Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs StarWind Virtual SAN comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and StarWind Virtual SAN based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual SAN Report (Updated: September 2023).
745,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"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.""Sangfor HCI is a one-stop solution that enables you to store and centrally manage your VMs.""The product provides a single management console for managing everything.""Sangfor HCI has a bundle of security features that are easy to monitor on the HCI dashboard.""The most valuable feature is the three nodes and the free hypervisor.""The manageability feature is the most important aspect of the solution.""It was not expensive at all.""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."

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"They offer top-tier support.""The price was right.""Starwind made it easy to deploy fully redundant, highly available storage at a low cost.""Starwind support is excellent. They are very fast and have very good knowledge of Starwind and Hyper-V Cluster software.""StarWind Virtual SAN can improve an organization's storage infrastructure by providing high availability, scalability, cost-effectiveness, performance, and ease of use.""This software lets us maintain storage redundancy across both of our Hyper-V hosts, so if one goes down the environment fails over to the other and we have minimal to no downtime.""Given the high availability of the server cluster, we were able to reduce separate physical servers onto one hyper-converged cluster - this saved in OPEX and CAPEX costs immediately, along with licensing costs of the Windows Server licenses.""This product now allows us to migrate virtual machines between nodes as if we had a dedicated $100,000 SAN in the mix without the additional cost and management of the SAN."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Pros →

Cons
"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.""I would want the product to include Continuous Data Protection (CDP) which can help to easily retrieve the data.""We have had issues while integrating VMware with Sangfor HCI. The tool should be also faster in terms of customization.""There is a feature to upgrade multiple VMs simultaneously, but it crashes.""My company faced some issues with the product, as our virtual machines crashed, and we had to face some security issues.""Sangfor HCI has room for improvement in terms of integration. So, the integration with Sangfor HCI is not as extensive as in Nutanix.""Sangfor could improve its built-in CAP system. Right now, we need to use an external tool for CAP."

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"Feature-wise we are only waiting for the release of a "planned disaster" feature that would allow us to patch a hypervisor node without having to take the full storage offline.""Ongoing improvements in read and write performance would help meet increasingly demanding workloads.""Geolocation could be better, for example, for site mirroring for DR purposes.""Security on the ISCSI protocol could be improved by adding features like OS-type control access, especially for the data center environment.""Perhaps more reporting features on the utilization, usage, and performance of the configured high-availability images and underlying physical disks would be helpful.""When you will cease your contract with StarWind (for support) your product won't be updated and that is a big selling point, especially for us, as we have loads of products from StarWind.""Other vendors such as VMware vSAN have a bigger community of users, so it is easier to find more pre-sale or post-sale information from users.""While we had little to no issues in setting up StarWind and received excellent support from the StarWind technicians, we would have appreciated a clearer guideline for a setup with the free version of StarWind Management Console or, in other words - for the setup with the PowerShell."

More StarWind Virtual SAN Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "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."
  • "I would say its pricing is between cheap and reasonable and would rate it as three out of five."
  • "The solution has a good initial cost but a high renewal cost."
  • "The solution is very cheap."
  • "The tool’s pricing is better when compared to VMware or Nutanix. The product’s licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • "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 product's pricing is less expensive and competitive than other alternatives. I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
  • "From a business perspective, we use Sangfor HCI due to its competitive pricing compared to other competitors such as Nutanix."
  • More Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "For two nodes, it cost us $10,000, and we spend $2,000 a year on support."
  • "If you are looking at a traditional SAN for a small cluster, give StarWind vSAN because you will save thousands without any compromise."
  • More StarWind Virtual SAN Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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.
    Top Answer:Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is a reasonably priced product.
    Top Answer:My company faced some issues with the product, as our virtual machines crashed, and we had to face some security issues. Thanks to the remote help provided by the technical engineers from Sangfor, who… more »
    Top Answer:We like their high availability. It reduces the downtime for our entire organization's environment.
    Top Answer:The Premium ProActive service price is a little high, yet worth the price.
    Top Answer:It is hard to find adequate technical documentation on their support website. However, they have a fantastic technical forum and Premium ProActive email support services. We can find a lot of… more »
    Ranking
    9th
    out of 39 in HCI
    Views
    6,197
    Comparisons
    4,325
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    439
    Rating
    8.4
    4th
    out of 39 in HCI
    Views
    6,035
    Comparisons
    1,928
    Reviews
    99
    Average Words per Review
    599
    Rating
    9.6
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    StarWind SAN & NAS
    Learn More
    Overview

    Sangfor HCI is an IT infrastructure platform built on converged architecture. It integrates server virtualization, distributed storage, and networking. Sangfor HCI provides a unified management platform that converges compute, storage, networking, and security on a single software stack. This approach delivers a simplified architecture, ease of use, and reliability for business-critical applications.

