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."It has reduced the amount of switching, network connections, etc., because the converged StarWind Virtual SAN allows us to connect high-speed network interfaces between different boxes instead of having to connect SANs via the network, then connect those two clusters together."
"Having the ability to migrate machines live in our environment was made possible by this software."
"It allows you to use ANY consumer or enterprise HDDs and SSDs, and that's a really great thing!"
"The most valuable feature for us is having the ability to configure our local storage using a limited number of disks and using the StarWind VSAN software to keep the cluster nodes in perfect sync."
"This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime."
"In the three years that we have been using StarWind, the product has yet to cause us any problems."
"Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."
"The top-notch support before, during, and after deployments are better than any other vendor I have come across."
"An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system."
"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."
"I am very happy with this product's ability to adapt, increase, and modify existing infrastructures."
"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 most valuable feature for us is that we can adjust the size of the storage very easily, without stopping production."
"The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are many counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like when a backup is in progress)."
"It is a stable solution."
"The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs."
"How quickly the StarWind solution replicates also gives us the confidence to know that in the event of catastrophic failure of any piece of hardware, we won't be far behind before things went wrong."
"Overall, the solution has improved our system's performance. I was concerned about the physical-to-virtual conversion of our database server. It's actually much faster now, as a virtualized host on this Hyper-V cluster."
"The option to deploy a hyper-converged system without an expensive storage switch was a benefit."
"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the redundancy and its cost. I used to have a SAN, a Dell EMC EqualLogic. Unfortunately, it was they call an "inverted pyramid of doom." It was two or three hosts, two switches, and one storage array at the very bottom. But the SAN, the storage array at the very bottom, is a single point of failure..."
"High-availability is what I bought it for."
"The low cost of this solution has also made a big difference in our budget, which has been very helpful."
"The initial setup seems to be very straightforward."
"I'd prefer it if a remote console was provided."
"We just need more integration with Veeam."
"I'd love to see more clarification for us folks who are smart enough to do some damage yet not smart enough to use CLI."
"The platform needs to improve user management and the web console."
"In all areas the product could be made faster."
"It took a bit of knowledge and support to put in place but once installed it works fine. Migration (HyperV) from one server to another sometimes takes longer than expected but there is no data loss even if the host crashes."
"We don't really have any issues with this product."
"Currently, the StarWind management console is a bit clunky to navigate and isn't the most user-intuitive interface."
"The cost is becoming prohibitive since they moved to a subscription model."
"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."
"Management could be improved. The management console sometimes reacts very slowly."
"The cloud reporting interface is quite poor compared to other vendors."
"The alert system could have more features."
"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."
"I would like for it to improve into a more ergonomic management console and a translation into the French language. It should have some process for a shutdown of a VM properly in case of a problem."
"Its interface could be better."
"The web-managed interface (a separate VM) could be better."
"I would request that the terms and conditions be reviewed and made more acceptable to corporate security so that we could finally turn on the proactive support feature, as it is included with our support agreement."
"Maybe they could have a support portal that you can have direct access to a current support representative."
"We ran into some issues with going from Hyper-V 2012 R2 to Hyper-V 2019."
"What would have to be done urgently is the adaptation of the hardware to the configuration."
"I wish I understood what goes into the StarWind software a little bit better. To me, it's kind of magic the way some of it works. As an IT professional, you don't really want things to be magic. I do wish there was a little more "Here's how it works." There could be more documentation given to administrators..."
"I think some performance metrics would be nice to see, especially on the storage side."
"It would be nice to have some kind of GUI interface implemented to give you an overall view of the system's health at a glance."
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DataCore SANsymphony is ranked 4th in Software Defined Storage (SDS) with 54 reviews while StarWind HyperConverged Appliance is ranked 6th 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.
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