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OpenNebula 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

OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converg...
Ranking in Cloud Management
19th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
HCI (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 2.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 1.5%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenNebula2.5%
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure1.5%
Other96.0%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
Products Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Reliable, simple to manage, and offers great technical support
The support of VXLAN fits with our network management. Thanks to this we can propose mixed solutions using virtual resources on OpenNebula and bare metal servers hosted in our facilities linked to each other on the sale network. This use case is very useful when some applications need bare metal power (Kubernetes workers, huge databases, AI models computations, et cetera). The cluster management is very useful for splitting our different clusters (mutual vs dedicated). We can manage deployments and capacity planning without pain. The API is also really simple and it helped us to develop the Terraform provider to manage OpenNebula like any other cloud infrastructure.
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

"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"I also like the ability to build custom functions. I can define a function where I have two types of views and configure the dependencies. The virtual data centers concept allows me to define users. If a user wants to join certain kinds of machines, the host and the other user won't see them. It gives me the flexibility to define multiple views and data centers in one place."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."
"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."
"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."
"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."
"It's a great solution for companies in Pakistan."
"We find the topology feature of Sangfor HCI particularly valuable."
"Sangfor has included Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and a built-in firewall with the license."
"The Continuous Data Protection (CDP) feature is one of the good features."
"I find the simplicity of Sangfor very valuable, it is easy to configure and user-friendly, and the overall user experience as well as the usability of Sangfor is outstanding."
"It is flexible like a hyper-convergence system, you can add nodes, and you can scale to have better performance and stability."
"I would rate the user-friendliness an eight out of ten."
 

Cons

"They should add more features like object storage."
"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
"I would like to see OpenNebula add more integration with REST API. XML-RPC API is good, but it becomes a pain to form a resting output."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."
"Most of the competitors are offering some sort of billing software to transform their installation to work as a small-sized public cloud, but those offerings from OpenNebula are still missing."
"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."
"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."
"Initially, there were issues with wrong sizing and certain features being locked, although these have been fixed."
"Sangfor HCI has room for improvement in terms of integration. So, the integration with Sangfor HCI is not as extensive as in Nutanix."
"Sangfor HCI could be improved with certification and the right ecosystem for ISVs like Oracle and SAP."
"Its virtual machine tools can be improved. These tools should be enhanced for use in other applications and operating systems, such as Linux."
"One question that has come up frequently in the last week is whether or not the renewal cost for Sangfor's HCI solution is too high."
"Lacks network support."
"There are certain aspects of sizing of the solution that need improvement."
"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

"The licensing for OpenNebula used to be free, but now it's no longer free. A customer contacted me asking to move to another provider because of the changes in the licensing terms for OpenNebula. I have no information on how much the OpenNebula license is because the customer pays for it, and I only do the integration."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"OpenNebuoa has recently come up with a new subscription model that is economical and a lot of new customers are choosing this as it is an easy subscription model."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"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 solution has a good initial cost but a high renewal cost."
"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 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."
"Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is a reasonably priced product."
"From a business perspective, we use Sangfor HCI due to its competitive pricing compared to other competitors such as Nutanix."
"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 price of Sangfor is cheaper than other competing products."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
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 Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with OpenNebula?
The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...
What is your primary use case for OpenNebula?
Previously, we were using VMware, but recently, we've started using OpenNebula for cloud management. As a big cloud provider, it helps give customers increased control over their clusters. We use L...
What advice do you have for others considering OpenNebula?
I recommend it, especially if you need a management interface for a small to medium private cloud. I would rate OpenNebula an eight 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.
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

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.
TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenNebula vs. Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.