# DataCore SANsymphony Reviews **Vendor:** DataCore Software **Category:** [Block Storage Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/block-storage) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 32 ## About DataCore SANsymphony DataCore™ SANsymphony™ software-defined storage (SDS) provides organizations the flexibility, performance, and simplicity they need to efficiently aggregate isolated disparate storage resources into one highly available storage services pool. DataCore SANsymphony enables any mix of hyperconverged, converged (SAN), and storage virtualization deployment models to mitigate the business risks, IT complexities, and costs associated with different architectures, data migration initiatives, and protocols while increasing your organizations’ agility and competitive edge. DataCore’s hardware agnostic approach frees organizations from vendor lock-in and provides ultimate flexibility in how they manage, build, and modernize their storage infrastructures. ## DataCore SANsymphony Reviews ### 1. DataCore SANsymphony: powerful and flexible, but demanding to deploy and scale **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 29, 2026 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** What I appreciate most about DataCore SANsymphony is its ability to completely abstract hardware storage to offer a very flexible software layer independent of storage arrays. From a critical point of view, several points stand out: Highly developed storage virtualization: you can aggregate different types of arrays (heterogeneous) and manage them as a single pool. It's powerful, but it also adds an additional layer to master. Effective high availability: active/active synchronous mirroring is a real strength. However, it requires a solid network infrastructure (latency, bandwidth), otherwise performance may suffer. Performance optimization: server-side caching clearly improves IOPS, but it heavily depends on the available RAM — so be careful with sizing. Independence from hardware: it avoids vendor lock-in, which is a strategic advantage, but can complicate support in case of multi-vendor incidents. Functional richness: snapshots, replication, auto-tiering... it's comprehensive, but sometimes at the cost of a rather steep learning curve and an interface that may seem less intuitive than some modern solutions. In summary: 👉 A very powerful and flexible solution, ideal for complex or heterogeneous environments, but it requires rigor, expertise, and good design to fully benefit from it. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** What I like less about DataCore SANsymphony, with a critical view: Implementation and operation complexity: the solution is very functionally rich, but this results in a significant learning curve. Without good mastery, one can quickly make suboptimal architectural choices. Dependence on proper sizing: performance heavily relies on server resources (RAM for cache, CPU, network). Poor sizing can significantly degrade performance, making the project quite sensitive from the design phase. Interface and ergonomics could be improved: compared to some more recent solutions, the interface may seem less intuitive, especially for advanced operations. Troubleshooting can be complex: in case of a problem, the abstraction layer adds an additional level of analysis. Identifying whether the issue originates from the hardware, the network, or the DataCore layer can take time. Overall cost: even though independence from hardware is gained, the cost of licenses and underlying infrastructure can become significant depending on needs. In summary: 👉 A very powerful solution, but it requires expertise, rigor, and anticipation. Without these, its complexity can become a hindrance rather than an advantage. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Centralization and simplification: a unified vision of storage instead of multiple manufacturer interfaces.\nFlexibility of evolution: I can add or replace hardware without significantly impacting production.\nImprovement of resilience: less dependence on a specific array, better service continuity.\nLong-term cost optimization: possibility of using standard hardware rather than full manufacturer. ### 2. Secure and speed up your storage with Datacore **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maxence V. | Technicien SIC, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 22, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Datacore Sansymphony allow fast access to your storage and you can aggregate all your old storage bay. It can replicate your data between server on other rooms or sites. Failover, replication and failback are easy to use and completly transparent for users in production. Integration with vsphere is very easy and replicated connections are well managed. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The console is not user friendly, I prefer web based administration in html5. An update comme with the last version. It's better but not very user friendly for me. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Check before what you realy need to put in fast storage and what can go in cold storage in your organisation. Datacore is a good solution but for application that needs fast access, for achive datacore is expensive. After installing datacore, let him work and take a coffee. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our database application were slow with big querys, now, user can easily work on BI applications. After all, datacore is not very expensive, support contracts with other storage providers are expensive too. For the storage bay, you can use what you want, a Lenovo disk is not expensive like a netapp one. VMs backups are improved too ( but a better integration with Veeam will be fine ). ### 3. 100% available over the last 10 years **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Legal Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 23, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Because of the builtin mirror function our DataCore Storage Cluster has an 100% availability quote over the last ten years. You can update, migrate, power off one server and the other one goes seemlesly active. Also the user friendly admin interface helps new IT stuff to handle the software when they are new in the company. