AWS Control Tower vs OpenNebula comparison

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AWS Control Tower

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

OpenNebula and AWS Control Tower both compete in the cloud management sector. AWS Control Tower seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive service offering and integration within the AWS ecosystem.

Features: OpenNebula offers open-source customization and management of private and hybrid clouds with a focus on simplicity. It provides flexible user management, supports various hypervisors, and has a strong community for support. AWS Control Tower is known for its automation in setting up AWS accounts, management guardrails, and comprehensive management of multi-account environments.

Room for Improvement: OpenNebula could enhance its technical documentation and expand its integrations. Its reliance on community support might not suit enterprises needing immediate assistance. AWS Control Tower could improve in simplifying its cost structure and enhancing integration with non-AWS services. Fine-tuning its configuration processes to be more user-intuitive would also be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage, suited for organizations seeking simplicity. Its community-based support might require more technical expertise. AWS Control Tower offers streamlined deployment with centralized management and comprehensive AWS customer support, making it suitable for enterprises requiring reliable service.

Pricing and ROI: OpenNebula presents an economical option with a potentially higher ROI for businesses minimizing upfront costs. AWS Control Tower involves higher initial investment due to its extensive features and enterprise support but provides strategic ROI through increased efficiency and reduced operational overhead for AWS-integrated users.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Control Tower vs. OpenNebula Report (Updated: September 2025).

AWS Control Tower vs. OpenNebula

September 2025

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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

AWS Control Tower

Ranking in Cloud Management

11th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.3%, down from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 5.7%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
OpenNebula	5.7%
AWS Control Tower	1.3%
Other	93.0%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Unified security management ensures comprehensive compliance for account safety

Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security. I can manage user security and user IAM, firewall, and other security-related tasks via Control Tower. The unified security management is a crucial aspect, and whenever an AWS organization is used, Control Tower is typically included to ensure comprehensive compliance fulfillment.

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Thomas Bennett

Manager, DevOps System Engineering team at MX

Robust with great CLI tools and UI

I've found OpenNebula upgrades to be more complex than those of some of the competitors and the support to be mediocre. I would also like to see more and better ancillary tools related to OpenNebula, for example, more robust tools for backups, user support, etc. The support knows their software stack reasonably well. However, OpenNebula depends on so many open-source projects that they lack expertise. As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Compliance is the most valuable feature."

"I would rate the solution a 10 out of 10."

"There are two features in Control Tower which are the most valuable. One is the guardrails because it has preventive and detective guardrails."

"AWS Control Tower is a tool specifically designed for multi-account management. It offers the advantage of highly granular management."

"The solution's initial setup was easy for me."

"One of the standout advantages is the fine-grained control it offers in terms of permissions and privileges."

"It provides a central point for account management, access control, and compliance monitoring."

"With Control Tower, there are ready-to-use automated templates available, simplifying the implementation of a centralized management solution."

More AWS Control Tower pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."

"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."

"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."

"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."

"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."

"While using the solution recently, it broke a certain activity. So, AWS Control Tower needs to consider making the solution better."

"There is a sync issue within the organization. It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiring me to manually choose sync options."

"The tool's setup is very technical. Its pricing can be cheaper."

"AWS should provide more resources, examples, and tutorials."

"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."

"AWS Control Tower should improve its fast execution. It also needs more tools for triggering and monitoring AWS services. AWS Control Tower needs more tracking as well."

"There aren't any additional features that I feel are missing. However, it's worth noting that Control Tower seems to function as a layer utilizing standard AWS products in the background. Occasionally, the interface may appear less streamlined, with changes in layout based on the underlying products being used. While this doesn't impact functionality, having a more standardized user interface, irrespective of the background products, could enhance the user experience."

More AWS Control Tower cons

"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."

"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."

"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."

"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."

"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."

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."

"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."

"They should add more features like object storage."

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"AWS Control Tower is not really that expensive."

"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."

"It operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning we are charged only for the services we actively use within it."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."

"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."

"The pricing structure is closely intertwined with the specifics of your environment and the billing strategy you employ."

"The pay-as-you-go model ensures you're only charged for what you use, which offers great flexibility for different types of companies."

"I believe it's free of charge or comes at a very low cost. It's an additional feature. Even if there is a fee, it's minimal. AWS seems to assist customers in gaining a comprehensive view of their security setups within AWS. Using Control Tower is highly recommended, especially as your company grows and involves Active Directory, various departments, and different architectural aspects. It becomes more advisable to leverage Control Tower rather than managing these aspects manually, especially for larger organizations."

More AWS Control Tower pricing and cost advice

"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."

"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"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."

"The solution is open source so is free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

16%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Control Tower?

The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Control Tower?

Control Tower within the AWS Organization does not have a charge. It is free and does not incur additional charges.

What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?

I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one si...

What do you like most about OpenNebula?

The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenNebula?

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

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...

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs AWS Control Tower

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Product Reports

Download AWS Control Tower product report

AWS Control Tower

October 2025

Download OpenNebula product report

October 2025

Overview

AWS Control Tower offers the easiest way to set up and govern a new, secure, multi-account AWS environment. It establishes a landing zone that is based on best-practices blueprints, and enables governance using guardrails you can choose from a pre-packaged list.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

OpenNebula provides the most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds. OpenNebula interoperability makes cloud an evolution by leveraging existing IT assets, protecting your investments, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

OpenNebula is a turnkey enterprise-ready solution that includes all the features needed to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, and to offer public cloud services.

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.