OpenNebula Reviews

OpenNebula is the core of our cloud offering. We propose virtual resources to our customers. We have several zones grouped into an OpenNebula Federation to serve more than 50 customers. Some customers use a global infrastructure with dedicated VMS running on shared hosts. Some customers with specific needs and more VMs are deployed on dedicated nodes. Only their VMs run on these nodes.
This very simple model is really appreciated by our valuable customers, it was very simple to set thanks to OpenNebula's cluster feature.

OpenNebula is really simple to manage and very reliable.

It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams. It helped us to propose strong Cloud features with a very simple and flexible solution.

In five years we didn't have an incident related to OpenNebula software. This is really appreciated by our customers.

For maintenance, we can easily balance load between nodes thanks to automation features offered by OpenNebula. We can manage our cloud with very few operators to focus on other business topics.

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.

The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources. The current design requires to extraction of lots of data so it leads to some latencies for some requests.

Adding more customization layers to Sunstone can also speed up the way we can expose it to our customers.

Even if some huge improvement has been made, we cannot still open it to be used directly and autonomously by our customers. 

We need to dig more into the last releases to see what can be improved.

We've used OpenNebula in production for five years now. 

The product is very stable.

The solution is very scalable.

Support is very reactive. They find workarounds and final solutions very quickly. It's been a while since we had to open a case as it is really stable!

Positive

We have used VMware. We still use it; we didn't switch. OpenNebula is another way to offer cloud services.

The initial setup is straightforward. We took the help of the OpenNebula team for the first deployment.

We used an in-house deployment.

We saved a lot of money compared to VMware licensing (at least $10k per month). We have had no incident and therefore no penalties. The ROI is very good.

The major cost is the hardware for the host and also for the front-end services. If you use high availability (which is recommended for production) you need three (small) servers - ideally outside the hosts. Then you need some space to host them. Don't forget the storage part too. We decided to use Storpool for VM storage as it is really powerful in terms of I/OS and is very reliable.

We evaluated OpenStack.

This is a really good alternative to VMware. It is very simple to use as it is only what you need to have a private cloud.

NodeWeaver's GUI is based on the OpenNebula platform, and I use OpenNebula to interface into the NodeWeaver product set.

With AI and GPU,s being the new drivers Opennebula has stepped up in this area

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

Keeps pace with new demand in the market

OpenNebula's templates are weak, and it could do something to make template creation a lot easier to use. The solution has a template for every single VM you create, which is not clever. You should be able to use a template for many different virtual machines.

There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula.

I have been using OpenNebula for four years.

I rate OpenNebula a nine out of ten for scalability.

I previously used OpenStack. I switched to OpenNebula because OpenStack has too many plugins. OpenStack is a lot of different products put together. The version control of OpenStack is very difficult to keep under control because when you put in a new plugin, something else breaks.

On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy, I rate OpenNebula a five out of ten for the ease of its initial setup.

I deployed OpenNebula in about two weeks.

I have not seen a return on the investment with OpenNebula because I put in my own time. Without the payment gateway, I needed to move away to get payment gateways working.

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

Overall, I rate OpenNebula a seven out of ten.

Previously, we were using VMware, but recently, we've started using OpenNebula for cloud management. As a big cloud provider, it helps give customers increased control over their clusters. We use Linux with KVM as a provider and measure all the data centers with OpenNebula. We have installed OpenNebula on just one or two machines, but a larger cloud might require more.

OpenNebula is used to create and manage virtual machines. We prefer using OpenNebula as it offers more flexibility. For example, one project required using specific routers and tenants and OpenNebula was very helpful. As for integration capabilities, it's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems.

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 network stack. Other than that, it's a quite mature product.

The stability of OpenNebula depends on the servers and the underlying infrastructure. If they are stable, OpenNebula is stable. I would rate the stability a seven out of ten. 

We haven't tested the scalability extensively in terms of how many nodes it can control. In my opinion, OpenNebula is suitable for all business sizes, including large enterprises.

Previously we were using VMware.

Setting up OpenNebula is complex. It’s not a plug-and-play solution, so you have to download the right version and compile it yourself. As it is open source, it requires some work. OpenNebula needs ongoing management and it is not an easy solution which can be installed and kept to work on its own. 

I recommend it, especially if you need a management interface for a small to medium private cloud.

I would rate OpenNebula an eight out of ten.

We run on a SaaS platform with millions of end users; our entire platform runs on OpenNebula VMs in colocation data centers. At peak usage we had roughly 3000 individual virtual machines running, all VMs were Linux. Our company has built multiple independent OpenNebula clusters.  

