DataCore SANsymphony Reviews

SANsymphony is a software solution that enables storage virtualization.

We implemented SANsymphony due to its mirroring and continuous data protection features.

The installation is done independently of the hardware and even allows infrastructures in synchronous replication in active/active with different manufacturers.

The data is identical and accessible on both storage nodes. The solution also allows you to create a Disaster Recovery Site with an asynchronous and bidirectional mirror that is easier to test.

This solution allows us to have a business continuity plan for storage and as a first level of backup.

This solution allows us to have our IT production in two separate and autonomous rooms in active/active mode. The data is present in both rooms. In the event of scheduled shutdowns (works, updates, etc.) or incidents, the changeover is done manually or automatically.

The Continuous Data Protection feature and the logging of data changes allows a minimal level of data loss on incidents, human errors, or cyberattacks. This functionality makes it possible to restore the data to the moment before loss.

The synchronous mirroring is great. Storage is always available. This is the main feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS which allows very high storage availability and better protection against environmental incidents (electrical, flooding, etc.).

Continuous data protection reduces data loss. This functionality makes it possible to restore the data to the moment before loss.

Caching and parallel I/O offer more performance. The cache is done with the RAM of the server. To add cache you just have to add RAM.

The parallelization of the IOs allows us to have much better performance with the same hardware by accelerating the processing of the IOs.

The compression and deduplication are now suitable for a production environment. Additionally, this allows us to use logical RAID for NVMe drives in ZFS clusters.

The architecture has been revised with cache and metadata disks to improve overall performance.

The graphical interface is not always very stable. In a dense infrastructure with many volumes and disks, slowness and GUI crashes can be observed. Developments are still underway to continually improve this part.

The current graphical interface is ported to a web interface and not all features are available yet.

The eagerly awaited feature is tiering between deduplicated/compressed disk pools and performance pools. This will leave the possibility of activating by virtual disk the automatic movement of blocks according to their activity.

I've been using this solution since 2008.

I have been using this solution for over a decade and it is very stable.

The solution is highly scalable by adding disks or nodes.

Technical support is awesome and very reactive.

Positive

We used Dell/EMC, VNX, and UNITY. We switched due to vendor lock-in, overpriced drives, or upgrades.

The initial setup is very simple as there are many wizards.

We handled the implementation in-house.

You get to ROI quickly by reusing material.

Users need to remember that they just need to buy what they use.

We evaluated VMware vSAN.

The support team is awesome.

The product is primarily used for providing block storage space for the virtualization environment.

The server nodes caching algorithms will speed up your SAN storage performance, even if you are already using a high-class FC attached enterprise storage system.

The DataCore is open in order to attach a lot of different storage subcomponents.

The SDS is not dependent on a special hardware vendor. You will be able to mirror between different vendor systems if you like/need to. For example, to mirror data between one node with locally attached storage and the opposite node with an FC attached NetApp system. The data migration between old and new HW is quite simple.

The DataCore system has been rock solid since we have been using it - from 2007 on.

The caching functionality, which could speed up your attached storage, is great.

We use the reserved x% of space for free for new writes as additional speed improvement for multiple tier pools.

DataCore will reserve a percentage of your storage tier and tried to keep it free to write directly new data into it. In that case, your new writes will go directly in the free space of tier 1, which is the most common and fastest one. Afterward, data will be kept in tier1 or destaged to other tiers (2, 3, 4, etc.). This setting improved our SAN Speed for the complete pool.

It would be ideal if they were providing archive licensing with the ability to create a second pool on existing storage nodes. Maybe they could do it with limited max IO and/or without auto-tiering capabilities for the archive pool - to avoid interference with the performance pool.

I've used the solution since 2007 when the product was called SAN Melody.

The solution has 100% storage availability and we've had that for more than ten years.

There is scalability without any limit.

Customer Service is very fast. There is a high level of expertise and they are willing to help and assist you. They are industry-leading, I would say.

Positive

The local storage was used before and we found that it was not flexible enough.

The initial setup was straightforward and easy. With good planning and knowledge of your own environment, the setup works like a charm.

DataCore provides well-documented configuration guides.

It was a combined installation. Would like to say that the vendor assisted us.
Their knowledge and support were great, as was our internal expertise.

The availability is the best ROI.

DataCore is a good and valuable solution. The licensing costs depend on the storage and the volume of use. They were leveling on a good basis.

We did not evaluate any other solution.

DataCore is only as good as your plan for your environment. First, you need to know your own environment, including: 
- storage space
- throughput
- burst IO
- avarage IO. 
- good planning and testing.

Perfect choosen hardware is one that fits your needs. If you have that combined with DataCore, you will guarantee a success story.

SANsymphony is a hardware-independent solution that provides storage virtualization. We implemented SANsymphony because of its mirrors feature. So it allows you to store the data on two sides synchronously on a single storage server. However, that single storage server consists of two independent hardware boxes in two data centers, but it behaves like one storage server because it's mirrored. No other vendor was offering that kind of transparent behavior when we implemented it.

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.

SANsymphony is missing some features that vSAN has. For example, vSAN has a special feature called continuous data protection. It provides the ability to go back in time to a given moment. You can see what was on your disk in the past up to two weeks. That's a great feature because ransomware attacks are increasingly common, and that provides you some kind of protection.

I've been using different DataCore solutions for about 15 years.

SANsymphony's scalability is huge. 

I rate SANSymphony eight out of 10. I believe it's a great product with many excellent features. 

I work with many customers that ask us to put their solution near the production because they can't stop the production. It's easier to protect the network this way.

It has helped my customers because it's an SDS solution, and we can use all components that you put in a server. You have many options that meet customer needs, and you can find the best way in relation to performance and price. 

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.

The most important thing is the work we do on the new management interface called DIS. You can follow the evolution of this platform, and it's very important for me because the customer has to manage the platform. 

We add the workload on this platform, and they need the platform to evolve. It's very important to the customer, and we have to work on the DIS to realize the customer's this vision.

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

I have been using DataCore SANsymphony SDS for about six years.

DataCore SANsymphony SDS is a very robust and stable solution.

Technical support is very good. For example, their system engineer came down to help my customer resolve a problem.

I can't say that the installation is difficult, but it's impossible for a customer who doesn't know the product or the installation process. You will need the help of a consultant or a reseller to install and deploy this solution.

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. 

On a scale from one to ten, I would give DataCore SANsymphony SDS a ten.

We use the DataCore software to provide (virtual) storage hardware to our virtualisation environment (VMware ESX).

• SANsymphony gives us the possibility to get storage redundancy with a very good ROI.
• It also helps us to get a more balanced performance of our storage systems.

• Redundancy of vdisk: It provides less downtime.
• Continuous data protection: It is always good to have a possibility to "go back".
• Technical support: Technical support is amazing. It is very fast and always has a solution in no time.

• It will help if there is a possibility to backup the vdisks directly.
• An idea could be that there is a second storage just for backup which doesn't count to the license usage.
• A better (and easier) tool to detect performance issues.

With SANsymphony we never had any issues of stability.

It is very scalable because you can just extend the storage with other (different) hardware. There is a lot of certified storage hardware. Also, the tier level helps to scale.

Fast, faster, DataCore support.

They are also kind and solution-oriented. They are easy to understand, and you have the feeling they want to help you and get you satisfied.

No, we have only used DataCore SANsymphony as SDS.

The setup was done by our IT partner. It is complex because he also had to set up our iSCSI environment. With Fibre Channel it would be much easier.

Our IT partner started the initial installation. We implemented it in our environment.
The partner had very good expertise.

We didn't calculate the ROI.

We have not calculated the ROI of the software. Only the benefits in redundancy and scalability were important for us.

The licensing is very easy to understand/calculate since the new license model. You just have to license the storage and additional features.

No.

The installation is only supported if it is installed by a DataCore certified implementation engineer. Also, updates should be done by this DCIE.

If you want to manage everything by yourself, you have to get a DCIE.

We use DataCore to improve the redundancy of our virtual machines so that we can achieve high availability of our server systems.

We are now able to run a hot standby solution for our virtual systems with separated server rooms (in case of fire), and so we can minimize downtimes of our IT infrastructure.

• High availability of storage
• Stability and performance
• Fast implementation and integration.

Installation time was about one day. Since then, it runs stable.

The product runs stable in the background and does what it should do, so I don't have any special issues at the moment, but increasing performance and improving the user interface for easier setup is always a good idea.

It runs fast and stable.

Since its installation, we had no problems.

In our actual environment it runs stable and fast, and about scalability, I can not (yet) say anything, sorry.

To be honest, we did not need the support until now.

No, we did not.

We installed it through our IT partner. Installation time took around one day.

Installed by our standard IT partner.

Expert level I think.

Increased high availability.

The product was installed by our IT partner in one day, so the installation cost is OK.

Pricing and licensing was also fair.

The product was offered by our system integrator, they had installed it several times for other customers without problems, so we trusted them and they were right.

Maybe using a good IT partner who already has some experience with the product.

The solution is used for the provision of high performance and high availability block storage. By using auto-tiering, many applications can benefit from the high performance of current NVMe SSDs. At the same time, cold data is kept on low-cost storage resources.

The separation of data streams from different applications (e.g. SAP HANA, SQL server, virtualisation) also increases overall performance and availability.

The use of snapshots for data backup is already planned and scheduled. For this purpose, Veeam Backup 11 will be connected to SSY. The backup will then be LANless via Fibre Channel.

