Nutanix Central vs OpenNebula comparison

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Nutanix Central

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 8, 2025

OpenNebula and Nutanix Central are competing in the cloud management platform sector. Nutanix Central tends to have an advantage with its advanced features, despite OpenNebula's competitive pricing and support.

Features: OpenNebula is known for its flexibility, open-source approach, and ability to provide custom cloud environments efficiently. Nutanix Central offers integrated management tools, robust scalability, and a comprehensive all-in-one solution.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula provides a straightforward deployment model and strong community support. Nutanix Central features a more streamlined deployment process with professional customer service ideal for large-scale implementations.

Pricing and ROI: OpenNebula is cost-effective with lower setup costs and high ROI due to its open-source nature. Nutanix Central, although higher in upfront costs, delivers value through a comprehensive feature set that enhances long-term ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Central vs. OpenNebula Report (Updated: June 2025).

Nutanix Central vs. OpenNebula

June 2025

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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 Central

Ranking in Cloud Management

18th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Virtualization Management Tools (6th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (7th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (8th)

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

reviewer2703777

S30290139 Infrastructure Administrator II at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees

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.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We have multiple Prism Centrals - two currently, with more coming in, especially with NC2 and the public cloud. We can log into one portal, one panel, and see metrics, VMs, and perform administration tasks, all from one site."

"The grouping feature in Nutanix Central is helpful because, from my perspective, it's similar to tagging that I've been using in AWS and Rubrik."

"My experience has been phenomenal."

"I would give the customer service a perfect score."

"The features of Nutanix Central that I value most are primarily the hardware portion because it tells us everything available regarding BIOS upgrades and any updates that become compatible, including LCM upgrades. I enjoy troubleshooting and dealing with urgent issues."

"Nutanix Central scales very effectively with our growing needs."

"The ease of use is valuable because we can manage two different clusters or several clusters with it. I appreciate the one umbrella management feel. We can run updates and get different types of analytics."

"I find the categories in Nutanix Central most valuable because they allow us to group things easily, so we don't have to deal with complications, and that's how we use our DR."

More Nutanix Central pros

"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."

"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."

"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."

"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."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."

"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."

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

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"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."

"There has been confusion regarding the initial setup of Nutanix Central."

"The update process in terms of using LCM or using Central is sometimes confusing, but I think they are working towards unifying that."

"The permissions should be set for the highest level, more akin to cluster admin and Prism admin. There have been occasions where I needed to log into Prism Central directly to complete work due to permissions issues from Nutanix Central. They are very close to a one-for-one equivalence. While their website states it is not meant to replace Prism Element or Prism Central, I would prefer to see it reach the level where I can perform all Prism Central tasks from one location to multiple Prism Centrals."

"The API needs work. It's not specifically Central, but just the API as a whole. We've had a recurring issue where the API calls stack up and hang during backups from Rubrik, which has been a challenge, but Nutanix has their API version four coming out pretty soon, or it is available now, and we just can't upgrade yet. We're hoping to see some major improvements there."

"One of the things I'd want to see in Nutanix Central is more utility. 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, even if we have to make changes to networks."

"The update process in terms of using LCM or using Central is sometimes confusing, but I think they are working towards unifying that."

"There is a sense that they want to close tickets faster than always getting the resolution right."

More Nutanix Central cons

"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."

"An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula."

"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."

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

"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."

"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"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 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."

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Our experience was fine. We have no complaints."

"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."

"We had the benefit of already being under Ultimate and Pro for the majority of our licensing models. We do not incur additional costs for using Nutanix Central. Similar to Security Central, this is one of those tools we are adopting, integrating, and promoting because we already have access to it."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"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."

"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."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"The solution is open source so is free."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Computer Software Company

21%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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?

What is your primary use case for Nutanix Central?

My main use cases with Nutanix Central are managing updates, including LCM updates. We also manage all of our clusters and servers with it. It tells us the hardware health, VM health, disk issues, ...

What do you like most about OpenNebula?

The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenNebula?

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

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...

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Product Reports

Download Nutanix Central product report

Nutanix Central

May 2025

Download OpenNebula product report

May 2025

Overview

Nutanix Central offers a comprehensive platform for IT management, providing seamless integration and enhanced control across multi-cloud environments. It supports enterprises in scaling their digital operations efficiently and securely.

Designed for enterprise-grade deployment, Nutanix Central simplifies management tasks across different workloads with its intuitive interface. By integrating hybrid and multi-cloud operations, it allows management from a central point, making administration straightforward. This single platform is optimized for performance, helping companies reduce complexity while maintaining top-notch security protocols. With scalability at its core, Nutanix Central adapts to the changing demands of businesses, offering a reliable infrastructure for various applications.

What are the most important features?

Unified Management: Centralizes control of IT environments from a single dashboard.
Multi-cloud Integration: Supports seamless operation across public and private clouds.
Scalability: Adapts to growing business needs without compromising performance.
Security: Ensures data protection with robust security measures.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces operational expenses by optimizing resource use.
Enhanced Productivity: Streamlines IT management activities.
Business Agility: Enables swift response to market changes.
Reduced Complexity: Simplifies infrastructure management processes.

Industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail leverage Nutanix Central for its capability to manage distributed IT environments efficiently. In healthcare, it supports compliance and patient data security, while retail benefits from its ability to enhance customer experiences through agile IT operations. The financial sector relies on its robust security features to safeguard sensitive information, ensuring business continuity and regulatory adherence.

Nutanix

OpenNebula provides the most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds. OpenNebula interoperability makes cloud an evolution by leveraging existing IT assets, protecting your investments, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

OpenNebula is a turnkey enterprise-ready solution that includes all the features needed to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, and to offer public cloud services.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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