We leverage the OpenNebula "cluster" features as well to segment different workloads and security requirements.  

We do use the web interface for small tasks, however, we mostly leverage the API, SDK, and custom-built Ansible modules to interact with the OpenNebula server.

OpenNebula and virtualization, in general, have helped us increase compute density, better secure our workloads, and automate the deployment of our various applications.  

Our workloads must be segmented due to security requirements and business objectives. Virtualization, in general, has enabled us to satisfy those requirements.  

OpenNebula is mostly written in Ruby, which was one of the reasons we picked this product over the competitors. The live-migration features have helped maintain our uptime during maintenance work as well.

OpenNebula has a robust API and SDK that we have heavily leveraged in our company.  

The CLI tools and UI are great for simple tasks, but as you build more automation, the SDK and API become necessary.  

Our company has been able to write custom OpenNebula modules for Ansible and Puppet that leverage the API.  We've also been able to add customization to some of the OpenNebula scripts to add new functionality.  

The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.  vLANs also work very well.

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.  

I've managed an enterprise production installation of OpenNebula Enterprise for roughly four years.

We use OpenNebula to set up a virtual private cloud across several physical servers. It has an XML-RPC API that we automate via Python. You can connect it to VMware and run it over KVM. The latest version supports containers, but I haven't tried that. I mostly do KVM-based virtualization. I think the whole company is using it, so we have around 260 users. 

The OpenNebula Marketplace provides you with several relatively large images. It's similar to the AWS console where you can download images from the Marketplace. You can choose an image and adapt it to your use case.

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.

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 pathway and prediction and all those things can be tricky.

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. 

I've been using OpenNebula for about six or seven years.

I find it very stable. It's quite good. We are running around more than 200 servers inside OpenNebula. They perform very good and I'm very happy with the product.

OpenNebula can scale, but you must have a plan. You need to set up the front end correctly. 

OpenNebula has a large, active user community, including a formula where you can ask questions. When you post a question, you typically get a response in 10- 12 hours, depending on your time zone. 

You can almost always find the answer to your question by searching the forums. It has been around for a long time, so there are very few issues that have never come up before, but if you can't find the answer, someone will respond quickly to your post. 

I have also used OpenStack, which is a much bigger beast than OpenNebula. OpenNebula gives you the ability to run simple VMs and containers, but it lacks many of the features available in OpenStack. It's great if you're only running VMs and providing developers with a way to automate them through the pipelines. In those cases, I would recommend OpenNebula because it is simple to do that. 

You should go with OpenStack if your use case is complex or you want to use templates. OpenStack addresses a much wider variety of use cases, but it is complex. OpenNebula focuses on one use case, but it is simple to use.

I rate OpenNebula 10 out of 10 for ease of setup. Setting up OpenNebula is straightforward, and the documentation is great, whereas OpenStack is more complex. Anyone following the steps in the documentation can easily do it.

There isn't much maintenance aside from routine updates. You have to upgrade certain parts of the open architecture by migrating the VMs from one host to another host and upgrading the host. You also need to keep the host security patches up to date. It isn't often—about once every six months.

OpenNebula is open-source, but I believe they also have an enterprise version you can buy with support setting up and configuring the solution. 

I rate OpenNebula 7.5. I can't go about that because it lacks many of the features that a cloud management solution should provide. Nevertheless, it's a great product that's simple to use.  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. The architecture is simple. If OpenNebula covers your use case, I'll definitely recommend it to them.

I've deployed OpenNebula a few times, primarily for public cloud hosting providers who want to get into the cloud business.

An excellent example of how OpenNebula improves an organization is with one of my clients who had fifteen to twenty-five customers, and he had to manage all customer needs by himself. If a client called him and said, "I need more disk space on this server," my customer had to log in and increase the disk space for that client. Another client would say, "I want a new IP on my server." My customer would have to log in, go into the server, then adjust it for the client.

When my customer migrated to OpenNebula, he gave each client a login credential and a dashboard so each client could log in to a specific dashboard and manage that instead of asking my customer to manage that dashboard.

OpenNebula freed my customer from doing the maintenance operations of the servers because now that can be done by his clients. For example, his client could go in and create a new digital machine, assign more disk space, increase memory, etc.

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.

The user-friendly UI of OpenNebula is also its most valuable feature.

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.

Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now. I speak from experience because I've worked with multiple private cloud solutions, and most of those solutions have template management and networking all figured out, making it easier for new users to start immediately.

With OpenNebula, you'd need a networking expert to have a full-fledged cloud. The OpenNebula team assumes that you know this. Still, most developers don't because they don't do networking, so you'll end up with a half-configured cloud or an OpenNebula that needs many inner workings to run. It would be great to have an OpenNebula assistant to guide users in configuring the servers. Otherwise, the solution may need to be rebuilt.

