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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

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
7.2
Number of Reviews
126
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (8th)
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
24th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 2.4%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.5%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)2.4%
OpenNebula1.5%
Other96.1%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Phani Venkata Sai BKD - PeerSpot reviewer
Technology Lead at Thomson Reuters
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.
FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager is the flexibility we're finding in expanding our technology and our support."
"One of the solution's greatest strengths is its "Single pane of glass" feature, which allows users to access all pertinent data in one location immediately upon logging in. Additionally, the solution's ease of deployment and mobility are notable aspects that I personally find appealing."
"It really drives up our speed tremendously for getting workloads to the customer as soon as possible."
"Previous inquiries took us almost a full day to prepare the VM to the liking of our users. Now the deployment time is below 15 minutes and users can do it on their own! That leaves us to only update the blueprints if new requirements come in or new Windows Versions are published. As we have now predefined setups the testing team can rely on common ground for their product tests. Development teams can experiment with alpha versions in a secured environment (separate VLANs) without harming production machines."
"Using NCM's built-in playbooks has helped free up time for my IT team to focus on other projects, saving approximately 20% of time."
"The ability to do Layer 2 stretching across data centers is valuable. The migration of VMs from one location to the other is also valuable."
"IT doesn't have to be super complicated."
"The executive dashboard is valuable and provides a complete sense of the whole infrastructure."
"I'll definitely recommend OpenNebula because it's an open-source solution that's effortless to set up, and the total cost of ownership is low."
"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."
"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."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
 

Cons

"I think NCM's guest tools have some room for improvement. It's a minor pain point getting those installed and getting the virtual machines to recognize them. I know there are changes coming in the near future, but as it stands today, they could be improved."
"The stability of the Prism solution is another thing that we have found to be a bit of work. For example, the Prism Central and the appliances use 97 percent of the CPU and RAM of the virtual machine."
"NCM's pricing structure is confusing and difficult to understand."
"They should include more use cases for automation in administering the environment."
"I still remember it was a struggle when we configured the initial network setup, that part was a little bit confusing about how exactly it works, we have two different Nutanix technicians who were on-site to help on the configuration. But both of them could not get right the first time, and we had to reset and start over again on both systems."
"If you're still running tiered architecture for the storage, it would be good to give stats on the amount of data that is warehoused in the cold tier versus the hot tier."
"The time between the solution's production and delivery is too short. We see several bugs. Many tests are not done before delivery. They need to test it more and for a longer time."
"The machine learning can be improved. There are a lot of false positives at times. For example, I'm actually looking at some alerts right now, that some service was restarted multiple times. It is like the same alert, spammed over and over again. But really, it turns out that that event didn't happen."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"I would like to see OpenNebula add more integration with REST API. XML-RPC API is good, but it becomes a pain to form a resting output."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"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."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is less compared to Hyper-V."
"Nutanix costs more than Hyper-V, but the price is reasonable for the features we're getting. We have better support, analytics, reporting, and other capabilities that we didn't have before. That is more than enough to justify the cost. The hardware we purchased from Nutanix was priced fairly. The primary costs are software and support. It's a subscription-based service, which can be bad or good, depending on how you look at that. For me, it makes perfect sense. We get regular updates and can get support when we need it."
"The pricing was very good. We were very pleased with what we were offered by our account manager. Because of that, we expanded Nutanix Cloud Manager, and we hope to expand even more. Right now, we are in Azure, and as we build up more and more within the NCM platform, we hope to expand into AWS as well."
"The five-year term for NCM's license cost and support was around five million."
"At the end of the day, the product justifies the cost, and it leads to a conversation with management over whether we actually need this feature and if there are any use cases for why we would want to keep it."
"On a scale from one to ten, if one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the solution's pricing a six."
"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 expensive...When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless."
"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."
"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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Marketing Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise75
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. OpenNebula and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
914,262 professionals have used our research since 2012.