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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 10, 2025

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
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
8th
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 January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 3.9%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 3.7%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)3.9%
OpenNebula3.7%
Other92.4%
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

"There is less management for the team than before, so there is a complete gain of time. It freed up our staff's time for other work. This is something that is important for our company."
"Nutanix Prism Pro and Nutanix AOS have greatly improved our organization by providing a reliable and simple solution that requires little to no maintenance in order to successfully offer a stable service to our clientele, as opposed to the competitors."
"The most valuable feature for me is being able to find a machine, regardless of which cluster it's located in, as quickly as possible, and being able to work on it. A lot of times we are called upon to troubleshoot an issue. That usually means there's a problem that needs quick attention. Being able to find machines, ascertain their status, and do so in a timely manner, are processes that are very critical to our business needs."
"The best part of it is that when you use the product, there's no secret proprietary magic that you experience as a user. The real genius is under the covers, so it makes the user experience very straightforward and easy. It's a wonderful solution to teach partners about. The ease of use is something a lot of suppliers talk about, but Nutanix does it better than anyone else."
"What I appreciate about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it gives us a good, simple view that really plays effectively when we're trying to talk to other teams to show them their VM has too many resources."
"The use case for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that we can share data to the cloud and there is no need to sync manually; it automatically runs the job for the data sync from the on-premises to the cloud."
"The administration components are the most useful since, with them, we have been able to win and perform preventive measures in the administration of the hyper-converged Nutanix infrastructure."
"The solution is very stable...Customer support is very good."
"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"I also like the ability to build custom functions. I can define a function where I have two types of views and configure the dependencies. The virtual data centers concept allows me to define users. If a user wants to join certain kinds of machines, the host and the other user won't see them. It gives me the flexibility to define multiple views and data centers in one place."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
 

Cons

"If they integrated more with GPT, that would be ideal."
"Our sister company currently uses an outdated database technology, Sybase, which presents challenges in migrating to a newer database. Despite our efforts to encourage them to move to a different database, the company's 25 years of code and data basic make it difficult to do so. We are open to any level of support or guidance that can help us manage the Sybase database, even if it's not a fully managed solution. Direction on how to scale, improve, and optimize tables and queries within Sybase would be greatly appreciated."
"Nutanix is one of two stacks where you can run everything you like. It would be nice if you could run it without the Nutanix appliance. Some clients don't use Nutanix engineering server hardware, so it would be helpful to run the Nutanix software for demos and tests."
"When we tried to migrate an application from the old cluster, we couldn't run it on Nutanix’s native hypervisor."
"For Nutanix, there are options to go with different types of hardware vendors for using the AOS operating system. We can deploy it on Dell, Lenovo, or IBM servers. If Nutanix had its own server, it would be good."
"The stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The pricing of the solution is an area of concern that needs improvement."
"The solution should introduce more automation features."
"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
"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."
"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."
"An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula."
"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"They should add more features like object storage."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Don't unlicense your Prism licensing. Pro is the strict minimum for real infrastructure. Go with at least Pro and not with the starter. Ultimate was the best choice for me."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"The solution’s pricing is not outrageous like other products."
"Its acquisition and support cost is nominal. It is not too high, and it is not too low. It is within the budget, and there are no issues on that part."
"The product is expensive...When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless."
"I was not involved in purchasing Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), so I have no information on its pricing or cost. I do feel that it's fair that Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a product sold as one but with multiple tiers, though you need to make sure it isn't oversold in terms of client needs."
"The pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager is an expensive solution."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"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."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Marketing Services Firm
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise65
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 do you like most about OpenNebula?
The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.
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...
 

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: December 2025.
880,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.