subject: Starwind And Datacore Comparison [print this page] iSCSI SAN market is gradually picking upiSCSI SAN market is gradually picking up. But which vendor is more reliable, have reasonable price and good performance? The offer for small and medium business is essential. Let's take a insight at short test results of comparing two of the leaders in this branch - StarWind software and Datacore. We will compare each of these product - SANMelody and StarWind Enterprise HA Unlimited.
Installation
Initial step is installation. To install StarWind you need to spend about 3-4 minutes, the installation is intuitive. Datacore, unlike StarWind, takes more time for the installation itself, plus time for reading manual, that is required in this case.
Functionality
Both products have all the backup functions, such as Continuous Data Protection, Snapshots, VSS (volume Snapshot Service) Mirroring, Replication, true active-active High Availability with automated failover and failback, but when I tried to setup High Availability with Datacore, it appeared that I need to do the additional purchase - MPIO (Multipath Input/Output), that HA cannot work without.
Security
Security is existing in such features as IPSec, which will protect data transfer while remote control, for example, or CHAP (Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol) provides guard against playback attack by the peer during the use of an incrementally changing identifier and of a variable challenge-value.
Performance boost features and User experience
Here we can see High Speed Caching, MPIO, that will increase performance. And now about some differences between products. Both of them have many features, that competitor lack in. Star wind has these features.
oSPTI - SCSI Pass through Interface. You will be competent to use any data carrier or media as iSCSI target. Very useful if you need to work with tapes or tape libraries.
oVirtual Optical Drive could let you forget about using optical disc drives on the clients side;
oRAM Discs will increase your network performance.
oVTA (Virtual Tape Array) will help you to avoid probable network overhead while writing data to tapes or even taking the tapes place;
Datacore:
oMMC is a little improved.
oPerfMon Support - will aid you in monitoring of your network performance;
oEventViewer Support - you can see all Datacores events in Windows Event System.
As you can see Datacore is trying to mix inside the Microsoft OS, but it may originate some troubles with third-party programs.
StarWind has made bet on usability - everything made to make work simplified as much, as it possible.
Usability of both products could not be compared - they are too different. StarWind GUI is easy-to-use, so you don't need any manuals or help to find something, somewhere. The separate deal is Datacore. In short - the situation is the same like with installation.
There was one more difficulty while working with Datacore - to make target you need unformatted volume without seted letter.
Price policy.
We may compare the price.
Opting DataCore you can pay extra up to 800%, comparing to StarWind. The most expensive StarWind product cost $5995, and DataCores - $41500, without MPIO, if you remember.
