No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula comparison

 

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
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
15th
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 May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.6%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)2.6%
OpenNebula1.9%
Other95.5%
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.
FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
Products Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Reliable, simple to manage, and offers great technical support
The support of VXLAN fits with our network management. Thanks to this we can propose mixed solutions using virtual resources on OpenNebula and bare metal servers hosted in our facilities linked to each other on the sale network. This use case is very useful when some applications need bare metal power (Kubernetes workers, huge databases, AI models computations, et cetera). The cluster management is very useful for splitting our different clusters (mutual vs dedicated). We can manage deployments and capacity planning without pain. The API is also really simple and it helped us to develop the Terraform provider to manage OpenNebula like any other cloud infrastructure.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to use the APIs and talk to it through APIs is the most beneficial feature for us because we have to do automation."
"The most valuable features are the compliance features and the chargebacks."
"It has improved my life and the way the company is running."
"The arrival of Nutanix to the organization was a quality leap from the sky to the moon, we migrated the critical production services such as databases, applications and other servers that should have better performance, and more advanced management from Prism which gives us a way to monitor everything that happens in the cluster."
"Prism Pro has given us a central administration of our entire virtual environment."
"The ability to do Layer 2 stretching across data centers is valuable. The migration of VMs from one location to the other is also valuable."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides automation capability in multi-cloud management, automation, and security with different use cases depending on the organization."
"The customer service and technical support I've received have been phenomenal."
"The ability to use it almost like a public cloud for an organization is a big asset, as it will create a value proposition and can control costs in a great way."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
"OpenNebula freed my customer from doing the maintenance operations of the servers because now that can be done by his clients."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"For our use case, we found the solution to be the best fit when dealing with infrastructure services."
"What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management."
 

Cons

"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."
"Nutanix, as of today, they do not have many of the features that VMware hypervisor provides, such as the memory layer."
"There are some load-balancing features that are currently missing in the flow network security and could potentially be added in the future."
"Even though it's a lot easier, it could be a bit slicker for the end-users."
"I would like to see integrated analytics in the dashboard that accurately displays graphics, such as CPU usage, the overall health of the infrastructure, and specific virtual machines that we refer to frequently."
"I rate this area a seven because this technology is new to the vendor as well, so for them, it takes time to reach out to developers and check everything in their test environment before providing a solution."
"I would like to see a P2V feature like Move or Xtract."
"Currently, users can only attach a new ISO to their VMs for a partial reinstall, but a full reinstall feature is unfortunately unavailable."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
"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 front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"I would like to see OpenNebula add more integration with REST API. XML-RPC API is good, but it becomes a pain to form a resting output."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nutanix is really smart to understand that the most important fact is the value to the customer, not the price tag. While you do get some sticker shock sometimes, as soon as you show this and you prove the value, all of a sudden, it looks exceptionally affordable."
"The pricing was very good. We were very pleased with what we were offered by our account manager. Because of that, we expanded Nutanix Cloud Manager, and we hope to expand even more. Right now, we are in Azure, and as we build up more and more within the NCM platform, we hope to expand into AWS as well."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price is probably right where it should be. It's not vastly expensive, and it's not too cheap. We get very good value for the price with what we're being offered with it."
"Nutanix changes its licensing models frequently, and it is difficult to figure out how and what is included in which package."
"It is an expensive solution, but one has to make the trade-off between what you want to achieve and what you are willing to pay."
"Licensing is always a hot topic. We haven't had any challenges around licensing and costs. Everything was within budget and our expectations. It's a hot topic because renewals and licensing costs are high. Managing costs is always a concern, as we're always being asked to do more with less."
"In my opinion, the pricing is reasonable."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"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."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula 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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Construction Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business28
Midsize Enterprise26
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...
What needs improvement with OpenNebula?
The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...
What is your primary use case for OpenNebula?
Previously, we were using VMware, but recently, we've started using OpenNebula for cloud management. As a big cloud provider, it helps give customers increased control over their clusters. We use L...
What advice do you have for others considering OpenNebula?
I recommend it, especially if you need a management interface for a small to medium private cloud. I would rate OpenNebula an eight out of ten.
 

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: April 2026.
894,830 professionals have used our research since 2012.