DataCore SANsymphony Reviews

We have been using DataCore SANsymphony for many years to protect data-availability and keeping productive. It helps us to improve reliability for our complete IT solutions.

In the time of using DataCore SANsympohny Hyper-converged-Infrastructure, we had no storage-related downtime in our environment. The server and storage functionality works, and maintenance is easier to handle depending on the redundancy.

DataCore is an administrator's and users' friend.

Performance boost (MegaCash, Parallel I/O technology) and Continuous data protection (CDP) are the features we love most because security and being productive are big points for us.

DataCore is helping us focus on our core business and keep it running, which is important for our customer success.

Supporting of Automated-Storage-Tiering (AST) is a good feature that saves money.

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

Supporting newer Windows Server versions faster (e.g. Microsoft Windows Server 2019) would be nice.

This solution is very robust and reliable.

It has good scalability. We can scale up in 1TB steps.

We have found that technical support has good skill levels and availability.

We did not have another SDS solution before this one.

This initial setup of this solution wasn´t complex. The necessary functional test plan of the implementation company was time-consuming, but it guaranteed the correct implementation.

We implemented this solution using our solution provider with vendor support in the background, and it worked well for us.

Overall, we are happy with innovations, but in the future, we will also look into more improvements.

With DataCore we manage the central storage for VMware virtualisation and Oracle databases. At the first location are two mirrored DataCore servers. At a second site, we use a DataCore server as an asynchronous replication target.

It is easy to manage the storage and simple to enlarge our virtualisation environment. 
DataCore SANsymphony has improved performance, stability and data security of our datacenter.

• The most useful features are the continuity of service, mirroring and auto-tiering, and the associated performance. 
• We enjoy great reliability, flexibility, and performance. 
• DataCore helps to use memory efficiently.

• The client console should be improved. It starts slowly and heavily. 
• After a long time (idle), the displayed information is no longer completely reliable. You have to close and reopen the console for current data. (symptom after upgrade to PSP8)

Very stable, no failures, no interruptions.

High scalability.

quick support enabled  ;-)

No, we did not.

The initial setup was straightforward, no special hardware, good documentation.

Implementation with a DCIE (DataCore certified implementation engineer).

Not calculated.

For installation and upgrades, work with a good IT partner with a DCIE.

EMC, NetApp.

DataCore is our main Enterprise SAN solution. We serve all workloads among five different DataCore server groups. These workloads include all hypervisors, SQL and Oracle Databases, file shares, archive, and backups. DataCore helps us achieve disaster recovery by allowing us to mirror our data between two sites.

DataCore has been doing software-defined storage since back before SDS was even a buzzword. It has provided a great deal of flexibility, performance, and efficiency for our Enterprise SAN. We are not tied to any one hardware vendor and over the nineteen years that we've had DataCore, we have gone through various models of IBM servers to Dell servers as well as various storage arrays from IBM, Dot Hill, XIO, Kaminario, and Dell (all with some of the same data from year one).

DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable. DataCore's auto-tiering feature also allows us to use our SSD arrays efficiently.

DataCore needs a more efficient and better way to keep track of metrics and counters so that we can do baseline analysis to measure performance. Datacore has some functionality where you can send performance metrics to a SQL database however it has not always worked well for us. We actually had to turn it off because we were actually collecting too much data, but in my opinion we sometimes want this data. Ideally if there was a way to see metrics for current and specific points in time it would be great for troubleshooting and any type of trend analysis.

I used to say the problem with DataCore was that it ran on Windows. However, with 2012 R2 and now Windows 2016, things have become much more stable. In general, stability has improved over the years. Most of the problems we've had in the past were due to Windows blue screen errors stemming from our HBA cards.

Scalability has worked well so far. We are up to managing about 2PB of data across five different DataCore Groups.

Technical Support is responsive. They could be a little faster when there is a critical emergency, but for the most part, technical support is good.

We have always had DataCore as our Enterprise SAN.

We've always had DataCore come in with Professional Services to do the initial setup.

In regards to Fibre Channel, buy a server that can handle the highest number of Quad Port HBA cards. Purchase as much memory for the server as you can afford. Anything you spec out, you will need to double if you want redundancy.

We did not evaluate other solutions prior to selecting this one.

DataCore is the primary storage solution for all of our VMware hosts, installed on a Dell EMC RX740 server with a combination of spinning and NVMe storage. We have just moved to a 2-host, hyperconverged solution utilizing DataCore. All of our servers and services are running off the 2-node DataCore solution.

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

The most valuable feature is auto-tiering, which allows for storage pools containing different speed storage systems and the data automatically moved to the most appropriate pool.

