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DataCore Swarm vs NetApp StorageGRID comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 4, 2024

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
232
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (2nd)
DataCore Swarm
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (16th)
NetApp StorageGRID
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
File and Object Storage (12th)
 

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.
N Bravi - PeerSpot reviewer
Sales Manager at MSDSYSTEMS S.R.L.
Has simplified data protection across two locations and reduced time spent on recovery efforts
The best features DataCore Swarm offers are its scalability and the ability to truly solve many problems related to data loss and recovery. It is important because if we want to add a new code, it sets itself up from scratch, and if we want to add, for example, a 72 terabytes or petabytes node, we just drop it in, which is very easy. DataCore Swarm has positively impacted my organization through the support for my dedicated salespersons.
Michael Lopez - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Systems Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Has reduced storage costs and improved snapshot management for large data workloads
The advanced features of NetApp StorageGRID which our upper management wouldn't agree to use, include the S3 feature. We are heavy into AWS, and my thoughts were to develop a small dev environment or even a POC environment on-prem. That's still up in the air as we continue on. Currently, AI has taken over everything with a focus on AI. The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present a challenge. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node would not upgrade. The positive aspect is that it didn't take down the entire environment. The environment remained functional on two different versions. The scalability of NetApp StorageGRID has been proven as we've expanded twice. We started with six or seven nodes and have grown to 15 nodes. It does take time for synchronization to complete. From what I've seen, it took a couple of months for it all to sync up once adding nodes. However, it was transparent. It captured the addition and performed effectively, all happening in the background, steadily and surely.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their technical support is excellent. It's the best out of any of the vendors we work with."
"The most valuable feature is its upgradeability."
"It is an easy to use product for all of my team members."
"We saw a vast improvement when we switched over to using the Pure Storage model over the XtremIO."
"Pure Storage FlashArray has helped us decrease the storage footprint in a significant way; the dedupe and compression that they have is really good, and we're getting about four to ten in the deduplication and compression."
"For an organization, it can take storage from 40 terabytes down to five terabytes."
"I have never experienced an outage with the product or had any support that was below excellent."
"When users don't call wanting to kill me, that's ROI."
"I find its flexibility valuable."
"With DataCore Swarm, we have transitioned from tape-based backups, which were long, to Swarm, making the process more rapid and efficient."
"The first feature is compatibility with the S3 protocol. DataCore SWARM allows you to quickly have an on-premise, robust and scalable environment that is natively compatible with the S3 protocol. The functionalities used are therefore derived from the S3 protocol, notably versioning and therefore the possibility of configuring immutability in governance or compliance mode. The object metada can be enriched with the addition of tags to subsequently enable filtering and searching. Configuring and using DataCore SWARM is simple and flexible. It is very easy to create domains, tenants and buckets for different use cases with various authentications. The cluster architecture also allows replication between different clusters at different configured levels (Cluster / Domains / ...) A web interface for browsing the content of existing buckets allows simple and rapid manipulation of certain objects such as sharing via a link or cropping a video. Finally, the physical architecture of the solution is based on an x86 server and its scale-up or scale-out evolution is very simple by adding disks or servers."
"I find its flexibility valuable, it's also user-friendly, and I'm happy with the dashboards and the customization."
"The best features DataCore Swarm offers are its scalability and the ability to truly solve many problems related to data loss and recovery."
"DataCore Swarm is highly available."
"The ability for the solution to use any new hardware quickly and without administration is a great thing in the context of hosting."
"StorageGRID is designed for cloud-based, highly scalable storage. Think big names like service providers like Google who need massive storage volumes with scalability. It also offers cloud-enabled storage capabilities with cloud management functionality. So, if you prioritize scalability and cloud integration, StorageGRID is the way to go. Its object-based storage is built specifically for that purpose."
"The technical support team is reliable and responsive."
"It helps automate our storage infrastructure and improve our operational efficiency."
"Overall, this is a good product and I recommend it."
"The ability to get to the StorageGRID from anywhere on my network. The solution is remote. You don't have to be at a physical location."
"The most valuable feature is tiering."
"It has improved our operational efficiency through time consumption and logistics by 40 to 50 percent, and everything that had to do with our legacy tape solution has been improved and is now more efficient."
"The speed of the disks removed the bottleneck from our storage."
 

Cons

"Once, before Pure went public, we were a member of their customer advisory board and beta tested replication. One requested enhancement yet to manifest is the scheduling of snapshot replications."
"The cost of the storage needs improvement."
"The price of Pure Storage FlashArray could be better."
"A year ago they promised that they would be able to read through the database encryption with more metric and they have not delivered on that patch, which is significant because it gives us back so much more storage room. We want to be able to read through the encryption."
"Having something native in the Pure Storage ecosystem would make it integrated and in one single company, and we wouldn't have to work with multiple organizations."
"Everything has been good, but we faced one issue last year while migrating volumes from one Pure Storage to another. The snapshots were not visible in the Veeam backup portal."
"The technical support is okay, but could be improved."
"We ran into some issues with the program at first and we had to work around those issues to fix our problems."
"The main issue currently is the hard installation process."
"The solution needs simpler architecture."
"The product currently requires a significant number of servers to start. There are also network prerequisites to be met in order to guarantee good security of the architecture, which means that the product is only available to large customers. Besides, the license starts at 100TB. An Appliance version is being developed with an architecture based on containers which will make it possible to offer DataCore SWARM to everyone. The product has been evolving since the acquisition by DataCore, but maintaining and updating the product is not always easy and needs to be improved. For now, we only use DataCore SWARM for a few use cases and therefore a small part of the existing functionalities. With use we will perhaps have more criticism of the product but not for the moment!"
"The pricing can definitely be better."
"The only real issue that we have run into is, when we are cloning, we cannot do a thin provision clone, it has to be a full clone."
"The user interface of NetApp StorageGRID might need some tweaks, and configuration is maybe a little bit confusing for those who are not so experienced."
"We want to move towards Azure in the cloud. Right now, the system is all physical."
"It has its quirks here and there, but it is an older NetApp system."
"They can enhance the deduplication and compression features, which are crucial for saving more disk space. It's not at the same level as the NetApp filer or the real NetApp cluster that runs itself on its architecture, as StorageGRID is a software solution that emulates a RAID level."
"The processes around installation and upgrade need improvement."
"We had issues in a few areas because we couldn't do it from GUI."
"The price is something that NetApp could improve, as with most companies. NetApp is known for not being the cheapest storage option, which is also valid for StorageGRID. There are other storage options on the market which we are aware of and have done proofs of concept for, but you cannot really compare the list prices because, as a big user of NetApp storages, we have totally different prices than some list prices. Still, the price information we got for other options are almost always less expensive than StorageGRID."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is reasonable."
"No storage device is cheap, but Pure Storage is fairly priced and offers what you pay for. You get all the licenses in the future when you purchase a license."
"I have had a couple of customers who have complained about the cost. It can be a little more expensive than some of the other platforms. After it has been installed, I have never had a customer say, "I wish we wouldn't have spent all that extra money." They have always been happy with the product after it has been installed. They might be on the fence about it because of the price, but everybody who I have ever seen install it, they are always happy with it."
"Pure Storage is expensive. It comes with features, so you get what you pay for. It is expensive compared to our old storage systems, but from the amount of human effort that you have to pay to babysit a storage system, it reduces that. I don't know if the TCO is reduced, but it's not a concern for us."
"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"It is light years beyond anything else with the same price point."
"We implemented Pure Storage FlashArray nine years ago when it was new to the market and obtained it at a preferential price."
"In terms of other contemporary arrays, Pure is something you need to have a use case for, as it's not priced for you to buy one off-the-shelf. If you have a use case, heavy lift Oracle Databases, any type of noticeable virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), or need low latency and high throughput, you should consider all-flash at least and probably Pure Storage."
"You pay for what you use. For example, if you use one terabyte, you just pay for that one terabyte. But the pricing could always be better"
"The first installation brick is expensive but the upgrades are extremely simple and granular by adding disks or nodes."
"With respect to pricing, it is okay. This product is mid-range."
"Our licensing is in INR it was around 25 lakhs, which is roughly two million."
"The price is attractive."
"The pricing is quite flexible and depends on the specific customer requirements. The initial cost is primarily based on the desired capacity, so it's not a fixed price."
"We pay for a license annually."
"While we have been able to save money on storage costs, it could be better."
"NetApp is not known for being the cheapest storage option on the market. Almost all of the other storage options we looked at were less expensive than StorageGRID. The price is one thing to criticize, which is what we hear internally and from customers as well. They find the cost of the terabytes in this class of storage a little bit higher than expected."
"Creating your own data stores, backups, or storage grids, helps eliminate all these costs of downloading all the data back after you downloaded to the cloud."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business73
Midsize Enterprise38
Large Enterprise161
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
 

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?
When comparing cost, I find that the cost is either the same or slightly higher, but that is returned by the ease of ...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
The only thing I think could be improved is price. The price is the main concern for our customers.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore Swarm?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that in many cases, it was expensive, but my salesperson ga...
What needs improvement with DataCore Swarm?
I believe DataCore Swarm cannot be improved in any way because for me, it is perfect.
What is your primary use case for DataCore Swarm?
My main use case for DataCore Swarm is in a big company in Italy that has two problems: it has very big data to manag...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp StorageGRID?
As an administrator, I was not involved in the pricing of NetApp StorageGRID. From what I understood, it was cheaper ...
What needs improvement with NetApp StorageGRID?
The upgrades of NetApp StorageGRID present challenges. It's a rolling upgrade, node by node. At one point, one node w...
What is your primary use case for NetApp StorageGRID?
It started back when we first got NetApp StorageGRID at Cox Automotive, approximately seven years ago. We first got i...
 

Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
Caringo Swarm
Storage GRID
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
iQ Media, NEP, Texas Tech University, Telefónica, City of Austin, Massive Media, Data Deposit Box, Premier Physician Services, Truliant Federal Credit Union
ASE, DARZ GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore Swarm vs. NetApp StorageGRID and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.