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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

Pure Storage FlashBlade
Sponsored
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
8th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
All-Flash Storage (12th), File and Object Storage (8th)
DataCore SANsymphony
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
4th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Storage Software (2nd), HCI (7th), Storage Performance (3rd)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Ranking in Software Defined Storage (SDS)
24th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
HCI (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Software Defined Storage (SDS) category, the mindshare of Pure Storage FlashBlade is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of DataCore SANsymphony is 6.3%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual Tape Library is 2.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Defined Storage (SDS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
DataCore SANsymphony6.3%
Pure Storage FlashBlade3.3%
StarWind Virtual Tape Library2.2%
Other88.2%
Software Defined Storage (SDS)
 

Featured Reviews

MikaelHellström - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Manager at Regin Dalarna
Has handled backup storage needs reliably and supports seamless upgrades
In environments requiring high throughput and low latency, Pure Storage FlashBlade provides high throughput and normal latency, but we do not have any application that requires low latency right now, so the latency of three to five milliseconds is considered kind of high. Pure Storage FlashBlade's ability to integrate with enterprise applications is not important for us, as we only want to present an S3 bucket for our backup, which we have done, and it works very fast. We use the Purity software's data reduction techniques; we have a backup software that compresses everything before sending it to the S3 bucket, achieving a data reduction of 1.1 to one. I would recommend Pure Storage FlashBlade to other companies because it's a very fast and scalable solution for anyone who needs it. On a scale of 1-10, I rate this solution an 8.
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 most valuable features are the Metro clustering, and disaster recovery."
"Pure Storage FlashBlade is user-friendly. It's replication feature is great because it has active replication and active DR. That's the beauty of the product. It's a perfect solution for block storage."
"The product is scalable and easy to expand."
"I would rate this solution an eight plus. It has has good flexibility and stability, it's easy to manage and the response time is good."
"Approximately 40% to 50% of my time is saved using Pure Storage FlashBlade compared to different products."
"The most valuable features include the ease of implementation, ease of use and the speed that you can do backup and recovery on."
"It's very easy-to-use."
"It performs well and it is also very fast."
"During the maintenance periods, on any part of the storage or VMware migration, we have had no downtime."
"DataCore SANsymphony's stability is okay."
"For us, fault tolerance is the most important feature of DataCore."
"DataCore's ability to seamlessly move virtual volume data between storage pools as well as their synchronous mirroring has made maintenance and disaster recovery planning achievable."
"The DataCore system has been rock solid since we have been using it - from 2007 on."
"It is a well-proven, automated management tool in all dynamic provisioning, auto-tiering, great performance, parallel I/O​, cache speed mechanism, etc."
"Good security with this solution."
"The platform's most valuable feature is its synchronous mirroring capability, which ensures bit-identical copies of data and offers excellent failover capacity."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
 

Cons

"An area for improvement in Pure Storage FlashBlade is its price. It could be reduced. The technical support for Pure Storage FlashBlade also needs improvement. It used to be good, with more experienced engineers. Nowadays, it isn't, and it takes longer for support to solve problems."
"There is some room for new features related to authentication and integration with Kubernetes, and other solution using S3 Bucket."
"The solution is expensive."
"It would be beneficial if the layer could support the S3 protocol and be container ready in the next release."
"Its configuration should be easier."
"In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray and FlashBlade, allowing for synchronized data between both platforms."
"The Pure Storage Orchestrator is our biggest pain point at the moment. If we can have more say in future developments of feature sets that we will need to support for our use case, that would be pretty beneficial to us."
"It would be nice if you could store file-based in the same box with the same technology."
"I would like to see reporting added, such as a monthly connectivity report."
"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."
"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."
"One area where the solution could improve is its software platform. Many customers have expressed dissatisfaction with the software running on Microsoft Windows."
"The graphical interface is not always very stable."
"I would like to see SMPA (Shared Multi-Port Array) technology developed with the aim of allowing a configuration identical to other storage arrays."
"We are waiting for container support (on the roadmap), as well as a user-friendly full web-administration capability, and an improved API."
"DataCore needs a more efficient and better way to keep track of metrics and counters so that we can do baseline analysis to measure performance."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven to eight out of ten."
"Our licensing is renewed annually."
"We used a reseller for the purchase."
"The price of this solution could be made more affordable."
"Support is a separate line item. Support is a different cost, but whatever your support is now, that's what you're going to pay forever. If your support's $100 today, six years from now it's $100. It doesn't fluctuate unless you upgrade it, or change it, etc."
"The price is a little high."
"The product is very expensive."
"It's a costly solution, but Pure Storage FlashBlade doesn't require additional licenses. All of the software is combined into one bundle."
"The solution is cost effective."
"The cost is at the same level as other storage solutions and it is easy to understand the licensing."
"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."
"We have licensing costs on a yearly basis. They charge per terabyte, so in terms of cost, it can be very costly. They have three different features, and you have to pay extra for those."
"This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage."
"DataCore SANsymphony's pricing is very high and should be much cheaper."
"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."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"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
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Government
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business36
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise21
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure Storage FlashBlade?
The tool's most valuable feature is its fast performance, especially in handling snapshots. It helps during power out...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure Storage FlashBlade?
Regarding pricing, it is okay; we needed exactly this in size, and the price was a lot lower than competitors, making...
What needs improvement with Pure Storage FlashBlade?
In my opinion, one way Pure Storage FlashBlade can be improved is by having more compatibility between the FlashArray...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DataCore SANsymphony SDS?
Before choosing DataCore SANsymphony, I did not evaluate other options.
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...
What needs improvement with DataCore SANsymphony?
DataCore SANsymphony can be improved with high availability as it offers synchronous mirroring between physical and s...
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Also Known As

No data available
DataCore Virtual SAN
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceNow, Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport, Dominos, Man AHL
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: December 2025.
879,477 professionals have used our research since 2012.