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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
8th
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
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
HCI (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 4.4%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 1.6%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenNebula4.4%
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure1.6%
Other94.0%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Bennett - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, DevOps System Engineering team at MX
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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."
"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."
"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."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"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."
"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."
"It is quite easy to deploy."
"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."
"Their GUI interface is a bit easier than VMware's."
"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."
"Unlike VMware, Sangfor offers a straightforward solution with rich features and an easy-to-use interface. Its ease of management and strong integration capabilities make it a compelling choice."
"It is a smart solution for virtualization"
"The extraordinary product quality, unmatched support services, and the third-generation HCI offering are some of the most valuable features of Sangfor HCI."
"Sangfor HCI has a really good GUI. It allows us to monitor the temperature of the server and many other things."
"The solution provides a single management console."
 

Cons

"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."
"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"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 protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"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 migration process could be easier."
"The solution could improve by including backup capabilities."
"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."
"The documentation and support from the community are not as good or as mature as VMware or Hyper-V."
"We have had issues while integrating VMware with Sangfor HCI. The tool should be also faster in terms of customization."
"Stability is also an area for improvement here as well."
"As far as I know, no hyper-convergence solution includes security, so you have to buy security from another brand. For example, you buy SimpliVity or Nutanix. They don't really have a security solution inside the product. It would be good if there is a security solution inside this solution so that it is not only for the virtualization of CPU, RAM, disk, and network but also for security."
"There is a feature to upgrade multiple VMs simultaneously, but it crashes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"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."
"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."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"From a business perspective, we use Sangfor HCI due to its competitive pricing compared to other competitors such as Nutanix."
"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 pricing of Sangfor is very competitive."
"Considering the capabilities provided, the product is expensive."
"The product's pricing is less expensive and competitive than other alternatives. I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"I would say its pricing is between cheap and reasonable and would rate it as three out of five."
"Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is a reasonably priced product."
"The solution has a good initial cost but a high renewal cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

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 is your primary use case for OpenNebula?
Previously, we were using VMware, but recently, we've started using OpenNebula for cloud management. As a big cloud provider, it helps give customers increased control over their clusters. We use L...
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...
 

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: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.