Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs OpenNebula comparison

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructur...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) and OpenNebula based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two HCI solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. OpenNebula Report (Updated: May 2023).

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs. OpenNebula

May 2023

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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 Cloud Infrastructur...

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

197

Ranking in other categories

Software Defined Storage (SDS) (3rd), HCI (3rd), Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) (1st), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th)

OpenNebula

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (7th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Infrastructure and Tools solutions, they serve different purposes. Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is designed for HCI and holds a mindshare of 8.6%, up 8.5% compared to last year.
OpenNebula, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud Management, holds 7.4% mindshare, up 6.5% since last year.

HCI

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

MahendraPanchotiya

Infrastructure Manager at ER Tech Pros

Offers a unified platform, reduces downtime, and simple updates

Nutanix offers a unified platform for managing databases, virtual machines, and applications. This simplifies management by consolidating everything into a single interface. While Nutanix may have a higher upfront cost compared to other hypervisors, it can significantly reduce the resources needed for infrastructure management. With our previous hypervisor, we needed nearly ten IT personnel. Nutanix has allowed us to streamline our team to just three members. We use a combination of database technologies, including SQL databases and web servers such as IIS, BHP, and NGINX. Nutanix features helped our organization reduce downtime. I don't recall the last time we had downtime related to Nutanix because it is such a stable product. Nutanix, a reliable product, helps us streamline our processes, which in turn improves company revenue. We began to see the benefits after two years, with a 40 percent reduction in operational costs. We migrated 200 servers from AWS to Nutanix. Nutanix may not consolidate applications, but it helps us run them more efficiently on its platform. Updating is simple with one click. I would rate the updating processes 10 out of 10. Adding compute and storage on demand is not difficult. However, we need to factor in the existing and new firmware and software requirements.

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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

"Prism Central allows managing the cluster from a single pane of glass, and it allows a deeper dive into the solution."

"What I like the most are the high-availability and scalability."

"Nutanix Acropolis AOS has very good stability."

"There are a lot of things I really like. Perhaps the best part is taking a snapshot of a virtual machine. It's very quick. Another useful part is replication and creating a protection domain: using the protection feature to replicate a machine to a remote site for DR purposes."

"To receive a performance enhancement by merely clicking the one button upgrade is the true value of the platform and what I look forward to the most."

"Great flexibility and scalability."

"Its low maintenance is a key feature. It is easy to install, upgrade, and scale by adding more blocks."

"The solution is well integrated with other vendors."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pros

"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."

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

"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."

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

"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."

"I also like the ability to build custom functions. I can define a function where I have two types of views and configure the dependencies. The virtual data centers concept allows me to define users. If a user wants to join certain kinds of machines, the host and the other user won't see them. It gives me the flexibility to define multiple views and data centers in one place."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"The technology has a lot of room for improvement. For example, when they want to segment applications in conjunction with NSX, which VMware uses, Acropolis is not compatible with the competitors. The integration in the security layer is not compatible with NSX for the application segmentation that uses VMware."

"The reporting feature isn't very good."

"Storage utilization and optimization should be better."

"Nutanix should improve AHV to support migration VMs between clusters and storage containers. Migration between containers is possible, but it requires shutting down the VM. The procedure is long and there is no migration between clusters at all."

"Our client had some old Citrix Xen servers for which there is no direct migration. Nutanix has a move utility for Microsoft Hyper-V clusters or VMware clusters. You can easily migrate them using the move utility, but the Xen clusters cannot be migrated in a simple way. That is the only thing that is lacking, but nowadays, no one uses the Citrix Xen server for their clusters. Everything else is already there. Nutanix keeps on upgrading its hardware's or hypervisor's capability to be able to support new technologies."

"The new features are not free. You need to pay for each feature."

"They could improve the graphical user interface."

"The only problem is that not many operating systems are supported on the AOS hypervisor. They need to probably increase the support on multiple operating systems. As of now, a very limited number of operating systems and patch levels are supported on AOS."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) cons

"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."

"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."

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

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."

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

"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."

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

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Extra features should not be so expensive. We would love to be able to use or even just try some of the extra features without having to buy them. Buying those features is just as expensive as buying vSphere licenses, so the cost savings is nullified."

"In terms of the solution's licensing, it's quite comprehensive."

"The software only licensing model is priced normally, but the licensing model that comes with hardware is priced very high. You can choose to pay the license yearly, or you can pay every three years, or every five years."

"We have a three-year license for the use of this solution."

"The price of the solution is expensive. However, the price to performance is good. The cost for development and installation is very low."

"This product is expensive, but they do have discounts. At one point, I saw that they were giving a 70% or 80% discount, which is a good thing, but maybe they should have a more realistic price and then a 5% to 10% discount."

"Cost-wise, it is very good. It is like the hypervisor cost is not there. We only need to pay for the system and AOS licenses."

"It is slightly more expensive compared to a standard, on-prem, bare-metal configuration. There is about a 30 percent overhead there."

More Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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 solution is open source so is free."

