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Reviews (1-5 of 5)
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March 06, 2020
Currently, we use hyper-converged SANsymphony in our corporate location for the whole organization. The business problem it addresses is redundancy for business continuation and for easily carving up data space needs. We do not use a san as our data needs do not require it; however, should we get to that point it will be very easy to incorporate it.
- Speed is remarkable.
- Easy to allocate data space needs.
- Very easy to administrate.
- Customer assistance is fantastic.
- 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.
April 11, 2019
We are using DataCore to increase I/O, to more flexibly utilize storage and to provide a robust offsite replication solution for the whole organization.
- It has really helped with I/O.
- Manages our storage more simply.
- Gives us a way to do replication easily.
- The only area I see lacking with DataCore is their support. It's not very good at all, and it's frankly, very frustrating and has almost caused me to swear off the product. With that said, the product itself (especially when working) is developed and runs very well and because of that, I will keep using it.
Want to choose your hardware purchases on value and not be locked in by a single provider? Go with SANsymphony. Chose your hardware vendor and if you don't like them, move on; it's that flexible. The big vendors want you to just purchase the solution they offer. Storage changes quickly. You have the flexibility to purchase SSDs from one vendor and spinning disks from another, thanks to SANsymphony.
- 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.
- The performance metrics could use some help. I can see what my storage usage and latency is.
DataCore is one of the best Virtual SANs I tried. The ability to create a tier from almost anything helps with leveraging [our] investment. You can have a very fast tier like SSD, go thru 15k SAS, 10k SAS, 7k SATA, 5K SATA, ... DataCore will make sure your blocks are on the right disks.
This is an easy way to use direct-attached storage into a very powerful SAN. Running on Windows, you don't have to learn much to be able to configure and use it.
iSCSI attached to not only the virtual hosts, but also FileServer and backups. Sometimes, I attach iSCSI disk directly inside a VM that needs more storage or IOPS.
DataCore is so easy!
This is an easy way to use direct-attached storage into a very powerful SAN. Running on Windows, you don't have to learn much to be able to configure and use it.
iSCSI attached to not only the virtual hosts, but also FileServer and backups. Sometimes, I attach iSCSI disk directly inside a VM that needs more storage or IOPS.
DataCore is so easy!
- Tier of anything!
- Low cost hardware
- Powerful UI
- Run on well known platform
- Need a lot of RAM/SSD when using tier/dedup.
- Not much RAID options...
- Expansive
April 06, 2019
I have assisted various organizations to implement this product as well am currently using DataCore's SANsympnony product in my home lab and place of employment. We have 20 DataCore storage server across the enterprise, at 9 different locations with over 2 PBs of storage.
This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage. So we can throw in our own enterprise-class hardware (including SSDs) and not pay any extra based on the type of storage we use. This is the same model used with server virtualization. Keep the hardware separate from software. This is true "storage virtualization" at its finest. The software over the years has matured to be very robust and allows you to build a very high performing storage platform. It has all the features of any high-end SAN such as fiber channel, iSCSI, thin provisioning, storage tiering, snapshots, continuous data protection/recovery synchronous and asynchronous mirroring, performance reporting/graphing, true HA design.
This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage. So we can throw in our own enterprise-class hardware (including SSDs) and not pay any extra based on the type of storage we use. This is the same model used with server virtualization. Keep the hardware separate from software. This is true "storage virtualization" at its finest. The software over the years has matured to be very robust and allows you to build a very high performing storage platform. It has all the features of any high-end SAN such as fiber channel, iSCSI, thin provisioning, storage tiering, snapshots, continuous data protection/recovery synchronous and asynchronous mirroring, performance reporting/graphing, true HA design.
- No more vendor lock-in, overpriced drives or forklift upgrades. With DataCore SANsymphony, you can utilize just about any storage you wish with this product such as another SAN, NAS, JBOD, FusionIO, etc. If Windows can see it as a non-removable drive, you can use it with SANsymphony. Also, you can use this to mirror any of these various types of storage which is awesome for migration. Say you have an HP SAN and you want to migrate off it to your own JBOD type storage or you have 2 sites with 2 different storage SANs that you want to replicate data between. With DataCore, it is possible to mix and match just about any storage platform you want to use.
- As software-defined storage, the system is designed to run on top of Windows Server OS (which can be virtual or physical) and can utilize the server's RAM to provide disk cache. This makes our 7.2K HDDs class storage run really fast and allows us to use a bottom tier class of drive and get the performance of a much higher class of drive. Also if we have to add capacity or replace drives we can just order replacement drives off the web saving us quite a bit of money. Of course, we still use "enterprise-class" drives but we don't pay through the nose to buy hardware. If we want to upgrade the Ethernet ports from 1Gb to 10Gb we just do it. Same goes for FC. If we want to upgrade from 4Gb FC to 16Gb, we don't have to do a forklift upgrade. We just buy the HBAs and we're off the to races.
- The other great thing is DataCore keeps their product on VMware's approve HCL. So even if you have a SAN (backend storage) that falls off the HCL with VMware, because it's virtualized storage behind DataCore, your covered. If you put the storage behind DataCore you won't have to worry about VMware's HCL any longer. Because of this fundamental practice, DataCore was one of the first storage vendors to support vVOLs.
- The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge savings in space and costs.
- DataCore Support is OUTSTANDING and they release new updates and features frequently (sometimes almost too frequently)
- There's very little that I can find in their software that I would say needs to be improved. Sometimes the updates are too frequent and just as we finish updating all our sites another update comes out. Due to the many, many various options for what hardware to use, sometimes it is difficult trying to figure out what hardware options are the best for the money. DataCore can help a bit with this but because they only are the software side of the solution they tend to not prefer one hardware vendor over another (they get along with everyone). They do have good documentation that covers known issues with various hardware items.
- While they support de-dup, it is recommended that you not de-dup the storage used for operating systems, or high change rated type data. The requires some planning to ensure the storage that is targeted for de-dup only have data that end users would be using (such as MS Office files etc.). Also, their de-dup console is not yet integrated inside their main SANsymphony console. They are working on it but it's not there yet.
- While their console allows you to connect to each of the nodes without closing the interface you have to log out and in when you switch between a different storage server groups. It would be nice if they had an interface more like vCenter to where you see all server group in a list and can just click on each group. It would be nice to be able to see multiple groups at the same time. So having more of an Enterprise approach (v/s a local storage cluster) view would provide better management of the environment. For example, their current reports can only run for each storage server group. There is currently not a way to run the same reports or look at performance across the enterprise (only the local site).
- Having an enterprise "Storage Dashboard" that could show capacity, usage, performance and any issues would also be very beneficial. Currently, DataCore does not have this.
SANsymphony Scorecard Summary
What is SANsymphony?
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 read and write latency.
Categories: Hyper-Converged Infrastructure, Software Defined Storage
SANsymphony Technical Details
| Operating Systems: | Unspecified |
|---|---|
| Mobile Application: | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is SANsymphony?
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 read and write latency.
What are SANsymphony's top competitors?
Who uses SANsymphony?
The most common users of SANsymphony are Small Businesses from the Information Technology & Services industry.