OpenNebula vs VMware Cloud Director comparison

OpenNebula and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. OpenNebula is ranked #21 with an average rating of 7.0, while Broadcom is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.2. OpenNebula holds a 1.6% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenNebula users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

OpenNebula

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

3,459 Views
3,286 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

VMware Cloud Director

Read 71 VMware Cloud Director reviews

5,886 Views
5,062 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

OpenNebula

VMware Cloud Director

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Cloud Director and OpenNebula operate in the cloud infrastructure platform market, with VMware Cloud Director being more suited for enterprise-level deployments due to its comprehensive service offerings, scalability, and advanced features. OpenNebula, on the other hand, appeals to smaller operations because of its open-source nature and ease of use.

Features: VMware Cloud Director is known for extensive cloud service offerings, multi-tenancy, and integration abilities with VMware’s suite, making it robust for enterprise use. OpenNebula is appreciated for its lightweight nature, simple deployment, and support for multiple hypervisors, offering flexibility as a cloud management platform.

Room for Improvement: VMware Cloud Director could enhance its public cloud integration, simplify user experiences, and improve HTML5 support. Users seek better alignment with AWS or Azure. OpenNebula requires stronger community support, better template management capabilities, and advanced cloud features to compete effectively with rivals.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Cloud Director offers flexible deployment options across various cloud environments, though setup can be complex. Its customer support receives mixed reviews concerning timeliness. Conversely, OpenNebula is praised for straightforward deployment in on-premises setups and customer service simplicity.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Cloud Director's high costs may not suit budget-constrained projects, although its benefits can lead to substantial ROI over time due to enhanced service delivery. OpenNebula, with its cost-effective approach, especially for open-source users, presents an attractive pricing model, delivering quick ROI through low initial investments and operational savings.

To learn more, read our detailed OpenNebula vs. VMware Cloud Director Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. VMware Cloud Director

August 2026

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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

21st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Cloud Director

Ranking in Cloud Management

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Director is 2.5%, down from 6.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Cloud Director	2.5%
OpenNebula	1.6%
Other	95.9%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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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KuldeepSingh4

Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Experienced users benefit from resource isolation and valuable self-service portal while seeing potential in enhanced infrastructure visibility

VMware is not going further with VMware Cloud Director. They are integrating the VMware Cloud Director feature with Aria Automation only for the upcoming versions, primarily with the VCF 9, and slowly they are integrating some of the parts they have already integrated, and they might not continue with VMware Cloud Director in the future. They can make it more granular to ensure hardware-level segregation, the underlying infrastructure level of segregation for the end user, and a separate security boundary where users can access the end-to-end layer. End-to-end layer means my software layer along with the hardware layer. If they want to do a certain level of troubleshooting primarily on the ESXi part, that is what I feel is lacking for now because for an end user accessing the SSP, the underlying infrastructure is a kind of black box for them. For VMware Cloud Director, it can be more comprehensive if we enable public cloud integration as well. In today's date, customers are adopting a multi-cloud environment where VMware Cloud Director is much feasible to leverage the underlying VMware backend architecture. If VMware Cloud Director could be made to have more integration with the public cloud and do the day one, day two jobs for public cloud interface as well, that would be beneficial. Additionally, I recommend leveraging the VMware Cloud Director layer if a customer has a multi-cloud environment and is planning some cross-cloud migration capability. Cross-cloud migration refers to if a customer has something on Azure, wanting to bring it up on VMware or maybe from VMware to AWS, vice versa. In that case, VMware Cloud Director should provide some cross-cloud migration capability as well.

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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

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

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

"OpenNebula has given us tremendous knowledge about cloud computing and about Cloud Management platforms, commonly known as CMP."

"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage, is easy to use, has a good UI, and is very scalable."

"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."

"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."

"It is quite easy to deploy."

More OpenNebula pros

"The initial setup was complex. There's a lot of things you have to factor in, like security, backup, disaster recovery, monitoring, and how to maintain the platform. It's something we still struggle with, but it's getting better."

"You can't go wrong with VMware."

"What I found most valuable in vCloud Director is the multi-tenancy."

"The initial installation and setup are very quick."

"vCloud Director works and makes my life easier, as its self-service capabilities allow us to give resources to our customers so they can spin up as many or as few machines as they like, and it works."

"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director is its ability to host customers on their own cloud."

"We use it to replicate VMs for our customers from one data center to another data center."

"We use vCloud Director as a multiple cloud management solution."

More VMware Cloud Director pros

Cons

"Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now."

"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 no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"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."

"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."

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

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

More OpenNebula cons

"vCloud Director isn't cheap."

"The tool needs to add more features to improve the console."

"The tool's price is one of the challenges we faced with the solution, making it an area requiring improvement."

"The product's UI has certain shortcomings that require improvement."

"VMware is not going further with VMware Cloud Director. They are integrating the VMware Cloud Director feature with Aria Automation only for the upcoming versions, primarily with the VCF 9, and slowly they are integrating some of the parts they have already integrated, and they might not continue with VMware Cloud Director in the future."

"vRealize Orchestrator is an expensive tool."

