SANsymphony vs. VMware vSAN

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
SANsymphony
Score 9.1 out of 10
N/A
DataCore SANsymphony software-defined storage aims to deliver flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency in a HCI platform. Powered by a block-level storage virtualization technology, SANsymphony is designed to provide flexibility to control how data is stored, protected, and accessed. The vendor states users can ensure business continuity with just 2 nodes, easily scaling out to 64 nodes, and achieve productivity for performance-demanding workloads by improving I/O processing and reducing…N/A
VMware vSAN
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
VMware vSAN is an enterprise-class storage virtualization software that provides a simple path to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) and multi cloud. VMware vSAN is no longer sold as a standalone product and is now available as a part of VMware Cloud Foundation.N/A
Pricing
SANsymphonyVMware vSAN
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SANsymphonyVMware vSAN
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
SANsymphonyVMware vSAN
Considered Both Products
SANsymphony
Chose SANsymphony
SANsymphony only requires two nodes to get started
VMware vSAN

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
SANsymphonyVMware vSAN
Small Businesses
StarWind Virtual SAN
StarWind Virtual SAN
Score 9.2 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
StarWind Virtual SAN
StarWind Virtual SAN
Score 9.2 out of 10
StarWind HCA
StarWind HCA
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Storage Scale
IBM Storage Scale
Score 7.8 out of 10
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
SANsymphonyVMware vSAN
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(7 ratings)
8.9
(17 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.5
(5 ratings)
User Testimonials
SANsymphonyVMware vSAN
Likelihood to Recommend
DataCore Software
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.
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VMware by Broadcom
The product is a must for enterprise & SMB segments as this gives a good value for money and the licensing policy is very well defined and cost effective for the feature set it provides. This is very well suited for organization which have multiple brand storage systems and would like to consolidate them all together, thus providing a huge storage capacity for the organizations data growth. The product becomes less appropriate in organization where they have single storage platform as the service provider would have the ability to consilidate all the storage systems. Hence this products may be under utilized.
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Pros
DataCore Software
  • 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.
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VMware by Broadcom
  • VMware runs VSAN certification programs to make sure the OEM sells validated nodes. It helps customers to select appropriate certified ready nodes like Lenovo ThinkAgile VX which comes factory configured and easy to set up.
  • Hyperconverged solutions reduce real estate space and networking costs when compare with shared storage. The host overhead also less.
  • Supports All-Flash (SATA and NVMe SSDs) and Hybrid vSAN with HDD and SSD. So customers can choose cost-effective solutions appropriate to their workloads.
  • Supports different storage policies, RAID and duplication, and compression features and it makes a complete storage solution.
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Cons
DataCore Software
  • 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.
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VMware by Broadcom
  • We were a fairly early adopter of VMware vSAN and as such experienced several growing pains.
  • We experienced a few bugs that took a few software versions upgrades to go mostly away.
  • The biggest issue we had overall was with host drivers. Even with vSAN ready node compatible hosts, you have to be very careful that the drivers for NIC and RAID controllers are right.
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Likelihood to Renew
DataCore Software
I'm currently in the process of renewing my support.
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VMware by Broadcom
No answers on this topic
Usability
DataCore Software
No answers on this topic
VMware by Broadcom
Deploying and configuring VSAN is a relatively simple process for people that are already used to working in virtual environments, primarily for those that are familiar with vSphere. The compatibility of those two products is amazing. You shouldn't really encounter any issues and if you do, you surely did something wrong.
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Support Rating
DataCore Software
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!
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VMware by Broadcom
Support is (as always forVMware) top notch and easy to work with. The majority of computer companies are outsourcing their tech staff, and it seems they do as well. But their guys know the product well and are quick to respond to your ticket (if the severity is right!).
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Alternatives Considered
DataCore Software
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.
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VMware by Broadcom
Our VMware solution is built in-house for the organization's private application, we don't want to put our data on cloud premises. Also, vSAN is a cost-effective solution for our environment. We have done the POC with both products to understand the Flexibility, Management, and cost. After the successful POC, we have chosen the VMware vSAN.
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Return on Investment
DataCore Software
  • 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.
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VMware by Broadcom
  • we have realized savings in the licensing compared to traditional storage (over $500,000 over the last 5 years)
  • we have realized ROI through efficiencies in our staff of approx $1MM (over the last 5 years)
  • also, positive impact on the time to value/speed of implementation allowed us to realize business objectives (Over $1MM of ROI)
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ScreenShots