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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
6th
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
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
HCI (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 6.1%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 1.9%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenNebula6.1%
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure1.9%
Other92.0%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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."
"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."
"What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management."
"For the entire data center, as a private cloud, I believe that user management, expert management, and the virtual data center is completely magic for the users."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."
"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."
"The most valuable feature is the three nodes and the free hypervisor."
"We find the topology feature of Sangfor HCI particularly valuable."
"I am impressed with the product's firewall and virtualization."
"Sangfor HCI is a one-stop solution that enables you to store and centrally manage your VMs."
"The manageability feature is the most important aspect of the solution."
"Scalability is very good."
"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."
"Sangfor is user-friendly and simple to upgrade."
 

Cons

"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"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."
"The processing speed and cost should be improved."
"Sangfor’s hypervisor is not mature enough to handle all the flavors related to industrial needs."
"My company faced some issues with the product, as our virtual machines crashed, and we had to face some security issues."
"The error reporting needs to be improved."
"Support may be an issue for customers in some industries. For example, financial institutions may require 24/7 support."
"Stability is also an area for improvement here as well."
"There is a feature to upgrade multiple VMs simultaneously, but it crashes."
"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."
 

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."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"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."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is a reasonably priced product."
"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 pricing of Sangfor is very competitive."
"The solution has a good initial cost but a high renewal cost."
"The solution is very cheap."
"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."
"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 affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Educational Organization
8%
 

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 do you like most about OpenNebula?
The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.
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 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

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: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.