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Nutanix Central vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.6
Nutanix Central offers significant efficiency and cost-effectiveness in IT management, enhancing restoration and issue resolution compared to VMware.
Sentiment score
6.9
Organizations reported improved efficiency, reduced costs, faster deployment, and enhanced resource management with Nutanix Cloud Manager's streamlined integration and scalability.
I have seen measurable outcomes from using Nutanix Central, such as more efficient IT management.
When an alert appears, Nutanix provides detailed information and resolution steps, making our job easier.
Managing without Nutanix Central would require significantly more man-hours.
Anything that reduces bandwidth and reduces the brain work that our teams have to do to maintain systems across all environments is time-saving and cost-saving.
The biggest return on investment for me when using this product is the fast deployment and the rapid integration and migration without impacting our operations during the migration.
Playbooks and automation definitely freed up engineer time. This allows us to focus on other projects and not have to get hands-on, reducing operational costs.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
Nutanix Central's support is praised for responsive, knowledgeable service, overcoming initial challenges to achieve high client satisfaction.
Sentiment score
8.1
Nutanix Cloud Manager's support is praised for quick response, knowledgeable staff, proactive issue detection, and effective communication.
When an issue is reported and reviewed, they provide next steps and work to resolve the issue long term.
Nutanix support is one of the top ones I have dealt with.
They've always resolved issues in a timely manner.
There is a feature that allows you to escalate the call.
The handoff with support and the knowledge of the support engineer is significantly better than experience with other vendors.
Even when a node goes down, it doesn't impact our infrastructure because it gets load-balanced between the available nodes.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
9.1
Nutanix Central scales efficiently with growing needs, allowing seamless expansion and earning high user ratings for scalability.
Sentiment score
7.5
Nutanix Cloud Manager offers scalable, automated cluster management for businesses of all sizes, ensuring performance and seamless expansion.
It scales efficiently with the growing needs of our company.
Nutanix Central scales with the growing needs of my company, and we have expanded usage.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) scales well.
The key aspects include mix-match hardware and hyper-converged infrastructure, combining compute, storage, and network in a single platform.
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has not had any issues scaling with the growing needs of my company.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.8
Nutanix Central offers stable, reliable performance with high availability, resolving issues through scaling, and automatic alerts enhance reliability.
Sentiment score
7.7
Nutanix Cloud Manager is highly stable, reliable, and resilient, with minor issues quickly resolved, ensuring seamless user experiences.
If one node goes down, it automatically alerts us, but we can always count on the other builds running.
Nutanix Central is always available, so it's quite stable and reliable.
Nutanix Central is available 90% of the time with the ability to log in and manage all resources.
We've never had any downtime related to the Nutanix product itself.
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
The stability and reliability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) have been excellent.
 

Room For Improvement

Nutanix Central needs improved setup, enhanced permissions, seamless migration, better API compatibility, unified updates, and streamlined task execution.
Nutanix Cloud Manager needs better VM organization, simplified pricing, improved interface, and enhanced features for smoother cloud integration.
One of the biggest challenges we have with Nutanix currently is that our Rubrik backups do not work with the Nutanix API.
It would be nice to go in and say, 'This VM doesn't need to be in this data center, and we'd prefer to put it in this one,' and have the ability to initiate the migration.
Once it is set up, everything works smoothly, but the initial setup was difficult.
It supports different hardware types without vendor lock-in, which is an advantage over Azure Stack HCI, which may only work with specific vendors such as HP or Dell.
Our primary reason for choosing Nutanix was for mission-critical applications and Kubernetes.
Quick resolution of disconnection issues and errors in plugins is crucial.
 

