CloudStack vs OpenNebula comparison

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

2,986 Views
2,837 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and OpenNebula are competing in the cloud infrastructure domain. OpenNebula has the upper hand due to its adaptability and ease of deployment across varied infrastructures.

Features: CloudStack offers comprehensive support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments, advanced networking, and security features, and a centralized management system for scalability. OpenNebula has a lightweight footprint, provides a user-friendly interface, and supports flexibility across both private and public cloud platforms.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack can improve by streamlining its resource-intensive deployment process, simplifying the customization process, and enhancing its support for newer virtualization technologies. OpenNebula could benefit from expanding advanced networking capabilities, increasing support for multi-cloud environments, and improving its integration with additional enterprise applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula is known for its straightforward deployment and strong customer support, making it easy to manage various cloud infrastructures. CloudStack's deployment may require more resources, but it provides extensive documentation and community support for users.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack is an open-source solution, potentially involving higher initial expenses due to substantial customization and resource needs. OpenNebula, also open-source, presents lower setup costs and an attractive return on investment for small to medium-sized enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. OpenNebula Report (Updated: April 2026).

CloudStack vs. OpenNebula

Download the complete report

Helped 891,869 peers since 2012

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

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.2%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 2.1%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
CloudStack	2.2%
OpenNebula	2.1%
Other	95.7%

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

FOURES Jean-Philippe

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.

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

"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."

"The API with CloudStack made integration into various external facing web applications simple enough."

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

"In general I would say CS is a stable solution and, in my opinion, it will solve problems with administration of VMs."

"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."

"I have also explored setting up with OpenStack and I found it harder to use than CloudStack."

"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."

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

More CloudStack pros

"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."

"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."

"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."

"It is quite easy to deploy."

"OpenNebula has given us tremendous knowledge about cloud computing and about Cloud Management platforms, commonly known as CMP."

"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."

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

"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"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)."

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

"The product does not have an easily implementable payment gateway."

"The absence of the feature, deploy an instance from a snapshot, is the weak point of the platform. It is a feature that everyone needs nowadays."

"For time consuming operations like storage migrations, volume Snapshot restore and the like, we faced issues like MySQL operations timing out and status update failures."

"Environment is sensitive, so, unlike VMware, you can not afford middle-skilled engineers, they will ruin everything."

"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."

More CloudStack cons

"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."

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

"Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now."

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

"I would like to see OpenNebula add more integration with REST API. XML-RPC API is good, but it becomes a pain to form a resting output."

"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."

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

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

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

891,869 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

University

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	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	3

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.

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...

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...

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.

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Comparisons

Compared 8% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

CloudCheckr vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

Flexera Cloud Management Platform (CMP) vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 6% of the time

Morpheus vs OpenNebula

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs OpenNebula

Compared 5% of the time

More OpenNebula Competitors

Product Reports

CloudStack

Download CloudStack product report

Download OpenNebula product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

No data available

Overview

CloudStack offers an easy-to-manage platform compatible with multiple hypervisors, enabling seamless networking and efficient workload scaling. Its advanced APIs and open-source nature facilitate automation and customization, making it ideal for extensive cloud environments.

CloudStack is recognized for ease of setup, robust networking, and hypervisor compatibility. Supporting a range of workloads, it scales efficiently, offering flexible features like VM migration, private networking, and multi-zone support. Its user-friendly open-source design aids troubleshooting and customization, making it ideal for managing broad cloud deployments. Despite needing upgrades in interface and integration with third-party vendors and container technology, CloudStack remains a strong choice for businesses seeking effective virtualization solutions. Improvements in documentation, regional management, and emerging tech support would enhance usability and performance.

What are CloudStack's notable features?

Hypervisor compatibility: Supports diverse virtualization technologies for flexible deployment.
Robust networking: Ensures reliable and scalable network infrastructure management across zones.
Advanced APIs: Facilitates automation and integration to streamline cloud operations.
VM migration: Enhances operational flexibility with seamless virtual machine relocations.
Private networking: Provides secure and isolated network environments for critical tasks.
Multi-zone support: Offers scalable solutions for distributed cloud management.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Open-source model: Allows extensive customization without licensing costs, enhancing ROI.
Ease of management: Simplifies operations, reducing time and resources spent on maintenance.
Scalability: Enables growth and adaptability, fostering agility in expanding businesses.
Flexibility: Supports various workloads and environments, meeting diverse operational needs.

CloudStack is implemented across industries, used in managing virtual environments, offering IaaS in public, private, and hybrid cloud models. Companies use it for internal virtualization and customer service, integrating with hypervisors across data centers to orchestrate virtual machines and support development and testing globally.

Apache

OpenNebula offers scalability, ease of deployment, and integration capabilities that enhance cloud management for enterprises. It supports both virtual and bare metal resources, providing a versatile cloud management experience.

OpenNebula provides a robust platform for building, managing, and automating private and public clouds. Its compatibility with platforms like VMware, KVM, and containers makes it ideal for businesses hosting virtual private clouds and deploying Kubernetes clusters. OpenNebula's API and SDK facilitate automation and integration, allowing organizations to connect with IT systems effectively. Despite its strengths, improvements in object storage, REST API integration, and UI enhancements are needed. The documentation can be disorganized, and users encounter challenges with upgrades and community support.

What are key OpenNebula features?

Scalability: Easily manage resources for growing cloud environments.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies cloud management tasks.
Integration: Connects seamlessly with IT systems using robust API and SDK.
Hypervisor Support: Works with multiple hypervisors and container platforms.

What benefits do users find in OpenNebula?

Efficiency: Streamlines cloud operations, reducing management complexities.
Versatility: Offers support for both virtual and bare metal resources.
Community and Documentation: Though needing improvement, provides valuable resources for users.
Cost-Effectiveness: Lightweight nature minimizes resource expenditure.

OpenNebula implementation spans industries where cloud automation and management are critical. Companies utilize OpenNebula for deploying private clouds and managing infrastructure. Its support for Kubernetes clusters is beneficial in tech-driven sectors, highlighting OpenNebula's adaptability to different operational needs.

Sample Customers

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

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

CloudStack vs. OpenNebula