Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure Reviews

Any type of infrastructure, whether it is a customer having a three-tier infrastructure, which we are migrating to converged or hyper-converged, or even customers planning to have their own hybrid cloud-based infrastructure, bringing a cloud foundation within their organization. There are multiple use cases for group companies. 

People are opting for Sangfor HCI so they can offer cloud-based services to their group companies from a single stack of HCI. Sangfor is present in the manufacturing industry, the hospital and healthcare industry, and the financial industry. 

The largest deployment in Pakistan is a 48-node cluster, which reduced the requirement from over 100 servers to 48.

Sangfor HCI has proven to be beneficial by consolidating infrastructure and reducing the footprint of data centers. This has led to significant cost savings in terms of power, cooling, and space. 

The simplified licensing model, which includes everything and provides enterprise-class features with free backup, offers a better return on investment. Additionally, it provides high-level support services that enhance business continuity and disaster recovery, making it a great value for the organization.

The extraordinary product quality, unmatched support services, and the third-generation HCI offering are some of the most valuable features of Sangfor HCI. It includes a simplified single license regime, providing enterprise-class licenses and built-in backup. 

The integration of their own firewall, Internet access management gateway, and security features within the HCI ensures robust security. The drag-and-drop layout for infrastructure setup, easy operation management, and comprehensive support services are also noteworthy. 

The scalability, with support for configurations such as a 48-node cluster, is another valuable aspect.

Initially, there were issues with wrong sizing and certain features being locked, although these have been fixed. The major drawback is its adoption in major tier-one sectors or banks, which is gradually improving. 

In its early days, Sangfor created hidden snapshots that led to storage penalties. This has been resolved. Another concern is the initial reluctance of tier-one banks to adopt a Chinese brand amidst large technology giants like VMware and Nutanix.

I have been reselling Sangfor HCI for over six years.

The stability has been excellent. I have not experienced any complaints or issues related to performance, bottlenecks, or latency.

Sangfor HCI is highly scalable. For example, one of our customers is using a forty-eight node cluster, which demonstrates its robustness. It scales easily by adding new nodes, and it is ready to go within minutes.

Their customer service and support are excellent. I would give them a rating of one hundred points.

Positive

Over my 22 years of experience, I have mostly worked with Dell products. Despite selling many storage boxes like PowerVault, Compellent, and PowerStore, I have not had much experience with other HCI solutions. 

Although I have worked with VMware and VXLAN, I did not sell other full-stack HCI solutions before Sangfor.

The initial setup is straightforward. You can deploy it as easily as any other hypervisor, and even a semi-technical person can complete it with phone support.

The return on investment is justifiable and significant. Consolidation saves on power, cooling, and space costs. The simplified licensing model, which includes everything needed, provides a better ROI. Using Sangfor HCI for firewall and Internet access management also reduces licensing costs and footprint, further boosting ROI.

Initially, Sangfor was very competitively priced compared to other leading HCI solutions. Now, while the pricing has begun to align more with the market, it remains competitive and offers good value compared to other options.

I'd rate the solution ten out of ten.

My clients use it on all their virtual machines. These virtual machines contain web applications, and that's Sangfor's main purpose. They have application portals to collect user data, such as registration forms.

Sangfor HCI has a really good GUI. It allows us to monitor the temperature of the server and many other things.

We just deployed Sangfor HCI for our client, and the one problem we faced with Sangfor is preventative maintenance. When we do preventative maintenance, we must upgrade the operating system and run some updates, such as APT updates, because most virtual machines are on Linux. We need to keep the OS updated from time to time. Normally, we do a PM twice a year. Every time we do it, we face challenges. We needed to run an update on the VMs one at a time, which was the biggest challenge we faced. We have over 200 virtual machines, and doing the updates one at a time is tough. There's a window for preventative maintenance with downtime we have to agree on with our client. Normally, the downtime lasts about a day or half a day, depending on the client's requirements, such as the kind of uptime they require. If it's an application that should be highly available all the time, the updates are a huge problem for us. We can't update one virtual machine at a time. We need to update all of them simultaneously. That is why I would rather choose something like Nutanix.

There is a feature to upgrade multiple VMs simultaneously, but it crashes.

I've worked with this solution for around six months.

Sangfor can crash. I rate stability a five out of ten.

When we upgrade virtual machines, there is a feature that allows us to upgrade multiple virtual virtual machines at a time. But the problem is it crashes. The whole server can go down.

Every time the organization needs to expand, we must expand vertically or horizontally, and Sangfor is not cut for it. When it comes to scaling up, Sangfor can't do the job. We use Sangfor for a fixed thing. Let's say we know the organization has only 200 users and won't expand. Then it's okay to use Sangfor. Sangfor is not scalable.

My clients are enterprise-level businesses.

Sangfor is easy to set up. We just have to put the ISO file in our thumb drives. Then, we go to our bare metal server and deploy the ISO. Generally, this is what we do, and it's pretty straightforward.

The deployment time depends on how scalable the organization is. If it's full or fewer than ten servers, we can deploy the solution in a day or a couple of hours if we have experienced engineers. We can deploy the solution with two people.

The solution is affordable.

For preventative maintenance, Sangfor needs us to update one machine at a time. We have over 200 VMs, so the updates affect availability. Because we need to update all the VMs simultaneously, I would prefer something like Nutanix.

From a customer's point of view, Sangfor's instructions are straightforward. If the user is computer literate, they will understand and do it. If instructions are given correctly by me, and users follow them properly, they can fix the problem.

I recommend that prospective users study their client's requirements. They should try to understand what the client wants whether they'll be scaling up in a short period, and users have to consider all those factors before they choose a product like this. Depending on the kind of organization it is and how big it is, if it's a small organization, users can go for Sangfor and save a lot of money. But for big organizations, users must spend some bucks for these hypervisors.

Since there's a lot of room for improvement, I rate Sangfor HCI a six out of ten.

We use the solution for the virtualization of servers.

It’s a new technology. The solution enables less space utilization. The solution provides a single management console. It is easy and manageable.

The cost must be improved.

I have been using the solution for six months.

The tool is stable.

Around 1500 people are using the product in our organization. We have configured multiple servers. Every department might have access to three servers. A dedicated team manages the solution.

The initial setup was easy.

The tool is very expensive. Not all customers would be able to afford the solution.

Different products like Cisco and H3C are capturing the market.

If we are using 50 servers and if these servers could be combined into five servers, we could save power, space, data center, capacity, and racks. I recommend the solution to others. Every vendor is different. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

Sangfor HCI is very easy to use. It has a single pane of management. When it comes to network configuration, you have to drag and drop things, so it's very GUI. It's not a conventional command line thing. Whenever customers see that, it's very appealing for them.
Moreover, whatever Sangfor offers, it is offered in a very simple package, unlike other manufacturers where, if you need a feature, it comes with the enterprise or enterprise plus. It is very simple for customers to understand whatever they offer because it comes in a single bundle. Sangfor also mentions if there is some feature you need to buy separately, and they mention it very clearly. Likewise, for other solutions, when customers buy them and check, they find that a certain feature is not there, and whenever they call them up here, they are told to buy it separately. However, it's not like that in Sangfor. This is also a powerful point where the customer builds trust with Sangfor's solutions.

When it comes to backup, the native tool they have in their offering is not up to the mark. They need some improvement with that. When it comes to firewalls, they don't have email spamming or a complete email spam filtering solution compared with other competitors. For example, Fortinet has a separate solution for that. And with HCI, they don't do very well regarding backup. They have a very basic thing.

I've been using the solution for about five years.

Sangfor HCI is very stable.

Technology is evolving fast. Let's say a customer has some servers with certain processors, and they have Sangfor HCI. When they want to add a new server, it normally comes with better performance, and it causes a mismatch. That is not the technology's fault because new technology is always coming up. But this is a problem when customers are charged on a pay-as-you-grow model, where they want to add more nodes into Sangfor HCI's cluster after three or four years.

My clients are small, medium, and enterprise. A small customer can do that if a customer wants to start with a two-node HCI cluster. This is something that others don't offer.

Talking about HCI, the support is very good.

Positive

Sangfor has recently increased their products' prices. It was better before, but it's on the higher side now.

I rate Sangfor HCI a nine out of ten. Nobody is 100%, and there is always room for improvement, so I never rate any product a ten out of ten.

If you're dealing with a huge workload running on a massive infrastructure, Sangfor HCI can reduce the physical hardware while maximizing resource utilization. 

Sangfor HCI is a one-stop solution that enables you to store and centrally manage your VMs. 

Support may be an issue for customers in some industries. For example, financial institutions may require 24/7 support. 

I have used Sangfor for two or three years. 

I rate Sangfor HCI 10 out of 10 for stability. 

I rate Sangfor HCI seven out of 10 for scalability. We have nearly 80 users, Most of our clients are small and medium-sized businesses. 

I rate Sangfor support eight out of 10. 

Positive

I rate Sangfor HCI eight out of 10 for ease of setup. Deployment is pretty straightforward and can be completed in four or five days. 

Sangfor HCI is reasonably priced, and there are no additional costs. 

I rate Sangfor HCI eight out of 10. You should give Sangfor HCI a chance. It has more advanced technology and is more user-friendly than other solutions. 

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.

We have had issues while integrating VMware with Sangfor HCI. The tool should be also faster in terms of customization.

I have been using the product for five to six years.

The solution is not stable for large enterprises.

The solution is scalable. It can take up to 64 loads.

The tool’s tech support offers us services without extra charges.

Positive

The tool’s setup is easy. You can run it on two nodes. The solution’s deployment is fast and takes around 25-30 minutes to complete. The tool has all the deployment instructions and it is easy for someone with virtualization experience.

The tool’s pricing is better when compared to VMware or Nutanix. The product’s licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would rate the solution an eight out of ten. The solution is good for medium enterprises like regular universities, small banks, and pharmaceutical companies. Sangfor HCI is the best cost-effective solution for universities that have three to four campuses with around 5,000=10,000 students. It is the best campus management system for them.

Sangfor is actually the HCI and we are dealing in that.

The solution is very reasonably priced. It was not expensive at all.

The support is very helpful.

Its initial setup is very simple. 

It is a very stable product. It's reliable. 

It's scalable. 

The solution offers good compatibility with other products. 

The migration process could be easier. 

We started selling Sangfor three months ago.

The stability is very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

While it's stable, it depends on the implementation. It must be implemented properly. 

It's scalable. We have ten to 15 clients that are on the solution or in process of coming onto the solution. 

Technical support is great. We are very happy with the level of service.

We're also aware of HP, however, their solution is not as good and neither is their support. 

The initial setup was simple and straightforward.  

We have a tech that can handle all aspects of the solution, including implementation. He's been doing it for the last three or four years and understands it quite well. 

Sangfor is cheap and reasonably priced. 

Sangfor has one license and doesn't require any third-party licenses.

The licensing is renewed yearly.

We've implemented it for a couple of companies. There are maybe ten to 15 companies we have with orders still pending. 

I'd recommend the solution to others. It's very cheap and works very well. It's a great solution for companies in Pakistan. 

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. 

We are primarily using this product to store our applications. We are using to host data for us to perform analytics on.

The interface is typical for this type of product. I would rate the user-friendliness an eight out of ten.

Sangfor does not support a SAS configuration, which is something that we would like.

I would like to see support for Kubernetes and Docker.

We have been dealing with Sangfor for less than eight months.

I think that there are issues with scalability because Sangfor consumes a high amount of power. In order to scale using Sangfor, I would also have to scale up the amount of power in my data center.

I am currently not getting enough technical support because of the COVID-19 pandemic. I am looking for direct support, but I don't have it.

The price of Sangfor is cheaper than other competing products.

I am currently looking to replace this solution with something from perhaps Nutanix or Dell. I am still looking for the best solution to use in our next project.

Overall, I think that this is an average product. I am not satisfied with it and do not recommend that others use it.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.