DataCore SANsymphony vs Dell PowerPath comparison

DataCore and Dell Technologies are both solutions in the Storage Software category. DataCore is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.4, while Dell Technologies is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.0. DataCore holds a 23.9% mindshare in SS, compared to Dell Technologies’s 15.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Dell Technologies users who would recommend it.

DataCore SANsymphony

Read 58 DataCore SANsymphony reviews

3,905 Views
312 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Dell PowerPath

Read 8 Dell PowerPath reviews

509 Views
310 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

DataCore SANsymphony

Dell PowerPath

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 29, 2025

Dell PowerPath and DataCore SANsymphony compete in the storage management and virtualization category. DataCore SANsymphony appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive data efficiency features and broader range of capabilities.

Features: Dell PowerPath offers robust path management, load balancing, and failover capabilities to optimize data flow and reliability. DataCore SANsymphony provides auto-tiering, encryption, and integration flexibility for a comprehensive data virtualization approach.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerPath could benefit from enhanced integration with non-EMC storage and broader virtualization features. Additionally, improved user interface designs would aid accessibility. DataCore SANsymphony might improve by streamlining the setup process, offering more intuitive management tools, and enhancing documentation for ease of understanding.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Dell PowerPath is known for straightforward deployment with supportive guidance, making it appealing for rapid executions. DataCore SANsymphony requires more initial setup but offers flexible configurations and strategic customer support adaptable to diverse environments.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerPath typically offers a competitive setup cost, delivering reliable ROI through its path management performance. DataCore SANsymphony, while incurring a higher initial cost, justifies the expense with extensive features and long-term operational savings for a higher total ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell PowerPath Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell PowerPath

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

DataCore SANsymphony

Ranking in Storage Software

2nd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (7th), Storage Performance (3rd)

Dell PowerPath

Ranking in Storage Software

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 23.9%, down from 30.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerPath is 15.4%, up from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Storage Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony	23.9%
Dell PowerPath	15.4%
Other	60.7%

Storage Software

Featured Reviews

SigfridCecillon

Owner at Arsium

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.

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Derrick Brockel

Senior Manager of Operations at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

A resilient and reliable solution that has many load-balancing technologies and provides high availability

People who want to buy the solution must create a scorecard of Dell PowerPath against other products. They must run database tests. They must consider factors like pricing, performance, ease of use, visibility, and reliability. They must also run tests to understand which product recovers faster. Overall, I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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)."

"It is a very stable solution."

"This flexibility and scalability have helped our organization in practice because it is important for us as it decouples the storage management software from the physical hardware, creating a software layer of intelligence."

"It allows data to be available from two DataCore servers."

"I'd have to say that the biggest improvement gained by using SANsymphony has to be the performance of the product."

"The most useful feature of SANsymphony is that it's able to manage any brand of block storage."

"DataCore has helped provide flexible, highly available, high-performance storage that otherwise would have been outside our price range."

"The synchronous mirror allows us to operate a fully redundant storage solution that is distributed across two sites."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"It provides a high availability and will increase the performance of any server or operating system."

"The product is very reliable."

"We have found the solution to be quite flexible and very scalable."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that disaster recovery scenarios are very good and easy to use in Dell PowerPath since it is available in a simplified form."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is migration without disruptions."

"OS-aware multipathing is a valuable feature of the product."

"The user interface is good."

"The solution has improved our performance, reliability, and redundancy."

Cons

"We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API."

"The cost is becoming prohibitive since they moved to a subscription model."

"I still see room for improvement with DataCore SANsymphony in the area of alarm and task management."

"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."

"My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that in many cases it is expensive, but we can find a solution every time to have a discount for selling it."

"The graphical interface is not always very stable."

"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."

"It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"The solution is quite stable, although they have not quite worked out all of the kinks."

"While I utilize it for data migration, I would love to do that data migration in a GUI from an ease of use perspective."

"Although PowerPath is very mature and has been on the market for more than 15 years there are still a lot of bugs that have been profiled with PowerPath, specifically, during any OS upgrade."

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The product must adapt to other storage technologies like HPE 3PAR."

"The technical support is good but they are not available all the time."

"The solution should provide extensive reports on backups and backup failures."

"Customers do not choose PowerPath unless they have Unix or Linux."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have licensing costs on a yearly basis. They charge per terabyte, so in terms of cost, it can be very costly. They have three different features, and you have to pay extra for those."

"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

"Make sure you are made aware of the annual subscription cost when purchasing."

"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"I rate the product's price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is affordable, and ten is really expensive. Dell PowerPath is an expensive tool."

"Pricing is good. I don't have any issues with the pricing of this solution."

"The product is a little bit expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"There are no additional costs associated with the product."

"The price of the solution is fair."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Government

Transportation Company

17%

Retailer

13%

Healthcare Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	21

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

Before choosing DataCore SANsymphony, I did not evaluate other options.

See all answers

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).

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Comparisons

StarWind Virtual SAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 9% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 6% of the time

NetApp ONTAP vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 6% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 5% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

NetApp ONTAP vs Dell PowerPath

Compared 38% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs Dell PowerPath

Compared 34% of the time

StorONE Storage-as-a-Service vs Dell PowerPath

Compared 14% of the time

More Dell PowerPath Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

January 2026

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerPath

January 2026

Download Dell PowerPath product report

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN

PowerPath

Overview

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

DataCore

EMC PowerPath: Host-based software for automated data path management, failover and recovery, and optimized load balancing. PowerPath automates, standardizes, and optimizes data paths in physical and virtual environments as well as cloud deployments to deliver high availability and performance.

AUTOMATE FAILOVER/RECOVERY

PowerPath automates data path failover and recovery to ensure applications are always available and remain operational.

OPTIMIZE LOAD BALANCING

Adjust I/O paths constantly to leverage all available data paths and to monitor and rebalance the dynamic environment for the best application performance.

STANDARDIZE PATH MANAGEMENT

Simplify and standardize data path management across heterogeneous physical and virtual environments as well as cloud deployments.

Dell Technologies

Sample Customers

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.

Healthcare Residential Service Company

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell PowerPath

December 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. Dell PowerPath

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