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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

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

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (8th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.4%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)2.4%
OpenNebula1.5%
Other96.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Phani Venkata Sai BKD - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
Manages hybrid infrastructure seamlessly with flexible cluster scaling and comprehensive oversight
The most important aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it helps us manage the infrastructure as a hyperconverged infrastructure in HCI mode. If I have different physical servers, I can map them into a cluster and manage the storage together. It provides flexibility to make use of storage in a clustered format instead of using it in an individual storage endpoint. We have the flexibility to have Nutanix-based licensing based on the core model, instead of having a specific cost on the cluster. The costing on a core model gives customers flexibility to add multiple cores to a single physical host and adjust the infrastructure accordingly, and we can scale up the cluster as needed. While other cloud providers, AWS or Azure, are mostly into cloud-based solutions, and Azure has introduced Azure Stack HCI for managing on-premises infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides flexibility from day one. We can manage both on-premises and Azure solutions using a single pane of glass, eliminating the need to navigate different windows or screens. It provides a comprehensive view of the infrastructure and highlights specific areas through alerts, giving us good visibility of infrastructure conditions.
AB
CTO at Encha
A highly scalable solution that gives good value for money, but it does not have payment gateways
OpenNebula's templates are weak, and it could do something to make template creation a lot easier to use. The solution has a template for every single VM you create, which is not clever. You should be able to use a template for many different virtual machines. There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I do a lot of tasks via automation which I previously would have to hire people to do. The solution has helped me to eliminate a lot of low-skilled labor. I can put the money required for this job into other things."
"I am quite happy with the outcomes we have received using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) so far."
"Using NCM's built-in playbooks has freed up time for my IT team, we have saved more than 50% of the time, and we can create the experience of scale-out and elasticity that we have in the public cloud, provide this to on-premises solutions, and it saves lots of time in micromanagement of the VM profiles."
"One of the most valuable features is the hardware and how they have set it up to be pretty redundant. If something goes down, you can just swap it out and you're back online. If a drive or even a whole node goes down, it's pretty easy to get it back up and running."
"It's awesome for helping teams address their current automation needs while planning for future expansion."
"The fact that these are non-technical people — they're experts in their fields but they're definitely not technical — and they can just log in to the portal and select the resource that they believe they need, and manage it themselves, speaks to the ease of use. It shows them their live costs, etc., as they're spending. The fact that they can do that without any problems, or having to engage the IT teams, is a true testament to it. There's no need for any user training at all."
"The unified platform is also very user-friendly and clickable, similar to the Windows environment, making it easier for users to navigate and maintain."
"The customer service and technical support I've received have been phenomenal."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"OpenNebula has given us tremendous knowledge about cloud computing and about Cloud Management platforms, commonly known as CMP."
"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 live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"I'll definitely recommend OpenNebula because it's an open-source solution that's effortless to set up, and the total cost of ownership is low."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."
"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage, is easy to use, has a good UI, and is very scalable."
 

Cons

"Integration with the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Unified Storage or Nutanix cloud platform should be improved for better containerization."
"The one thing I wish it had was that it worked more closely and more cleanly with custom data inputs, which I know is a lot to ask."
"When comparing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) with other competitive portfolio products, there is some lack of capabilities."
"I would appreciate improvements in handling pre-check failures for beginners, particularly compatibility mismatches and issues with unsupported driver versions during upgrades or patches."
"In Brazil, Nutanix Cloud Manager is not cheap."
"The main area that could be improved with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the cost."
"We would like to be able to provision virtual machines at the computing level, as that would give us an added value against the competition."
"In terms of areas for improvement, I believe there is a need for redesigning some aspects on the storage level, as physical and virtual storage currently operate under different parameters in Nutanix."
"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."
"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."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"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."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nutanix changes its licensing models frequently, and it is difficult to figure out how and what is included in which package."
"The five-year term for NCM's license cost and support was around five million."
"You will see great value from it if you utilize the self-service part of Calm. The price you pay for it will only give you equal value if you use the self-service part to enable other teams. If you only use it as a deployment mechanism, I think it's rather expensive."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is cheaper than VMware and other products."
"I rate Cost Governance an eight out of 10 for pricing. There are different plans, so you can pay monthly or yearly. You can also sign a three-year contract. It's quite flexible. I can't give it a perfect 10, because customers always want a cheaper solution."
"Its cost is reasonable. The features are very good."
"Some people say that Nutanix is a bit more expensive. However, when we were looking at Nutanix versus Cisco and NetApp before deploying this solution, the prices were very similar. Being a government entity, we got a bit more of a discount on Nutanix so it was a bit cheaper. The time savings after the fact has been really worth it."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager's pricing is fair at the moment."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"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."
"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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise75
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?
For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...
Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?
When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...
Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?
Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...
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Also Known As

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central, Nutanix Software Subscription
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. OpenNebula and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
918,614 professionals have used our research since 2012.