In the next release of OpenNebula, I'd like it to have an automatic network provisioning feature.

I've been working with OpenNebula since 2016, but most of my experience with it started in 2017. I've worked with the solution within the last eighteen months when a client requested an OpenNebula installation.

OpenNebula is a stable solution.

OpenNebula is scalable, and you can manage multiple servers, have various hosts, and configure redundancy.

My rating for the OpenNebula technical support is eight out of ten because I raised a question, but it took a while for support to reply. One of my customers was waiting on an answer, but then nobody responded, so I had to open a new question, and eventually, someone from support reached out to answer my question.

Positive

Deploying OpenNebula is extremely easy, and you can get an OpenNebula cloud in the morning.

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.

I evaluated CloudStack, but I prefer OpenNebula because of its simplicity, and setting it up is quicker.

I'm a system integrator for OpenNebula.

My customers use the PaaS version of OpenNebula and build a cloud using the solution. Customers build the hardware and then install OpenNebula. You can install instances of the host on Amazon or Google because OpenNebula integrates with other cloud providers. Still, in the four or five deployments I've done, I haven't seen any case of people bringing OpenNebula to a competitor. Instead, my customers build OpenNebula as a competitor to Amazon or Google.

Maintaining OpenNebula isn't difficult. Once you've set up the solution, it works. You don't need to spend a lot in terms of maintenance costs. Setting up OpenNebula could be challenging the first time because of all the networking and templates you need. Still, after you set up OpenNebula, nobody needs to touch it because it works fine.

I advise anyone who wants to start implementing OpenNebula to learn Linux and how the solution works first.

My rating for OpenNebula is eight out of ten.

My company provides system integration services for different clients based on OpenNebula. I'm a systems architect. 

OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage. This is its primary valuable feature. In addition, it's easy to use, has a good UI, and is very scalable. Compared to other open-source hypervisors like OpenStack, installation is very easy as is administering, managing, and configuring the solution. For someone who has never worked with hypervisor virtualization, OpenNebula is a good place to start.

The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well. We stopped using that feature because we had problems. It's not always easy to find answers on the forums if you're using the open source product. 

We've been using this solution for over two years. 

The solution has been very stable since we moved to pacemaker plus. If you put in some redundancy then you should add more servers so that if one goes down, it doesn't degrade the cluster.

We have six engineers in the company that work with OpenNebula, and we have a partner company with 10 users that receive more advanced technical support and they help us solve some problems with deployment and maintenance of OpenNebula that we provide to our clients. So it's like that, but we separate, so we have a group of engineers that works only with OpenNebula. 

Because we're putting OpenNebula into a container, we get support from the people who implemented the product. They, in turn, receive support from OpenNebula. We provide technical support for clients on L1 and L2. We get support on L3 from our partner company which developed the deployment into a container environment. The support is very good, they're experts in OpenNebula. 

If you're deploying the classic OpenNebula, then the initial setup is straightforward. I was able to deploy three nodes with one node for SQL and one management node and it took two to three hours the first time. The website instructions are very clear. Some initial maintenance was required because of errors in the SQL deployment, but since then we haven't needed any external assistance. 

There isn't much difference between the open source product of OpenNebula and the enterprise one. The free version has full distribution potential. The price of the integration is not included in the price of the software so it's very cheap. If you compare it with VMware, there are different costs of integration because you pay a lot of money for different kinds of licenses. You only pay for privileged features like enterprise repository and technical support. 

In comparison to OpenNebula, OpenStack is very complicated. In OpenStack you deploy nodes that have a lot of models and when you deploy for the first time, it's unclear where to start. Those issues don't exist with OpenNebula. OpenStack is preferable for enterprise companies that already have experienced engineers in virtualization who understand how to transform the cloud from VMware to OpenStack. OpenNebula is easier to integrate into infrastructure in smaller organizations.

I would suggest testing the solution, trying it on-prem and in the cloud. Be clear about your use case and why you're looking to change your virtual environment It's important to understand the risks. We plan to increase usage of OpenNebula.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

Our company recently completed a project for a customer where we used the solution for cloud management. Our team included four developers, one QA, and a technical manager. 

The customer desired to move from a private to an open or hybrid cloud platform for their lease management system. The customer had dealership and manufacturer showrooms on different systems, controls, and software. We built their systems with different operating systems, CPUs, and memory and constructed a system to manage those resources. 

We use the solution as a super user to provide administration for all users, systems, and upgrades. We can remotely provide users with credentials or install needed items into certain umbrellas. 

