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DataCore SANsymphony vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 2024

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

Everpure FlashArray
Sponsored
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
215
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (4th)
DataCore SANsymphony
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
59
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), Software Defined Storage (SDS) (4th), HCI (9th), Storage Performance (1st)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (23rd), HCI (27th)
 

Featured Reviews

Sowjanya MV - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Lead at Wipro Limited
Has improved performance for mission-critical workloads and enabled seamless non-disruptive upgrades
The availability is 99.99%, which is the main factor any customer would need because their data should be available whenever they want to access it. This is one main critical thing. It is very easy to upgrade since Pure Storage FlashArray handles it well. Everything is non-disruptive now; previously, there were forklift shifts, but now that is not the case. Pure Storage FlashArray says no to forklift upgrades. Usually hardware requires downtime, but Pure Storage FlashArray has improved their footprint so that they are not asking for downtime; everything is just a non-disruptive activity, which is why customers are more inclined towards Pure Storage FlashArray. Customers want more of the models in their environment due to the performance they are giving, and everything is in one Pure1 Array console where we can view all the models on one page or just an orchestration tool. You don't miss anything; you have replication, notifications about replication, and details about which host groups replication is happening in and if that replication is successful or failed. On a daily basis, our purpose is to create volumes for infrastructure; our daily activities include creating volumes and mapping them to the host, doing any migrations from a VM, clearing the data stores, and carving the volumes to those VMs. One key factor is the data compression with a ratio of 5:1, focusing on space efficiency, inline deduplication, and the compression Pure Storage FlashArray works on; that is a major factor we can suggest to any customer. Analytical capabilities are crucial. Daily, we check the throughput and consumption, and Pure Storage FlashArray provides predictions for one year regarding usage. This prediction helps plan updates well ahead. For support, we just raise a case, and they follow up and get it done. There is also AI readiness, but with the model R2, we don't have much of that AI readiness. For others, we do have AI readiness that predicts capacity based on daily or monthly trends, enabling us to analyze how much space we need or if we need to expand the disk shelf. From an operational point of view, a good feature is that if you accidentally delete a volume, it will be retained in the destroyed state for the next twenty-four hours, which is not the same with any other vendor. I have worked in this storage domain for the past fifteen years, and this option is remarkable, benefiting any L1 or L2 engineer. Additionally, from a compliance perspective, Pure Storage FlashArray has REST APIs enabled. I have not explored automation much, but from a security standpoint, it is strong with encryption data. If you want to automate, you can easily integrate with all clouds and explore Pure Cloud for scheduling workloads, including volume creation. Customers find benefit in Pure Storage FlashArray's single management pane of glass due to the dual controller and active-active setup. If one of the controllers goes down, all workloads automatically shift to the other controller, ensuring their data is safe and accessible at all times. This is a highlighted feature that any customer desires because their data should always be accessible. For SAN workloads, we use Pure Storage FlashArray because for SAN FC fiber channel, we don't use it; we use NetApp for NAS activities. We have clearly split this, so SAN is for mission-critical applications, while network-attached storage handles file systems. This architecture helps us maximize the benefit from Pure Storage FlashArray due to the significant workloads from this giant retail client. From a footprint and energy consumption perspective, you can see energy consumption from the Pure1 storage portal on a daily basis, and it is very compact. The three models we use consume only three units, which is quite low. From a footprint and data center perspective, it doesn't occupy much space. As everything moves to cloud, there are requirements to avoid excess spending on data centers, and Pure Storage FlashArray is efficient in energy consumption and is environmentally friendly.
SigfridCecillon - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at Arsium
High availability and user-friendliness enhance infrastructure health and redundancy
I would rate technical support from DataCore SANsymphony a 10. Each time I contact the technical support, it's when I don't have a choice because it's very difficult for me on site, and each time, I have good people online who are able to help me solve the problem. Usually, the problems are not very technically difficult, but sometimes they are, and the support team is still there to help us resolve them. The majority of the problems are linked to licensing, so when the license has expired or the number is not correct, they are proactive and change things live, which is very good.
reviewer1414572 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Director at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
Flexible and reliable with helpful support
I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster. Who would not like things to be faster? It would be nice if StarWind could come up with a best practice document for configuration. I had to do some playing around in my environment with test runs to get the configuration that really allowed for the maximum amount of throughput that I was going to get with the software. Once I had figured out what worked best, the solution was rather fast for backing up 30+ TB of data