The cost is becoming prohibitive since they moved to a subscription model.  'Education' pricing is such in name only (we are a school).

When we originally purchased Datacore (in 2014) it was on a perpetual basis and provided exceptional value for money. We have renewed our DataCore solution this year, in 2019, and have found that DataCore has moved to a subscription model. Not only was the initial licensing far higher than previously, partly due to additional storage requirements but also because we can no longer acquire a 'limited' license and we also find we now have a large subscription to pay each year.

DataCore has been incredibly stable in the last six years that we've been using it, with zero downtime due to a failure in the DataCore component.

DataCore gives me the impression that it is hugely scalable. We currently use it on a tiny scale of two nodes, but this would be expandable to many many more.

DataCore support has always been top-notch whenever we've called on their services, although this has admittedly been rarely due to the stability of the product.

Previously we had local storage on separate physical servers. DataCore seemed the ideal solution for our vSAN when moving to a virtualized environment in VMware.

The initial setup of a conventional vSAN is straightforward.

Our recent setup of a two-node hyperconverged solution was a little more complicated, though this was mainly due to the Dell servers we had ordered as hosts, rather than DataCore itself. The DataCore consultants setting up the solution were very knowledgable and it was completed without too much trouble.

Our solution was implemented through a DataCore specialist, external contractor, who helped configure the whole solution.

When we initially purchased DataCore, it was extremely cost-effective with a perpetual license. They have since moved to a subscription model, which may prove too expensive for us in the future.

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

DataCore appeared to be the most suitable, best-value solution at the time and as such, we did not evaluate other alternatives.

Our primary use case is for a high-availability and redundant storage system with fast read and writes times with low latency.

DataCore SANsymphony has improved our organization by using much less hardware for storage. The power consumption and heat have decreased, so we were able to shut down one air conditioner. Also, it is a faster storage system.

The features I have found most valuable are the active-active, or so-called grid technology, and the integration into our VMware vCenter. Our vCenter is now much easier to manage.

An easier way to open a service call, right through the DataCore GUI, would be an improvement, especially when there is an urgent issue.

Although we have just started to use DataCore, we are very happy with the stability of this solution.

The scalability of this solution is very good.

So far, we have not had to contact customer support.

We used the IBM SAN Volume Controller and switched to DataCore. In our case, it was possible to use less hardware and get more performance.

The initial setup was not complex. The migration was fast and we experienced no problems.

We implemented this solution through a partner company.

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

We have some experience with IBM storage solutions.

I recommend taking a look at DataCore because it is a simple-to-use product that saved us from spending more money on additional hardware and support.

We use SANsymphony for all of our business-critical data. We run a dual host, VMware 6.7 host environment with a 25Gb/s network fabric connecting to mirrored SANsymphony nodes. We have two business systems running in this environment. One is running Red Hat Linux and Progress DB, whereas the other is running Windows and Microsoft SQL server.

I'd have to say that the biggest improvement gained by using SANsymphony has to be the performance of the product. When we migrated from our physical SQL server hardware storage to SANsymphony's software-defined storage, with its clever caching mechanism, we saw a huge increase in performance. This decreases the amount of time it takes to make a sale and keeps both our staff and customers happy.

SANsymphony is a very versatile product and its vendor's agnostic nature allows us to pick and choose our hardware platform. Its redundancy allows us to perform maintenance 'on the fly' and protects our data from all manners of failure.

As a policy, we tend not to over-commit our storage (a feature I'm sure others find really handy). There is no way of quickly matching the exact size of a vDisk to a disk pool.

I can't think of any other features that SANsymphony needs - it is a very comprehensive storage solution.

The project was to replace an old SAN (from Dell EMC) with a new system that is more resilient and offers high availability.

We replaced a SAN (Dell EMC) product with two servers and the SANsymphony software. The solution is more scalable and very easy to administrate.

We have gained in scalability. The most valuable feature for us is that we can adjust the size of the storage very easily, without stopping production. The product is easy to administrate.

Even though it is easy to administrate, the initial installation and configuration can be complicated.

The alert system could have more features.

We feel that this solution is very scalable.

I use DataCore SANsymphony for the redundancy with two nodes. It's a good solution with a good price for a small infrastructure like us.

It has improved performance, security, RTO, RPO, and timeout. It has improved my organization with the prevention of a breakdown.

Redundancy and improved performance in terms of storage with auto-tiering are the most valuable features. 

It needs just two nodes for the operating system and licensing.

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.

The stability is good for the moment.

I feel that the scalability of this solution is very good.

This is our first solution in the world of the hyperconvergence.

Our ROI is from good security.

Storage costs are better with DataCore SANsymphony.

The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore.

I compared it with vSAN.

Good support, very reactive.