Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Azure Stack HCI vs DataCore SANsymphony comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.5
Azure Stack HCI delivers substantial ROI via cost savings, Azure Arc benefits, and reduced licensing costs compared to VMware.
Sentiment score
6.8
DataCore SANsymphony enhances security and availability, offering high ROI through hardware reuse and cost-effective storage and uptime savings.
There has been some return on investment in terms of just time usability and reduction of footprint.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
3.8
Azure Stack HCI support is mixed; expertise and resolution times vary, with Premier support recommended for better assistance.
Sentiment score
6.4
DataCore SANsymphony's support is praised for being rapid, knowledgeable, effective, and highly rated, despite occasional inconsistencies.
Not every support team member is very knowledgeable about Azure Stack HCI, creating delays in resolution.
They always help me quickly and with great knowledge, which is essential for central storage.
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10.
The customer support is perfect.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.0
Azure Stack HCI provides scalable, reliable cloud integration, handling numerous virtual machines, with performance comparable to VMware.
Sentiment score
8.5
DataCore SANsymphony is praised for its scalability, hardware independence, and adaptability to both small and large environments.
There are no limits to scalability, which is essential for central storage.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.0
Azure Stack HCI is stable and scalable, praised for performance but needs more features and better integration.
Sentiment score
8.3
DataCore SANsymphony is highly stable and reliable, with minimal downtime, requiring proper configuration and minimal maintenance.
It does not feel like a well-oiled machine yet, with too many idiosyncrasies and insufficient documentation and integration, feeling more like software that is still in beta.
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Stack HCI needs improvements in networking, deployment, and stability; it faces integration challenges and limited multi-cluster management.
DataCore SANsymphony struggles with tech support, pricing, Windows dependence, and needs better integration, interface, and enterprise features.
There are discrepancies between managing VMs through Azure Arc versus managing them directly, as changes made not using the Azure Arc integration are not easily reflected in Azure Arc.
Hyper V seems to lag behind compared to VMware.
there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs
DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and separate sites to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery.
The area of DataCore SANsymphony that has room for improvement is the support.
 

Setup Cost

Azure Stack HCI's pricing includes OS and OEM licenses, is competitive, significant, and €10 per core monthly.
DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is high, but offers favorable price-performance, with careful planning advised to optimize costs.
The licensing is quite expensive because it's per call.
They have made some improvements regarding the pricing, but it's still too expensive.
The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model.
 

Valuable Features

Azure Stack HCI enhances VM management, networking, and cost-efficiency with Microsoft licensing, supporting infrastructure and seamless analytics.
DataCore SANsymphony enhances storage management, performance, and reliability with high availability, flexibility, scalability, and hardware-agnostic versatility.
The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent.
Customers can extend storage with flexibility, as one is not obligated to purchase hard disks or controllers from the same storage vendor.
DataCore SANsymphony has positively impacted our organization because it is scalable and has a fundamental concept that aggregates and pools available storage resources, hiding the complexity, which makes it very simple.
DataCore SANsymphony's ability to enhance storage utilization is very good because it's agnostic and it can be deployed on every environment, which is perfect for my clients.
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Stack HCI
Ranking in HCI
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
DataCore SANsymphony
Ranking in HCI
7th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), Storage Performance (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Azure Stack HCI is 3.7%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 2.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony2.4%
Azure Stack HCI3.7%
Other93.9%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Nicholas Diesel - PeerSpot reviewer
The storage for local usage is very efficient for an HCI product but virtualization needs improvement
Azure Site Recovery is brilliant. The integration with Azure using Azure Arc is excellent. Additionally, Azure storage for local usage is very efficient for an HCI product. There has been some return on investment in terms of time usability and reduction of footprint, and obviously, HCI two emissions and other factors.
SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
High availability and user-friendliness enhance infrastructure health and redundancy
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10. Each time I contact the technical support, it's when I don't have a choice because it's very difficult for me on site, and each time, I have good people online who are able to help me solve the problem. Usually, the problems are not very technically difficult, but sometimes they are, and the support team is still there to help us resolve them. The majority of the problems are linked to licensing, so when the license has expired or the number is not correct, they are proactive and change things live, which is very good.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which HCI solutions are best for your needs.
869,832 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Stack HCI?
This solution costs €10 per core per month. The whole stack is free if you are renting Windows Server Datacenter.
What needs improvement with Azure Stack HCI?
An area that could be possibly improved with Azure Stack HCI is the stretched cluster functionality, which was included in version 23H2 for disaster recovery purposes. However, this functionality h...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?
Before choosing DataCore SANsymphony, I did not evaluate other options.
What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?
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).
What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?
DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and separate sites to ensure business continuity and disaster recovery. I do not have...
 

Also Known As

No data available
DataCore Virtual SAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Stack HCI vs. DataCore SANsymphony and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,832 professionals have used our research since 2012.