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."We have experienced multiple hardware failures at one site and the fault-tolerant volume worked exactly as expected with zero downtime."
"It is extremely stable."
"StarWind vSAN has allowed us to leverage our server infrastructure more completely without the need to add more hardware."
"We test live failovers every week, and so far, everything has been running smoothly without anything unexpected."
"The vSAN provides full redundancy for storage while reclaiming some rack space."
"The fact that the solution is vendor-agnostic allows it to be used with any virtualization vendor while remaining a powerful abstraction over storage."
"This was a great implementation for a small to mid-size business."
"Besides being 80% cheaper than the other alternatives, the simplicity makes reconfiguration and support much easier."
"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 well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O, cache speed mechanism, etc."
"Oracle OLTP benchmark to test how it improves the performance while using flash drive NVMe."
"Storage is always available."
"I'd have to say that the biggest improvement gained by using SANsymphony has to be the performance of the product."
"During the maintenance periods, on any part of the storage or VMware migration, we have had no downtime."
"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."
"It is a very stable solution."
"Live migration between nodes was quick and simple."
"The hosts came preconfigured, and it was plug-and-play."
"The most valuable aspect of StarWind is the all-in-one solution that they provide."
"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..."
"We no longer need multiple staff members performing small, mundane tasks."
"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."
"The redundancy of two identical nodes that can run alone allows us to have truly "no single point of failure" in our computing and primary storage infrastructure."
"We run probably 16 virtual machines, and all of them are now highly available, and highly redundant."
"Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment."
"The documentation is good. However, if compared with competitors, it could be enhanced and made more professional."
"Perhaps the developer should refine the product management through PowerShell."
"It would be nice to see a new UI for the windows client, as it is not the easiest to find settings."
"It would help if the manufacturer provided clearer and more detailed documentation, with explanations of how the application can be installed in various HA configurations."
"They need to invest more in the support documents for real issues happening when integrating the solution with the hypervisor."
"StarWind doesn't really have any performance reporting, especially compared with other vSAN products we've used."
"I would like to see more user-friendly dashboards in future versions."
"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."
"There is no way of quickly matching the exact size of a vDisk to a disk pool."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the graphical interface."
"Its interface could be better."
"I found it a little unnecessary to have to rename the configurations within the graphics console in order to have unique names."
"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."
"DataCore SANsymphony should integrate file servers at a good price into the solution."
"We struggle a little with capacity management with the StarWind Hyperconverged appliance."
"Shipping options should be explained in detail and offer more white glove delivery options even if it comes at an additional cost for some SMBs without docks."
"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."
"The monitoring and reporting console can be improved in the sense that it can have more information on it."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"The only area that surprised me had to do with the fact that each host runs a StarWind virtual machine used to maintain the health of the vSAN, which individually uses 24GB of memory per host. You should keep this in mind when determining the resources you will need when selecting hardware and components for your specific setup. If I knew that, I would have chosen to add more memory per host to make up for the use."
"There is room for improvement in the setup and installation phase. We had massive problems connecting the StarWind appliances to our network infrastructure. That wasn't necessarily a StarWind problem. I don't know if their business partner in the UK wasn't used to having to deal with the supply of the cabling infrastructure, but that's where the problems started."
"The only area that the product could improve would be user training."
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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), VMware vSAN, Dell PowerFlex, VxRail and StorMagic SvSAN. See our DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind HyperConverged Appliance report.
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