"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

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Comparison Review

it_user244362

Managing Consultant with 51-200 employees

Aug 30, 2015

Nutanix vs. VMware EVO:RAIL vs. FlexPod

Originally posted at www.storagegaga.com/dont-get-too-drunk-on-hyper-converged/ I hate the fact that I am bursting the big bubble brewing about Hyper Convergence (HC). I urge all to look past the hot air and hype frenzy that are going on, because in the end, the HC platforms have to be aligned…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

38%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

22%

University

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is the biggest difference between Nutanix Acropolis and VMware vSphere?

We found the reduced power consumption with Nutanix Acropolis AOS a very attractive feature. We also like the interface that allows you to talk directly to your VM from the present software. We fou...

How do I choose between Cisco Hyperflex HX Series and Nutanix Acropolis AOS?

Cisco HyperFlex HS series vs Nutanix Acropolis AOS Cisco HyperFlex gives extended hyper-convergence functions from core to edge and multi-cloud environments. It helps IT and OT teams deploy hyper...

Which would you choose - Nutanix Acropolis AOS or VMware vSAN?

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...

VxRail vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Comparisons

Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

HPE SimpliVity vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Stack HCI vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 6% of the time

Dell PowerFlex vs Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

Compared 5% of the time

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CloudStack vs OpenNebula

Compared 50% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 14% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 9% of the time

Red Hat CloudForms vs OpenNebula

Compared 2% of the time

More OpenNebula Competitors

Product Reports

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI)

April 2025

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) report

Download Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) product report

Download OpenNebula product report

April 2025

Also Known As

Nutanix Acropolis AOS, Nutanix AOS, Nutanix Acropolis

No data available

Overview

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) is a top-ranking HCI software, cloud management tool, and Software Defined Storage (SDS) tool that is marketed as the foundation for users' hybrid clouds. It offers a powerful and secure hyperconverged infrastructure to deliver all data and applications at any scale and on any cloud. The solution offers a complete software stack that allows users to unify their hybrid cloud infrastructure.

NCI’s services include computer, storage and network, hypervisors and containers, and deployment in public or in private clouds. The product also comes with built-in resilience, disaster recovery capabilities, self-healing, and high-security capacities. It provides further deployment flexibility through several software and hardware options and platforms. NCI includes a full set of enterprise capabilities. It can also be deployed on a wide range of servers from popular manufacturers.

The capabilities of the product are categorized into three main groups:

AOS storage
Flexible and open compute
Automated and secure networking

Outside of these categories, NCI also offers other capabilities:

Integrated disaster recovery
Full-stack lifecycle management
VMware with Nutanix
Intelligent operations

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Features

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers its customers various features and tools in each of the previously mentioned categories. The available features for users currently include:

High-performance: This set of features utilizes hardware advances such as NVMe and RDMA to accelerate users' most demanding applications with consistent performance. The tools in this feature category work alongside data locality to ensure successful results.
Foolproof resiliency: These Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure features protect data and keep it available by facilitating advanced distributed consistency algorithms. Users can utilize these features to protect their data from issues like bit rot, hardware failures, and even entire site failure.
Flexibility: This set of features allows storage to be sized for the needs of each organization and expanded promptly and easily so that the organization and its data can grow. The features offer flexibility to users in terms of applying storage policies logically on a pre-workload basis, instead of being tied to hardware.
Hypervisor choice: Users can choose from the leading hypervisors - Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESXi. They can also leverage the built-in hypervisor AHV that Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides.
Integrated virtualization: These features offer simplified automation and AHV streamlined operations. The services in this category are optimized for high performance and reliability.
Kubernetes: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to build and deploy cloud-native applications on intelligent distributed infrastructure. Apps can be integrated with cloud-compatible storage and both building and deployment can be achieved within the same platform.
Microsegmentation: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) offers features to prevent malware spread and reduce attack surfaces by leveraging machine learning (ML).
Virtual networking: This set of features allows users to easily implement multi-tenancy in their environment or stretch networks across clouds.
Centralized network management: Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides organizations with a way to manage networking configurations centrally. Users can utilize it across their human-computer interaction (HCI) environment with simple virtual switch management.

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) Benefits

The product offers various benefits to users who utilize its capacities. Some of these include:

NCI reduces technology sprawl and frees up technical resources to allow organizations to focus on other activities, potentially reducing costs for the business.
The product allows customers to deploy, scale, and bridge to the public cloud to be able to react in evolving business environments.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure improves data availability while simultaneously protecting it against several kinds of failures and attacks.
The solution offers high-performance, resilient distributed storage for all workloads.
Working alongside Nutanix Cloud Platform, NCI offers simple management of data from one console.
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure works by the zero trust philosophy, protecting users' apps and data through specially designed security protocols.

Reviews from Real Users

According to Gerhard J., an IT manager at Q4 Fuel, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) provides serious reliability and stability across the entire system makes for ROI.

A solutions architect at a computer software company describes NCI as a stable, straightforward to set up, and scalable solution.

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

St. Lukes Health System, the City of Seattle, Yahoo! Japan, Sligro, Empire Life, Hyundai AUS, and many others.

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