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** DataCore takes its time to release support for current OS e.g. Windows Server 2019. I also think that the ressource portal could be a little more structured. You have to search a lot to find the right support ressources - but you find them. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Define your requirements and reflect your experience with other SDS products over the last few years. You also need a good service provider who helps you with implementation and support. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have a very small inhouse IT-Team and our systems have to be 100% available. DataCore helps us to reach this. Another plus is the price when you compare it to competitors e.g. Dell EMC. DataCore often release best practice guides that help you to configure the software and the systems that host it. You don't have to be an deep dive technican to get the most out of the software. ### 4. It simple works. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** scott L. | Network Admin, Retail, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 20, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** This is my first datacore environment that has now been running for about 7 months and we have had no problems thus far. It has been extremely easy to manage to the point that I rarely do anything with it. It just works. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** To date, I have found nothing that I dislike about it. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** It was the least expensive route for us after having had VMware on a previous Intel blade type server. This route enabled us to have 2 servers that gave us redundancy at an affordable price **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** By going with DataCore, I now have redundancy at an affordable price and it's easy to maintain. I have also found my networks speeds are excellent for our uses. ### 5. Nearly ten years satisfied with DataCore SANsymphony V **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike F. | Administrator, Systems Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The most useful features are the continuity of service, mirroring and auto-tiering, redundant storage and the associated performance. We enjoy great reliability, flexibility and performance. DataCore helps to use memory efficiently. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Actually, I have found nothing that I dislike about it. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** 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. At the main location working two mirrored DataCore servers and we use an asynchronous replication target at a different geolocation. ### 6. The Parallel I/O Function Is Very Useful When The **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** julien f. | IT manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 20, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Installation of this hyper-converged infrastructure in our school this summer with two servers directly attached. It works perfectly!! The parallel I/O function is very useful when there are many requests for read/write access to the disks. The administration is simple and easy. * It is possible to create a virtual disk very easily, and moving the virtual machines is fast. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The product update system is not very simple and the administration console is a little old **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** DataCore SANsymphony allows us to have a reliable, fast and easy administration infrastructure. We have a reliable and secure infrastructure thanks to SANsymphony, and all at less cost. It is possible to create a virtual disk very easily, and moving the virtual machines is fast. ### 7. Brilliant SAN Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Cal L. | Systems Analyst, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 19, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** SANSymphony provides 100% uptime from it's mirrored disks and redundant paths.This means that maintenance can be performed at any time on disk subsystems without interruption to business systems. This coupled with it's vendor agnostic hardware support, speed from it's data caching and easy to administer interface make it an excellent product for data storage. Datacore support is very good, they have a very quick response times and good diagnostics are built right into the software to analyse any issues that may occur. I've found a lot of support is also offered outside the scope of SANSymphony, for instance host configuration tips and they showed me a brilliant reference in their knowledge base for fibre optic grades recently - not something I'd expect a software vendor to offer! **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Having to calculate virtual disk sizes when provisioning disks to prevent over subscription of disk pools can be a little tricky, but I believe this is more an issue with disk geometry than SANSymphony itself. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** I'd recommend SANSymphony primarily on the basis of it being vendor agnostic. In the past I have worked for a company that invested in Netapp for a particular purose. When the need has come to expand and all of the drive bays have become occupied we were stuck in a situation where we needed to buy another shelf and disks - this was costly and lost effiency. With SANSymphonys versatile approach this isn't an issue, virtually any hardware can be used and it's auto tiering mechanisms can be used to optimise the location of 'hot' data. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work at all levels of computing abstraction, and although I can get into the bowels of some of our heavier apps and tune processes, procedures and SQL statements. There are some apps however that cannot be tuned due to their closed source nature. SANSymphony alleviates inefficiencies in poorly written software by providing a lightening fast storage system. ### 8. Software Defined Storage - easy as pie **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Fernando V. | LAN Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 27, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The software is easy to install, easy to manage and is stable. The company has been using this product for almost two decades now and have very few issues. Our downtime is almost zero for volumes served to our customers. The application is windows based and functions really well, very stable. I don't have to think about redundancy, having two systems built to mirror each other takes care of that. If one side is down, customers stay connected on the secondary active side. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The software is windows based. It would be nice if linux was supported. Not a negative, but stability has improved with the current windows versions. Console may feel dated. Maybe design a snap-in style console/manager where I can organize the most commonly used. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Try it, you won't go back when you see how flexible the product is. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** When we look for hardware, we are not locked in to any particular solution. We have the flexibility to mix and match hardware platforms, like flash, spinning disks. We can choose vendors based on what's most beneficial to the company instead of what they are promoting as the next greatest thing. Because we don't rely on the hardware our active active services come from the software and not the hardware. This keeps our solution flexible. ### 9. Resilient and manageable storage system **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 19, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Datacore storage is extremely reliable and easy to configue and maintain. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The user interface can become buggy on major revision changes. They do resolve on next update. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** DataCore provides a platform agnostic resilient and stable SAN solution. ### 10. Implementaton of a mirrored Storage for virtual Servers (VMware) **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Stefan L. | CIO, general manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** With datacore we have a redundant storage, so we have a higher availability of our virtual servers. It is a very stable and product with good performance. Since installation, the system runs stable without any problems until now. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** One time we had lost the communication between the hardware servers and after that we needed the datacore support to bring the mirror back online. The support was good and fast, but I wish there would be a better functionality to bring back the system online without support. But as the failure was not datacores fault (was a hardware issue) and apart from this we never needed their support it is not a bis problem **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** - implemation with a good Datcore partner **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** We gain a higher availability and flexibility for our server systems and as a lot of our employees can't work without the servers the system hopefully saves us time and money. ### 11. A real Business Continuity Plan which save my information system **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Frédéric D. | Administrateur Systèmes, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 12, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** the BCP and the teering to improve the performance. The facility to use the interface. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** In this product, if you have a problem the support help you to resolve it. Well i dislike nothing. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** The best practice it's to have 2 datacore's server in 2 rooms for the best protection. A real PCA. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** it's solve the fault tolerance on my environment. The Business Continuity Plan is solving the hotline for the week end. We are not a good technicien each week end. Well every body can do this hotline just to verify it's allright on the interface. ### 12. Safe and efficient **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 16, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The sansynfony solution combines performance and security. It is easy to manage and allows for excellent data security. It is used daily in my infrastructure for the replicated storage of our server virtualization and VDI data. It has greatly facilitated the management of tiering and replication. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The solution requires a good knowledge of installation and configuration. Even though the interface remains clear, it requires a bit of learning in its use. However, the visualization of key elements is done without problems. In case of a crash, we did not have any issues with resynchronization. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** The use of sansynfony has greatly simplified the management of tiering and synchronization of mirrored storage spaces. Moreover, disaster recovery has always gone smoothly, and we have never had issues like we did with other SAN-type solutions. ### 13. Datacore is an incredible good solution **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kevin B. | Review Datacore experience less 1 year ago, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 11, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** My company change our it infrastructure and we make the choice to go with Datacore SANsymphony. It's a very good experience and the support are very reactive and serious. The availibility is improve by this solution and end user like performance improve too. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Nothing for the moment It's a recent installation for our company. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Availibility with the vSAN. ### 14. First Experince with DataCore SANsymphony **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Mechanical or Industrial Engineering | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 17, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** I like that DataCore SANsymphony increased the performance of our DataCenter and has an easy to understand license model. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** At the moment i have nothing to dislike at DataCore SANsymphony, i haven't had any trouble with DataCore so far. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Take a look at DataCore. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Trough DataCore we were able to get a high performance and redundant storage solution for our business and saved money, because we needed less hardware to achive this, and saved money, too ### 15. Awesome! