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Dell XC Appliance vs Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 31, 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

Dell XC Appliance
Ranking in HCI
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converg...
Ranking in HCI
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Dell XC Appliance is 1.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 3.6%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure3.6%
Dell XC Appliance1.6%
Other94.8%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

Enables seamless integration with multiple software and outstanding AI tools
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it. I find it overly reliant on VMware. In cases of company mergers involving different platforms, software that can handle a multi-hypervisor environment would facilitate quicker integration.
KashifAli - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Head, Director of Sales and Operations at Core ISP Router
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

"The most valuable features are the deduplication and the compression features."
"The stability of the product is pretty good, as there have been no bugs, glitches, or crashes that I'm aware of."
"Overall, the solution is great."
"It's an extremely stable solution, and I highly recommend it."
"The most valuable feature is that you can assign a volume to an off-shore workload on the fly."
"The most valuable feature is the low management overhead, and the lower skill set required to manage it."
"When we compare it to normal hardware servers, I'd say it is quite easy to configure and deploy."
"Dell's appliances provide several key benefits, including horizontal and vertical scalability up to 64 nodes, proprietary artificial intelligence tools that are uncommon in the industry, seamless iDRAC integration with VMware to monitor VM details, performance, and hardware issues from one screen, and CloudIQ software that proactively addresses configuration errors."
"Scalability is very good."
"It's a great solution for companies in Pakistan."
"Sangfor HCI's best features are the ability to scale to a bigger size and the roadmap, whereby if they need to replicate their production to disaster recovery, they can do so on the same platform."
"Overall, I am pretty satisfied with this product and I recommend it."
"I find the simplicity of Sangfor very valuable. It is easy to configure and user-friendly. The overall user experience as well as the usability of Sangfor is outstanding."
"Sangfor HCI has a strong GUI interface in terms of graphical representation for management purposes."
"Sangfor HCI has a really good GUI. It allows us to monitor the temperature of the server and many other things."
"Sangfor technical support is great."
 

Cons

"There should be more provisioning capabilities within the solution."
"The cost of using the public cloud deployment is astronomical."
"The solution's storage size could be improved."
"The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's appliance won't support it."
"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"The solution's storage size could be improved."
"Currently, there is no support for the servers that are not in the cluster."
"There should be more provisioning capabilities within the solution."
"The migration process could be easier."
"I would want the product to include Continuous Data Protection (CDP) which can help to easily retrieve the data."
"We have faced multiple types of challenges with the integration."
"Sangfor HCI could be improved with certification and the right ecosystem for ISVs like Oracle and SAP."
"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."
"The error reporting needs to be improved."
"The migration process could be easier."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We received a good price from Dell."
"The pricing for Dell EMC solutions is quite expensive and not really made for small or medium-sized businesses."
"The pricing is good."
"The price point is very fair for a product in this category but can vary depending on the components selected within the family of products."
"The pricing is dependent on the technology and is in direct relation to the manufacturer and the components."
"I would say its pricing is between cheap and reasonable and would rate it as three out of five."
"The solution is affordable."
"From a business perspective, we use Sangfor HCI due to its competitive pricing compared to other competitors such as Nutanix."
"Sangfor needs to be more aggressive because this is a new market or territory for Sangfor. Nepal is a very price-sensitive market, so Sangfor needs to be a little more aggressive with its pricing. I would rate them 3.75 out of five in terms of the price."
"The price of Sangfor is cheaper than other competing products."
"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."
"The solution has a good initial cost but a high renewal cost."
"The tool’s pricing is better when compared to VMware or Nutanix. The product’s licensing is on a yearly basis."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Performing Arts
6%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering Dell XC Appliance?
My advice for people who are selling this product is to first make sure that you educate the customers. The customer doesn't often know much about HCI and what the need to be using it for. If they ...
What needs improvement with Dell XC Appliance?
The main issue with the DirectVXL appliance is that it only supports a single orchestrator or hypervisor. If multi-hypervisor support is required and VMware does not provide it, then Dell's applian...
What is your primary use case for Dell XC Appliance?
Dell offers several benefits with its appliances. Primarily, I can combine them horizontally and vertically, reaching up to sixty-four nodes. Additionally, Dell employs its own artificial intellige...
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.
What is your primary use case for Sangfor HCI?
The primary use case for Sangfor HCI involves running all workloads that were not for SAP on conventional servers using Hyper-V. We migrated all of these instances from Hyper-V to Sangfor HCI. We a...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cardlytics, AEW Energie, Aubert, Zhongtong Information Service, Commune de Villepinte, Teikyo University Hospital
TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about Dell XC Appliance vs. Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.