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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs Red Hat CloudForms 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

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (4th), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
Red Hat CloudForms
Ranking in Cloud Management
31st
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 5.7%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Vipin Kumar Sha - PeerSpot reviewer
Stands out with auto-scaling, auto-scheduled snapshots, and single-vendor support
The areas that could be improved include the Nutanix Move tool, which is presently used for migrating VMs from one setup to a private cloud. It can be improved by adding some other setups, such as Citrix Xen, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat OpenShift. There are many other cloud products that need to be added to the Nutanix Move tool, which would be really helpful for us in India, where we use different setups such as Red Hat Virtualization, OpenShift, Citrix XenCenter, Hyper-V, and VMware. The second suggestion is regarding the different clusters in Nutanix. Although Nutanix is very user-friendly and codeless, the individual clusters cannot be logged in at the same time via Prism, which takes time and can be wasteful. We have multiple clusters within Nutanix. Prism serves as the central management interface, allowing us to access these different clusters. When we log in through Prism, it takes a certain amount of time—sometimes several minutes—to log into each individual cluster. This can be quite time-consuming. Another important issue, especially for our customers in India and other data centers, is the need for proper VM tool reports. We require detailed information such as VM names, IP addresses, CPU assignments, and CPU utilization. This data should be exported in an Excel format. For example, if a virtual machine has four CPUs, the Excel report should include entries like: VM name, IP address, 4 CPUs, and current utilization (e.g., if 2 out of 4 CPUs are being used). We also need to capture other parameters, such as memory and disk configurations (e.g., hard disk 1 and hard disk 2), whether any ISOs are mounted (like CD/DVDs), USB drives attached to the VM, storage types (like NVM), and any RDMs associated with the VM. By extracting all this information into an Excel file, we would create a handy inventory for all the engineers. This detailed VM list would be extremely beneficial for cloud engineers and managers working with Nutanix.
Ilhami Arikan - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution that helps to provision servers
We use the solution to provision servers.  I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs.   The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved.  I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten.  I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We haven't faced any problems because Nutanix provides an outside team. We haven't had any issues requiring L3 support, and the L1 and L2 engineers are on-site."
"I would describe my experience with deploying Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) as very simple."
"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager is the flexibility we're finding in expanding our technology and our support."
"It's easy to set up."
"The ability to use the APIs and talk to it through APIs is the most beneficial feature for us because we have to do automation."
"The solution expands easily."
"I really like the Nutanix Marketplace a lot. We publish standard workloads there and that, in combination with the Projects, allows for self-service, which is the most powerful feature of Calm."
"The customer service and technical support of the platform has been great."
"The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."
"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."
"The multi-tenancy feature has been very helpful for our clients. It has been working fine and seamlessly for them. Its interface is also very simplified, and it is also an open and easy-to-scale solution."
"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."
"I am impressed with the product's reports."
"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting."
"They are a very mature product."
"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."
 

Cons

"The pricing of the solution is an area of concern that needs improvement."
"The pricing could have some changes; compared to other platforms, pricing enhancement is important, and Nutanix does enhancements quarterly."
"It could maybe have better documentation. Nutanix does have really good documentation, but it could have more details in the future."
"It is important to mention that while Nutanix claims improvements in licensing over the past couple of years, I find it a bit annoying, as it still does not work as intended."
"For Nutanix, there are options to go with different types of hardware vendors for using the AOS operating system. We can deploy it on Dell, Lenovo, or IBM servers. If Nutanix had its own server, it would be good."
"In the gambling industry, you have a lot of regulation from different countries. One of those regulations states that you have to be able to send all the logs of your Prism to a separate server, what we call the syslog server. On Prism Central, this doesn't work. We have opened a case for it, since this is a basic feature nowadays. We spoke to Nutanix, and they said that it will be in future updates. We did an update, following their support, but once we did the update, it wasn't fixed."
"We use Nutanix only for our dev and test environments. Our production environment is VMware, and that is totally separate. But we do transfer data between them. That's a challenge because we need to frequently bring the production data into our test environment and that's a big transfer. If we could do a cross-storage transfer, like a transfer from NetApp or Nimble Storage into Nutanix with automation, that would greatly help us."
"The list of blueprints and applications could be more configurable so you see all the fields you need and not just some predefined fields which are not customizable now."
"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."
"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."
"The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved."
"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."
"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."
"The solution is still quite immature."
"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."
"The problem is that the platform requires it to be maintained and updated. Also, a few cases are still pending with the Red Hat support team since they are not closed yet."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is expensive."
"The solution’s pricing is not outrageous like other products."
"It is an expensive solution, but one has to make the trade-off between what you want to achieve and what you are willing to pay."
"In Brazil, Nutanix Cloud Manager is not cheap. However, Nutanix offers different options such as long-term contracts."
"Compared to UCS and the NetApp storage, Nutanix is actually cheaper."
"At the end of the day, the product justifies the cost, and it leads to a conversation with management over whether we actually need this feature and if there are any use cases for why we would want to keep it."
"The pricing has been reasonable."
"I think it can be more cost-effective."
"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."
"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."
"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."
"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."
"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
34%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
24%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
University
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?
For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...
Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?
When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...
Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?
Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...
What do you like most about Red Hat CloudForms?
I am impressed with the product's reports.
What needs improvement with Red Hat CloudForms?
I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions.
What advice do you have for others considering Red Hat CloudForms?
I would rate the product a four out of ten since its implementation is not as good as it sounds.
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. Red Hat CloudForms and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.