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."Integration with Microsoft clustering has been perfect, allowing us to leverage our investment in MS server licensing to the fullest."
"It integrates (fully) with VMware and Veeam, my hypervisor, and backup vendors, so for me, all the puzzle pieces simply fit and work smoothly."
"The install itself is easy as pie."
"StarWind Virtual SAN offers high availability and data resilience features to prevent data loss if hardware fails."
"We went from "no way DB applications would have good performance" to "Wow! We can now actually have a DB running and have some VMs running at the same time.""
"A typical system administrator with minimal experience in Hyper-V, VMware, or Windows can do VSAN configuration and maintain VSAN operations."
"It provided the much-needed HA on an extremely low budget."
"Support keeps track of alerts of the system and verifies with us if we need help to fix any issues. They have great and quick technical support."
"Supporting of Automated-Storage-Tiering (AST) is a good feature that saves money."
"Storage is always available."
"Oracle OLTP benchmark to test how it improves the performance while using flash drive NVMe."
"The most valuable feature for us is that we can adjust the size of the storage very easily, without stopping production."
"CDP is an important feature for avoiding data loss in the event of ransomware attacks. You need more storage capacity, however, you get the possibility to return at any time and use the data saved up to that point. The recovery is much faster than with a classic restore."
"For us, fault tolerance is the most important feature of DataCore."
"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."
"It is a well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O, cache speed mechanism, etc."
"The setup was easy to deploy, and management is simplified compared with traditional SAN solutions."
"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."
"The solution has provided our company with a fully redundant virtual environment at half the cost of a traditional SAN implementation."
"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."
"Product functionality and performance are wonderful."
"Servers came pre-configured for our environment and as soon as they were in the rack, Starwind got them up and running."
"In our experience with StarWind, the support has been by far the most valuable feature."
"The sales process is easy."
"The product can include a more simple way of synchronization after a forced shutdown as the current process has a few more steps to check that hosts have synchronized and this can be automated."
"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."
"I wish there was online support because email return takes a long time and a faster solution should be found."
"There is one issue as far as licensing goes and that is a lack of documentation online for users when transitioning from the free version to the paid version, or vice versa."
"Scaling the product is fairly easy except for the computing aspect. It would entail another appliance. While not a show stopper, it isn't as easy as dropping in a few extra SSDs."
"Pricing is a bit high."
"Management of VSAN itself could be improved. A Web UI for management would be great rather than an application installation. StarWind is testing a command center virtual appliance that I have installed in my environment."
"I'm sure it needs bug fixes..."
"We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API."
"Management could be improved. The management console sometimes reacts very slowly."
"The main problem is there is no DataCore OS."
"The solution could be better packaged and marketed."
"Datacore is developing a new WebUI with new dashboards. It is a good idea as the classic GUI is lacking dashboards."
"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."
"I think the performance reporting can be improved by adding historical statistics into a database for the purpose of comparing."
"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 overall product documentation and knowledgebase articles could use some rewriting and clarification."
"We need to be very cautious in following every step when updating the physical host. We must move over each VM and drain roles from the servers to ensure everything goes smoothly without interruptions. If this were a more automated process, this would be less taxing each time an upgrade is needed."
"Perhaps the initial configuration and documentation could be a little clearer and simpler to follow."
"We haven't had to use the ProActive Premium Support feature much yet. But they contacted me one time because there was a glitch on one server, a networking issue... I have not seen the problem since."
"Product shipments did have a few bumps along the way, but that's to be expected when using any shipping company."
"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."
"The only thing my team has recommended improving on is possibly a StarWind-customized GUI to monitor the overall system health, similar to 5nine Manager."
"If I had to pick something to add to the product, it would be nice if you could have more than one user account on their command center VM."
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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, StorMagic SvSAN, Red Hat Ceph Storage 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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