Nutanix Central vs Red Hat CloudForms comparison

Nutanix and Red Hat are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Additionally, 100% of Nutanix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 8, 2025

Red Hat CloudForms and Nutanix Central are cloud management platforms designed to streamline IT operations and automate cloud environments. Nutanix Central holds the upper hand due to its comprehensive features, offering a more integrated experience despite higher costs.

Features: Red Hat CloudForms emphasizes multi-cloud management, policy-driven governance, and open-source integration, allowing for flexibility and robust control. Nutanix Central offers enhanced security features, seamless application mobility, and a unified management interface, providing a focus on detailed analytics and AIOps.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat CloudForms is known for straightforward deployment and excellent customer service support, offering training sessions to facilitate a smooth transition. Nutanix Central may be more intricate in deployment but offers a cohesive setup within hyper-converged environments. Its customer service is responsive, though the complexity may require additional support initially.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat CloudForms has a lower setup cost with flexible subscription models and achieves a clear ROI due to its cost-effective scalability. Nutanix Central involves a higher initial investment, justified by its longer-term ROI, improved efficiency, and security benefits, benefiting organizations focused on scaling hybrid IT environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Management Report (Updated: May 2025).

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May 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

IBM Turbonomic

Featured Reviews

Alex Darby

Director, Infrastructure, Wintel Engineering at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Saves time during workload migration, facilitates sizing of virtual servers, and the support team is helpful

The right-sizing feature is the most captivating one for us. It helped in taking the emotions out of what people think they need, basing it off of real data, and providing them what they actually need. It's not really a special feature, but the support that we received from that team really helped us in our success. There were definitely some customizations that needed to take place to make it successful. This is the most aware of our products, in terms of understanding all of the components from the top down. It is integrated with all of the different modules, all the way down to the core infrastructure. All of it is tied together and there are not many tools that can do that.

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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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Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

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…

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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

"I like Turbonomic's automation and AI machine learning features. It shows you what it can do, but it can also act on recommendations automatically. Integration with an APM system makes the AI/ML features truly effective. Understanding what the application is doing and the trends of application behavior can help you make real-world decisions and act on that information."

"It helps us get a consolidated view of all customer spending into a single dashboard, allowing us to identify opportunities to improve their current spending."

"The feature for optimizing VMs is the most valuable because a number of the agencies have workloads or VMs that are not really being used. Turbonomic enables us to say, 'If you combine these, or if you decide to go with a reserve instance, you will save this much.'"

"We have seen a 30% performance improvement overall."

"The proactive monitoring of all our open enrollment applications has improved our organization. We have used it to size applications that we are moving to the cloud. Therefore, when we move them out there, we have them appropriately sized. We use it for reporting to current application owners, showing them where they are wasting money. There are easy things to find for an application, e.g., they decommissioned the server, but they never took care of the storage. Without a tool like this, that storage would just sit there forever, with us getting billed for it."

"The recommendation of the family types is a huge help because it has saved us a lot of money. We use it primarily for that. Another thing that Turbonomic provides us with is a single platform that manages the full application stack and that's something I really like."

"The notifications saying, "This is a corrective action," even though some of them can be automated, are always welcome to see. They summarize your entire infrastructure and how you can better utilize it. That is the biggest feature."

"My favorite part of the solution is the automation scheduling. Being able to choose when actions happen, and how they happen..."

More IBM Turbonomic pros

"My experience has been phenomenal."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"It provided a significant increase in speed and ease of use."

"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."

"The ability to look in one place in Nutanix Central is what I prefer the most. We can see storage but also capacity, and it gives my boss a place to look, so he doesn't ask me questions."

More Nutanix Central pros

"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."

"The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or providers."

"They are a very mature product."

"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."

"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."

"I am impressed with the product's reports."

"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

Cons

"We're still evaluating the solution, so I don't know enough about what I don't know. They've done a lot over the years. I used Turbonomics six or seven years ago before IBM bought them. They've matured a lot since then."

"Since the introduction of a HTML 5 based interface, our main - but minor - criticism of a less than intuitive operation managers' GUI would be the area of improvement."

"They have a long road map when we ask for certain things that will make the product better. It takes time, but that's understandable because there are other things that are higher on the priority list."

"The issue for us with the automation is we are considering starting to do the hot adds, but there are some problems with Windows Server 2019 and hot adds. It is a little buggy. So, if we turn that on with a cluster that has a lot of Windows 2019 Servers, then we would see a blue screen along with a lot of applications as well. Depending on what you are adding, cores or memory, it doesn't necessarily even take advantage of that at that moment. A reboot may be required, and we can't do that until later. So, that decreases the benefit of the real-time. For us, there is a lot of risk with real-time."

"It would be good for Turbonomic, on their side, to integrate with other companies like AppDynamics or SolarWinds or other monitoring softwares. I feel that the actual monitoring of applications, mixed in with their abilities, would help. That would be the case wherever Turbonomic lacks the ability to monitor an application or in cases where applications are so customized that it's not going to be able to handle them. There is monitoring that you can do with scripting that you may not be able to do with Turbonomic."

"There are a few things that we did notice. It does kind of seem to run away from itself a little bit. It does seem to have a mind of its own sometimes. It goes out there and just kind of goes crazy. There needs to be something that kind of throttles things back a little bit. I have personally seen where we've been working on things, then pulled servers out of the VMware cluster and found that Turbonomic was still trying to ship resources to and from that node. So, there has to be some kind of throttling or ability for it to not be so buggy in that area. Because we've pulled nodes out of a cluster into maintenance mode, then brought it back up, and it tried to put workloads on that outside of a cluster. There may be something that is available for this, but it seems very kludgy to me."

