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) (5th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
17th
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 June 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.5%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.7%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)2.5%
OpenNebula1.7%
Other95.8%
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

"It saves time since it is a single pane of glass. Our efficiency has increased because of that. We don't have to log into multiple servers when we do upgrades. We can do it on one console. This saves us eight to 10 hours a month. Upgrade activity on servers, which was offloaded to the Nutanix platform, used to take hours on our Legacy platform."
"Nutanix is a company that cares about your experience and your thoughts and improving things."
"The biggest lesson I've learned using this solution is how easy it is to empower users to achieve what they need to achieve."
"Its use is fantastic and managed to improve the response times of our IT department, optimize their tasks, achieve more free time to carry out other tasks, and really focus on what is important in the business."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the disaster recovery portion, which they call Xi Leap. It's included in the licensing. Before, we were on a solution that charged extra for DR software. And with Prism Pro, not only can we manage all of our other infrastructure in addition to our DR, in the same console, but we can set up recovery points. We can also set up scripts to run, so it gives us everything we need to have a solid DR plan in place."
"The unified platform is also very user-friendly and clickable, similar to the Windows environment, making it easier for users to navigate and maintain."
"I particularly appreciate the life cycle management feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM), which allows for one-click upgrades of firmware, the system, hypervisor, and AOS components, simplifying patching and reducing risks compared to traditional environments."
"The Nutanix stack is hyper-converged. I don't need to buy expensive SAN storage because it's integrated into the hardware appliance. That's the best part. We get excellent latency by leveraging local storage."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"OpenNebula has given us tremendous knowledge about cloud computing and about Cloud Management platforms, commonly known as CMP."
"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"For our use case, we found the solution to be the best fit when dealing with infrastructure services."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
 

Cons

"Azure has a public cloud offering, and it also has a CSP model that allows Microsoft partners to provide Azure as a service to their customers. Cost Governance only works on the standard public cloud, not the CSP model. When I was at my previous company, we frequently got requests for Azure CSP support. We also got some requests for Alibaba Cloud and Oracle Cloud, but Azure CSP was the biggest one."
"Earlier versions could be buggy, and new versions improve the experience."
"I think Nutanix Xi Beam can be more cost-effective."
"It is important to mention that while Nutanix claims improvements in licensing over the past couple of years, I find it a bit annoying, as it still does not work as intended."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) can be improved by ensuring updates align with new circumstances."
"The solution could be more user-friendly."
"We have had our fair share of issues while upgrading early on, but the process now is working flawlessly."
"We have clusters not only with HPE. We have some with VMware to use Cisco Call Manager for VoIP. That only runs on VMware. They upgrade the ESXi host but not vCenter, which manages the ESXi host. It would be great if there is a way to include vCenter on the VM because you run the updates, but you do not update vCenter."
"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."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is correct."
"The pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market."
"It's cost-effective. It's not necessarily cheap, but it's also not inordinately expensive. It comes down to how much you use it to offset some of the costs."
"It is expensive when you are looking at small locations that need low-latency workloads, but for larger locations, as compared to other guys, even using VMware, it is not that expensive because if you add it all up, it is going to be pretty much the same value."
"In my opinion, the pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"Nutanix costs more than Hyper-V, but the price is reasonable for the features we're getting. We have better support, analytics, reporting, and other capabilities that we didn't have before. That is more than enough to justify the cost. The hardware we purchased from Nutanix was priced fairly. The primary costs are software and support. It's a subscription-based service, which can be bad or good, depending on how you look at that. For me, it makes perfect sense. We get regular updates and can get support when we need it."
"Nutanix changes its licensing models frequently, and it is difficult to figure out how and what is included in which package."
"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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"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."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.
899,052 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
University
7%
 

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: June 2026.
899,052 professionals have used our research since 2012.