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CloudStack 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

CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converg...
Ranking in Cloud Management
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
HCI (12th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.1%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 1.4%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CloudStack2.1%
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure1.4%
Other96.5%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys
Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls
I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.
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

"All our development is done on this environment because we deploy around 3,000 instances every day."
"I can recommend CloudStack because there are a lot of large companies using it in production for critical mission systems, and everything else."
"CloudStack provides an environment that is very simple to use, with built-in APIs and a web interface that supports almost all features of AWS and Azure."
"We increased our IaaS sales by 30% and our deploy time of VM/instances has been reduced from one day to one minute."
"When compared to OpenStack, CloudStack is also an open-source platform that is continuously improving its features and capabilities with each new version release. Having worked with CloudStack 4.7, 4.14, and most recently, 4.17, I have noticed significant enhancements in the platform's features and customer experience, such as the introduction of a new user interface in the latest release. Notably, the latest versions have made major improvements to VM live migrations, making them more efficient and effective."
"It gives us the ability to manage and segregate a guest network with openvSwitch and VLAN IDs."
"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."
"We chose CloudStack because we saw it with a better TCO ratio, balancing innovation, and starting the DevOps culture with a low operational overhead."
"It is a smart solution for virtualization"
"I find the simplicity of Sangfor very valuable, it is easy to configure and user-friendly, and the overall user experience as well as the usability of Sangfor is outstanding."
"Sangfor has many solutions, and you can easily manage their machine servers with just one management. They're always striving for greatness, and they continuously update their products. For example, they have now built endpoint security within the firewall. They are continuously improving not only the security but also all other products."
"It's a great solution for companies in Pakistan."
"The initial setup isn't hard."
"We find the topology feature of Sangfor HCI particularly valuable."
"The manageability feature is the most important aspect of the solution."
"The most valuable feature is the three nodes and the free hypervisor."
 

Cons

"The product has evolved a lot since the first versions in which it was very complicated to do version updates, and had various problems."
"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."
"For time consuming operations like storage migrations, volume Snapshot restore and the like, we faced issues like MySQL operations timing out and status update failures. Those areas needs improvement."
"The installation of CloudStack can be quite challenging because you need a good understanding of the product before starting."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."
"From time to time there is a bug in calculating limits of resources for customer domain/account. Maybe it’s a problem with 4.9.2."
"The absence of the feature, deploy an instance from a snapshot, is the weak point of the platform. It is a feature that everyone needs nowadays."
"Overall, I think that this is an average product. I am not satisfied with it and do not recommend that others use it."
"The error reporting needs to be improved."
"Sangfor does not support a SAS configuration, which is something that we would like."
"The interface could be a little bit better."
"The initialization is not fully automated and has room for improvement."
"The processing speed and cost should be improved."
"Lacks network support."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."
"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."
"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"The price of Sangfor is cheaper than other competing products."
"It is in the middle range as compared to other hyper-converged infrastructure solutions. There is a three-year warranty on the hardware. The license also includes other features. Sangfor has included Continuous Data Protection (CDP) and a built-in firewall with the license. Other top brands, such as VxRail and VMware, require a separate license for such features."
"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 has a good initial cost but a high renewal cost."
"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 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."
"From a business perspective, we use Sangfor HCI due to its competitive pricing compared to other competitors such as Nutanix."
"The pricing of Sangfor is very competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?
CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...
What is your primary use case for CloudStack?
My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...
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...
 

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.