DataCore SANsymphony vs NetApp ONTAP comparison

DataCore and NetApp are both solutions in the Storage Software category. DataCore is ranked #2 with an average rating of 9.4, while NetApp is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. DataCore holds a 30.9% mindshare in SS, compared to NetApp’s 42.4% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of DataCore users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of NetApp users who would recommend it.

DataCore SANsymphony

Read 56 DataCore SANsymphony reviews

300 Views
161 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

NetApp ONTAP

Read 80 NetApp ONTAP reviews

809 Views
238 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

DataCore SANsymphony

NetApp ONTAP

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between DataCore SANsymphony and NetApp ONTAP based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Storage Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp ONTAP Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp ONTAP

April 2025

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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 Storage Software

2nd

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (5th), HCI (7th), Storage Performance (2nd)

NetApp ONTAP

Ranking in Storage Software

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Storage Software category, the mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 30.9%, up from 26.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NetApp ONTAP is 42.4%, up from 42.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Storage Software

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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Christopher Cagayan

IT Server and Storage Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees

A solution that comes with several valuable features and excellent SAN storage

NetApp ONTAP is scalable. They have two types of scalability, "scale up" and "scale out." With "scale up," you can get up to petabytes of data if you have the money to buy those servers and add them to the system. And "scale out" also, you can buy additional controllers, up to 12 nodes, which is pretty good when you are a big company. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. NetApp is one of our organization's main storage systems. Every application is scattered on all of our NetApp devices. Applications won't run without it because they need to pull data from NetApp ONTAP.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"Storage is always available."

"SANsymphony is flexible, with many potential options for implementation. SANsymphony's can be used with VMware, Hyper-V, or even with a hypervisor agnostic approach. It can also be used for strictly physical non-virtualized solutions."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its versatility, with there being support for all new hardware technologies and platforms, disc mirroring and very effective auto tiering."

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

"It is a stable solution."

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

"It's a software storage solution that can scale as we like. There is also has a parallel feature that enhances the performance of the storage solution. We can separate storage and computing, and we can scale these two parts of the platform to meet business needs efficiently."

More DataCore SANsymphony pros

"The most valuable feature is the very high IOPS rating which you can achieve with it."

"It has multiple uses. It does everything in one box."

"We can do upgrades without taking it down. We have had nodes fail and people just kept working."

"ONTAP has really reduced our costs because we learned that we could use our storage with fewer machines and drive down data center costs."

"The ability to spin up copies of data in other data centers, on other storage appliances, is the most valuable for us."

"The most valuable features of NetApp ONTAP are its data redundancy, performance, storage catering, snapshot technology, and NetApp Insight."

"I did not face significant issues with reliability. It is a multi-edge deployment, so it is always operational."

"We bought it for a couple reasons. One, it took advantage of our existing storage because we could front-end that storage. It also allowed us, through native replication, to set up a DR site, which we're working towards. And three, that DR site, in 2020, is going to the cloud. NetApp has a nice solution for that. And our production in 2022 may actually go to the cloud. So all that is already in place, no additional tools. You can use the same SnapMirror and SnapVault technology to get there."

More NetApp ONTAP pros

Cons

"The graphical interface is not always very stable."

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

"Its interface could be better."

"In my opinion, there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs."

"One limitation of this solution is that it's Windows-based, e.g. one requirement to install DataCore SANsymphony SDS is putting it on a Windows server machine. It relies on Windows and that is a limitation because there are some customers who are looking for non Windows systems."

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

"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."

"There is no way of quickly matching the exact size of a vDisk to a disk pool."

More DataCore SANsymphony cons

"I would like to see more in the public cloud space around things like object storage. A bit more granularity around how that gets deployed would be nice, but other than that I think they've got it nailed."

