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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 November 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 5.1%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 1.8%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenNebula5.1%
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure1.8%
Other93.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Bennett - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust with great CLI tools and UI
I've found OpenNebula upgrades to be more complex than those of some of the competitors and the support to be mediocre. I would also like to see more and better ancillary tools related to OpenNebula, for example, more robust tools for backups, user support, etc. The support knows their software stack reasonably well. However, OpenNebula depends on so many open-source projects that they lack expertise. As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today.
Zaid Farooqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhanced private cloud flexibility with superior native backup capabilities
Sangfor HCI provides the flexibility of building our own private cloud. It has also enhanced our infrastructure management by enabling single-window operations for managing all the HCI clusters, including applications, and offers excellent reporting and visualization capabilities. Furthermore, it supports our AI-driven projects, which involve machine learning and computer vision analytics.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"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."
"The ability to use it almost like a public cloud for an organization is a big asset, as it will create a value proposition and can control costs in a great way."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"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."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"It was not expensive at all."
"The extraordinary product quality, unmatched support services, and the third-generation HCI offering are some of the most valuable features of Sangfor HCI."
"The interface is very user-friendly."
"Their GUI interface is a bit easier than VMware's."
"I would rate the user-friendliness an eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Sangfor HCI is the native backup of their own VMs, which sets them apart from Nutanix and Dell's VxRail."
"Sangfor HCI is a one-stop solution that enables you to store and centrally manage your VMs."
"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."
 

Cons

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"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."
"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."
"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"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."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"Sangfor HCI could be improved with certification and the right ecosystem for ISVs like Oracle and SAP."
"It can have more compatibility and new features. I would also like to see better performance. Some of the other HCI solutions already provide the SSD and flash storage and much higher Intel processors. Sangfor HCI can improve on that."
"Its virtual machine tools can be improved. These tools should be enhanced for use in other applications and operating systems, such as Linux."
"Lacks network support."
"Sangfor HCI has room for improvement in terms of integration. So, the integration with Sangfor HCI is not as extensive as in Nutanix."
"I would want the product to include Continuous Data Protection (CDP) which can help to easily retrieve the data."
"The cost must be improved."
"I would like Sangfor to have a presence on some public cloud offerings, such as Azure or AWS, to build disaster recovery sites."
 

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."
"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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"I would say its pricing is between cheap and reasonable and would rate it as three out of five."
"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."
"The pricing of Sangfor is very competitive."
"Considering the capabilities provided, the product is expensive."
"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."
"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 solution is very cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software 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.
872,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.