AWS Control Tower vs OpenNebula comparison

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AWS Control Tower

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

OpenNebula and AWS Control Tower both compete in the cloud management sector. AWS Control Tower seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive service offering and integration within the AWS ecosystem.

Features: OpenNebula offers open-source customization and management of private and hybrid clouds with a focus on simplicity. It provides flexible user management, supports various hypervisors, and has a strong community for support. AWS Control Tower is known for its automation in setting up AWS accounts, management guardrails, and comprehensive management of multi-account environments.

Room for Improvement: OpenNebula could enhance its technical documentation and expand its integrations. Its reliance on community support might not suit enterprises needing immediate assistance. AWS Control Tower could improve in simplifying its cost structure and enhancing integration with non-AWS services. Fine-tuning its configuration processes to be more user-intuitive would also be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage, suited for organizations seeking simplicity. Its community-based support might require more technical expertise. AWS Control Tower offers streamlined deployment with centralized management and comprehensive AWS customer support, making it suitable for enterprises requiring reliable service.

Pricing and ROI: OpenNebula presents an economical option with a potentially higher ROI for businesses minimizing upfront costs. AWS Control Tower involves higher initial investment due to its extensive features and enterprise support but provides strategic ROI through increased efficiency and reduced operational overhead for AWS-integrated users.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Control Tower vs. OpenNebula Report (Updated: June 2025).

AWS Control Tower vs. OpenNebula

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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

AWS Control Tower

Ranking in Cloud Management

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.4%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 6.8%, up from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Unified security management ensures comprehensive compliance for account safety

Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security. I can manage user security and user IAM, firewall, and other security-related tasks via Control Tower. The unified security management is a crucial aspect, and whenever an AWS organization is used, Control Tower is typically included to ensure comprehensive compliance fulfillment.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It provides a central point for account management, access control, and compliance monitoring."

"It is incredibly user-friendly and functions seamlessly."

"The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on job descriptions in Active Directory. This establishes a direct correlation between the user's name, job definition, and the corresponding rules applied to each account."

"The solution's initial setup was easy for me."

"One of the standout advantages is the fine-grained control it offers in terms of permissions and privileges."

"It provides centralized solutions for all AWS accounts in one place, customized to meet the organization's specific needs."

"The most significant benefit of Control Tower is its capability to align with our organization's standards."

"It aligns well with the customer's needs and it ultimately fosters a strong customer-company relationship."

More AWS Control Tower pros

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

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

"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."

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

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

"The solution provides templates for configurations that can easily be exchanged to VMs."

"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."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."

"There should be more automation security tools in the Control Tower."

"The tool's setup is very technical. Its pricing can be cheaper."

"There is a sync issue within the organization."

"It is essential to clarify that this isn't necessarily a drawback of the service, but having a clear and concise set of predefined guidelines from AWS for moving existing accounts under AWS Control Tower would be highly beneficial as it would simplify the process and make it more user-friendly."

"There aren't any additional features that I feel are missing. However, it's worth noting that Control Tower seems to function as a layer utilizing standard AWS products in the background. Occasionally, the interface may appear less streamlined, with changes in layout based on the underlying products being used. While this doesn't impact functionality, having a more standardized user interface, irrespective of the background products, could enhance the user experience."

"It could be improved by having a more intuitive graphical interface. It could also include other coding languages like PowerShell and Python, as it would be beneficial for DevOps recommendations."

"There is a sync issue within the organization. It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiring me to manually choose sync options."

More AWS Control Tower cons

"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"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."

"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."

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

"They should add more features like object storage."

"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."

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

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing structure is closely intertwined with the specifics of your environment and the billing strategy you employ."

"The pay-as-you-go model ensures you're only charged for what you use, which offers great flexibility for different types of companies."

"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price and ten is a high price, I rate the pricing an eight."

"It is cost-effective and the associated cost is quite minimal."

"AWS Control Tower is not really that expensive."

"I believe it's free of charge or comes at a very low cost. It's an additional feature. Even if there is a fee, it's minimal. AWS seems to assist customers in gaining a comprehensive view of their security setups within AWS. Using Control Tower is highly recommended, especially as your company grows and involves Active Directory, various departments, and different architectural aspects. It becomes more advisable to leverage Control Tower rather than managing these aspects manually, especially for larger organizations."

"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."

More AWS Control Tower pricing and cost advice

"The solution is open source so is free."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

20%

University

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about AWS Control Tower?

The most intriguing feature is the automatic generation of user accounts. Leveraging Active Directory and global company settings, AWS Cloud Tower enables the creation of AWS user accounts based on...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Control Tower?

Control Tower within the AWS Organization does not have a charge. It is free and does not incur additional charges.

What needs improvement with AWS Control Tower?

There is a sync issue within the organization. It is important that the system syncs automatically instead of requiring me to manually choose sync options.

What do you like most about OpenNebula?

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenNebula?

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

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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Product Reports

AWS Control Tower

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Overview

AWS Control Tower offers the easiest way to set up and govern a new, secure, multi-account AWS environment. It establishes a landing zone that is based on best-practices blueprints, and enables governance using guardrails you can choose from a pre-packaged list.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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.

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

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

AWS Control Tower vs. OpenNebula