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OpenNebula pros and cons

Vendor: OpenNebula
4.1 out of 5

Pros & Cons summary

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

OpenNebula provides efficient user management and virtual data center functionalities that users find to be exceptionally valuable.
The platform is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize, offering great flexibility to organizations.
It integrates well with SAP Storage, enhancing its capability to serve diverse infrastructure needs.
OpenNebula's deployment and management processes are straightforward, often cited as key factors in choosing it over other cloud solutions like OpenStack.
Its scalability and live migration feature are invaluable, allowing great adaptability and frequent use by organizations.

CONS

OpenNebula should add more features like object storage and hot-add RAM and CPU, which have been anticipated for over two years.
Competitors offer billing software for small-sized public cloud transformations, a feature absent in OpenNebula.
A straightforward REST API is needed, as the current XML-RPC API is less efficient compared to the JSON outputs provided by REST.
OpenNebula lacks many cloud features and backup solutions are only in the enterprise edition.
The protocol for clusterization doesn't perform well and hosting platforms are limited, impacting deployment.
 

OpenNebula Pros review quotes

DR
CEO at Lidoma
Aug 29, 2019
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.
DR
CEO at Lidoma
Nov 17, 2020
OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize.
RT
Head - Operations & Sales at Computer Port IT Solutions
Jan 26, 2021
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.
Learn what your peers think about OpenNebula. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.
AnkurGupta9 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal DevOps Engineer at Guavus
Oct 21, 2022
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.
RS
Associate principal engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Oct 27, 2022
The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs.
Dmitry Gilev - PeerSpot reviewer
System Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Nov 2, 2022
OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage.
FelipePolanco - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Nov 8, 2022
What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management.
RT
Head - Operations & Sales at Computer Port IT Solutions
Dec 2, 2022
It is quite easy to deploy.
KP
Senior System Integration Engineer at a tech consulting company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Dec 20, 2022
With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them.
Dmitry Gilev - PeerSpot reviewer
System Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Feb 23, 2023
OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack.
 

OpenNebula Cons review quotes

DR
CEO at Lidoma
Aug 29, 2019
They should add more features like object storage.
DR
CEO at Lidoma
Nov 17, 2020
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.
RT
Head - Operations & Sales at Computer Port IT Solutions
Jan 26, 2021
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.
Learn what your peers think about OpenNebula. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2025.
879,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.
AnkurGupta9 - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal DevOps Engineer at Guavus
Oct 21, 2022
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.
RS
Associate principal engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Oct 27, 2022
Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement.
Dmitry Gilev - PeerSpot reviewer
System Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Nov 2, 2022
The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well.
FelipePolanco - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Engineer at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Nov 8, 2022
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.
RT
Head - Operations & Sales at Computer Port IT Solutions
Dec 2, 2022
There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds.
KP
Senior System Integration Engineer at a tech consulting company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Dec 20, 2022
The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing.
Dmitry Gilev - PeerSpot reviewer
System Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Feb 23, 2023
Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups.