Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
115
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
9th
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 February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 3.4%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 2.9%, down from 8.3% 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)3.4%
OpenNebula2.9%
Other93.7%
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

"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 file server feature in Nutanix is very good, offering a solution-worthy feature that can host files, blocks, and object storage in the same cluster."
"The self-service capabilities allow us to orchestrate our deployments without writing code, and they also use artificial intelligence to improve our security posture."
"Nutanix Prism Pro improves the quality and efficiency of IT operations for the modern datacenter. Powered by the machine learning and task automation, Prism Pro intelligently optimizes capacity, proactively detects performance anomalies, and enables the IT team to automate operations tasks with ease and confidence."
"I find that the support from Nutanix is very good, as I have worked with them many times."
"The design is very intuitive; it's easy to find information in the different menus and things like that. The user experience is much better compared to other products."
"The tool is easy to use."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager has increased our productivity higher than what it used to be. We used to spend four hours on server checking. Nutanix gave us three and a half hours back from those four hours to do normal work."
"It is quite easy to deploy."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
"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."
"For the entire data center, as a private cloud, I believe that user management, expert management, and the virtual data center is completely magic for the users."
 

Cons

"We have a lot of projects so we cannot always dive deep into the material that Nutanix offers. We would like to but we have other priorities. It was a busy year. We have an external company that does things for us so we can make the process go faster. We know what we need and what we would like to achieve. I'm still on the learning curve."
"The web interface could be improved at some points."
"If you're still running tiered architecture for the storage, it would be good to give stats on the amount of data that is warehoused in the cold tier versus the hot tier."
"We are still learning about cloud usage and the integrations we are targeting right now at the event. I believe there is room for improvement, especially with the prices, which are not very friendly."
"When it comes to integration with Terraform, there is still a lot of improvement needed."
"Nutanix, as of today, they do not have many of the features that VMware hypervisor provides, such as the memory layer."
"In terms of how Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) can be improved, there are some functionalities in the newer releases and upgrades that are not available in Prism Central, which lacks the newest versions."
"I'd like them to offer a more flexible licensing model."
"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."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"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."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is a bit high in price for what we are receiving as features. I feel they are overcharging us at approximately 25 percent. That is something that they should change."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"It is a nightmare to keep up with all the licensing. I would prefer everything to be in one price."
"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."
"At the end of the day, the product justifies the cost, and it leads to a conversation with management over whether we actually need this feature and if there are any use cases for why we would want to keep it."
"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 pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"The solution is open source so 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."
"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.
882,180 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Marketing Services Firm
15%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
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 Business26
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise68
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: February 2026.
882,180 professionals have used our research since 2012.