"Especially with the all-flash arrays, we would like to see better storage efficiency and deduplication. In terms of manageability, it would be great if NetApp would add more native reporting tools into the dashboard so that we don't need to use the third-party tool for analyzing our environments or to generate any reports. This would be especially helpful for companies that need to generate some chargeback for the customers."

"With our current use case, we will need something faster. E.g., if you have a huge scale, having SSD-based backup is better."

"The vendor diagnostics, which allows for movement from one vendor to another vendor using the application technology that is available. It should be able to talk to any vendor, not just NetApp to NetApp. We should be able to replicate the data, so the next feature should not be vendor specific."

"Technical support is good but they can take some time on critical problems."

"If they could come up with some more automation, this would be helpful."

"There is a lot a lot of functional integration that we look forward to for improvements. I'm learning where they're going and I'm very interested to see those improvements and how they can help us."

"Technical support is hit or miss sometimes. Level 1 support is not very good. Level 2 and Level 3 (the escalation support) are very good. They are knowledgeable people, but sometimes you get some hiccup in the Level 1 support. After you pass Level 1, it is smooth sailing. There is a lot of room for improvement."

More NetApp ONTAP cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

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

"Pricing has improved but it is still expensive."

"The pricing and licensing are better with DataCore."

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

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

"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."

More DataCore SANsymphony pricing and cost advice

"Additional costs exist if you want a license for a feature like SnapMirror."

"It has been cost-efficient. Compared to our legacy Dell infrastructure, we have realized cost savings. It is good."

"If you start narrowing down NetApp versus price point, then comparing it to the feature set and take away all the bloat that other companies will try to add on, there is no other option. It comes down to just NetApp."

"ONTAP has helped our organization reduce its overall cost of storage (somewhere in the high millions)."

"ONTAP is expensive, but most storage systems are now-a-days and everything is included with the license - there are no additional fees."

"They could reduce the price."

"NetApp is streamlined, reducing costs."

"We have seen ROI as we can fit a lot more storage in one rack."

More NetApp ONTAP pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

20%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

21%

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

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?

The cost changed from a perpetual license to a subscription model, and it seems reasonable. I am technical personnel and not deeply involved in sales, but the pricing appears fine.

See all answers

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).

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What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?

In my opinion, there should be improvements in how to get and filter logs. However, this is not a frequent need because they have great support that offers quick and knowledgeable assistance. Other...

See all answers

How does Azure NetApp Files compare to NetApp ONTAP?

Azure NetApp Files is a Microsoft Azure file storage service built on NetApp technology. The platform combines the file capabilities of Azure and NetApp to move critical file-based applications to ...

See all answers

What do you like most about NetApp ONTAP?

We do not face any glitches or downtime.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NetApp ONTAP?

NetApp provided the features required within our cost limit.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat Ceph Storage vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 12% of the time

VMware vSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 12% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 10% of the time

StorMagic SvSAN vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 10% of the time

Pure Storage FlashArray vs DataCore SANsymphony

Compared 7% of the time

More DataCore SANsymphony Competitors

Dell PowerPath vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 24% of the time

Azure NetApp Files vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 17% of the time

Cloudian HyperStore vs NetApp ONTAP

Compared 12% of the time

More NetApp ONTAP Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony

April 2025

Download DataCore SANsymphony product report

Buyer's Guide

NetApp ONTAP

April 2025

Download NetApp ONTAP product report

Also Known As

DataCore Virtual SAN

No data available

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.

DataCore

NetApp is the data authority for hybrid cloud. We provide a full range of hybrid cloud data services that simplify management of applications and data across cloud and on-premises environments to accelerate digital transformation. Together with our partners, we empower global organizations to unleash the full potential of their data to expand customer touchpoints, foster greater innovation and optimize their operations.

NetApp

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.

1&1 IONOS, Acıbadem Healthcare Group, Adder Technologies, Aero Vodochody Aerospace

Buyer's Guide

DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp ONTAP

April 2025

Free Report: DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp ONTAP

Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. NetApp ONTAP and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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