    Hyperconverged infrastructure is a unified system of data storage. HCI combines storage, computing, networking, and management, unlike traditional storage solutions. HCI systems enable you to build your private cloud, expand to a public cloud, or have your own true hybrid cloud. Sangfor HCI presents two product models: The Sangfor HCI server appliance is a hardware version that enables easy deployment. Sangfor HCI software is the digital version combined with a third-party server that enables flexible deployment.

    Sangfor HCI supports Windows systems on desktop and is web-based. Its range of use cases cover a wide spectrum of industries, from healthcare to manufacturing. It is applicable for mid- and large-sized businesses. The software is customizable. Users can customize the logo and contact information in the user interface.

    Benefits and Features

    • Stability: Sangfor HCI delivers high reliability and availability with 0 RPO and 99.99% availability. The infrastructure is fully redundant to ensure business continuity. This means no data is lost in the event of hardware failure.
    • Simplified infrastructure: The solution supports visual management, making it easier to use. The single platform provides a central control with access to resources.
    • High performance: One unit of HCI can support up to 100,000 IOPS. The solution supports data striping, data locality, SSD caching and AI-based DB optimization. It also supports linear expansion without bottlenecks.
    • Hyper-converged infrastructure that enables working with different scenarios. For instance, cloud transformation and data center consolidation. It is fully converged, which means it provides unified management, full resource visualization, and orchestration with SCP. The standardized HCI unit consolidates hardware appliances, a storage network, IP network, and server into a single unit.
    • Integration: Sangfor HCI offers deep integration with NFV components. Users can deploy complex SDN networks.
    • Pay-as-you-grow model: The pay-per-use model reduces operational expenses and total cost of ownership.

    Use Cases

    Sangfor HCI can be applied tin various scenarios:

    • Enterprise applications: Users can benefit from the reliability and performance of Sangfor HCI for business-critical processes. The system is optimized for enterprise applications to enhance their performance and stability.
    • Datacenter consolidation: The unified and software-defined technology simplifies the operational management and the architecture of data centers.
    • Cloud transformation: You can add a cloud management platform, transforming Sangfor HCI into a complete cloud computing solution. You can then run your cloud workloads and benefit from the automation features of Sangfor HCI.
    • Data protection and recovery: Sangfor HCI offers multiple data protection features, such as continuous data protection (CDP), which ensure the integrity of sensitive and user data. You can protect backup snapshots and take backups. It records virtual machine IO logs at frequent intervals. It offers disaster recovery capabilities that ensure business continuity.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Gabriele P., Senior Software and Systems Engineer at SAMU.IT, says "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."

    A Junior Solutions Engineer at a tech services company adds that "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."




    StarWind Virtual SAN provides high availability and fault tolerance for virtualized environments without the need for dedicated SAN hardware. It allows for real-time replication between servers, shared storage for Hyper-V clusters, and enables vMotion and High Availability features for VMware vSphere. The solution reduces costs and leverages existing hardware while providing a scalable and reliable infrastructure. Valuable features include ease of use, scalability, top-tier support, hardware agnosticism, and the ability to use off-the-shelf standard servers to increase storage space. StarWind VSAN has helped organizations improve performance, data availability, and data security while reducing downtime and providing cost-saving storage options.

    Offer
    Learn more about Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure
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    Sample Customers
    TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
    Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company23%
    Comms Service Provider23%
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Construction Company8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Government8%
    Insurance Company7%
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company10%
    Construction Company9%
    Educational Organization8%
    Computer Software Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company17%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Government9%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business70%
    Midsize Enterprise26%
    Large Enterprise4%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business29%
    Midsize Enterprise18%
    Large Enterprise53%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business63%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise58%
    Buyer's Guide
    Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual SAN
    September 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: September 2023.
    745,775 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is ranked 9th in HCI with 22 reviews while StarWind Virtual SAN is ranked 4th in HCI with 98 reviews. Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is rated 8.4, while StarWind Virtual SAN is rated 9.6. The top reviewer of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure writes "Low cost, great GUI, and helpful support". On the other hand, the top reviewer of StarWind Virtual SAN writes "Easy to set up and maintain with good performance capabilities". Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is most compared with VMware vSAN, VxRail, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), HPE SimpliVity and Dell vSAN Ready Nodes, whereas StarWind Virtual SAN is most compared with VMware vSAN, Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct, Red Hat Ceph Storage, StorMagic SvSAN and Red Hat Gluster Storage. See our Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual SAN report.

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    We monitor all HCI reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.