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DataCore SANsymphony vs ScaleIO [EOL] comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
231
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
DataCore SANsymphony
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (8th), Storage Performance (1st)
ScaleIO [EOL]
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO 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.
SK
Manager at Securetech
Meets our customers' needs but they should move towards high-level scaling
I the product already has scalability features, but in terms of size maybe they could do more to work with parent storage and move to high-level scaling. That area, I feel, is a place where there could be some more options in this solution. It would be a way to improve the scalability in another direction, maybe options to scale out rather than just up. So far we have done very few installations. So maybe in the coming days, weeks and months, we would be able to come up with some additional features that are needed, but right now the product has the competitive features that our clients need.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has improved my organization in the way that now we have lower latency, we get fewer complaints from customers, and we see a constant response time."
"The best features of Pure Storage FlashArray are its ease of use and user-friendly interface, and the performance allows all types of services to be visualized from a single point of interface, making it more robust and user-friendly."
"The first year, we started out with one or five terabytes and it took what was 20 terabytes of storage down to less than one terabyte."
"The performance levels and the storage have improved my organization because we're a 95% virtualized environment and we're able to allocate resources as needed and manage our whole infrastructure that way."
"I find two features of Pure Storage most valuable. The first is the "safe mode" function, and the second is its simplicity."
"The most valuable feature is the speed of it, as it is much faster than anything that we can get from similar competitors, and the solution helps to simplify storage."
"The most valuable feature of Pure Storage FlashArray is the complete set of functions it provides."
"I would definitely suggest this solution to a colleague because of the ease of use."
"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."
"An advantage of SANsymphony is its ease of use, especially when installing or upgrading the system."
"It's a software storage solution that can scale as we like. There is also has a parallel feature that enhances the performance of the storage solution. We can separate storage and computing, and we can scale these two parts of the platform to meet business needs efficiently."
"It is a stable solution."
"Stability, the price, and ergonomics are the features I find most valuable in 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)."
"DataCore has been doing software-defined storage since back before SDS was even a buzzword, and it has provided a great deal of flexibility, performance, and efficiency for our Enterprise SAN."
"Technical support is amazing; it is very fast and always has a solution in no time."
"The ScaleIO UI: EMC has been working with storage for a long time; therefore, they know how to clearly present any important data, including data flow and each drive's IOPS/bandwidth, and allow the user to easily monitor bottlenecks and problems, especially the rebuild and rebalance status of child objects."
"Automatic rebalancing is the feature saving administration time, and also auto rebuilding."
"We are using it as the primary virtualization storage (both for internal corporate users and external customers) for VMware and Hyper-V virtualization platforms."
"Comparing other products that are competing with Dell EMC (Enhanced Memory Controller), Dell seems to us to always come out on the high-side."
 

Cons

"The latest release contains bugs that shouldn't be in a production environment. Two incidents impacted our client, including hardware-related bugs. They need to be more cautious in testing before they release."
"I think replication is one area that still needs improvement."
"On a couple of occasions, the waiting time for an upgrade has been pretty substantial."
"It falls far short of protocol support."
"I feel like there is too much automation; the user doesn't have any manual input."
"The higher education moves slowly. We are still looking forward to implementing the full list of existing features."
"The overall scalability for this product could be improved as well as having a single console to management multiple arrays."
"The solution could improve by having a multi-tenant feature."
"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."
"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."
"The alert system could have more features."
"The current view in the GUI is too simple and we cannot see clearly cold data or hot data."
"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."
"I still see room for improvement with DataCore SANsymphony in the area of alarm and task management."
"The heavy client mode console should be improved by having a web console to improve accessibility."
"Pricing can be confounding with many options"
"Ecosystem around the product: There is no built-in system for viewing history data, such as volume IOPS. We have to provide graphing by Prometheus and Grafana, which would be a good new feature in ScaleIO."
"If they could introduce a write cache feature, the product would be perfect overall."
"There is room for improvement in the area of horizontal scaling."
"It would be nice to set minimum IOPS per volume, besides just the maximum, to be able to satisfy this demand from customers out-of-the-box, not by calculating number of disks, etc."
"I think ScaleIO already has some features for scalability as it is part of the reason for the product, but in terms of size, maybe they should try to address parent storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price is about the only thing that's wrong with it. A little bit better pricing would be great."
"The pricing of Pure Storage FlashArray is reasonable."
"Pure is typically more expensive than everyone else. You get what you pay for, but I have lost deals to similar solutions because of pricing. They include everything, and that's another positive about Pure Storage. They aren't trying to nickel and dime their customers for different features. It is all included in one price. The license is by capacity, and the price depends on the capacity and the discount we're getting from the vendor. You get the SKU of the physical appliance, support, and maintenance, and that's it. You're licensed for whatever feature they offer. It is all rolled up into the price of the appliance."
"The pricing is very attractive and it delivers performance for the money."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"The Evergreen Storage subscription is great, because then I get new controllers every three years."
"While more expensive than NetApp, Pure Storage FlashArray offers superior performance that often justifies the higher cost and adds value overall."
"The cost has room for improvement."
"The solution is cost effective."
"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."
"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
"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."
"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."
"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."
"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."
"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Construction Company
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business71
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise159
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise22
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I find the pricing of Everpure FlashArray to be quite high compared to other storage solutions; however, the reliabil...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
I believe we have covered the most important features; the architecture of Pure Storage is essential, and features su...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?
I am saying that the pricing is reasonable. It's not that expensive, and the product is also pretty stable. It's a go...
What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?
It's difficult to know how DataCore SANsymphony can be improved. I think DataCore SANsymphony could be deployed on Li...
What is your primary use case for DataCore SANsymphony?
I usually recommend DataCore SANsymphony for companies in the domain of research, energy, governmental, and education.
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
DataCore Virtual SAN
EMC ScaleIO
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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.
Check Point Software Technologies, Blue Central, Deltares, Sentinel Technologies, The Binding Site Group, Swisscom, Itrica
Find out what your peers are saying about StarWind, Nutanix, Red Hat and others in Software Defined Storage (SDS). Updated: July 2026.
906,852 professionals have used our research since 2012.