DataCore SANsymphony vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct comparison

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

DataCore SANsymphony

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

5th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Storage Software (2nd), HCI (7th), Storage Performance (1st)

Microsoft Storage Spaces Di...

Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)

8th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 7.6%, up from 5.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct is 8.2%, up from 7.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Defined Storage (SDS)

Featured Reviews

TempreviewerD

Architecte Principal at Orange

Robust with good replication and access protection

The solution is constantly evolving. Recently, deduplication and compression have been further improved to meet customer needs, and updates are easily implemented without stopping production. The update assistant checks the state of health before using good practices, during checks that the data is still presented for service continuity, and afterward, if the actions carried out are indeed active. Technical support is truly available even without a production incident. This is really essential right now.

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Lawrence Tse

Founder, Professional Services Director, Lead Architect at Falcon Consulting

A great solution for fostering the natural expansion of the traditional hybrid culture

Most of the VMware customers I have been engaging with say they have experienced engagement problems. VMware is trying to sell off the VMware enterprise cost and the whole solution is being sold down to a customer, whereas, usually they would try to intentionally avoid talking about the related Windows license. It's not very eye-catching but it's still sizable and we have implemented several Storage Spaces Direct projects for our customers. Currently, we're working hard to replace some of the special storage and hopefully even replace the harder converged storage, etc. Documentation management could be improved. The reason why this product is not being widely accepted by the public is that it doesn't include intuitive streamline, which makes it far from complete. Storage Spaces Direct is powerful and the performance is amazing, but if you need to deliver a high price-performance ratio and visible performance, you need to have expertise in tuning. Many people will not be able to enjoy this opportunity because it's not included in the training. In this case, you need to have a system integrator. A Complete management UI using a web-based interface would be a beneficial feature. They should also use a direct API — currently, they are only using partial API. Often, our customers need to work with other web-based solutions, so they require full API. I am writing my own API for this reason, and our customers are ok with that, but full API would be a very helpful feature that would lead to much more customer satisfaction. Microsoft should provide support for other channels. Microsoft OS supports other channels, but when they become the S2D storage solution, it's very easy to customize the quality. Technically, you can switch channels and replace your storage, but you will need to store away all of the fiber channel equipment, the hardware, and the cables, which can be very expensive.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Our system is designed to be scalable and flexible, so it can grow and adapt to meet the changing needs of our clients."

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

"It allows data to be available from two DataCore servers."

"CDP is an important feature for avoiding data loss in the event of ransomware attacks. You need more storage capacity, however, you get the possibility to return at any time and use the data saved up to that point. The recovery is much faster than with a classic restore."

"It is a very stable solution."

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

"The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated."

"For us, fault tolerance is the most important feature of DataCore."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"It's mainly about the storage expansion, like in hyper-converged solutions."

"The flash ability, in terms of tiering and caching, is amazing"

"The most valuable feature is that there is no single point of failure."

"Its technical support is excellent."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The performance, reliability, and affordability has been most valuable."

"The most valuable feature are the caching capabilities using the storage class memory."

Cons

"We'd like to manage the raid on the disk directly in SanSymphony."

"The graphical interface is not always very stable."

"Problem detection could be easier. It should help customers identify problems very quickly because it's not easy to analyze on the platform today."

"It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes."

"Right now, the version used is run on Microsoft Windows Server. Having a Linux version or even an appliance would be better as it would eliminate the use of additional licensing for another piece of hardware."

"Management could be improved. The management console sometimes reacts very slowly."

"For customers or technicians that don't speak and understand English, it could be great to have other languages support, all the more so given the number of countries in which SanSymphony is used."

"I would like to see SMPA (Shared Multi-Port Array) technology developed with the aim of allowing a configuration identical to other storage arrays."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"It is scalable, but only beyond two nodes. If I go for two nodes it's not scalable. I need to build a complete cluster from the beginning if I'm going for two nodes."

"The management tool within this solution could be improved. We would also like to be able to access services like Azure when using this solution."

"It is difficult to get a hardware compatibility certification for the solution."

"The integration is not difficult because there is no GUI, but we need to use a PowerShell command. This makes it difficult to monitor and to see the components' statuses."

"I think the online documentation needs a lot of work and so do the sizing tools."

"Documentation management could be improved"

"More optimization could be done in terms of mirroring."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In my case, the licensing per terabytes is very high and it must be licensed for each extra functionality."

"This product has a good ratio between quality and price. In many cases, it's less expensive to work with DataCore than other storage systems."

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"The solution is cost effective."

"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."

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

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

"It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"Cost-wise the product is one of the more affordable within the category of products."

"With the data center licensing and everything that is connected to that, this solution is relatively costly."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

22%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?

I rate the pricing of this solution as an eight. It is relatively expensive, and the additional costs for hardware and storage can make it a significant investment for customers.

What do you like most about DataCore SANsymphony?

The dashboard is very intuitive, and there are a lot of counters to diagnose what happens during a short period (like when a backup is in progress).

What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

One area where the solution could improve is its software platform. Many customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the software running on Microsoft Windows. Although an attempt was made to dev...

How does VMware vSAN compare with Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

We found VMware’s vSAN was easy to set up, configure, and manage compared to other solutions we considered. It is best suited for small- to medium-sized organizations. It is easy to create load bal...

What do you like most about Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

Its technical support is excellent.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct?

The solution is expensive.

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

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NetApp ONTAP vs DataCore SANsymphony

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VMware vSAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 67% of the time

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 10% of the time

StarWind Virtual SAN vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Unified Storage (NUS) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 4% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Compared 3% of the time

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Product Reports

DataCore SANsymphony

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct

Download Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct product report

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN

MS Storage Spaces Direct

Learn More

DataCore

Microsoft

Overview

Experience peace of mind with DataCore SANsymphony, the ultimate software-defined storage solution alleviating storage management challenges. Say goodbye to the complexities of managing different storage tiers and disruptions with SANsymphony's block-level storage virtualization technology, empowering you to automate capacity provisioning and data placement across diverse storage environments including SAN, DAS, HCI, and JBOD. Break down silos, control data placement, meet business continuity objectives, boost performance, and seamlessly expand or refresh hardware with SANsymphony. Benefit from features like asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, minimizing data loss, accelerating application responsiveness, and integrating new technology non-disruptively. Trusted by industry leaders like NASA, Thorntons, Inc., and TUI Cruises, DataCore SANsymphony guarantees unparalleled flexibility, scalability, and reliability, ensuring uninterrupted data access and application availability while reducing storage costs and inefficiencies.

Storage Spaces Direct uses industry-standard servers with local-attached drives to create highly available, highly scalable software-defined storage at a fraction of the cost of traditional SAN or NAS arrays. Its converged or hyper-converged architecture radically simplifies procurement and deployment, while features like caching, storage tiers, and erasure coding, together with the latest hardware innovation like RDMA networking and NVMe drives, deliver unrivaled efficiency and performance.

Sample Customers

Volkswagen , Maimonides Medical Center, NASA, Thorntons, Inc., TUI, ISCO Industries, Pee Dee Electric Cooperative, United Financial Credit Union, Derby Supply Chain Solutions, Mission Community Hospital, Bellarmine College Preparatory, Colby-Sawyer College, Mount Sinai Health System, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, Quorn Foods, Bitburger, University of Birmingham, Stadtverwaltung Heidelberg, NetEnt to name a few.

Acuutech, Quest Technology Management, Bradley, Mead & Hunt

DataCore SANsymphony vs. Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct