Cosa ne pensano i clienti

In che modo ha aiutato la mia organizzazione?

When you have to meet data latency and accessibility requirements you will need to look at this software offering. Our developers and DBAs require uptime and redundancy. This has improved our operational offering to our customers. The end-user finds it fast and reliable. The software works well no matter what storage vendor we put on the back end. We can check storage from startup ABD or price from vendor XYZ. This improves our flexibility and cost savings as we rely on the software and not on a product or manufacturer that locks us in.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

Active-active is the most valuable aspect for us. The reason being, we can run our clusters on one side knowing our data is available in the other data center. There is simple management via GUI or command line. The software just works and is reliable. Downtime due to storage maintenance or upgrades is long gone. We have multiple types of software running to differentiate our applications. This gives us more value due to the fact that we can segment by application if needed. The bottom line is the software is what runs our applications on whatever storage vendor we choose - and it does so reliably.

In che modo ha aiutato la mia organizzazione?

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.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

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.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

The most valuable feature of DataCore SANsymphony SDS is its high availability. I also like that this solution has high stability and good performance.

How are customer service and support?

Technical support for this software is good. We ran into a few issues and their technical support team were on time helping us, including our customers. I would rate the support for DataCore SANsymphony SDS five out of five.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

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.

Qual è l'impiego tipico principale?

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.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

SANsymphony's scalability is huge.

Qual è l'impiego tipico principale?

We work with the enterprise edition, SANsymphony V SDS. The solution is geared towards small and medium-sized businesses, with two or three node clusters supporting business continuity and nonstop operations of virtual machines or servers. This makes the solution very stable, cost effective and simple to administer and maintain.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

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. This translates into very advanced storage features, accompanied by a cost effective application or license.

In che modo ha aiutato la mia organizzazione?

DataCore SANsymphony brings the ability to work on almost every hardware platform and to build a storage node with high precision (disks, interfaces, protocols). We can choose what hardware we want to put in and it brings a high-performance throughput from it. The ability to build exactly what you need is a major advantage of SANsymphony over other solutions. Hardware maintenance is easy since it is a simple server. There's no need for a storage hardware expert. On top of that, the Software-Defined Storage is easy to manage.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

We used the wizard to deploy SANsymphony in a virtual environment for hyper-converged infrastructure and it is quite useful. We can deploy virtual high-available infrastructure for running tests in less than an hour. Continuous data protection is a powerful feature that can save your data in several cases. It is good protection against ransomware. The ability to use the RAM of the server node as a read and write cache brings a lot of performance to the storage. We can reach high IOPS from slow disks through the huge amount of cache. The documentation repository is really useful and kept updated.

In che modo ha aiutato la mia organizzazione?

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. A next project will link Veeam Backup with SSY. Veeam will then control the snapshots for data backups, especially of the virtual platform. These snapshots are then presented directly via FC to the backup server for backup.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

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 the 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.

Qual è l'impiego tipico principale?

SANSymphony is used to provide HA storage block services to the vSphere Streched Cluster. The backend virtualized storage is a mix of internal node storage and SAN (Dell Compellent, IBM Storwize). It can be fiberchannel connected or iscsi or both. By using this solution we provide a High Availability storage solution. We can do the running of VMs in classic Windows or Linux workload and Citrix virtual Apps. This is a software solution, so new functionality does not rely on any hardware.

In che modo ha aiutato la mia organizzazione?

SANSymphony allows us to separate the storage software from the hardware. That way, we can replace or add any backend in the cluster without downtime. This ease of adding or removing storage allows us to control costs. All maintening operations can be done without downtime as well. The team is happy due to the fact that they can do the operational tasks during day without impact on the production. It helps us control storage costs. This solution is very flexible. We can have 2 physical DataCore nodes with backend storage virtualized or we can have internal disks on the main site and hyper-converged 2 nodes on Robo sites. All this is managed from the same console and with the same functionnalities.

Qual è l'impiego tipico principale?

We use this solution for providing software-defined storage that is virtualized, in a true HA configuration. It provides SAN storage services to VMware vCenter hosts and VMware Horizon hosts, as well as some physical Windows and Linux servers. This platform allows us to leverage any storage that Windows can leverage, including other vendor SAN devices. This allows us to keep existing storage, mirror SANs from 2 different vendors and even allow very easy migration from one vendor to another. Most of our locations just use RAID attached storage (as it is the least expensive) with enterprise-class drives (both HDD and SSD).

In che modo ha aiutato la mia organizzazione?

This solution allows the use of off-the-shelf hardware and charges by the TB of storage. So, we can throw in our own enterprise-class hardware (including SSDs) and not pay any extra based on the type of storage we use. This is the same model used with server virtualization. This has allowed us to keep the hardware separate from software. It is true "storage virtualization" at its finest. It has all the features of any high-end SAN such as fiber channel, iSCSI, thin provisioning, storage tiering, snapshots, continuous data protection/recovery, synchronous and asynchronous mirroring, performance reporting/graphing, and true HA design.

Cosa c'è di più prezioso?

No more vendor lock-in, overpriced drives, or forklift upgrades. With DataCore SANsymphony, you can utilize just about any storage you wish with this product such as another SAN, NAS, JBOD, FusionIO, etc. If Windows can see it as a non-removable drive, you can use it with SANsymphony. Also, you can use this to mirror any of these various types of storage, which is awesome for migration. Say, for example, you have an HP SAN and you want to migrate off it to your own JBOD-type storage, or you have two sites with two different storage SANs that you want to replicate data between. With DataCore, it is possible to mix and match just about any storage platform you want to use. As software-defined storage, the system is designed to run on top of Windows Server OS (which can be virtual or physical) and can utilize the server's RAM to provide disk cache. This makes our 7.2K HDDs class storage run really fast, allowing us to use a bottom-tier class of drive and get the performance of a much higher class of drive. Also, if we have to add capacity or replace drives then we can just order replacement drives off the web, saving us quite a bit of money. Of course, we still use "enterprise-class" drives but we don't pay through the nose to buy hardware. If we want to upgrade the Ethernet ports from 1Gb to 10Gb then we just do it. The same goes for FC. If we want to upgrade from 4Gb FC to 16Gb, we don't have to do a forklift upgrade. We just buy the HBAs and we're off the to races. The other great thing is DataCore keeps their product on VMware's approved HCL. So even if you have a SAN (backend storage) that falls off the HCL with VMware, because it's virtualized storage behind DataCore, you're covered. If you put the storage behind DataCore then you won't have to worry about VMware's HCL any longer. Because of this fundamental practice, DataCore was one of the first storage vendors to support VVOLs. The ability to pool the storage to leverage thin-provisioning is a huge saving in space and costs.