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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 (5th), Virtualization Management Tools (1st), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (10th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
27th
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 November 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.4%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.5%, down from 5.0% 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

Vijaykumar Talreja - PeerSpot reviewer
Global Group CIO, CTO, Cdo & CISO at a real estate/law firm with 201-500 employees
Centralized multi-cloud management has simplified automation and boosted operational efficiency
Some downsides of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are that it has very high cost and licensing complexity, particularly for smaller environments, making it more suited for larger environments. On the learning curve and support, while Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is user-friendly in some areas, the initial setup is complex and sometimes requires very specialized expertise, creating a steep learning curve. There is also limited third-party integration, as it has very limited non-native integrations compared to competitors. The documentation has gaps, particularly for advanced features, requiring some improvement, and certain advanced configurations and troubleshooting still require heavy reliance on the command-line interface rather than having a GUI.
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

"What I found most valuable in Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is the one-click upgrade and the analytics it can provide for hyper-converged infrastructure."
"We are using a Nutanix cluster to increase availability because it is a very good product with everything in one box: storage, network, and compute."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager is a stable product compared to other vendors."
"I also like the fact that the solution manages itself. It has one interface where you can basically see all your servers. So, you can manage your servers and see whether you are falling short on space or disc usage. Also, in case your RAM is only using four Gigabytes of memory instead of eight, you can extend out the over-provisioned mail and save your cluster for four Giga of RAM."
"The blueprints and templates are very nice and easy to use. They are very valuable because we can configure the entirety of an environment as a template and reuse it multiple times."
"It's easy to control resources and govern the resources, and it frees up support to focus on other things without having to help developers."
"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."
"Nutanix is a company that cares about your experience and your thoughts and improving things."
"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."
"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."
"OpenNebula freed my customer from doing the maintenance operations of the servers because now that can be done by his clients."
"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage, is easy to use, has a good UI, and is very scalable."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
 

Cons

"Compatibility with multiple clouds and a single control would help us."
"In this solution, it is difficult to organize the VM folders and subfolders."
"The impact of the Runbooks feature on automating our IT processes with Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) hasn't been significant yet."
"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."
"What could make Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) a ten would be tighter integration of the agentic behavior."
"NCM's pricing structure is confusing and difficult to understand."
"I would rate the technical support from NCM at a five."
"For now, my biggest problem in our corporation is the Nutanix hypervisor (AOS) is not fully operational for some things."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now."
"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."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We primarily work with mid-level customers in India rather than enterprise clients. These mid-level customers are interested in services that are priced more moderately. In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups. As a result, we have approximately 3,000 customers using VMware, while Nutanix has around 1,800 customers."
"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."
"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."
"The tool is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"I think it can be more cost-effective."
"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."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"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."
"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."
"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
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
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: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.