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** I love this program because of the great speed and how much memory it holds, great addition to any company to hold tons of important data and documents important to keep a business growing and updated! I would love to see another version of this because it has been so helpful to me and others I would love to see it grow into a must need program for business needs, I think its helpful and will help my company grow and succeed to its financial expectations, I think that if you want to commit to one program this would be it. You wont be disappointed with its speed and data memory of the program, I would give this a try and recommend to all business need! **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** I love everything about this program! I would recommend it to everyone even small company's will find it helpful to be able to keep updated information! I cant think of anything else, that would make this program better so, I would say this is one program that I cant think of anything that I dislike about it but, there's always way to improve and make a program better so, I would just add to make an updated version because it would make companies jobs easier with this awesome data core and it may fix just general issues if you are a bigger company that would need to save more and detailed information that would not fit on this program but, other than that it fits my company and clients needs where it will keep me from having issues with not enough data being able to fit in an organized way to access it easier so, I don't know what I would do without this awesome program! **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** I recommend others to use it on a trial basis and see how great this program is then buy if It fits companies expectations. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** The benefits being solved with Data Core would be when you have issues with keeping documents and important information saved in one program this will solve that problem and keep everything in a detailed and easy to use program. ### 16. PRA and HA avaibility storage **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** romain s. | IT Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 18, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** simplicity oh emplenting solution in our datacenter **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** licencing is more difficult to endurstand and not easy to deploy **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** PRA, 1h to RTO ### 17. DataCore offers robust solution für Data Availablity **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Construction | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 24, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** We are using DataCore SANsymphony Software since many years. We haven‘t had any storage downtime. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** In the past the Licensing was very complex with many optional addons. Since a few years it‘s all included in capacity based licenses. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Flexible scalable Protection for our data with Leading Performance. ### 18. High-performing, cost effective vSAN **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 09, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Easy to configure and manage software-defined storage solution. Platform agnostic and versatile, so we can install on commodity hardware. Initial cost for a hyperconverged system is much lower than other competing systems. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Although extremely cost-effective when initially purchased 5 years ago on a perpetual license, DataCore have since moved to a subscription model which may be a little too much for us to sustain over time. We may need to look for an alternative in 3 years, when our pre-paid subscription expires. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Find out what your annual renewal is likely to be before committing. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** High-performing, highly available software-defined storage. ### 19. A great product that will benefit any organization **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Legal Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 15, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The ease with which I can create and manage storage for my entire network from one easy to use interface. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The only area I see lacking with DataCore is there support. Its not very good at all and is, frankly, very frustrating and has almost caused me to swear off the product. Although the product itself (especially when working) is developed and runs so well I keep using it. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using DataCore to increase I/O, to more flexibly utilize storage and to provide a robust offsite replication solution. ### 20. Secure and Fast **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 27, 2019 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The simple way to create S2D Storage Systems **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** There is nothing I don't like. All the best. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** High Available Storage Infrastructure Systems and S2D Systems ### 21. SANsymphony in a nutshell **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jay M. | IT Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 30, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The software is very intuitive and smart. All features are logical and can be customized at will. It is very suitable to our solution as an active/active configuration. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The only downfall of software is the inability to support the users when the platform it is on is the issue. I was once let down by the datacore support team when they turn down my request to be assisted on a install that yielded an HBA issue. The fix was eventually discovered by myself as to logically install the software in a particular order. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** There is no other choice... **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have a storage that did not have the front end to use as an API or serve with. Datacore can be use to with multiple storage mixed with multiple brand. ### 22. DataCore SanSymphony Review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Brent E. | IT Data Center Systems Specialist, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 01, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Storage protection, geographic features, caching, use whatever storage equipment you can find **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** We've had issues with Microsoft's iSCSI interface, buffer iSCSI resets, some issues with the software crashing-which primarily have been resolved. We had a ticket that was a year + opened. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Have familiarity with Microsoft iSCSI. Have backdoors implemented in-case of a complete DataCore failure. Keep updated on patches. Have good cabling, switching & routing infrastructure in place and this should ensure a good environment. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Geographic Distant Data Centers, storage redundancy ### 23. Hyper Converged is the future. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Corey N. | IT Manager, Public Safety, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 30, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Our environment never goes down. This system is so redundant that I can take hosts offline and the end users are unaware of any changes at all. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Upgrades can be tricky, you have to manage the systems using a another client outside of VCenter. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Try a demo, look at the features, you will not be disappointed. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were having serious performance issues. We not only have zero latency issues, but we are fully redundant to our backup site. ### 24. DataCore provided high performance storage for over 300 developer virtual machines in our datacenter **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Defense & Space | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 05, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Software-defined storage is the future. By decoupling the hardware from the storage software, we were able to choose the best hardware at the lowest price while ensuring enterprise-grade storage was provided to our end users. The in-memory mirroring from DataCore allows for incredible performance with all-SATA mixed SSD/HDD drive configurations where other products simply do not perform. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Understanding the reasons behind a windows-only solution, which ensures maximum compatibility with a variety of hardware, a linux-based solution would have been nice as it aligns with a lot of our existing automation tools such as Ansible (most of our roles/plays are already written for Linux). The limitations behind an HA-paring (mirroring) of nodes could also be better suited by a distributed mesh topology, similar to SolidFire and ScaleIO, to allow for better recovery from a degraded state and scalable performance. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Work closely with your DataCore rep to make sure performance requirements are understood to properly identify drive types/sizes within each tier. Make sure to fully understand some of the limitations of tiering vs all-Flash solutions, regardless of what any vendor says. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** The ability to right-size a storage cluster based on current need and grow as required lowers the total cost of ownership to our business. With a traditional SAN we are often required to purchase upfront all storage, plus special-purpose controllers, in order to satisfy the performance needs of our users. By growing as required we save money and get the performance we need when we need it. ### 25. Satisfied DataCore SAN Symphony customer **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael L. | Quality Coordinator/Technical Services, Semiconductors, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 05, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Ease of use and intuitive interface. Very solid and stable environment. Relatively trouble free and low maintenance. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** One has to be smarter than me to configure some of the networking. That's not a real high bar........ **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Don't hesitate to use support. Everyone we've worked with so far has been very professional, thorough and knowledgeable about the product. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** We like the ability to manage our virtual environment seamlessly.We also like the rock solid and relatively trouble free environment. ### 26. Solid solution if you want to save money on storage yet have a fully featured SAN **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Damon D. | Manager, Systems Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 28, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** This solution allows the use 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 it's finest. The software over the years has matured to be a 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 fibre channel, iSCSI, thin provisioning, storage tiering, snapshots, continuous data protection/recovery synchronous and asynchronous mirroring, performance reporting/graphing, true HA design. You can utilise 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. The system is designed to run on top of Windows Server OS (which can be virtual or physical) and can utilise the server's RAM to provide disk cache. This makes our 7.2K 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. Alos 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 that falls off the HCL with VMware. 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. Support is OUTSTANDING and they release new updates and features frequently (sometimes almost too frequently). **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** There's very little that I can find in their software that I would say I dislike. 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. Currently, SANsymphony does HA with just 2 sets of mirrored drives/RAID sets over FC or iSCSI. It would be interesting to see if in the future they can stripe the data across 3 or more nodes to create an n+1 type configuration. 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. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Obtain DCIE certification before installation, provide ample time for hardware testing/storage burn-in. Follow all DataCore's procedures for testing and certification the installation. If possible, use Fibre Channel. iSCSI is OK but more complex and not as fast due to the overhead of TCP headers. If it's a small site with only a couple of ESX hosts and 2 DataCore storage servers running in HA use direct connect Fibre Channel (FC switches are not needed for smaller configurations as long as you have enough ports. With quad-port HBAs that's easy to do). Pick a storage server with lots of PCIe slots, decent CPUs and as much RAM as you can afford to help with disk caching. Use a dedicated UPS on each of the storage servers to protect disk caching. Don't bother with non-mirrored drives. At this cost, HA is the only way to go in my book. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Flexibility, performance and cost savings are the three biggest benefits for us. For sure, we would not have been able to afforded to virtualize all our locations without this product. ### 27. Great product **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Apparel & Fashion | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 01, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The administration of this product has reduced the IT man hours for our team. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Trouble shooting can be somewhat challenging. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reduced 15 physical servers to vm's. ### 28. Data Core Symphony **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Medical Practice | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 30, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** The peace of mind that our ever growing data is protected. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The system has been very seamless for us. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have an exponentially expanding dataset which needs to be safe, secure and accessible to multiple locations at the same speed up and down the coast of California. Datacore has provided us the foundation we need for this endeavor. ### 29. Probably the best rated software we use in our company **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Public Policy | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 03, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** DataCore SANsymphony gives us independency from storage vendors. It allows our operations continue working transparently in case of multiple hardware failures. Support response is fast. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The only thing we dislike is price. Also we want new features that are not available at the moment. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** Discounts when buying can be different depending on your vendor. Ask for certified professionals for the initial installation and migration. Ask for evaluation test installation onsite. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business continuity, high availability and disaster recovery ### 30. The best solution of Application Adaptive Data Management platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 02, 2017 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Performance, stability, scalability and flexibility **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Really nothing.............................. **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** SANsymphony is a really adaptive solution and address any business storage need. ### 31. This is a good SAN alternative **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tommy B. | IT Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 11, 2016 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** You take your cheap server, add cheap hard drive, and create a low-level SAN. A lot of enterprise feature **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** The tiering work like crap. You need a lot of SSD disk to use the tiering. You can have a lot of tier level, but the first level of SSD needs to handle the full mapping. If you don't have any SSD, don't use tiering! I tried using 15k, 10k and 7.2k drives, and it was SO SLOW! faster to have only 7.2k drives. It is very expansive, better to go with a real SAN for better value and performance. **Recommendations to others considering DataCore SANsymphony:** If you need cheap storage, it MAY be an option, but if you want advanced feature, with PERFORMANCE, it's not cheap. One of the key feature is creating a lot of tier. If you can afford TB of SSD, you can than create tier with 15k, 10k, 7.2k, NAS, Cloud, etc. Meaning that your unused files will move to the archive without having anything to do... very NICE! **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** We want a lot of non-expansive disk spaces. SANsymphony is supposed to make it possible. ### 32. Affordable, powerful, flexible. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 08, 2016 **What do you like best about DataCore SANsymphony?** Flexibility of using own hardware, resulting lower TCO. Very powerful for price point. Ease of use. **What do you dislike about DataCore SANsymphony?** Support requires interaction with multiple vendors (can't be helped!) **What problems is DataCore SANsymphony solving and how is that benefiting you?** High performance, multi-site, DR. ## DataCore SANsymphony Discussions - [What is DataCore Software-Defined Storage used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-datacore-software-defined-storage-used-for) - [View DataCore SANsymphony pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/datacore-sansymphony/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-23+01%3A00%3A04+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=c64db0e1-ae1c-4a2b-87ba-134c60abe58d&secure%5Btoken%5D=49559c028e56b38a161c9e7d3af04d3ecd4e2f7bafd521782dec9f9e50b5f573&format=llm_user) ## Top DataCore SANsymphony Alternatives - [DigitalOcean](https://www.g2.com/products/digitalocean/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (736 reviews) - [Akamai Cloud Computing](https://www.g2.com/products/akamai-cloud-computing/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (387 reviews) - [Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-elastic-block-store-ebs/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (77 reviews)