The solution prepares and automates workflow because it allows for template and VM creation, assignment of users to certain VMs, and administrative privileges.

The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs. For example, I can create four templates with different configurations or various input parameters and then exchange the proper template to a VM. In contrast, Azure and AWS require multiple steps to achieve the same thing. 

The interface is quite simple and easy to use.

Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement. There are some kernels that limit hosting or cause issues with the CLI which only works on the server where it is installed. To solve this issue, we use a virtual box with user centers that run the solution for particular machines. 

Upgrades sometimes have compatibility issues that require changes on our end and this should be improved. For example, a 6.4 or 7.0 release should be downward compatible with the 6.0 version.  

The multiple stacks are built on the Python side but need a .NET extension. 

The CLI is on Ruby on rails so can be complex. 

An installation video that walks through all setup steps would be useful. 

I have been using the solution for one year.

The solution is quite stable.

The solution is scalable. There are open source limitations but it is easy to create plug-ins and consume APIs.

The solution is open source so there is no support. Documentation is quite good and queries on the forum are answered within 24-48 hours. Those who respond have good knowledge of the solution and are capable of helping.

Neutral

The setup is not particularly straightforward but the solution's forum includes detailed documentation and user comments. Answers to questions about installation are included in the forum. 

If there are any issues, you can always return to the forum for answers. No videos are available, so it is important to read through documentation and steps. 

I rate setup an eight out of ten. 

We implemented the solution in-house and for our customer.

The solution is open source so is free.

We looked at OpenStack which offers a lease extension feature that is unavailable with the solution. It also is more well known and used by developers which adds to its market culture. 

For our use case, we found the solution to be the best fit when dealing with infrastructure services. It makes life easier from the infrastructure side. 

The solution's templates make exchanging VMs much easier than the multi-step processes of Azure and AWS.

Compatibility with Terraform CLI and Sunstone UI are a benefit. It is easy to move back and forth between UI and CLI to write commands.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

In my previous role at a system integration company, we used OpenNebula to deploy private clouds for our clients. My current company uses it for our own needs. 

OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack.

Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups. 

I have worked with OpenNebula for more than three years.

I rate OpenNebula nine out of 10 for stability. I've never experienced any critical failures or lost data. 

OpenNebula has the potential to be highly scalable, but I've never done a massive deployment. My deployments have never had more than fifteen nodes. 

I can compare OpenNebula to OpenStack and VMware. OpenStack is also free, but it's too complicated to deploy into a production environment without specialized knowledge. It's okay for a testing environment but almost impossible to deploy in production. 

Setting up OpenNebula is simple. We deploy it on on-premise servers in our data centers. 

We use the free community version of OpenNebula.

I rate OpenNebula eight out of 10. 

We used to host an application that could help the organization. It helped all the employees and the partners access all our products which we had set up as a virtual lab in OpenNebula.

I liked that we could create templates (as many as we want) and we could deploy as many copies of them as and when required. 

With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them. You just give the number, and it will deploy right away.

It is a stable product.

The solution isn't very expensive. 

The marketplace feature that they had wasn't really up to the mark as they published it. That is something that they could improve.

They need to improve their customer support as well.

The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing. At first glance, it would all look okay. However, they need to be very specific about how their storage is occupied at the OpenNebula level. That would give a pretty clear idea to the end user on how to deal with it and how to plan ahead. 

I've used the solution for around three years. 

The stability is pretty good. I would rate it seven out of ten. There aren't bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

From a management perspective, it is a pretty small environment. It is just two or three of us managing things. From the end-user perspective, we have hundreds of users at a time.

Customer support could be improved.

They don't have phone support. They only have support via email or their ticketing system. That's it. If you have an urgent issue, you just have to wait for their reply instead of calling them up and getting things on track right away.

You go back and forth a lot of times instead of a quick ten-minute call.

Neutral

I previously used VMware. From the management perspective, if you give both products to the administrators in the environment, OpenNebula is much more user-friendly and easy to manage than vCloud Director.

The solution was easy to set up. 

I'm not sure if they came up with a new version with a new improvement feature. I'm not aware of that right now.

The deployment itself only took a few days. You may have to set up dependencies and do cabling, et cetera. We had to set up on our end like the hardware and cabling and the basic environment setup. Then there was a setup that was required from their end. They did the initial setup and they taught us how to do it so we could handle things going forward.

The costs are pretty low The solution is cheap. 

We're a customer. 

I cannot recall the exact version of the solution I used. It might have been version five or three. 

Potential new users will need to understand basic networking and how things work at the network level, and then it would be right for them.

I'd rate the product seven out of ten. The solution is good. However, support is not.