Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula comparison

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

OpenNebula and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) compete in cloud management solutions. NCM has an upper hand due to its advanced features and performance, which justify its higher cost for enterprise-focused capabilities.

Features: OpenNebula offers simplicity, flexibility, and native support for multiple hypervisors, making it ideal for smaller deployments. NCM provides an integrated infrastructure, hybrid cloud support, and deep analytics, excelling in complex, scalable environments.

Room for Improvement: OpenNebula could improve by offering more streamlined deployment processes and expanded support services. Additionally, a more user-friendly interface could enhance its appeal. NCM might address its higher initial cost, broaden customization options, and improve user training resources.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix Cloud Manager offers streamlined deployment with comprehensive customer service and an all-inclusive platform. OpenNebula, while more customizable, may require more manual setup, with support primarily community-driven.

Pricing and ROI: OpenNebula's low initial setup cost is attractive for budget-conscious projects, with ROI improving as deployment scales. In contrast, NCM requires a higher initial investment but offers a better long-term ROI through its comprehensive features and performance.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. OpenNebula Report (Updated: September 2025).

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. OpenNebula

September 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 Cloud Manager (NCM)

Ranking in Cloud Management

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 5.3%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 6.1%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)	5.3%
OpenNebula	6.1%
Other	88.6%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Kumargaurav Kadam

Senior Information Technology Advisor at Dell Technologies

Offers centralized management, cost-effectiveness, and scalability

The licensing is much cheaper than other competitors such as VMware, Cisco UCS, or Microsoft Hyper-V for on-premises data centers. It is very user-friendly and can be managed through Prism Central, a centralized console that allows management of multiple clusters. Due to the recent conversion from VMware to Broadcom, Broadcom has increased their prices five times the existing rates. Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused. The main differentiator from competitors is its cost-effectiveness, and customers have been running and upgrading their technologies for 10 to 15 years. In terms of client satisfaction, performance, upgrades, or protection against ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities, they are regularly releasing patches and upgrading the system. These activities contribute to customer satisfaction and differentiate them from competitors.

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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 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."

"The most valuable feature is less or no implementation time. It should be up and running at any point in time so I don't spend time in transformation."

"Nutanix Prism Pro improves the quality and efficiency of IT operations for the modern datacenter. Powered by the machine learning and task automation, Prism Pro intelligently optimizes capacity, proactively detects performance anomalies, and enables the IT team to automate operations tasks with ease and confidence."

"I also like the fact that the solution manages itself. It has one interface where you can basically see all your servers. So, you can manage your servers and see whether you are falling short on space or disc usage. Also, in case your RAM is only using four Gigabytes of memory instead of eight, you can extend out the over-provisioned mail and save your cluster for four Giga of RAM."

"What I like the most about it is how intuitive it is to use."

"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 product has helped my company to have a single point of view for managing the infrastructure, our environment, and virtualization."

"The file server feature in Nutanix is very good, offering a solution-worthy feature that can host files, blocks, and object storage in the same cluster."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."

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

"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."

"It is quite easy to deploy."

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

"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."

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

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"There should be more APIs to integrate with different vendors and to integrate with the existing solutions that we use on-prem."

"I'd like them to offer a more flexible licensing model."

"The design could be more user-friendly. There is always room for improvement when it comes to a site being more user-friendly."

"In the first couple of months of deploying Nutanix, we had an issue with certain nodes that were rebooting automatically. Nothing went down, but it was concerning. Within a week of having the problem, we had a dedicated support person who worked with us for about a month and a half while they found the bug and developed a new patch for it. We tested it for them, then once it was working, everything was good."

"Nutanix Cloud Manager could partner with more partners to bring technologies that align with the area's policies and business needs."

"NCM's analytics could be better because we're not getting an accurate analysis of our virtual machines, and we're over-provisioning some of them."

"I cannot say Calm is providing centralized control of all our applications because we have some legacy systems. We have IBM iSeries, which is another technology. But with Calm we can centralize all our x86 machines."

"If they integrated more with GPT, that would be ideal."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

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

"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."

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

"They should add more features like object storage."

"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."

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

"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."

