RAID5. 

We use the auto-tiering function to manage the two kinds of storage and place the dormant blocks on the SAS disks. 

We also use the Continuous Data Protection function to protect our volumes against crypto lockers, for example. 

The solution allows us to have real Business Continuity Planning on our storage system.

DataCore SanSymphony helps us to have a real performant and secure storage system. We can use the storage technology of our choice because SanSymphony can manage any storage that Windows accept.

The solution helps us to protect the data with the high availability function, which synchronizes in real-time the block between the servers. The continuous data protection function can log all the changes on the storage to allow us to go back in time within the last 72 hours.

We thought about replacing our two VMware servers and the two DataCore servers with the hyper-converged DataCore solution. 

The first valuable aspect is the software-defined storage. We like the fact that we are not dependent on a constructor. We can mix them as we wish. We can also mix the storage class as we want. 

The second thing we like is the cache which is the RAM of the server so we can choose the cache we need and we want. It provides us with a real performance for the writers but also for the readers.

Next, today, Continuous Data protection is mandatory for us. These days, with the multiplication of crypto lockers, we are more confident in the protection of our data.

It's difficult to say if something is missing in this solution. Maybe we'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony. 

We essentially use RAID5 for our SAS disk and SSD, and now we need to create this RAID on the raid card. If we could bypass this card, we could really manage all the storage from the solution, which would be ideal.

The graphical interface needs to be improved. We have noticed some bugs in it.

A vCenter integration just appeared in the last version. However, we have only some functions within it. I am confident that many new things will arrive in the next few months to make it more robust.

I have been using this solution for 14 years.

I found the solution to be very stable.

The scalability is very good; we can add a disk or RAM if we need it.

The support is very good. They are fast and efficient.

Positive

We used EMC SAN. We switch due to the fact that, at the time, there was not high availability on the EMC side and the management of the storage was simpler.

The initial setup is very simple; there is a wizard to help you deploy the solution. 

I implemented the solution myself.

We evaluated EMC's MirrorView and recently Huawei with Dorado Hypermetro.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The solution is used for the provision of high performance and high availability block storage. By using auto-tiering, many applications can benefit from the high performance of current NVMe SSDs. At the same time, cold data is kept on low-cost storage resources.

The separation of data streams from different applications (e.g. SAP HANA, SQL server, virtualisation) also increases overall performance and availability.

The use of snapshots for data backup is already planned and scheduled. For this purpose, Veeam Backup 11 will be connected to SSY. The backup will then be LANless via Fibre Channel.

Among other things, we used SSY to bring a Splunk installation onto the existing central DataCore storage. Continuous data transfer rates of up to 2.6 GByte/s (16GB Fibre Channel, dual fabric synchronously mirrored systems over 20km) were also achieved.

The project was also much cheaper and easier to implement than any comparable solution.

The services already running (databases, virtualization) are not affected and run with the same performance as before the expansion.

Veeam is now configured to use storage snapshots. This reduces VMware snapshots to a minimum. The backup runs via Fibre Channel and relieves the LAN.

Synchronous mirroring was a prerequisite for the project. Two data centers are used, which are connected via two different WAN routes. 16G FC is used via the WAN. The "Systems managed Mirroring" feature was used for this.

Another feature that makes high performance possible is "pool striping", where accesses are distributed over a larger number of external data volumes (LUNs). The limiting factor for performance here is the external storage that is connected to the DataCore servers.

Snapshots are also an important feature. In connection with external applications, these enable an improvement in data protection.

CDP is an important feature for avoiding data loss in the event of ransomware attacks. You need more storage capacity, however, you get the possibility to return at any time and use the data saved up to that point. The recovery is much faster than with a classic restore.

With dedupe and compression, we can now save considerable capacity. An expansion of the capacity and thus the purchase of new licenses are thus avoided.

For an upcoming release, I would like to see a function that can manage the storage of multiple Datacore servers in a kind of "erasure coding". This would simplify scaling and make SSY more competitive with other providers.

NVMeoF should be implemented. This protocol will play a major role in storage infrastructure in the future.

Network protocols are becoming increasingly important. For future projects, protocols such as RoCE should be implemented. Especially in LAN infrastructures from 25G, a simpler and high-performance SAN infrastructure could be built here. The costs should be lower compared to Fibre Channel.

Improving support will be very difficult as it is already one of the best in the IT world.

I have been implementing SSY very successfully with many clients since 2008.

The system runs very stable. Through the use of server pairs, there is no more downtime. The storage service is always available, even if maintenance has to be carried out or a hardware defect has to be repaired.

The performance can be scaled very easily by adding data devices of the desired performance class.

It is also very easy to expand the capacity. By adding low-cost storage, cold data can be stored there. This also ensures that the hot data can be accessed with high performance.

Datacore offers one of, if not the best, technical support teams in the industry. Every request is handled very competently and in a short time.

The SEs are also very well trained and competent. They are always available for questions and are also very willing to give suggestions and information.

Positive

We previously used Netapp Metro Cluster. We switched due to the costs for the infrastructure (Metro Cluster) were too high. The performance was also no longer sufficient. The solution was too inflexible.

The implementation is somewhat more complex than with simple storage. In addition to the actual storage resources and the SAN infrastructure, the x86 server with Windows Server and SSY must also be installed.

The configuration of the storage is easy, as it is best to create many identical volumes and present them to the Datacore server.

These volumes are then included in the pool within SSY and centrally managed there.

The SAN configuration includes the construction of a FrontEnd, BackEnd, and Mirror layer. It is a little more complex, but not complicated.

The host systems access the resources via SSY, so these must also be configured in SSY. On the other hand, only the SSY servers need to be set up on the storage.

Being a DCIE myself, I did the installation.

Since the environment is dynamic (for example, changes, extensions), the ROI is not easy to determine. However, the TCO is more favorable than with other solutions.

Good planning is always very important. SSY is very flexible and can cover very different requirements. Therefore, it is important to keep a close eye on the requirements. If you have questions before implementation, ask support or a partner.

Also, pay attention to licensing. It may be cheaper to license a few TB more if you can make a jump in the discount scale.

Also note: Using DAS (internal storage) can be very cost-effective compared to external storage.

We considered different solutions such as Netapp FAS-Series, HP MSA, and 3Par.

I am glad to have used SSY. The solution is very stable and performs well. It requires very little effort.

What you do have to do, however, is regularly apply Windows patches. To do this, the node has to be restarted. You should therefore always use a pair with synchronous mirrors to avoid downtime.