Setup Cost

Nutanix Central offers budget-friendly integration with cost governance, enhancing resource planning and financial management across existing licenses.
Nutanix Cloud Manager offers flexible pricing, delivering ROI through management consolidation, reduced overhead, and scalable, negotiable plans.
We do not incur additional costs for using Nutanix Central.
Nutanix Central's cost visibility feature helps with resource planning and budget preparation.
We tie in with cost governance in Nutanix Central, which helps us identify other products and determine whether we need to increase our licensing or reduce it.
It's not cheap, but there are savings and return on investment when coming from a non-Nutanix shop.
In comparison, Nutanix's pricing is significantly higher than that of other setups.
While VMware costs depend on ESXi hypervisor pricing, the AHV hypervisor for Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is free.
 

Valuable Features

Nutanix Central centralizes multi-cluster management, enhancing efficiency and decision-making with integrated tools and insightful analytics dashboards.
Nutanix Cloud Manager offers centralized upgrades, simple interface, automation, and manages on-premises and cloud environments for efficient resource management.
The visibility we get from Nutanix Central—seeing it all in one spot—primarily gives us significant time savings.
It allows us to know what groups, such as application groups, servers belong to, so we can group them appropriately in consistency groups for DR purposes.
Before an issue becomes critical, it sends us an email notification with warning status information.
It's easy to control resources and govern the resources, and it frees up support to focus on other things without having to help developers.
I would approximate the cost savings to be in the 20% to 25% range since we can optimize our resources and avoid the need to purchase more hardware or reuse resources in the infrastructure from one implementation.
The importance of faster outcomes for their environment is significant; for example, when I delivered the Disaster Recovery solution, we included automation for auto-configuration of VMs and resizing of VMs, which replaced many tasks that were previously done manually.
 

Categories and Ranking

Nutanix Central
Ranking in Cloud Management
17th
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Center Infrastructure Management (7th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (8th)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
110
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2703777 - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us get ahead of potential problems, and their support has been phenomenal
I don't think there's much improvement needed in Nutanix Central. Maybe there are different tools I haven't discovered yet that may bring everyone on the same page. I am still in the process of researching them and providing feedback to Nutanix. For what we use it for, it runs efficiently. What I think is missing in Nutanix Central to make it the best product ever is compatibility with our backups. One of the biggest challenges we have with Nutanix currently is that our Rubrik backups do not work with the Nutanix API. That would be great to resolve, as it would reduce the time spent resolving the issue.
Phani Venkata Sai BKD - PeerSpot reviewer
Manages hybrid infrastructure seamlessly with flexible cluster scaling and comprehensive oversight
The most important aspect of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is that it helps us manage the infrastructure as a hyperconverged infrastructure in HCI mode. If I have different physical servers, I can map them into a cluster and manage the storage together. It provides flexibility to make use of storage in a clustered format instead of using it in an individual storage endpoint. We have the flexibility to have Nutanix-based licensing based on the core model, instead of having a specific cost on the cluster. The costing on a core model gives customers flexibility to add multiple cores to a single physical host and adjust the infrastructure accordingly, and we can scale up the cluster as needed. While other cloud providers, AWS or Azure, are mostly into cloud-based solutions, and Azure has introduced Azure Stack HCI for managing on-premises infrastructure, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides flexibility from day one. We can manage both on-premises and Azure solutions using a single pane of glass, eliminating the need to navigate different windows or screens. It provides a comprehensive view of the infrastructure and highlights specific areas through alerts, giving us good visibility of infrastructure conditions.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Wholesaler/Distributor
7%
Computer Software Company
30%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise23
Large Enterprise64
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Central?
My experience with the pricing, setup costs, and licensing is limited as I don't manage that part. However, I know it has been within budget and hasn't impacted our financial planning.
What needs improvement with Nutanix Central?
One area of improvement could be from the AI side, as the industry shifts and grows. If we could get workflow mechanisms built into Nutanix Central, we could define workflows to solve known issues ...
What is your primary use case for Nutanix Central?
We use Nutanix Central for our hybrid cloud management because we have our on-premises Nutanix clusters and AWS cloud resources.
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...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Central vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
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