"There are some shortcomings. There are bugs with opening support."

"I had issues with the support, but I also learned from the support. There is room for improvement in the response time."

More VMware Cloud Director cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"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."

"It's a costly product. The licenses may not be costly, but with every new development in their product, we need to purchase deployment services, and the deployment services are quite costly."

"The licensing cost is high for vCloud Director. It is mostly a perpetual license."

"The solution is costly, efficient, and robust versus alternative solutions."

"I believe the pricing is reasonable."

"The licensing costs are pretty high, but it might depend on the size of the company."

"In certain cases, the price of Cloud Director is quite high, especially with the load balancing and other features they've introduced. That seems quite costly. Overall, for VSPP programming, I think it's okay. However, features like enterprise load balancing and all these other things are very costly."

"My company has no problems with the pricing of the product as we got good discounts from VMware."

"This is an expensive solution."

More VMware Cloud Director pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Computer Software Company

University

Financial Services Firm

13%

Construction Company

12%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

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	24
Midsize Enterprise	13
Large Enterprise	39

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?

VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a single thing comes to mind when I think of improvements and that is integration. In...

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What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?

For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few years ago, my organization was using another cloud management tool. We switched...

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Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?

When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For example: Your DevOps team is supported through Infrastructure as Code services w...

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Comparisons

CloudStack vs OpenNebula

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 8% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs OpenNebula

Compared 5% of the time

Cisco UCS Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 4% of the time

More OpenNebula Competitors

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 8% of the time

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 7% of the time

Morpheus vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 5% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Cloud Director Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula

July 2026

Download OpenNebula product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Cloud Director

July 2026

Download VMware Cloud Director product report

Also Known As

No data available

vCloud Director

Overview

OpenNebula offers scalability, ease of deployment, and integration capabilities that enhance cloud management for enterprises. It supports both virtual and bare metal resources, providing a versatile cloud management experience.

OpenNebula provides a robust platform for building, managing, and automating private and public clouds. Its compatibility with platforms like VMware, KVM, and containers makes it ideal for businesses hosting virtual private clouds and deploying Kubernetes clusters. OpenNebula's API and SDK facilitate automation and integration, allowing organizations to connect with IT systems effectively. Despite its strengths, improvements in object storage, REST API integration, and UI enhancements are needed. The documentation can be disorganized, and users encounter challenges with upgrades and community support.

What are key OpenNebula features?

Scalability: Easily manage resources for growing cloud environments.
User-Friendly Interface: Simplifies cloud management tasks.
Integration: Connects seamlessly with IT systems using robust API and SDK.
Hypervisor Support: Works with multiple hypervisors and container platforms.

What benefits do users find in OpenNebula?

Efficiency: Streamlines cloud operations, reducing management complexities.
Versatility: Offers support for both virtual and bare metal resources.
Community and Documentation: Though needing improvement, provides valuable resources for users.
Cost-Effectiveness: Lightweight nature minimizes resource expenditure.

OpenNebula implementation spans industries where cloud automation and management are critical. Companies utilize OpenNebula for deploying private clouds and managing infrastructure. Its support for Kubernetes clusters is beneficial in tech-driven sectors, highlighting OpenNebula's adaptability to different operational needs.

OpenNebula

VMware Cloud Director is a versatile platform renowned for its multi-tenancy, automation capabilities, and ease of use. It integrates with platforms like Amazon and Azure, enabling networking flexibility, scalability, and efficient virtual data center deployment with a resilient and intuitive interface.

VMware Cloud Director empowers organizations by offering a self-service portal for independent resource management, robust security features, and efficient orchestration. Its integration with Amazon and Azure enhances cloud functionality, while scalability allows seamless addition of resources. Despite its strengths, there is a need for improved integration with AWS and Azure, a more intuitive UI, better private cloud support, advanced automation, simplified installation, and competitive pricing. Users seek built-in billing, seamless networking, stable updates, detailed documentation, robust technical support, and open-source compatibility.

What are the key features of VMware Cloud Director?

Multi-tenancy: Supports multiple tenants with resource isolation.
Automation: Enables automated deployment and management of resources.
Integration: Compatible with platforms like Amazon and Azure.
Security: Offers robust security features to protect data.
Self-service portal: Empowers users to manage resources independently.
Networking flexibility: Facilitates efficient network management.
Scalability: Allows easy resource expansion.

What benefits or ROI should users expect from VMware Cloud Director?

Resilience: Ensures reliable cloud infrastructure management.
Clear dashboarding: Provides transparent oversight of resources.
Service extension: Expands capabilities to enhance customer satisfaction.
Resource optimization: Maximizes resource utilization and efficiency.

In industries such as cloud infrastructure hosting, VMware Cloud Director supports the creation and management of virtual data centers. Organizations leverage it for delivering public and private cloud services, enabling the deployment and management of applications. Service providers utilize its capabilities to streamline customer onboarding and foster infrastructure segregation, catering to diverse cloud requirements.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. VMware Cloud Director

August 2026

Free Report: OpenNebula vs. VMware Cloud Director

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