We performed a comparison between DataCore SANsymphony and StarWind HyperConverged Appliance based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Software Defined Storage (SDS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
"StarWind is very easy to use, even if you have had no experience using a SAN before."
"Recovery and maintenance are now less stressful and most importantly, it allows our users to keep working."
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"I've been really impressed with it so far. I think it's pretty great, actually. It does exactly what we need it to do, and it does it well, so I would recommend it. Plus, the support has been very good."
"StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use."
"The StarWind VSAN is always up and allows us to move VMS to other nodes for maintenance, without interruption to service."
"It has reduced our overall maintenance and overhead by having to only maintain physical boxes for one cluster instead of having to manage physical boxes for two clusters."
"You can turn your local disk storage into high-availability iSCSI storage."
"The interface is user-friendly."
"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."
"Our central storage has very high availability. DataCore SANsymphony ensures high business continuity."
"It is a well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O, cache speed mechanism, etc."
"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."
"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)."
"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."
"The use of the RAM cache allows you to speed up the writing and reading of data while also allowing for a possible increase in performance by increasing the RAM on the servers."
"The initial setup is straightforward once you know what you're doing."
"The hardware footprint is great. We've got two 2U servers which replaced four 2U servers. Granted, they were about three years old at that point, but we actually increased our processing capacity by about 50 percent while keeping our storage capacity about the same. We've actually been able to downgrade to a half rack from a full rack because we've gotten rid of some of our network equipment and some of our additional storage arrays."
"UI Options are simple and easy to find."
"The high-quality hardware options, directly affecting performance, have significantly improved the user experience and are well worth the cost."
"The sales process is easy."
"Being able to upgrade machines and software during business operations just by switching nodes has been a huge improvement. We"
"The support is the most valuable feature. The support has been amazing. It's around the clock. One of our hard disks accidentally ejected without me knowing or being onsite. They called and told me about it before I had a chance to see it myself."
"We also substantially reduced network complexity by eliminating that standalone SAN. That reduced complexity has allowed us to concentrate on improving other areas of our network."
"While StarWind.com excels in numerous areas, there are a couple of notable functionalities that it currently lacks. One of these is duplication, which could be an invaluable feature for data redundancy and backup purposes. The ability to duplicate data across different storage locations can be crucial for safeguarding against data loss, and its absence is a minor limitation in an otherwise stellar offering."
"The documentation could be better."
"They require more media visibility."
"I would like an automated installation/configuration despite the fact that their service is very collaborative, a customer should be able to deploy the solution by themselves."
"When StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere nodes go offline unexpectedly, the nodes have to re-sync disks fully which takes a long time. We had a power failure and when both nodes came online, VMware vSphere didn't see StarWind disks before I manually re-scanned them form ESXi administration console even though it should happen automatically"
"StarWind relies on the underlying OS to manage the "SAN files" whether that would be a RAID volume, software RAID (such as LVM), etc. It would be useful if StarWind could incorporate the actual physical drive management inside of the solution, similar to Storage Spaces Direct."
"Being able to run StarWind vSAN on top of any free UNIX operating system to build a resilient iSCSI/FTP/SMB storage system would be useful."
"I found that certain browsers are not fully compatible with the administration web access portal."
"I would like to see SMPA (Shared Multi-Port Array) technology developed with the aim of allowing a configuration identical to other storage arrays."
"The solution could be better packaged and marketed."
"For customers or technicians who don't speak and understand English, it would be great to have other language support, all the more so given the number of countries in which SanSymphony is used."
"I would like to see reporting added, such as a monthly connectivity report."
"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."
"The alert system could have more features."
"I think an easier way to open a service call, right through the DataCore GUI, would be an improvement, especially when there is an urgent issue."
"We'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony."
"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."
"At the moment, the initial configuration is very technical and error-prone. That is the reason Starwind does it for you as a service, which is a great thing. But it would be nice if we could change or rearrange storage assignments ourselves."
"It would be nice if the software told you a new version was available and prompted you to do the upgrade to keep everything up to date."
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
"The management console could use a facelift."
"That situation, where Dell EMC servers were going down, has been my only real difficulty... it ended up being something that the wider audience of Dell EMC was actually aware of as an issue. Neither the StarWind technicians nor the Dell EMC technicians were able to actually identify that problem sooner than a week or so... The communication between Dell EMC support and StarWind support, in that particular scenario, left something to be desired, for me. I did express those concerns to StarWind and they were very responsive to that."
"Although the setup documentation was very complete and succinct, I found StarWind documentation to be a bit sparse."
"A desired feature or service is the ability to have a hardware subscription plan that ensures routine hardware updates in conjunction with the hyper-converged software."
More StarWind HyperConverged Appliance Pricing and Cost Advice →
DataCore SANsymphony is ranked 4th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 54 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 5th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 65 reviews. DataCore SANsymphony is rated 9.2, while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of DataCore SANsymphony writes "Robust with good replication and access protection ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind HyperConverged Appliance writes "Straightforward to use with good remote management and a simple GUI". DataCore SANsymphony is most compared with VMware vSAN, HPE SimpliVity, Red Hat Ceph Storage, StorMagic SvSAN and VxRail, whereas StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is most compared with Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Dell PowerFlex, VMware vSAN, StorMagic SvSAN and VxRail. See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
See our list of best Software Defined Storage (SDS) vendors and best HCI vendors.
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