OpenNebula vs Red Hat CloudForms comparison

OpenNebula and Red Hat are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. OpenNebula is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.5, while Red Hat is ranked #29. OpenNebula holds a 5.7% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 1.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenNebula users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

OpenNebula

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

3,009 Views
2,889 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat CloudForms

Read 10 Red Hat CloudForms reviews

658 Views
645 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

OpenNebula

Red Hat CloudForms

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Red Hat CloudForms and OpenNebula are competing tools in the cloud management platform space. Red Hat CloudForms is favored for its pricing satisfaction and support, while OpenNebula is often preferred for its robust feature set.

Features: Red Hat CloudForms excels in hybrid cloud management, automation capabilities, and offers advanced monitoring and reporting, whereas OpenNebula impresses with integrated multi-cloud orchestration, a focus on scalability, and simplicity.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat CloudForms can improve by simplifying its initial setup processes, enhancing ease of use, and expanding flexibility in integration. OpenNebula could benefit from enhanced support options, expanding its feature documentation, and increased focus on advanced analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula is known for straightforward deployment and efficient, tailored customer service. Red Hat CloudForms offers comprehensive support but may require more complex initial setup, which can be beneficial for enterprises needing deep customization.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat CloudForms generally presents a higher initial setup cost with significant ROI through its extensive feature suite, while OpenNebula offers a cost-effective entry with lower scripting overhead and operational expenses, delivering faster ROI due to streamlined deployment.

To learn more, read our detailed OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms

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

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

Red Hat CloudForms

Ranking in Cloud Management

29th

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 5.7%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.5%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
OpenNebula	5.7%
Red Hat CloudForms	1.5%
Other	92.8%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

Thomas Bennett

Manager, DevOps System Engineering team at MX

Robust with great CLI tools and UI

I've found OpenNebula upgrades to be more complex than those of some of the competitors and the support to be mediocre. I would also like to see more and better ancillary tools related to OpenNebula, for example, more robust tools for backups, user support, etc. The support knows their software stack reasonably well. However, OpenNebula depends on so many open-source projects that they lack expertise. As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today.

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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 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."

"It is quite easy to deploy."

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

"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."

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

"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."

"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."

More OpenNebula pros

"They are a very mature product."

"The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't had any issues with it."

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

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

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

"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."

"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."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

Cons

"They should add more features like object storage."

"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."

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

"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"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."

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

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

More OpenNebula cons

"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 solution is still quite immature."

"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."

"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."

"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."

"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."

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

"The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

University

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

18%

Manufacturing Company

16%

University

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about OpenNebula?

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

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenNebula?

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

CloudStack vs OpenNebula

Compared 42% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 9% of the time

More OpenNebula Competitors

VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 26% of the time

Morpheus vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 25% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 22% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 15% of the time

More Red Hat CloudForms Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula

October 2025

Download OpenNebula product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

October 2025

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

Overview

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.

OpenNebula

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

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

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)

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms

September 2025

Free Report: OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms

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