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Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library 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

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converg...
Ranking in HCI
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Management (29th)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Ranking in HCI
26th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 3.7%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual Tape Library is 1.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure3.7%
StarWind Virtual Tape Library1.7%
Other94.6%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1414572 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Director at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
Flexible and reliable with helpful support
I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster. Who would not like things to be faster? It would be nice if StarWind could come up with a best practice document for configuration. I had to do some playing around in my environment with test runs to get the configuration that really allowed for the maximum amount of throughput that I was going to get with the software. Once I had figured out what worked best, the solution was rather fast for backing up 30+ TB of data

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their GUI interface is a bit easier than VMware's."
"I am impressed with the product's firewall and virtualization."
"The initial setup isn't hard."
"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 interface is very user-friendly."
"Sangfor is user-friendly and simple to upgrade."
"It was not expensive at all."
"You can get almost all the features of the tool at a low cost. The tool also has built-in backup mechanisms. It also has a physical firewall for internet management which other competitors lack."
"It is a stable solution."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"I like the fact that we can simultaneously upload the virtual tapes to different cloud providers, and the settings can be adjusted to speed up the upload times even further."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"We simply replicate our backups from Veeam to the virtual tape library that StarWind implements, while magically transporting those to B2 for our offsite backup requirements."
"The support that they provide is excellent, with 24 hours a day seven days a week support, and all the engineers and the support staff know the solution very well."
 

Cons

"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."
"As far as I know, no hyper-convergence solution includes security, so you have to buy security from another brand."
"Sangfor HCI could be improved with certification and the right ecosystem for ISVs like Oracle and SAP."
"Overall, I think that this is an average product. I am not satisfied with it and do not recommend that others use it."
"Support may be an issue for customers in some industries. For example, financial institutions may require 24/7 support."
"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."
"I would like Sangfor to have a presence on some public cloud offerings, such as Azure or AWS, to build disaster recovery sites."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Sangfor is cheaper than other competing products."
"The pricing of Sangfor is very competitive."
"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."
"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 tool’s pricing is better when compared to VMware or Nutanix. The product’s licensing is on a yearly basis."
"I would say its pricing is between cheap and reasonable and would rate it as three out of five."
"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 pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Legal Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Find out what your peers are saying about Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,877 professionals have used our research since 2012.