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Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

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 Virtualization Management Tools
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
105
Ranking in other categories
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (4th), Cloud Management (1st), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)
SolarWinds Virtualization M...
Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools
7th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 9.3%, up from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is 9.9%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Virtualization Management Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Vipin Kumar Sha - PeerSpot reviewer
Stands out with auto-scaling, auto-scheduled snapshots, and single-vendor support
The areas that could be improved include the Nutanix Move tool, which is presently used for migrating VMs from one setup to a private cloud. It can be improved by adding some other setups, such as Citrix Xen, Red Hat Virtualization, and Red Hat OpenShift. There are many other cloud products that need to be added to the Nutanix Move tool, which would be really helpful for us in India, where we use different setups such as Red Hat Virtualization, OpenShift, Citrix XenCenter, Hyper-V, and VMware. The second suggestion is regarding the different clusters in Nutanix. Although Nutanix is very user-friendly and codeless, the individual clusters cannot be logged in at the same time via Prism, which takes time and can be wasteful. We have multiple clusters within Nutanix. Prism serves as the central management interface, allowing us to access these different clusters. When we log in through Prism, it takes a certain amount of time—sometimes several minutes—to log into each individual cluster. This can be quite time-consuming. Another important issue, especially for our customers in India and other data centers, is the need for proper VM tool reports. We require detailed information such as VM names, IP addresses, CPU assignments, and CPU utilization. This data should be exported in an Excel format. For example, if a virtual machine has four CPUs, the Excel report should include entries like: VM name, IP address, 4 CPUs, and current utilization (e.g., if 2 out of 4 CPUs are being used). We also need to capture other parameters, such as memory and disk configurations (e.g., hard disk 1 and hard disk 2), whether any ISOs are mounted (like CD/DVDs), USB drives attached to the VM, storage types (like NVM), and any RDMs associated with the VM. By extracting all this information into an Excel file, we would create a handy inventory for all the engineers. This detailed VM list would be extremely beneficial for cloud engineers and managers working with Nutanix.
Ravi Khanchandani - PeerSpot reviewer
Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager is a stable product compared to other vendors."
"Nutanix Cloud Manager is a lot easier to set up compared to other products."
"It offers high availability and consistency."
"The ease of use is a valuable feature. For us, it's a consistent interface. It's very easy to train our employees on it, and it's a newer generation interface. It's homogeneous, and every product and subset tie together, giving a very similar look to everything."
"We are using a Nutanix cluster to increase availability because it is a very good product with everything in one box: storage, network, and compute."
"Simplicity is most valuable because, with a single click, we have visibility of the entire infrastructure."
"The scripting, where you can use libraries, is a valuable feature. We don't really make the blueprints, as we have a third-party company that makes them for us. But it enables calling APIs in the blueprints. When we create a machine, we use IPAM from Infoblox and we can get an IP address. It's one platform to script and we can then use all the APIs to complete the scripts. It gives us a central management tool from which we can do a lot of things automatically."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."
"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."
 

Cons

"I consider it a very complete platform, for now, I believe it is very good. It could be advanced and more updated over time. I would like to see updates like the creation of basic applications for monitoring through tables, telephones, external updates, sending manuals, or informational brochures by mail to go hand in hand with the platform and its updates."
"Considering the shortcomings where improvements are needed, I would say that the tool should have a cheap hardware model that can be used to manage the proof of concept phase."
"It could maybe have better documentation. Nutanix does have really good documentation, but it could have more details in the future."
"The integration with Splunk is a little lacking, and this is something that we've worked on with Nutanix quite extensively in the last year or two. It didn't really have a good integration. They built some dashboards, where they were trying to kind of recreate Prism. Prism is its own utility; it works well for what it does. But it doesn't provide us quite the detail that we are looking for or the historical data that we were after. So we had to build our own custom apps for Splunk."
"I would appreciate seeing more in-depth features in the Intelligent Operations piece."
"In this solution, it is difficult to organize the VM folders and subfolders."
"The solution's dashboard is fine. In the product, the possibility of changing some of the icons in the dashboard configuration would be good since it is an area where the tool has shortcomings."
"Nutanix has room for improvement around the partner tools and making them approachable and easier to learn."
"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."
"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Nutanix changes its licensing models frequently, and it is difficult to figure out how and what is included in which package."
"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."
"The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"The pricing has been reasonable."
"The company frequently changes its prices, and it is not clear how the subscription-based model works."
"Its cost is reasonable. The features are very good."
"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."
"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
33%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?
SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.
 

Also Known As

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central
SolarWinds VMAN
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco
Elliot Health System
Find out what your peers are saying about Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.