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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

"In the beginning, I saw the product's user manual, but when installing and managing it in a practical way, I could see that it is very friendly and reliable at the interface level, at the same time very specific, it shows characteristics of the resources never observed at least by me on similar platforms"
"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 most valuable features of this solution are visibility, the single console, capacity planning, the VM efficiencies. We have a recovery plan, security, policies policy security. That's why we implement it with your customers."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations has multi-cloud capability, allowing users to switch between cloud providers or vendors without incurring egress or movement fees."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has positively impacted my organization through cost-cutting, significantly reducing the need for manual interruptions, and allowing us to schedule VM backups during disasters."
"One of the solution's greatest strengths is its "Single pane of glass" feature, which allows users to access all pertinent data in one location immediately upon logging in. Additionally, the solution's ease of deployment and mobility are notable aspects that I personally find appealing."
"The tool's management for clusters is amazing and simple. It's quite simple to use it daily. With 1-click centralized upgrades, I can update my entire cluster using the data tech software from a single point in an easy way. It shows me that I have an update, then I just apply it, wait a few minutes, and all of the clusters are updated. It doesn't matter if it's a software update or something like bills. Everything is done from one central point. Also, the dashboard are really good. We have some relevant formations where I can see my cluster's CPU age, memory age, virtual machines, etc. All information can be viewed in an easy way, which provides me a cloud-like experience on an on-prem solution."
"It offers high availability and consistency."
"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"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."
"For our use case, we found the solution to be the best fit when dealing with infrastructure services."
"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."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."
"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
 

Cons

"The stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would like to see it be able to apply a category to a project, and then have that category applied to all the VMs that are deployed within a project."
"NCM is a mature technology product, but it is more costly than some of the other solutions available, which leaves room for improvement."
"For now, my biggest problem in our corporation is the Nutanix hypervisor (AOS) is not fully operational for some things."
"You can set up DHCP but it's a little bit clunky. I wish they would streamline and centralize the management of DHCP."
"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."
"The areas that could be improved include the Nutanix Move tool, which is presently used for migrating VMs from one setup to a private cloud. It can be improved by adding some other setups, such as Citrix Xen, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat OpenShift. There are many other cloud products that need to be added to the Nutanix Move tool, which would be really helpful for us in India, where we use different setups such as Red Hat Virtualization, OpenShift, Citrix XenCenter, Hyper-V, and VMware."
"Integration with the Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Unified Storage or Nutanix cloud platform should be improved for better containerization."
"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."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"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."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing has been reasonable."
"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 pricing was very good. We were very pleased with what we were offered by our account manager. Because of that, we expanded Nutanix Cloud Manager, and we hope to expand even more. Right now, we are in Azure, and as we build up more and more within the NCM platform, we hope to expand into AWS as well."
"I think it can be more cost-effective."
"Nutanix is really smart to understand that the most important fact is the value to the customer, not the price tag. While you do get some sticker shock sometimes, as soon as you show this and you prove the value, all of a sudden, it looks exceptionally affordable."
"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."
"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 solution is expensive."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"The solution is open source so 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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
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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...
Ask a question
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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: June 2026.
903,147 professionals have used our research since 2012.