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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 (1st), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
19th
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 July 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.4%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.7%, down from 6.8% 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%
OpenNebula1.7%
Other95.9%
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

"Overall, the solution has dramatically improved the way our organization functions."
"It offers high availability and consistency."
"The best features of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) start with the combination of cost and what is really under the hood, and it basically does the same thing that VMware does."
"It's easy to use. Self-service is beneficial because it's easier for developers to assign themselves resources."
"Prism Pro has given us a central administration of our entire virtual environment."
"The most valuable feature is less or no implementation time. It should be up and running at any point in time so I don't spend time in transformation."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager is a lot easier to set up compared to other products."
"We have a local partner and all the support from the vendor. It has been a remarkable experience. The product is very easy to use, and the roadmap has been executed transparently. The administration has been quite fast."
"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 has given us tremendous knowledge about cloud computing and about Cloud Management platforms, commonly known as CMP."
"For our use case, we found the solution to be the best fit when dealing with infrastructure services."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"One thing that comes directly to mind is how they manage version control. I would love to see Calm create a built-in source control feature, one that we could tie into a repository and it would self-manage changes in versions. All the version control is built within Calm right now. I would love to see that integrated with an external repository and make it easy to tie it into GitHub or Git repositories."
"I think the Prism Center needs to include more functions."
"In this solution, it is difficult to organize the VM folders and subfolders."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) could continue to improve its network with micro-segmentation, as their current solution for East-West traffic is not as mature as VMware's NSX, and they need to develop this area to better support the infrastructure."
"The solution should introduce more automation features."
"I would like to see a P2V feature like Move or Xtract."
"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."
"I think the Prism Center needs to include more functions. I know that they're including the Nutanix Era, which is the database management and disaster recovery tool. I think that Era should include everything on a single tool where you can manage everything you need inside your organization."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now."
"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 UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"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."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing is not outrageous like other products."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager is an expensive solution."
"Compared to Dell HCI, Nutanix is a lot cheaper."
"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."
"On a scale from one to ten, if one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the solution's pricing a six."
"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."
"In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is expensive."
"The five-year term for NCM's license cost and support was around five million."
"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."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
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 Business29
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...
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Earn 20 points
 

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.
904,146 professionals have used our research since 2012.