Among other things, we used SSY to bring a Splunk installation onto the existing central DataCore storage. Continuous data transfer rates of up to 2.6 GByte/s (16GB Fibre Channel, dual fabric synchronously mirrored systems over 20km) were also achieved.

The project was also much cheaper and easier to implement than any comparable solution.

The services already running (databases, virtualization) are not affected and run with the same performance as before the expansion.

Veeam is now configured to use storage snapshots. This reduces VMware snapshots to a minimum. The backup runs via Fibre Channel and relieves the LAN.

Synchronous mirroring was a prerequisite for the project. Two data centers are used, which are connected via two different WAN routes. 16G FC is used via the WAN. The "Systems managed Mirroring" feature was used for this.

Another feature that makes high performance possible is "pool striping", where accesses are distributed over a larger number of external data volumes (LUNs). The limiting factor for performance here is the external storage that is connected to the DataCore servers.

Snapshots are also an important feature. In connection with external applications, these enable an improvement in data protection.

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.

With dedupe and compression, we can now save considerable capacity. An expansion of the capacity and thus the purchase of new licenses are thus avoided.

For an upcoming release, I would like to see a function that can manage the storage of multiple Datacore servers in a kind of "erasure coding". This would simplify scaling and make SSY more competitive with other providers.

NVMeoF should be implemented. This protocol will play a major role in storage infrastructure in the future.

Network protocols are becoming increasingly important. For future projects, protocols such as RoCE should be implemented. Especially in LAN infrastructures from 25G, a simpler and high-performance SAN infrastructure could be built here. The costs should be lower compared to Fibre Channel.

Improving support will be very difficult as it is already one of the best in the IT world.

I have been implementing SSY very successfully with many clients since 2008.

The system runs very stable. Through the use of server pairs, there is no more downtime. The storage service is always available, even if maintenance has to be carried out or a hardware defect has to be repaired.

The performance can be scaled very easily by adding data devices of the desired performance class.

It is also very easy to expand the capacity. By adding low-cost storage, cold data can be stored there. This also ensures that the hot data can be accessed with high performance.

Datacore offers one of, if not the best, technical support teams in the industry. Every request is handled very competently and in a short time.

The SEs are also very well trained and competent. They are always available for questions and are also very willing to give suggestions and information.

Positive

We previously used Netapp Metro Cluster. We switched due to the costs for the infrastructure (Metro Cluster) were too high. The performance was also no longer sufficient. The solution was too inflexible.

The implementation is somewhat more complex than with simple storage. In addition to the actual storage resources and the SAN infrastructure, the x86 server with Windows Server and SSY must also be installed.

The configuration of the storage is easy, as it is best to create many identical volumes and present them to the Datacore server.

These volumes are then included in the pool within SSY and centrally managed there.

The SAN configuration includes the construction of a FrontEnd, BackEnd, and Mirror layer. It is a little more complex, but not complicated.

The host systems access the resources via SSY, so these must also be configured in SSY. On the other hand, only the SSY servers need to be set up on the storage.

Being a DCIE myself, I did the installation.

Since the environment is dynamic (for example, changes, extensions), the ROI is not easy to determine. However, the TCO is more favorable than with other solutions.

Good planning is always very important. SSY is very flexible and can cover very different requirements. Therefore, it is important to keep a close eye on the requirements. If you have questions before implementation, ask support or a partner.

Also, pay attention to licensing. It may be cheaper to license a few TB more if you can make a jump in the discount scale.

Also note: Using DAS (internal storage) can be very cost-effective compared to external storage.

We considered different solutions such as Netapp FAS-Series, HP MSA, and 3Par.

I am glad to have used SSY. The solution is very stable and performs well. It requires very little effort.

What you do have to do, however, is regularly apply Windows patches. To do this, the node has to be restarted. You should therefore always use a pair with synchronous mirrors to avoid downtime.

We can not afford periods for maintenance. So we need a solution with which we can provide appropriate high availability. 100% guaranteed with DataCore SANSymphony-V.

Our data centers are divided into three sections. It is possible that the provision of data is guaranteed in the event of an error. We use a three-way-mirror from DataCore SANSymphony-V.

• Three-way mirror synchronization of the data over three sections
• Auto-tiering: effective utilization of fast to slow memory areas
• CDP: Continuous data protection is an important part of our backup strategy.

The management: management should take place via OS-independent access. Here a web-based client would be desirable.

Runs very stable and therefore very trustworthy. Without that, a storage solution would be unthinkable.

The scalability is given in all directions (frontend and backend, capacity) to our requirements.

Very fast, very competent, short ways via mail or telephone.

HP EVA4400.

Simple, as the initial training by the manufacturer and the help is very good.

Initially through a system house, then through our in-house team.

One hour of production downtime is more expensive than the solution.

A very good price-performance ratio. The license model is very successful.

The data was only asynchronously mirrored; thereby there was no transparent failover.

No, it was almost perfect.