We performed a comparison between DataCore SANsymphony and HPE SimpliVity based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."Virtual SAN runs on iSCSI, which is free and easy to configure. It's easy to manage from StarWind's GUI console, and it only required a few extra switch ports."
"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."
"StarWind Virtual SAN for vSphere is a software-defined storage solution that has reduced administration time for storage. It's pretty straightforward to install and setup it and so far it has been robust and worked as advertised from StarWind."
"The ROI is great on this product."
"In our case, the cost and high availability are the two most important factors which we were looking for in a solution."
"The management and monitoring have been very easy since the solution's dashboard is very simple and user-friendly."
"The access to our data is quicker and cheaper than it used to be in a traditional storage system."
"The ability to run the software virtually on every virtualization platform and the ability to eliminate all storage vendor locking are the most valuable features."
"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."
"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."
"The features I have found most valuable are the active-active, or so-called grid technology, and the integration into our VMware-vCenter."
"I found the solution to be very stable."
"The most useful feature of SANsymphony is that it's able to manage any brand of block storage."
"It is a well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O, cache speed mechanism, etc."
"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."
"Auto-tiering to obtain performance at a lower cost without the customer having to purchase ultra-fast storage is great."
"The most valuable feature is high availability."
"The ability to backup our data without requiring additional storage media or software application was a huge gain."
"The whole backup capability, where we are able to create backups and restore backups in typically 40 to 50 seconds, has been great."
"The main thing is its performance. In terms of performance, it is a lot better than VMware. Obviously, technology is changing a lot all the time. We were on just VMware with a separate attached array. The performance was kind of a step backward from just running separate servers. Now, the performance is much better, and we can take snapshots and backups of really big servers in just a matter of seconds. We can even restore them in a matter of seconds."
"It allows you to take advantage of the unique platform of computing, cloud management, storage, and integrated networks, as well as software-defined data management, which is easy to use. "
"Having one management console to do everything from was a great improvement over dealing with separate hardware for servers, SANs, backups etc."
"What I like about the solution, is that SimpliVity is easy to deploy and maintain. It's really performing very well. The ratio of price to performance is really good."
"It's much more simple than Nutanix and other hyper-converged solutions, at least from our point of view."
"The StarWind Management Console is available only for Microsoft Windows/Windows Server, and should also be available for Linux and macOS, as it would reduce implementation costs."
"The GUI deserves a little love."
"A great feature would be a wizard and to include a new disk in the SAN. At the moment, including a new disk requires several steps - some that must be done at the OS level and others in each node."
"I would like to see more advanced free versions."
"It would be helpful if StarWind provided more precise and detailed documentation explaining how to configure the solution in various scenarios, including the advantages and disadvantages of each."
"Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful."
"The only way I can see this product needing improvement is the consultation level of the StarWind sales and engineers."
"Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users."
"The cost is becoming prohibitive since they moved to a subscription model."
"The solution could be better packaged and marketed."
"For customers or technicians that don't speak and understand English, it could be great to have other languages support, all the more so given the number of countries in which SanSymphony is used."
"It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes."
"The solution is constantly evolving."
"One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine. It relies on Windows and that is a limitation because there are some customers who are looking for non Windows systems."
"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."
"We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API."
"The installation process could be simplified. It's a bit technical for non-IT users."
"Simplify the backup and restore: With integrated backup and remote replication, it could reduce risk and eliminates the use of legacy data tools."
"While SimpliVity was a pioneer of cloud connect capability, they have simply not exploited it."
"The initial setup was complex because it was a new solution."
"Increased storage capacity for big data, something that we have not had."
"They can bring more awareness about this product. In this part of the world or this region, people normally don't know about SimpliVity and its capabilities. The company we have it sold to hasn't been able to fully utilize all the features or understand the features. So, product awareness should be improved."
"There needs to be a simple process for migrating one SimpliVity cluster to a new SimpliVity cluster."
"Its price can be improved. Customers always look for better prices. It is more expensive as compared to other products available in the market."
DataCore SANsymphony is ranked 7th in HCI with 54 reviews while HPE SimpliVity is ranked 5th in HCI with 149 reviews. DataCore SANsymphony is rated 9.2, while HPE SimpliVity is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of DataCore SANsymphony writes "Robust with good replication and access protection ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of HPE SimpliVity writes "Provides a unified management interface that allows administrators to manage all aspects of the infrastructure". DataCore SANsymphony is most compared with VMware vSAN, StorMagic SvSAN, Red Hat Ceph Storage, NetApp ONTAP and VxRail, whereas HPE SimpliVity is most compared with VxRail, VMware vSAN, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE Alletra dHCI and Rubrik. See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. HPE SimpliVity report.
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