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CloudStack vs OpenNebula 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
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
31
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
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 4.8%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 6.8%, up from 6.8% 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.
FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We like the virtualization capabilities."
"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."
"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."
"Killer features for me were: support for many hypervisors, ability to match business logic, "everything in one box," available APIs."
"I liked the separation of the isolated network versus the shared network."
"The structuring of the components and isolated environments helped us when using parts of the framework at different levels of product development."
"We had a relevant reduction of bureaucracy tasks."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
 

Cons

"There are some minor things that can be improved even more such as, perhaps, a bit more polishing on the GUI side to catch up with the API possibilities (which are really extensive) but otherwise nothing critical."
"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."
"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."
"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."
"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
"We recognize that CloudStack is an easy-to-use cloud management platform and, in my opinion, there has been a large number of improvements in the past few years, particular when it comes to the modern UI and overall ease of management. However, I believe that CloudStack needs to grow their marketing in the commercial side. They don't have a great piece of market share right now."
"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."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"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."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"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.​​"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Educational Organization
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
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 OpenNebula?
The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.
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...
 

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com
No data available
 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. OpenNebula and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.