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CloudStack vs Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)
Ranking in Cloud Management
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (8th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 5.1%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Wido Den Hollander - PeerSpot reviewer
A solution that strikes a balance between user-friendliness, scalability, and stability
The market keeps changing, and so does technology. I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved. Regarding container technology, Kubernetes is something many people want to use and something which, as of now, many are using currently. However, there is still room for improvement in Kubernetes, particularly with networking functionality and network virtualization. When it comes to what needs to be improved in CloudStack, I would say that it should stay the way it is currently. It should continue being a stable product that people can rely on since many may be inclined to follow the latest trends and hype, which is not always good for a solution's stability. It is crucial to prioritize stability, which is a key factor that companies seek. In my view, the platform could benefit from adding more metrics. More metrics would offer more insights and data on the platform's performance, utilization, and usage. Overall, I believe that having more metrics available would be highly desirable.
Panomporn_Meesangeam - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrated with the personal files and knowledge management processes but is expensive
The customer is a company in Thailand. They use Nutanix Cloud Clusters for file sharing and integrate with personal file share and knowledge management. Our customer attaches a file service with a login and connects with WiFi for cloud content, such as second documents or email access files…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."
"You can manage infrastructure with a few people, since product is monolithic. We had three engineers (storage, virtual, Linux admins) only. Also, CS supports different flavours of hypervisors."
"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."
"When compared to OpenStack, CloudStack is also an open-source platform that is continuously improving its features and capabilities with each new version release. Having worked with CloudStack 4.7, 4.14, and most recently, 4.17, I have noticed significant enhancements in the platform's features and customer experience, such as the introduction of a new user interface in the latest release. Notably, the latest versions have made major improvements to VM live migrations, making them more efficient and effective."
"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."
"My company could implement a lot of customizations and integration with load balancers and DNS. When we started using CloudStack, we didn't have that integration, so we developed that. We could fix anything missing in the solution."
"The platform is very simple to scale-out.​"
"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."
"The license portability is good enough."
"There is ease of use. It is very important for our customers to have one centralized management console. Scalability is also very important for our customers."
"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."
"We spent a year on this ASR project and had so many issues when we attempted to do a failover. It took four to 24 hours to failover a couple of SQL VMs. During our first test deployment of NC2, it only took three or four minutes to failover and recover our VMs. This blew the Microsoft platform out of the water."
"The most valuable feature is having the full features of my Nutanix on-premises applications in the cloud."
"The feature I find most valuable about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is the portability."
"I've been very pleased with their support overall."
"The scalability is good."
 

Cons

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"From time to time there is a bug in calculating limits of resources for customer domain/account. Maybe it’s a problem with 4.9.2."
"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 product could improve by embracing newer technologies like GPU virtualization."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
"We did encounter issues with stability, and the main issue was secondary storage. When it is not available, XenServers and hypervisors are affected. And CS doesn’t do anything to reboot, or fix. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t, considering their approach – CS just orchestrates everything else on the hypervisor and storage level."
"The area of improvement could be the regionalization aspect. For example, managing multiple regions or HubStack deployments together was not thought out thoroughly in the versions I used. We faced issues around managing the global infrastructure and had to develop around it."
"Companies need to be knowledgeable about cloud technology. It's not for novice users."
"My suggestion would be getting up to speed on ransomware and evolving, as attackers are always one step ahead of what's out there."
"Having compatible feature sets between Azure and AWS would go a long way to improving the overall NC2 experience."
"Some features that people say Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) lacks could be simplified to make it easier, such as a single pane of glass, and getting more into Google Cloud would be very helpful for our team as we're working on GCP interfaces."
"The offering on GCP is a feature we have been waiting for to compare costs."
"Improvement is obviously needed in pricing; I cannot pinpoint where else I would suggest improvements."
"There are still some things that could be improved about the product."
"From an operational and cost perspective, for me, it is really expensive."
"The biggest weakness with Clusters at this point is that the adoption rate is low because customers don't know enough about it."
 

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."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"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."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"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."
"The transition from the perpetual license to what they have now is, from a business perspective, understandable, but from an operational and cost perspective, for me, it is really expensive. However, our partners at Nutanix did work with us recently and reduced a huge licensing cost for us."
"The solution has been more costly at this point. We do not see any cost savings."
"The licensing model of Nutanix is complex."
"The solution's licensing can be very pricey."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Educational Organization
10%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
29%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CloudStack?
The initial implementation process was quite good.
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.
What needs improvement with CloudStack?
CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product. Additionally, more themes and drag-and-drop interfaces could enhance the user experience. Improved document...
What do you like most about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
The overall infrastructure is the most valuable part of Nutanix Cloud Clusters.
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, ...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
We've been told some of these things are on the road map. I believe that networking is one of the biggest improvements. They have a great stock already, but some use cases, particularly around incr...
 

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com
Nutanix Clusters
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
The Home Depot, JetBlue, Hyundai, ShiftLeft
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
857,162 professionals have used our research since 2012.