Dell PowerFlex vs. SANsymphony

Definitely would recommend this unit or this family of units into most peoples organizations. Especially if you're starting fresh with a whole dedicated SAN and dont have to move a ton of data over to these (though that is possible, it is very messy). If you're moving from existing storage, then you will have to be prepared for some sore spots!

Incentivized

Now that you have virtualized your server's CPU and memory resources, you should look to do the same for your storage. Separation of hardware and software has many added benefits not only for CPUs and memory but for storage as well. Without this solution, we would not have been able to afford black-box type SANs at every location. This allowed us to virtualize over 90% of the server environment saving costs and power consumption/cooling and provides all the features costly black-box SANs, including true-HA (which most SAN vendors don't have). Migration from variant SAN storage and using mixed back-end storage solutions is as easier than ever before because the storage being virtualized.

Incentivized

• Gets all your (SAN) ducks in a row, and makes it easy with a single pane of glass
• The usual good dell support if you're paying for the right support level
• It can get expensive with options added but base price is pretty competitive

Incentivized

• Fast pools should go to your most used data, and not static files.
• Redundancy is a must for all aspects of our IT jobs. Who wants to explain when there's no data?
• Works on Windows server 2012/2016 much better. Solid stability.

• Costs are high, especially when having to replace multiple old SAN's with the one type
• There is alot of down time when you have to push updates out to the units
• Not sure we still have the full hang of all the functions as there's some pretty deep functions that are not explained well

Incentivized

• Our needs are very small when compared to what this product can do. We don't use all of what it is capable of doing. Honestly, I have no cons.

Incentivized

I'm currently in the process of renewing my support.

Incentivized

In the 3 years I have been running this, I have contacted support around 4 or 5 times and that was for minor questions with exception of one time when I was performing an update on the system. And in that one time, they were very timely in assisting me with correcting the problem. Top notch customer support!

Incentivized

DataCore is far easier to manage as well as deal with when it comes to hardware (as DataCore works with any hardware). It also seems way more affordable.

Incentivized

• Money saved in having a bunch of other competing storage units
• All kinds of time saved for our admins that have to deal with storage
• The units look good and give you that futurey data center vibe!

Incentivized

• More uptime - Typical SANs have redundant controllers, redundant power supply's and can make the drives redundant by leveraging RAID-0, 5, 6, and 10. The claim to be HA but they are not. That is because if I spay water all over them or catch the SAN on fire, the storage will go down. With DataCore's solution we have identical systems (maybe even at different datacenters connected with long-haul-fiber) including duplicate storage. So one side of the solution can totally be taken offline by water, fire, etc. and the other side will remain up providing true-HA storage. Because of this, we can upgrade the SANs during the day and still keep storage services running (zero-downtime).
• Lower Costs - Ability to use 3rd party hardware which lowers the costs, not only for the initial investment but as storage capacity grows.
• All the features one can want - High Availability, Thin Provisioning, Asynchronous and Synchronous mirroring/replication, snap-shotting, continues data protection, deduplication, storage reporting, trending with graphs, centralized console for easier management and many more.

Incentivized