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The code upgrades are very smooth."
"It's actually very stable"
"The most valuable feature is its speed."
"The benefits were realized right away. Between the flash array and the compression, you can really see how good it is. Our databases run a lot better now."
"I use all the features of this solution and I find them to be easy to use and functional, such as the compression and capacity to expand."
"It's very fast and very easy to use. It performs well and is both flexible and compatible. We like it because it's easy to use."
"If you need a high-performance storage appliance that is easy to install and maintain, you pretty much can't go wrong."
"Despite the overuse of buzzwords and re-classifications, the storage industry has actually seen dramatic improvements over the last 3-4 years."
"The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated."
"The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. This solution also exhibits good performance and has high stability."
"Continuous data protection (CDP), can be used to "protect" again ransomware by recording all write on disk in a log. You can recover your data with incredible time granularity."
"Technical support is amazing; it is very fast and always has a solution in no time."
"Auto-tiering to obtain performance at a lower cost without the customer having to purchase ultra-fast storage is great."
"Excellent performance and reliability, and very low cost using home hardware."
"Redundancy and improved performance in terms of storage with auto-tiering are the most valuable features."
"DataCore SANsymphony has improved our organization in terms of performance, data security and maintenance plan."
"We simply replicate our backups from Veeam to the virtual tape library that StarWind implements, while magically transporting those to B2 for our offsite backup requirements."
"The support that they provide is excellent, with 24 hours a day seven days a week support, and all the engineers and the support staff know the solution very well."
"I like the fact that we can simultaneously upload the virtual tapes to different cloud providers, and the settings can be adjusted to speed up the upload times even further."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
 

Cons

"The number of Filesystems is limited, which it is not on the EMC VNX."
"I would like to see the NAS add-on component become more fault-tolerant than just a single virtual machine running inside the array. I'm unwilling to use it for that reason."
"This product has only two active controllers, whereas other solutions can have more. This is something that needs to improve."
"We haven't seen ROI yet."
"The one major gripe I have is that there is no snapshotting enabled by default on the SAN."
"They have a product, FlashBlade, which is their object storage integration, and that's something that we haven't integrated with yet."
"I would like the ability to swap out the network adapters into it. So, without taking out the whole controller, I would like to be able to swap adapters. This would make things easier."
"It was not proactive communication."
"If you're dealing with big databases or transactional databases, it might not be the best-suited solution. The design of DataCore's solution isn't oriented towards this type of data."
"Pricing can be confounding with many options"
"Customer support is hit or miss. There are good technicians, however, some are not so good."
"The heavy client mode console should be improved by having a web console to improve accessibility."
"Management could be improved. The management console sometimes reacts very slowly."
"There is room for improvement in the graphical interface."
"Unified storage (all block, objects, and files) should be in a single storage pool with unified storage concepts, hence providing the user with whatever they want."
"Even though it is easy to administrate, the initial installation and configuration can be complicated."
"I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For us, as the customer, it reduced the price of the management."
"The cost was initially high, but once more people were using it, the costs came down. This was because the University was reselling it to other departments."
"The price is too high."
"It is cheaper than NetApp."
"It is cost-effective because after buying a subscription, they provide a service to upgrade hardware for free. They are providing so many features. When you consider the features provided, it is cost-effective."
"We have seen a reduction in TCO."
"Because the price is a bit higher than other products, the data reduction equalizes the price with amount of the data reduction."
"We have 16 or 18 arrays. We like to do the three-year support model so that we get Evergreen and therefore, we get free upgrades. We pay around more than 1.5 million dollars."
"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."
"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."
"The solution is cost effective."
"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."
"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."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
5%
Legal Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise151
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise22
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which should I choose: HPE 3PAR StoreServ or Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform F Series?
Both are great platforms, but if you are considering all flash solutions, I would recommend you to consider Pure Stor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashArray?
I don't really know much about the pricing for Pure Storage FlashArray in terms of the absolute cost. Regarding Everg...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashArray?
Despite liking Pure Storage FlashArray, there is room for improvement in automation. Pure Storage FlashArray needs to...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?
I am saying that the pricing is reasonable. It's not that expensive, and the product is also pretty stable. It's a go...
What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?
It's difficult to know how DataCore SANsymphony can be improved. I think DataCore SANsymphony could be deployed on Li...
What is your primary use case for DataCore SANsymphony?
I usually recommend DataCore SANsymphony for companies in the domain of research, energy, governmental, and education.
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Also Known As

Pure Storage FlashArray
DataCore Virtual SAN
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nielsen, Lamar Advertising, LinkedIn, Betfair, UT-Dallas
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.
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Find out what your peers are saying about DataCore SANsymphony vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.