"Enhanced executive reporting standard with the tool beyond the reports that can be created today. Something that can easily be used with upper management on a monthly or quarterly basis to show the impact to our environment."

"I would love to see Turbonomic analyze backup data. We have had people in the past put servers into daily full backups with seven-year retention and where the disk size is two terabytes. So, every single day, there is a two terabyte snapshot put into a Blob somewhere. I would love to see Turbonomic say, "Here are all your backups along with the age of them," to help us manage the savings by not having us spend so much on the storage in Azure. That would be huge."

More IBM Turbonomic cons

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

More Nutanix Central cons

"I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions."

"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."

"Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware."

"Red Hat CloudForms could improve by allowing more customization of reports. We have to do a lot of coding to accomplish what we want. Additionally, the compatibility with the multi-cloud could improve. The latter versions of the solution removed Google support and the cost comparison between other clouds was high."

"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."

"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."

"The solution is still quite immature."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is in line with the other solutions that we have. It's not a bargain software, nor is it overly expensive."

"I know there have been some issues with the billing, when the numbers were first proposed, as to how much we would save. There was a huge miscommunication on our part. Turbonomic was led to believe that we could optimize our AWS footprint, because we didn't know we couldn't. So, we were promised savings of $750,000. Then, when we came to implement Turbonomic, the developers in AWS said, "Absolutely not. You're not putting that in our environment. We can't scale down anything because they coded it." Our AWS environment is a legacy environment. It has all these old applications, where all the developers who have made it are no longer with the company. Those applications generate a ton of money for us. So, if one breaks, we are really in trouble and they didn't want to have to deal with an environment that was changing and couldn't be supported. That number went from $750,000 to about $450,000. However, that wasn't Turbonomic's fault."

"Everybody tells me the pricing is high. But the ROIs are great."

"I consider the pricing to be high."

"It's worth the time and money investment if you can afford it."

"We felt the pricing was very fair for the product. It is in no way prohibitive for larger deployments, unlike other similar product on the market."

"When we have expanded our licensing, it has always been easy to make an ROI-based decision. So, it's reasonably priced. We would like to have it cheaper, but we get more benefit from it than we pay for it. At the end of the day, that's all you can hope for."

"Price is a big one. VMTurbo was very competitively priced."

More IBM Turbonomic 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."

"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."

"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."

"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

No data available

Computer Software Company

28%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

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 Turbonomic?

It offers different scenarios. It provides more capabilities than many other tools available. Typically, its price is...

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What needs improvement with Turbonomic?

The implementation could be enhanced.

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What is your primary use case for Turbonomic?

We use IBM Turbonomic to automate our cloud operations, including monitoring, consolidating dashboards, and reporting...

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What do you like most about Red Hat CloudForms?

I am impressed with the product's reports.

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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.

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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.

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM Turbonomic

May 2025

Download IBM Turbonomic product report

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Central

May 2025

Download Nutanix Central product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

May 2025

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

Also Known As

Turbonomic, VMTurbo Operations Manager

No data available

Interactive Demo

IBM

Demo not available

Nutanix

Demo not available

Red Hat

Overview

IBM Turbonomic offers automation, planning, and right-sizing recommendations to streamline resource management, improve efficiencies, and optimize costs across virtualized environments and cloud platforms.

IBM Turbonomic is valued for its capability to optimize resource allocation and monitor virtual environments efficiently. It facilitates automated decision-making in VM sizing, load balancing, and cost optimization for both on-premises and cloud deployments. Users can leverage insights for workload placement, ensure peak performance assurance, and effectively right-size across VMware and Azure. The ongoing transition to HTML5 aims to improve visual and navigational ease, while expanded reporting features are anticipated. Opportunities for improved training, documentation, and integrations enhance platform usability and functionality.

What Are the Key Features?

Automation: Streamlines resource allocation and VM management.
Planning Tools: Supports capacity management and growth projections.
Right-Sizing: Optimizes VM configurations for efficient resource use.
Customizable Dashboards: Provides quick insights into environment health.
Reporting Capabilities: Offers valuable data for informed decision-making.
Cloud Integration: Ensures cost-effective resource utilization.

What Benefits Should Be Looked For?

Performance Enhancement: Improves application performance efficiency.
Cost Reduction: Minimizes operational expenses through optimizations.
Infrastructure Efficiency: Maximizes use of IT infrastructure resources.

In finance, IBM Turbonomic aids in maintaining platform efficiency during market fluctuations. Healthcare organizations leverage its capability for resource optimization during high-demand periods to enhance patient care support. Retailers use it for planning in peak seasons, ensuring resources align with fluctuating demand to maintain performance continuity.

IBM

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

Manage container, virtual, private, and public cloud infrastructures

Managing a complex, hybrid IT environment can require multiple management tools, redundant policy implementations, and extra staff to handle the operations. Red Hat® CloudForms simplifies IT, providing unified management and operations in a hybrid environment.

As your IT infrastructure progresses from traditional virtualization toward an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, CloudForms evolves, protecting your investments and providing consistent user experience and functionality.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

IBM, J.B. Hunt, BBC, The Capita Group, SulAmérica, Rabobank, PROS, ThinkON, O.C. Tanner Co.

Information Not Available

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 VMware, Nutanix, IBM and others in Cloud Management. Updated: May 2025.

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