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

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive when you are looking at small locations that need low-latency workloads, but for larger locations, as compared to other guys, even using VMware, it is not that expensive because if you add it all up, it is going to be pretty much the same value."

"For Ecuador, this is a sensitive issue. It is a small economy, so the issue of budget is very sensitive. You find many small businesses and government clients who do not renew, for example, support or guarantees, which raises the risk level for them. We are always advising them that it is necessary to renew the services or infrastructure."

"Its acquisition and support cost is nominal. It is not too high, and it is not too low. It is within the budget, and there are no issues on that part."

"The product is very cheap."

"Nutanix changes its licensing models frequently, and it is difficult to figure out how and what is included in which package."

"In my opinion, Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is expensive."

"The pricing model offered by Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is better than the ones offered by the other solutions in the market."

"The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

31%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

20%

University

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	64

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	3

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 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...

VMware Cloud Director vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Comparisons

Compared 17% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 15% of the time

Morpheus vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 7% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Competitors

CloudStack vs OpenNebula

Compared 46% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 9% of the time

Morpheus vs OpenNebula

Compared 5% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs OpenNebula

Compared 3% of the time

More OpenNebula Competitors

Product Reports

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

August 2025

Download Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) product report

Download OpenNebula product report

August 2025

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

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a cloud management tool that drives consistent governance across private and public clouds for its users. The solution brings simplicity and ease of use to managing and building cloud deployments by providing a unified multicloud management that addresses common cloud adoption challenges.

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers four key value drivers:

Intelligent operations: They include monitoring, insights, and automated remediation.
Self-service and orchestration: This capacity category of the product includes tools for managing application and infrastructure workloads across multicloud environments.
Cost governance: NCM offers cost governance through accurate visibility into public and private cloud metering, cost optimization, and chargeback.
Security central: The solution facilitates users' security operations through alert automations with intelligent analysis and compliance controls.

Nutanix Cloud Manager provides coverage for Nutanix private clouds as well as for VMware's. The solution also supports several popular public cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). NCM provides additional flexibility for users, as it is also available as a fully managed Software as a Service (SaaS). This product allows companies to benefit from all of Nutanix multicloud self-services, application automation, security compliance, and governance, without depending on Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has features in the four key categories already mentioned. Some of the main capacities of the solution include:

Codeless task automation: This Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) feature allows IT teams to build automation and improve productivity with zero coding required.
Automated optimization: This feature detects the performance of VM deviates and raises an anomaly alert automatically without the need for configuration.
Capacity usage and scenario analysis: This feature’s runways enable pay-as-you-grow scaling and improves capacity usage with optimizations.
Self-service provisioning: This feature allows users to publish blueprints directly to end users through Nutanix Marketplace.
Application lifecycle management: Through this NCM feature, users can provision, configure, scale, upgrade, and delete applications across cloud environments as well as provide access to multiple teams at a time.
Hybrid multicloud orchestration: This Nutanix Cloud Manager feature allows users to automate the provisioning of hybrid cloud architectures from a single control plane.
Showback, chargeback, and budgeting: Nutanix Cloud Manager uses this feature to allow users to automatically create cloud consumption reports, define chargeback policies, and set up budget alerts.
Automated right-sizing and intelligent purchases: Through leveraging machine learning (ML) algorithms, users can benefit from the automatic detection of anomalous spending patterns.
Security monitoring and remediation: This feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager allows users to utilize over 250 audits for public clouds and over 500 for Nutanix on-premises.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Benefits

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides its users with several benefits. These include:

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers intelligent operations through the automation of operational tasks.
NCM gives users self-service opportunities and centralized role-based IT governance, which allows them the freedom to control their processes better.
Companies can benefit from cost and security governance with intelligent analysis and regulatory compliance.
The product has been made available across all regions in 2022, allowing worldwide access to its services without limitations.
NCM is suitable for beginners, as it offers low to no code actions.
Nutanix Cloud Manager provides real-time security, ensuring the cloud data of companies is protected at all times.

Reviews from Real Users

An IT Operations at an energy/utilities company likes Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) because the product provides visibility, simplifies operations, and saves time and cost.

Drew P., a network systems administrator at Moda Health, rates NCM highly because the product saves man-hours with excellent speed on outcomes and provides a continuous validation process.

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

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

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