By: Julia Aidan
Submitted: 2009-12-28 14:31:52 | Word Count: 448
iSCSI SAN market is gradually picking up. But which vendor is more consistent, have reasonable price and good performance? Which developer can offer useful product for Small and Medium Business representatives. Let's take a look at short test results of comparing two of the best in this branch - StarWind software and Datacore. We will compare each of these product - SANMelody and StarWind Enterprise HA Unlimited.
Installation
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Primary step is installation. Starwind takes less time for installation. Datacore, unlike StarWind, takes additional time for the installation itself, plus time for reading manual, that is necessary in this case.
Functionality
All back up functions are available in both the products but with DATACORE additional MPIO is required.
Security
Security is offered 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 through the use of an incrementally changing identifier and of a variable challenge-value.
Performance boost features and User experience
Here we can find High Speed Caching, MPIO, that will add to performance. And now about some differences between products. Both of them have several features, that competitor lack in. StarWind support such features as.
o SPTI - SCSI Pass through Interface. You will be able to use any data carrier or media as iSCSI target. It is useful in tape uses.
o Virtual Optical Drive could let you forget about using optical disc drives on the clients side;
o RAM Discs will increase your network performance.
o VTA (Virtual Tape Array) will support you to avoid probable network overhead while writing data to tapes or still taking the tapes place;
Datacore:
o MMC is a little improved.
o PerfMon Support - will aid you in monitoring of your network performance;
o Datacore events can be seen in the event system.
As you can see Datacore is trying to amalgamate inside the Microsoft OS, but it may give 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 another deal is Datacore. In short - the situation is the same like with installation.
There was one more problem while working with Datacore - to make target you need unformatted volume without seted letter.
Price policy.
Comparing the prices we can see next.
Purchasing DataCore you can pay more up to 800%, comparing to StarWind. There is a wide variation in the price of Starwind and Datacore.
