CloudStack vs Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) comparison

Apache and Nutanix are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Nutanix is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.7. Apache holds a 2.8% mindshare in CM, compared to Nutanix’s 0.9% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

2,000 Views
1,820 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)

Read 28 Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) reviews

3,092 Views
402 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and Nutanix Cloud Clusters compete in the cloud management space. CloudStack holds an edge in simplicity and cost-effectiveness, while Nutanix Cloud Clusters stands out with advanced features and scalability.

Features: CloudStack offers resource allocation, efficient network management, and hypervisor flexibility. Nutanix Cloud Clusters provides seamless multi-cloud operations, built-in data protection, and advanced automation.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could enhance multi-cloud integration, improve automation options, and increase support for hybrid environments. Nutanix Cloud Clusters could offer more straightforward setup processes, reduce initial investment costs, and provide enhanced API functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack is known for its straightforward deployment and basic customer support. Nutanix Cloud Clusters combines robust deployment with proactive support, ensuring comprehensive assistance and rapid response times.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack's setup costs are low, promoting quick ROI, especially for smaller investments. Nutanix Cloud Clusters demands a higher initial investment but offers significant long-term benefits and scalability, potentially leading to higher ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)

December 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

CloudStack

Ranking in Cloud Management

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)

Ranking in Cloud Management

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (8th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.8%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
CloudStack	2.8%
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)	0.9%
Other	96.3%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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.

Read full review

Jose Ybarra

Manager, Information Technology Engineers at IBC Bank

Enables us to grow at the speed of business and be ready for whatever is coming

What I admire most about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is its scalability; that option that everybody seems to eventually go to is cloud, and we're ready for that when we decide. This scalability feature has improved my company because we can grow at the speed of business, and that's very important. We're not limited by the hardware that we have. We allow ourselves room for growth, and we can literally grow from today to tomorrow to ensure that we're handling our growth. The scalability is critical for us, especially in the banking industry, where we just get bigger every year.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CloudStack is simple to stand up and get off the ground in a hurry. Its centralized design allows for easier troubleshooting when compared to OpenStack. Out of the box, it’s very well suited for white labeling and IaaS."

"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."

"It has become easy to deploy new devices with no or minimal hardware changes. Now, a user can be ready to use a firewall within a few minutes, as compared to the traditional physical model which involved purchase, shipping, hardware configuration, cabling, power, etc."

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

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

"The APIs for automation in CloudStack are excellent; everything is API-driven, and while the API is very rich and hard to learn, you can do everything you would want to do, including everything in the user interface and more."

"The platform is very simple to scale-out."

"CloudStack’s private gateway networking feature is what enables us to offer utmost security and confidentially to our customers and partners, by enabling them to connect to their virtual data centers via dedicated, encrypted, private fiber lines that never touch the public internet space. Ease of setup and management are certainly important additional benefits for us on the engineering team."

More CloudStack pros

"Its performance and speed are valuable. Its performance has helped me reduce costs."

"The feature I probably appreciate the most about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is its scalability—how quickly I can deploy more nodes on a cluster and remove nodes."

"I'm not an AWS expert at all, but I can totally manage my Nutanix clusters, the same as I do on-prem. The fact that I can quickly and easily stand up servers or nodes instantly has been an amazing help."

"The solution can scale well."

"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Clusters is to protect the data."

"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) a ten."

"Nutanix has the best customer service."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its quick configuration and installation."

More Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) pros

Cons

"I encountered some stability issues. When I tried to remove high-capacity virtual machines it took a long time to update, and sometimes the VM status failed to update properly in the cloud database. This occurred multiple times, even though I had sufficient resources."

"VPN P2S is cutting all connections except the CloudStack environment for the user when he is connected. I would like to have VPN like Cisco's AnyConnect."

"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."

"The main reason why we started looking for another solution: backups, replication, HA, and dependency on secondary storage. CS is quite sensitive for infrastructure, and any kind of network disruption between CS and secondary storage leads to VM hanging."

"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."

"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."

"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."

More CloudStack cons

"From an operational and cost perspective, for me, it is really expensive."

"Improvement is obviously needed in pricing; I cannot pinpoint where else I would suggest improvements."

"The technical support for Nutanix Clusters could be better."

"When you go to the configuration part on the Nutanix site, the information is a bit high-level."

"Quality control needs to regulate the price-quality ratio."

"Perhaps the one thing that could be improved is the documentation around the solution."

"The offering on GCP is a feature we have been waiting for to compare costs."

"My impression of Nutanix's license portability is that I wish it had an easier transition from one license to license. I know in the last three to four years, the model has changed three times, making it harder for me to understand the transition from one license model to the next and what that means for me."

More Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

"I'm not familiar with the contracts, but I thought the process was pretty seamless. Licensing for the Nutanix part was the same as licensing something on-prem, and since it runs on bare metal EC2, there was no new process we had to go through—it fits into our existing procurement processes nicely. I appreciate Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)'s license portability."

"I am working on one configuration that is priced at $50,000 USD, whereas another one that I'm working on is estimated to cost $250,000 USD."

"The price is high."

"There are positives and negatives to licensing. It all makes sense now, but it took a while. When the licenses first changed, it was a bit confusing."

"The solution's licensing can be very pricey."

"The licensing portability can be very interesting. At the moment, I am working with Nutanix Appliances with the AHV as a hypervisor. I did not have a chance to ask for portability between platforms, but it will be good if you can have portability between multiple types of platforms."

"The solution has been more costly at this point. We do not see any cost savings."

"I feel that the prices could be improved, but the truth is that I am very happy. The license price keeps increasing, but I am confident that it is much more reasonable than other brands."

More Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

25%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?

I'm not familiar with the contracts, but I thought the process was pretty seamless. Licensing for the Nutanix part was the same as licensing something on-prem, and since it runs on bare metal EC2, ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?

From an improvement perspective, I cannot see anything at this point because I used those Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) at that moment, but I am currently not using it. The pricing could be lower.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?

I use the workload migration feature between clouds, such as migrating from VMware to Nutanix. I use Nutanix Move to migrate workloads from Nutanix Move. However, in some cases with our failover cl...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)

December 2025

Download Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

Nutanix Clusters

Overview

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

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) provide scalable and cost-efficient infrastructure management across cloud and on-premises environments. With features like data portability and ease of setup, NC2 enables seamless migration without application refactoring.

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) supports businesses in managing hybrid IT environments, enhancing disaster recovery, and optimizing workloads. Users value NC2 for its unified management platform and redundancy features, facilitating cloud migration and integration with major cloud providers. Challenges include pricing and initial setup complexity, as well as feature parity between different cloud services.

What are the key features of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?

Scalability: Easily scales resources to meet business demands.
Cost Management: Controls and reduces cloud-related expenses.
Data Portability: Ensures seamless migration between environments.
Unified Management: Manages both cloud and on-premises platforms from one place.
Integration: Connects efficiently with multiple cloud providers.

What benefits and ROI should users expect?

Redundancy: Enhances disaster recovery capabilities and operational resilience.
License Portability: Simplifies license management across different environments.
Optimized Workloads: Maintains performance and reduces unnecessary costs.
Efficient Setup: Simplifies initial adjustments, ensuring quick deployment.

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) find application in industries requiring reliable infrastructure management, like finance and healthcare, to safeguard critical systems. Organizations leverage NC2 for virtual desktops, application modernization, and smooth transition to cloud operations, improving data security and replication processes.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

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

The Home Depot, JetBlue, Hyundai, ShiftLeft

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)

December 2025

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