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Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs StarWind Virtual Tape Library 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:
 

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 (29th)
StarWind Virtual Tape Library
Ranking in HCI
26th
Average Rating
10.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Software Defined Storage (SDS) (22nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the HCI category, the mindshare of Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is 3.7%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of StarWind Virtual Tape Library is 1.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
HCI Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure3.7%
StarWind Virtual Tape Library1.7%
Other94.6%
HCI
 

Featured Reviews

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.
reviewer1414572 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Director at University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics
Flexible and reliable with helpful support
I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster. Who would not like things to be faster? It would be nice if StarWind could come up with a best practice document for configuration. I had to do some playing around in my environment with test runs to get the configuration that really allowed for the maximum amount of throughput that I was going to get with the software. Once I had figured out what worked best, the solution was rather fast for backing up 30+ TB of data

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Sangfor HCI was attractive to us because of the simplicity of its licensing and lack of hidden costs compared to its competitors."
"Sangfor HCI is a one-stop solution that enables you to store and centrally manage your VMs."
"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."
"Scalability is very good."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's firewall and virtualization."
"It was not expensive at all."
"The Continuous Data Protection (CDP) feature is one of the good features."
"The support that they provide is excellent, with 24 hours a day seven days a week support, and all the engineers and the support staff know the solution very well."
"The most valuable feature of the StarWind Virtual Tape Library is the archiving to the AWS cloud."
"The solution made our backups way more reliable."
"StarWind VTL allowed us to back up to virtual tape that was created within Veeam and upload the tape to the cloud."
"We simply replicate our backups from Veeam to the virtual tape library that StarWind implements, while magically transporting those to B2 for our offsite backup requirements."
"I like the fact that we can simultaneously upload the virtual tapes to different cloud providers, and the settings can be adjusted to speed up the upload times even further."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"It is a stable solution."
 

Cons

"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."
"We have had issues while integrating VMware with Sangfor HCI. The tool should be also faster in terms of customization."
"The cost must be improved."
"The documentation and support from the community are not as good or as mature as VMware or Hyper-V."
"I would want the product to include Continuous Data Protection (CDP) which can help to easily retrieve the data."
"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."
"The initialization is not fully automated and has room for improvement."
"The migration process could be easier."
"The initial installation can be complex and should be simplified."
"I am not sure if this is a limitation of my physical hardware or if it is the software itself. However, I would like the throughput to be faster."
"The main thing that I felt could be improved was having an estimated time of completion for the virtual tape uploads to the cloud."
"The solution's training process and online documentation could be more thorough."
"In practice, it is somewhat technical to deploy and manage, but overall it gets the job done."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a business perspective, we use Sangfor HCI due to its competitive pricing compared to other competitors such as Nutanix."
"Considering the capabilities provided, the product is expensive."
"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 price of Sangfor is cheaper than other competing products."
"The solution has a good initial cost but a high renewal cost."
"The tool’s pricing is better when compared to VMware or Nutanix. The product’s licensing is on a yearly basis."
"The product's pricing is less expensive and competitive than other alternatives. I would rate the product's pricing an eight out of ten."
"Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure is a reasonably priced product."
"If you currently have Veeam there is no other solution that is as easy and affordable as StarWind."
"The initial setup and deployment are also covered in the purchase at no additional cost."
"The pricing of the solution could be more flexible to meet the needs of smaller to mid-market size companies."
"The solution is cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Construction Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Construction Company
11%
Legal Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

TOSHIBA TEC Singapore, J&T Express Indonesia, Crowne Plaza Vietnam, Hermina Hospital Indonesia
Volvo, Sony, Samsung, Hitachi
Find out what your peers are saying about Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs. StarWind Virtual Tape Library and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.