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Cloudify vs Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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

Cloudify
Ranking in Cloud Management
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converg...
Ranking in Cloud Management
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
HCI (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Cloudify is 1.7%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 1.7%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mark Wittling - PeerSpot reviewer
Works very well for advanced service chaining requirements and has extremely advanced engineers for support
We had a manager who thought that Cloudify could be used as a replacement for Horizon in OpenStack, but we found that Cloudify lacked the user interface or GUI for doing multitenancy and basic platform management tasks. Cloudify was really good at launching, for example, firewalls and configuring them and doing service chaining and rather advanced things like that, but it didn't meet the requirements for a basic platform management solution. It is something that seems to work better as a bolt-on or an augmented solution. It is a bit mis-marketed as a Cloud Management solution. It is not that. It is more of a service orchestration and automation tool. It is very good at doing that, but it fails to meet basic platform management requirements. Once you have it running, you can't really do anything with it without writing code and scripts. It requires a full-time DevOps person to use it. We deployed a Palo Alto firewall with it. That's basically what the project was for us, and it worked flawlessly once we got it finished, but it took another 12 weeks to get all of the automation and everything else coded, tested, and working. There is certainly a place for this technology, but when we got rid of OpenStack and moved to VMware, we either had to go with the vRealize Automation Suite to do this kind of automation, or we had to find an alternative solution to manage the private cloud. So, we put Cloudify in, but we really couldn't find it useful for basic platform administration tasks.
KashifAli - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly GUI, capable technical support team but complicated license mechanism
Sangfor HCI's license mechanism is too complicated. The license agreement is a distributed license. Within the HCI platform, Sangfor HCI has multiple licenses in terms of services. Sangfor HCI has a separate license for the security services, a separate license for the Doctor services, and application services. They have multiple SKUs in separate forms. As per local market requirements, I think they need to couple up these or bundle up the license model.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Cloudify provides the infrastructure-as-code, as well as operational action capabilities (orchestrated startups or upgrades, and more)."
"Valuable features are auto-scaling and load balancing."
"Extensible internal functions and plugins. Can implement custom plugins to fit your scenario. Python based plugins."
"The solution includes the option to run background scripts and processes from a connected API."
"It enables a single platform to communicate with the entire infrastructure."
"Cloudify works in cases where you have very advanced service chaining requirements. It really works well there, and it fits the best. They have a standardized markup that's based on TOSCA, which is a standard. I like the fact that they're standards-based. Their solution works extremely well if you have the talent and the manpower to write TOSCA descriptors to deploy and interchange services or to automate the configuration and turn up of services."
"You can use only what you need. You can remove certain Cloudify functions from the framework to create a "minified" version of what you need. This might only consist of the messaging delivery system, and the orchestration functions."
"Has great extendability which means you can build your own custom logic."
"Sangfor has many solutions, and you can easily manage their machine servers with just one management. They're always striving for greatness, and they continuously update their products. For example, they have now built endpoint security within the firewall. They are continuously improving not only the security but also all other products."
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"I would rate the user-friendliness an eight out of ten."
"It is flexible like a hyper-convergence system. You can add nodes, and you can scale to have better performance and stability. I also like the backup feature, the recovery system, and the web interface GUI to handle everything."
"Unlike VMware, Sangfor offers a straightforward solution with rich features and an easy-to-use interface. Its ease of management and strong integration capabilities make it a compelling choice."
"The most valuable feature of Sangfor HCI is the built-in recovery functionality. The migration is simple to do from other solutions, such as VMware."
"The Continuous Data Protection (CDP) feature is one of the good features."
"The initial setup isn't hard."
 

Cons

"Unlike the Docker environment, Cloudify takes time for configuration and its learning curve."
"The solution is a bit of a headache because mistakes happen in the blueprint every time we deploy and they require modifications."
"The upgrading process could be simplified."
"It lacked the user interface for multitenancy and basic platform management tasks. It is a leader in the niche area that they like to perform in, but it only does about 30% of top-tier advanced functions of platform management. It doesn't meet about 70% of what you need to manage a private cloud platform."
"Certainly the UI could use some intensive work, but nevertheless, overall, it’s a complete product with its 3.4 version and much better features are available with 4.0."
"Install of the product itself could be improved and I would like to see better event monitoring."
"Error handling could be improved; GUI is lacking with respect to user privileges and connectivity."
"Sangfor could improve its built-in CAP system. Right now, we need to use an external tool for CAP."
"It should have object storage. It already has network virtualization and micro-segmentation, but it is missing object storage. It does not have object storage. vSAN also does not have object storage, but Nutanix has object storage, and it is natively integrated into its HCI. So, if you pay for the object storage license, you have that module pre-built."
"There is a feature to upgrade multiple VMs simultaneously, but it crashes."
"The initialization is not fully automated and has room for improvement."
"The interface could be a little bit better."
"Currently, when we need to do capacity planning, we have to rely on Sangfor's support team for assistance. However, if there were dedicated tools available, we could handle it ourselves and increase efficiency."
"Stability is also an area for improvement here as well."
"The documentation and support from the community are not as good or as mature as VMware or Hyper-V."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I wasn't involved in the pricing of it because we were just doing prototype work with it, but I was told by the upper management team that it was quite expensive. That was another reason we switched to Morpheus."
"Considering the capabilities provided, the product is expensive."
"It is in the middle range as compared to other hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. There is a three-year warranty on the hardware. The license also includes other features. Sangfor has included Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and a built-in firewall with the license. Other top brands, such as VxRail and VMware, require a separate license for such features."
"The product's pricing is less expensive and competitive than other alternatives. I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution is on-premise which does not have a subscription. However, there is a need to purchase support. The solution is on a perpetual license model. There is not any extra cost other than the standard licensing fees."
"I would say its pricing is between cheap and reasonable and would rate it as three out of five."
"From a business perspective, we use Sangfor HCI due to its competitive pricing compared to other competitors such as Nutanix."
"Its price should be better, but I don't think they will change the price list. You have to pay for licenses, and you have to pay for support, so you have an annual fee. You can use the product without the fee, but it's really dumb because you need support. We are an IT company. We provide the product, and we need the support too for our customers."
"The pricing of Sangfor is very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Retailer
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Sangfor HCI?
It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten... Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sangfor HCI?
I rate the pricing of Sangfor HCI at a five, as it is thirty to thirty-five percent more efficient than other solutions in terms of total cost of ownership.
What needs improvement with Sangfor HCI?
I would like Sangfor to have a presence on some public cloud offerings, such as Azure or AWS, to build disaster recovery sites. This functionality is currently missing in the Pakistani market.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Proximus Partner Communications (Israel) VMware NTT Data Metaswitch Spirent Communications Lumina Networks Atos Fortinet
TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudify vs. Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.