Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] vs CloudStack comparison

Cisco and Apache are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Apache users who would recommend it.

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

Read 1 Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] review

100% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

2,508 Views
2,332 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

CloudStack

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] and CloudStack based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Broadcom, IBM and others in Cloud Management.

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Cloud Management

March 2026

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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

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

CloudStack

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (8th)

Featured Reviews

Enterprise677

BS Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

A simple interface and helpful support for a solution that grows with us

It's a flexible enough tool to submit the changes that you want. It gives you the ability to cancel any loop. You can connect new orchestrations together. It offers enough support so that you don't need to have the need to get another device. The user interface is simple and easy to use.

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Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

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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

"It offers enough support so that you don't need to have the need to get another device."

"I strongly recommend the solution to people."

"The most valuable feature from my point of view is access to environment via console through separate browser window."

"You can build your own cloud and make it customizable with APIs."

"Valuable features include that it is a user-friendly portal, VPN P2S and S2S possibilities, and it's easy to manage accounts and limits."

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

"Being able to completely virtualize a customer’s physical data center and migrate any workload into the cloud, and cover the most complex use cases - while offering high performance and true volume QoS, backed by SSD-based managed storage - is what differentiates it from other IaaS solutions."

"I liked the separation of the isolated network versus the shared network."

"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."

"If you are looking for a stable product that is easy to install with a lot of documentation, a portal that is very easy to understand and manage and that can be modified, you should use CloudStack."

More CloudStack pros

Cons

"The solution is just too expensive, so maybe the pricing could be better."

"More integration with third-party products (we know that OpenStack has a better level of integration)."

"Lack of support for third-party software vendors such as Veeam and Zerto creates limitations on comprehensive offerings which would include backup and disaster recovery."

"My teammates have complained about the upgrade. The source code had massive files that had to be merged with our own development to upgrade to the latest version of CloudStack."

"The stability is problematic, in part, because there is no support."

"A technology upgrade is one item which could be improved upon a lot."

"This product needs a lot improvement on the development side. Every new version introduces new bugs. It lacks many features needed for NFV like DPDK, SR-IOV support, etc."

"With all that simplicity come limitations that need to be understood and planned for: Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."

More CloudStack cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

12%

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?

CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

See all answers

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

March 2026

Download Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

April 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Also Known As

Piston Enterprise OS

Vmops, Cloud.com

Overview

Piston Enterprise OS (pentOS) is an enterprise grade cloud operating system meeting the security and governance needs of enterprises wanting to use OpenStack for their infrastructure services. pentOS is an OpenStack distro that builds on top of the OpenStack codebase adding some proprietary features to meet the security and governance needs of the enterprise customers.

Cisco

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Apache

Sample Customers

Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix, Broadcom, IBM and others in Cloud Management. Updated: March 2026.

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