DataCore SANsymphony Reviews

We are using DataCore to increase I/O, to more flexibly utilize storage and to provide a robust offsite replication solution.

It has really helped with I/O and being able to manage our storage more simply.

The ease with which I can create and manage storage for my entire network from one easy-to-use interface.

The only area I see lacking with DataCore is their support. It's not very good at all, and it's frankly, very frustrating and has almost caused me to swear off the product. With that said, the product itself (especially when working) is developed and runs very well and because of that I will keep using it.

Low-cost infrastructure for SOHO.

Excellent performance and reliability, and very low cost using home hardware.

Flexibility. You can install it on almost any hardware and/or hypervisor.

Deduplication works but implementing it is complex.

We use the DataCore software to provide (virtual) storage hardware to our virtualisation environment (VMware ESX).

• SANsymphony gives us the possibility to get storage redundancy with a very good ROI.
• It also helps us to get a more balanced performance of our storage systems.

• Redundancy of vdisk: It provides less downtime.
• Continuous data protection: It is always good to have a possibility to "go back".
• Technical support: Technical support is amazing. It is very fast and always has a solution in no time.

• It will help if there is a possibility to backup the vdisks directly.
• An idea could be that there is a second storage just for backup which doesn't count to the license usage.
• A better (and easier) tool to detect performance issues.

With SANsymphony we never had any issues of stability.

It is very scalable because you can just extend the storage with other (different) hardware. There is a lot of certified storage hardware. Also, the tier level helps to scale.

Fast, faster, DataCore support.

They are also kind and solution-oriented. They are easy to understand, and you have the feeling they want to help you and get you satisfied.

No, we have only used DataCore SANsymphony as SDS.

The setup was done by our IT partner. It is complex because he also had to set up our iSCSI environment. With Fibre Channel it would be much easier.

Our IT partner started the initial installation. We implemented it in our environment.
The partner had very good expertise.

We didn't calculate the ROI.

We have not calculated the ROI of the software. Only the benefits in redundancy and scalability were important for us.

The licensing is very easy to understand/calculate since the new license model. You just have to license the storage and additional features.

No.

The installation is only supported if it is installed by a DataCore certified implementation engineer. Also, updates should be done by this DCIE.

If you want to manage everything by yourself, you have to get a DCIE.

• We use DataCore SANsymphony as our primary storage solution replicated on two hosts since October 2012. In July 2018, we dispatched them to the two server rooms.
• Each DataCore node consists of a server and two storage bays connected in SAS.
• We use this SAN to store our VMware datastore (300 virtual machines) for our 10 ESXi servers.
• Each server is connected to storage via two fiber channel links 8Gbps.

Previously, we had some Windows and Linux servers with direct-attached storage. Our server's farm increases faster than our server room. So, we thought about virtualizing our applications. We chose to use VMware ESXi and DataCore SANsymphony to create our new infrastructure and then began to deploy our infrastructure on one server room. Then in 2018, we chose to dispatch them for more security in two server rooms.

• The better features are the synchronous replication and the management console.
• The synchronous replication gives us the ability to make business continuity planning.
• I like the management console which is very easy to use.

DataCore is currently working with Veeam software for a better integration; this is my only desired missing feature today.

With this feature, Veeam do a snapshot on Virtual Machine, then snapshot the storage.
When storage snapshot is done, Veeam remove the Virtual Machine snapshot to avoid long period snapshot.
With a VMware snapshot period smaller, consolidate will be faster and production will be less impacted.
Then Veeam save VMs directly from storage snapshot without VM performance impact.

When Backup Job is done, veeam ask to Datacore to remove Storage snapshot without any VM interruption or impact performance.

SAN volumes for all system types. You can serve Linux and Windows systems alike, just add the multipath software.

• Multi-site redundancy, who wouldn't want that?
• Cluster maintenance is super easy: just add a node to the second site and the software takes care of the data.

Auto-tiering moves data to fast disk if needed. Works great. I don't have to think about the second set of data.

Maybe adding a Linux data manager, and moving away from Windows. It has become more reliable when using 2012/2016.

Using the newer MS server version has made the system more stable.

Very helpful support!

Straightforward. It supports fibre channel.

In-house.

Check what's out there.

No.

Once you use it, you won't want something else. No vendor lock-in.

We use it as part of the PCA. And also to recycle berries for which we deport their native intelligence on DataCore.

DataCore SANsymphony has improved our organization in terms of performance, data security and maintenance plan. We can stop one of our machine rooms without interruption of service to the user.

The most useful feature is the continuity of service and the associated performance. It brings great flexibility.

Additional features that should be included in the next release are "application performance and storage" (new tuning and troubleshooting options).

We use DataCore for VMware datastore. Each ESXi can access datastores stored on DataCore servers on different sites.

We don't have to check if sync is good or not between each server, DataCore does it for us and replicates on another site.

Storage access is improved. Just after migration, applications respond faster.

DataCore is very fast storage, applications start faster, and database access is improved. You can attach different storage pool and DataCore chooses where to store data (the most accessed data are on the faster storage automatically).

Replication helps us to replicate virtual servers on different sites easily.

• A web console in HTML5 could help us to manage storage from any computer.
• Veeam cannot directly access to DataCore storage at the moment; this feature would improve snapshot.

We used Dell EMC and NetApp storage before.

The price and performance of DataCore helped us to change our storage.

Check what really needs fast storage and migrate it to DataCore and let low access data be on other storages.

Installation of this hyper-converged infrastructure in our school this summer with two servers directly attached. It works perfectly!!

• DataCore SANsymphony allows us to have a reliable, fast and easy administration infrastructure.
• We have a reliable and secure infrastructure thanks to SANsymphony, and all at less cost.

• The parallel I/O function is very useful when there are many requests for read/write access to the disks.
  The administration is simple and easy.
• It is possible to create a virtual disk very easily, and moving the virtual machines is fast.
  

The heavy client mode console should be improved by having a web console to improve accessibility. Also, the analysis time on the storage increase is one month now. This could be improved.