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Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs StarWind Virtual SAN 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.4
Sangfor HCI offers cost-effective management and better returns, but ROI varies based on usage and user experience.
Sentiment score
7.3
StarWind Virtual SAN offers cost-effective, high-availability solutions with quick ROI through reduced downtime, maintenance, and hardware expenses.
Regarding cost savings, for my client, it was about 20K USD for his specific use and as for extending capacity, StarWind made that process easy.
Specifically, we saved money over having to purchase a SAN from a big vendor, which has impacted my IT team's workload.
We don't sell a lot of redundant servers, so it's not a massive ROI, but the ability to rely on their technical support and the software's ease of setup allows us to reduce labor costs and go to market competitively.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Sangfor HCI customer service is largely praised for responsiveness but occasionally faces language barriers and documentation concerns.
Sentiment score
8.3
StarWind Virtual SAN’s support is praised for expertise, quick responses, and comprehensive assistance in technical and account-related issues.
They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly who will be able to connect, verify your setup, run its parameters, and see exactly what's working and what is not, and adjust it, and they really help you with that.
I would rate the customer support for StarWind Virtual SAN a ten, as they are responsive and competent.
When we set it up, they validate our settings and configurations to ensure we don't miss anything.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Sangfor HCI is praised for scalability and adaptability, though faces challenges with power consumption and component mismatches during updates.
Sentiment score
7.7
StarWind Virtual SAN excels in scalable storage, easy expansion, broad capabilities with premium licensing, and infrastructure growth compatibility.
I believe that scalability should be further improved, especially considering the possibility that environments may grow exponentially.
I have never needed to scale up or add additional nodes with StarWind Virtual SAN, but we have had to expand, and customer support has been excellent.
StarWind Virtual SAN's scalability is good, and I have had an easy experience adding more space to the system.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Sangfor HCI is highly stable with minimal downtime, though some report compatibility issues and occasional crashes, depending on implementation.
Sentiment score
8.5
StarWind Virtual SAN is stable, reliable, and handles workloads seamlessly, with issues often due to external factors, not the software itself.
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is very stable, and I have never had a single instability issue.
It has been working for five years and the customer is still happy with it.
In my experience, StarWind Virtual SAN is stable as I haven't encountered any downtime or issues.
 

Room For Improvement

Sangfor HCI needs improvements in performance, compatibility, security, interface, third-party integration, ERP compatibility, and support services.
StarWind Virtual SAN needs better automation, documentation, interface, and centralized management for enhanced user experience and efficiency.
A more intuitive interface or an improved dashboard for monitoring the cluster would also be helpful, as it would facilitate performance tracking and help identify potential issues before they affect services.
There have been cases where not understanding exactly what's failing on the Virtual SAN has been an issue.
Limited feedback in the management GUI is the main area where I would like to see StarWind Virtual SAN get better.
 

Setup Cost

Sangfor HCI offers cost-effective pricing and comprehensive features compared to VMware and Nutanix, with straightforward licensing.
StarWind Virtual SAN is praised for cost-effectiveness, flexible licensing, affordable pricing, and excellent support for small enterprises and nonprofits.
The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
I talked to the sales team, they gave me a quote with a perpetual license with the support and everything went through smoothly.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that it was easy to implement, license, and the cost was very good.
 

Valuable Features

Sangfor HCI offers scalability, data protection, and user-friendliness with robust features, enhancing security and simplifying management through its GUI.
StarWind Virtual SAN offers ease of installation, high availability, excellent support, and integration with existing hardware for seamless virtualization.
StarWind's storage virtualization and failover capabilities have made a difference for my clusters through uptime improvements, with zero downtime specific to server host maintenance or even maintenance of the StarWind software itself.
Thanks to its seamless integration with Proxmox, the implementation of high availability servers has drastically reduced downtime, which is crucial for our security-focused company.
StarWind Virtual SAN helps us keep customer satisfaction and provides the solutions we need without having to hire many IT specialists.
 

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 (17th)
StarWind Virtual SAN
Ranking in HCI
5th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
196
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 3.6%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual SAN is 2.0%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Vladimir Simion - PeerSpot reviewer
Achieving seamless cost-saving implementation with exceptional support
The best features that StarWind Virtual SAN offers include the price because comparing to other virtual SAN solutions, this one is the best, and it also has a great support team behind it. My experience with their support has been positive, as their guides regarding the integration are very useful. They have some awesome guides online that show you exactly how to configure the product, how to do the initial setup, and you can speak with them directly. They will be able to connect and verify your setup, run its parameters and see exactly what's working and what is not, and they really help you with that. StarWind Virtual SAN has positively impacted my organization and my customer through initial cost saving. They use this product in a dark site, so I'm not able to provide any additional details about this, but they were really glad about it, they're still using it, and they asked for extending the capacity for it and the support. They really want to use it and are enjoying using it.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about StarWind Virtual SAN?
It is easy to use and can monitor system synchronization and check Storage status. StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN) combines flash and disks of the cluster and forms a virtual shared storage “pool” acce...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for StarWind Virtual SAN?
I have had no setup costs and no challenges with setup and installation for StarWind Virtual SAN. The costs are acceptable and very competitive compared to other hardware-only HCI solutions.
What needs improvement with StarWind Virtual SAN?
There are times when the feedback in the event of an impending issue or an actual failure can be limited. The remediation steps are usually fairly simple to resolve the issue, but the management GU...
 

Also Known As

No data available
StarWind SAN & NAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
Baker Tilly BVI, CMS Internet, Board Harpeth Hall School
Find out what your peers are saying about Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual SAN and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.