CloudStack vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth comparison

Apache and VMware are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.0, while VMware is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0. Apache holds a 7.0% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth are competing products in cloud infrastructure and management. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth has an edge with its advanced analytics and cloud optimization capabilities appealing to large enterprises.

Features: CloudStack offers robust cloud orchestration, scalability, and broad API support. It integrates with multiple hypervisors, supporting a flexible cloud solution. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth provides real-time analytics, cost optimization, and detailed multi-cloud management reporting.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could enhance its analytics and reporting features and improve documentation for better user support. It may also benefit from expanding integration with third-party applications. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth could simplify its deployment process and further refine its user interface for ease of use, along with offering more flexible pricing options to cater to diverse businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack is straightforward to deploy with a simple architecture, supported by an active community. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth, while complex, is backed by detailed documentation and responsive customer service, assisting those with complicated multi-cloud setups.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack is cost-effective and provides quick ROI due to its open-source nature with lower initial costs. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth involves higher upfront expenses but offers long-term savings through sophisticated cost management and cloud optimization, presenting better ROI for those seeking advanced features.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

January 2025

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Categories and Ranking

IBM Turbonomic

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of IBM Turbonomic is 6.0%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CloudStack is 7.0%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth is 2.2%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

SubashSubbiah

Assistant Consultant at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

It can tell us where performance is lagging on the hardware layer, but the reporting on the application layer is lacking

The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer. I would like them to add some apps for physical device load resourcing and physical-to-virtual calculation. It gives excellent recommendations for the virtual layer but doesn't have the capabilities for physical-to-virtual analysis. Automated deployment is something else they could add. Some built-in automation features are helpful, but we aren't effectively using a few. We want a few more automated features, like autoscaling and automatic performance optimization testing would be useful.

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Wido Den Hollander

Community Ambassador at 42on

A solution that strikes a balance between user-friendliness, scalability, and stability

The market keeps changing, and so does technology. I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved. Regarding container technology, Kubernetes is something many people want to use and something which, as of now, many are using currently. However, there is still room for improvement in Kubernetes, particularly with networking functionality and network virtualization. When it comes to what needs to be improved in CloudStack, I would say that it should stay the way it is currently. It should continue being a stable product that people can rely on since many may be inclined to follow the latest trends and hype, which is not always good for a solution's stability. It is crucial to prioritize stability, which is a key factor that companies seek. In my view, the platform could benefit from adding more metrics. More metrics would offer more insights and data on the platform's performance, utilization, and usage. Overall, I believe that having more metrics available would be highly desirable.

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Steve Staten

Cloud Advisor Specialist at Converge Technology Solutions Corp

The solution has excellent scalability, great dashboards, and is stable

I use the solution daily, multiple hours a day to identify possible savings by analyzing the various displays as well as the policies for possible cost savings for our customers CloudHelth has helped our organization with trying to right-size virtual machines based on current utilization and…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With over 2500 ESX VMs, including 1500+ XenDesktop VDI desktops, hosted over two datacentres and 80+ vSphere hosts, firefighting has become something of the past."

"We have VM placement in Automated mode and currently have all other metrics in Recommend mode."

"I only deal with the infrastructure side, so I really couldn't speak to more than load balancing as the most valuable feature for me. It provides specific actions that prevent resource starvation. It always keeps things in perfect balance."

"The primary features we have focused on are reporting and optimization."

"The solution has a good optimization feature."

"It also brings up a list of machines and if something is under-provisioned and needs more compute power it will tell you, 'This server needs more compute power, and we suggest you raise it up to this level.' It will even automatically do it for you. In Azure, you don't have to actually go into the cloud provider to resize. You can just say, 'Apply these resizes,' and Turbonomic uses some back-end APIs to make the changes for you."

"Turbonomic has helped optimize cloud operations and reduced our cloud costs significantly. Overall, we are at about 40 percent savings, and we spend about three million a year just in Azure. It reduces the size of the VMs, putting them into the right template for usage. People don't realize that you don't have to future-proof a virtual machine in Azure. You just need to build it for today. As the business or service grows, you can scale up or out. About 90 percent of all the costs that we've reduced has been from sizing machines appropriately."

"I have the ability to automate things similar to the Orchestrator stuff. I do have the ability to have it do some balancing, and if it sees some different performance metrics that I've set not being met, it'll actually move some of my virtual machines from, let's say, one host to another. It is sort of an automation tool that helps me. Basically, I specify the metric, and if I get a certain host or something being over-utilized, it'll automatically move the virtual machines around for me. It basically has to snap into my vCenter and then it can make adjustments and move my virtual machines around. It also has some very nice reporting tools built around virtual machines. It tells you how much storage, memory, or CPU is being used monthly, and then it gives you a very nice way to be able to send out billing structure to your end users who use servers within your environment."

More IBM Turbonomic pros

"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."

"The most valuable feature from my point of view is access to environment via console through separate browser window."

"We like the virtualization capabilities."

"You can manage infrastructure with a few people, since product is monolithic. We had three engineers (storage, virtual, Linux admins) only. Also, CS supports different flavours of hypervisors."

"CloudStack’s private gateway networking feature is what enables us to offer utmost security and confidentially to our customers and partners, by enabling them to connect to their virtual data centers via dedicated, encrypted, private fiber lines that never touch the public internet space. Ease of setup and management are certainly important additional benefits for us on the engineering team."

"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."

"You can use a single API to get things done, rather than multiple APIs on multiple modules."

"The platform is very simple to scale-out."

More CloudStack pros

"We use dashboards quite heavily, but one of the features that have really stood out is some of the policies we've created to alert us of particular situations."

"The most valuable thing I have found is the cost saving recommendations"

"The pricing is rather competitive right now."

"The product is easy to use in terms of monitoring all the environments. It works for multiple clouds."

"The solution is useful for cloud transparency and visibility in reports and dashboards that I have generated, especially the pre-populated dashboards."

"The solution is good for cloud cost management."

"We are able to create an internal price of the product that we can then sell to clients. We get the cost plan at a good discount and then resell it with a mark up to our enterprise-level clients. This flexibility in pricing is one of the solution's best features."

"It's stable. For report presentation, it's been fast."

More VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement [with] upgrades. We have deployed the newer version, version 8 of Turbonomic. The problem is that there is no way to upgrade between major Turbonomic versions. You can upgrade minor versions without a problem, but when you go from version 6 to version 7, or version 7 to version 8, you basically have to deploy it new and let it start gathering data again. That is a problem because all of the data, all of the savings calculations that had been done on the old version, are gone. There's no way to keep track of your lifetime savings across versions."

"There are a few things that we did notice. It does kind of seem to run away from itself a little bit. It does seem to have a mind of its own sometimes. It goes out there and just kind of goes crazy. There needs to be something that kind of throttles things back a little bit. I have personally seen where we've been working on things, then pulled servers out of the VMware cluster and found that Turbonomic was still trying to ship resources to and from that node. So, there has to be some kind of throttling or ability for it to not be so buggy in that area. Because we've pulled nodes out of a cluster into maintenance mode, then brought it back up, and it tried to put workloads on that outside of a cluster. There may be something that is available for this, but it seems very kludgy to me."

"The way it handles updates needs to be improved."

"The planning and costing areas could be a little bit more detailed. When you have more than 2,000 machines, the reports don't work properly. They need to fix it so that the reports work when you use that many virtual machines."

"The old interface was not the clearest UI in some areas, and could be quite intimidating when first using the tool."

"It can be more agnostic in terms of the solutions that it provides. It can include some other cost-saving methods for the public cloud and SaaS applications as well."

"The deployment process is a little tricky. It wasn't hard for me because I have pretty in-depth knowledge of Kubernetes, and their software runs on Kubernetes. To deploy it or upgrade it, you have to be able to follow steps and use the Kubernetes command line, or you'll need someone to come in and do it for you."

"The automation area could be improved, and the generic reports are poor. We want more details in the analysis report from the application layer. The reports from the infrastructure layer are satisfactory, but Turbonomic won't provide much information if we dig down further than the application layer."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

"VPN P2S is cutting all connections except the CloudStack environment for the user when he is connected. I would like to have VPN like Cisco's AnyConnect."

"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."

"The main reason why we started looking for another solution: backups, replication, HA, and dependency on secondary storage. CS is quite sensitive for infrastructure, and any kind of network disruption between CS and secondary storage leads to VM hanging."

"My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack. It was quite painful for them. CloudStack could add some cost management tools to give me some control over the costs associated with the number of users of my services."

"Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

"Environment is sensitive, so, unlike VMware, you can not afford middle-skilled engineers, they will ruin everything."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"The Windows hosts do not get their hostnames from cloud-init."

More CloudStack cons

"They should provide information or tools to tune the cloud resources according to the environment size."

"It would be helpful to have a mobile version or a tablet version, especially for people who are outside of the office."

"The export features regarding CSV files and specifically around identifying savings plans have room for improvement, as well as the drill-down features for reservation utilization."

"CloudHealth needs to start building out Turbonomics-types of features that help the customers who are using CloudHealth really understand everything down to the server level, the virtual machine level."

"The solution doesn't offer the best functionality, unfortunately. Some features just simply aren't on offer. The solution needs to offer more product milestones."

"The Perspectives feature could be better."

"The performance and accuracy of Cloud Health need to be improved."

"If you are working with the OS you need help and other connectors to get more information."

More VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the current prices, but I like how the licensing is based on the number of instances instead of sockets, clusters, or cores. We have some VMs that are so heavy I can only fit four on one server. It's not cost-effective if we have to pay more for those. When I move around a VM SQL box with 30 cores and a half-terabyte of RAM, I'm not paying for an entire socket and cores where people assume you have at least 10 or 20 VMs on that socket for that pricing."

"Contact the Turbonomic sales team, explain your needs and what you're looking to monitor. They will get a pre-sales SE on the phone and together work up a very accurate quote."

"The pricing and licensing are fair. We purchase based on benchmark pricing, which we have been able to get. There are no surprise charges nor hidden fees."

"It was an annual buy-in. You basically purchase it based on your host type stuff. The buy-in was about 20K, and the annual maintenance is about $3,000 a year."

"IBM Turbonomic is an investment that we believe will deliver positive returns."

"In the last year, Turbonomic has reduced our cloud costs by $94,000."

"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."

"It is an endpoint type license, which is fine. It is not overly expensive."

More IBM Turbonomic pricing and cost advice

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"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."

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"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."

"The pricing is competitive and while other products are good they are considerably more expensive."

"The licensing fees depend on how big the company is. If you are a larger company then you have a better contract with a better price. The price is different for a small company."

"CloudHealth has a subscription-based model."

"I give the cost of the solution an eight out of ten."

"There could be flexibility in pricing for the product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

23%

Educational Organization

11%

University

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

39%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Turbonomic?

It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Turbonomic?

The implementation could be enhanced.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?

We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...

See all answers

What do you like most about CloudStack?

The initial implementation process was quite good.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?

CloudStack is an open-source product. I rate the pricing an eight out of ten. It provides good value.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

The product had some limitations. So, I decided to write my own stack from scratch. The product does not have an easi...

See all answers

What do you like most about CloudHealth?

The product is easy to use in terms of monitoring all the environments. It works for multiple clouds.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudHealth?

I give the cost of the solution an eight out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudHealth?

There could be flexibility in pricing for the product. They should provide information or tools to tune the cloud res...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Aria Operations vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 19% of the time

Azure Cost Management vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 13% of the time

VMware vSphere vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 9% of the time

Cisco Intersight vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 9% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs IBM Turbonomic

Compared 5% of the time

More IBM Turbonomic Competitors

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 69% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 10% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

Cloudify vs CloudStack

Compared 2% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

VMware Aria Operations vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 20% of the time

Cloudability vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 20% of the time

Azure Cost Management vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 19% of the time

Densify vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Compared 6% of the time

More VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

December 2024

Download IBM Turbonomic product report

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

January 2025

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

December 2024

Download VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth product report

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

Vmops, Cloud.com

Aria Cost powered by CloudHealth, CloudHealth

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IBM

Apache

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VMware

Interactive Demo

IBM

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Apache

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VMware

Overview

IBM Turbonomic is a performance and cost optimization platform for public, private, and hybrid clouds used by companies to assure application performance while eliminating inefficiencies by dynamically resourcing applications through automated actions.

IBM Turbonomic leverages AI to continuously analyze application resource consumption, deliver insights and dashboards, and make real-time adjustments. Common use cases include cloud cost optimization, cloud migration planning, data center modernization, FinOps acceleration, Kubernetes optimization, sustainable IT, and application resource management. By integrating with various cloud platforms, on-premise infrastructures, and containers, IBM Turbonomic provides a holistic view of the environment, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently.

The solution is designed to support complex IT environments, offering actionable insights and automated actions that help IT teams proactively manage application performance and infrastructure resources. Turbonomic customers report an average 33% reduction in cloud and infrastructure waste without impacting application performance, and return-on-investment of 471% over three years.

IBM Turbonomic manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers to ensure efficiency and financial impact awareness. It automates resource allocation, balances memory dynamically, and provides robust performance metrics. Users benefit from its ability to prevent resource starvation and offer cost-saving recommendations through continuous management. Executive Dashboards provide insights for cost justification and resource management, making IT operations simpler with AI-driven automation and actionable recommendations.

What are the most important features of IBM Turbonomic?

Automated Resource Allocation: Dynamically allocates resources for optimal performance.
Dynamic Memory Balancing: Adjusts memory allocation to prevent resource shortages.
Right-Sizing: Sizes VMs accurately for Azure and on-prem environments.
Single Platform Management: Manages resources across hybrid and on-premises data centers.
Proactive Performance Optimization: Continuously optimizes performance to prevent issues.
Kubernetes Support: Enhances container management with robust support.
Cost-Saving Recommendations: Provides actionable tips for reducing expenses.

What benefits should users look for in IBM Turbonomic reviews?

Cost Reduction: Helps minimize expenses through efficient resource management.
Performance Improvement: Enhances application performance by preventing resource starvation.
Detailed Insights: Offers comprehensive analytics to justify costs and resource utilization.
Simplified IT Processes: Uses AI automation to streamline operations.

IBM Turbonomic is implemented across multiple industries, including finance for optimizing peak payroll processing, IT for enhanced virtual server management, and healthcare for reliable performance monitoring. Organizations benefit from its robust automation, ensuring maximum efficiency and cost savings.

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

VMware Tanzu CloudHealth, formerly known as VMware Aria Cost Powered by CloudHealth, is a specialized cloud management platform tailored for Multi-Cloud Cost Optimization. It offers comprehensive visibility into cloud spending across various providers, enabling users to identify areas for optimization and make informed resource allocation decisions. With features like reserved instance management, resource rightsizing, and automated cost governance policies, it facilitates financial management for optimal cost efficiency. Beyond cost optimization, Tanzu CloudHealth enhances cloud operations through workload optimization and governance automation, catering to multi-cloud environments encompassing public, private, and hybrid clouds. Its primary focus remains on enabling organizations to effectively manage and reduce cloud expenditures while supporting operations across diverse cloud platforms.

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Pinterest, Dow Jones, RhythmOne, Ziff Davis, Acquia, Mentor Graphics, Lookout, Veracode, SwiftKey, Amtrak, Shi, Imgur, SumoLogic, NewsUK, Cloudera, Canvas

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

January 2025

Free Report: CloudStack vs. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth

Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. VMWare Tanzu CloudHealth and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.

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