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AWS Control Tower vs OpenNebula comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
16th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpenNebula
Ranking in Cloud Management
9th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of AWS Control Tower is 1.6%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 2.9%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenNebula2.9%
AWS Control Tower1.6%
Other95.5%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

SI
Head of Platform Engineering at Ascend Group Co., Ltd.
Streamlines governance and security management but requires effort in managing hidden costs
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one single account, but in AWS, you have to separate many accounts. You end up with maybe 20 or 30 accounts if you try to separate. It has limitations; you pay a fixed amount for 15 accounts, but if you exceed that, you have to pay more. It could be useful for implementing a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE) for multiple organizations, but for one organization, I would advise against it; it is too much overhead and adds hidden costs. There are limitations on the Landing Zone feature as well. If we implement AWS Control Tower, we need to implement Landing Zone and the security policy, guardrails, and Account Factory; it is not one single product. Using another cloud's enterprise project, you can just create the project and manage it already. It requires some learning curve to get hands-on. For pricing and licensing of AWS Control Tower, it has hidden costs. The Control Tower itself does not cost much, but the child accounts created from AWS Control Tower add costs for checking all configurations, logging, and metrics.
FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Control Tower offers many valuable features for managing all account security."
"One of the standout advantages is the fine-grained control it offers in terms of permissions and privileges."
"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."
"It is incredibly user-friendly and functions seamlessly."
"The advantages of AWS Control Tower that stand out for me include centralized management and easy governance control."
"The solution's initial setup was easy for me."
"I would rate the solution a 10 out of 10."
"It is quite easy to deploy."
"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."
"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's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."
"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."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"While using the solution recently, it broke a certain activity. So, AWS Control Tower needs to consider making the solution better."
"The tool's setup is very technical. Its pricing can be cheaper."
"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."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The sole drawback is its restriction to enable only one Control Tower."
"It would be beneficial if AWS offered the capability to seamlessly deploy your infrastructure to another region to ensure continuous availability and redundancy."
"The solution's stability could be improved."
"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."
"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective and the associated cost is quite minimal."
"The product's affordability depends on the value it brings to specific organizations."
"The pricing structure is closely intertwined with the specifics of your environment and the billing strategy you employ."
"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."
"The pricing is efficient, not overly expensive but also not very cheap."
"AWS Control Tower is not really that expensive."
"It operates on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning we are charged only for the services we actively use within it."
"It is expensive but it is an investment in my opinion."
"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 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

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?
I believe AWS Control Tower could be improved. I compare it with Huawei Cloud's enterprise project, which is a similar concept but different implementation. In Huawei Cloud, you partition in one si...
What is your primary use case for AWS Control Tower?
I use AWS Control Tower to enhance governance, enhance security, and manage multiple subsidiaries. We sunset the AWS Control Tower that I implemented, but it was a new project that we implemented. ...
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...
What is your primary use case for OpenNebula?
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 L...
What advice do you have for others considering OpenNebula?
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.
 

Overview

 

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.
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Control Tower vs. OpenNebula and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.