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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 (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
15th
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 May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.6%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)2.6%
OpenNebula1.9%
Other95.5%
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

"I am quite happy with the outcomes we have received using Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) so far."
"It has improved my life and the way the company is running."
"It's easy to use. Self-service is beneficial because it's easier for developers to assign themselves resources."
"The single pane of glass is valuable. Seeing all my clusters there and getting all the alerts in one place helps to manage our global infrastructure. To me, the ability to view or see everything in one single place is very valuable."
"I really appreciate the console, the centralized administration, and the ability to quickly attach storage between operations."
"It is a very easy and stable solution, we have not had any issues."
"The best part of it is that when you use the product, there's no secret proprietary magic that you experience as a user. The real genius is under the covers, so it makes the user experience very straightforward and easy. It's a wonderful solution to teach partners about. The ease of use is something a lot of suppliers talk about, but Nutanix does it better than anyone else."
"The scalability of the solution is way better than anything else, and everything is plug-and-play, which is pretty awesome."
"It is quite easy to deploy."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"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."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
"OpenNebula has given us tremendous knowledge about cloud computing and about Cloud Management platforms, commonly known as CMP."
"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."
 

Cons

"Considering the shortcomings where improvements are needed, I would say that the tool should have a cheap hardware model that can be used to manage the proof of concept phase."
"The licensing procedures are not smooth and easy."
"It is a really good solution for doing simple tasks, but it's not a good solution for complex tasks."
"I would like to see a P2V feature like Move or Xtract."
"We'd like the demos to be longer - maybe two to three months. Some clients need much more time for a POC."
"I rate this area a seven because this technology is new to the vendor as well, so for them, it takes time to reach out to developers and check everything in their test environment before providing a solution."
"Also, I believe they should take a relook into their licensing model to adopt to the current situation."
"Earlier versions could be buggy, and new versions improve the experience."
"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."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"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."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"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."
"Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is expensive."
"The pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market."
"Prism Pro is a bit more upfront. It costs a bit more for some of the features that you get. We have four clusters, and two of them don't have Prism Pro because they weren't even available with what we bought. Those two clusters also run well, but they don't have all the features."
"It is an expensive solution, but one has to make the trade-off between what you want to achieve and what you are willing to pay."
"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."
"In my opinion, the pricing is reasonable."
"In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is expensive."
"Compared to Dell HCI, Nutanix is a lot cheaper."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
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Top Industries

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

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: April 2026.
894,807 professionals have used our research since 2012.