Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] vs CloudStack comparison

Cisco and Apache are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Additionally, 100% of Cisco users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Apache users who would recommend it.

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

Read 1 Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] review

100% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

3,161 Views
3,003 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

CloudStack

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] and CloudStack based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Nutanix, IBM and others in Cloud Management.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Management Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 900,747 peers since 2012

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

Cisco Piston Enterprise OS ...

Average Rating

9.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

CloudStack

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Management (8th)

Featured Reviews

Enterprise677

BS Systems Engineer at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

A simple interface and helpful support for a solution that grows with us

It's a flexible enough tool to submit the changes that you want. It gives you the ability to cancel any loop. You can connect new orchestrations together. It offers enough support so that you don't need to have the need to get another device. The user interface is simple and easy to use.

Read full review

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam

Senior Infrastructure Consultant at Infosys

Achieving seamless infrastructure management with optimized network and user access controls

I believe enhancements could be made in CloudStack, particularly in the management servers. I had the opportunity to collaborate with one of the Apache CloudStack developers, leading to the installation of additional agents for better information retrieval from hypervisors. We implemented configurations, ensuring consistency across hosts and VMs. We also utilized Ansible or YAML files to automate password upgrades during patching activities and database management, showcasing our customization efforts for improvement. For future releases, it would be beneficial if Apache enhanced CloudStack by integrating alerting systems directly. We've had instances where hypervisors experienced overloads without prior alerts, so proactive alerts within the tool would better prepare us for addressing issues swiftly, preventing disruption in business operations. A portal summarizing system metrics alongside alert capabilities would greatly enhance our operational efficiency.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers enough support so that you don't need to have the need to get another device."

"I strongly recommend the solution to people."

"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."

"It works, and pretty much always has, and reliability and support for enterprise features, with a multi-tenant interface, makes CloudStack a very compelling solution."

"It gives us the ability to manage and segregate a guest network with openvSwitch and VLAN IDs."

"The back-end database design is simple and straight forward. The user interface is designed with external users in mind. Billing is relatively straightforward with this product. Not being restricted to just one hypervisor was nice."

"Valuable features include that it is a user-friendly portal, VPN P2S and S2S possibilities, and it's easy to manage accounts and limits."

"CloudStack is a very feature-rich product; it gives you a lot of control over your VM networks and has extensive integration with storage plugins where you can use many open source tools to bring storage into your CloudStack environment for backups or even to run VMs."

"Key features include stability, centralized management design that scales well, and transparent interoperability with different hypervisors and manufacturers.."

"CloudStack, by default, gives us a zone-based setup which makes it easier to manage datacenters located in different geographical areas."

More CloudStack pros

Cons

"The solution is just too expensive, so maybe the pricing could be better."

"More integration with third-party products (we know that OpenStack has a better level of integration)."

"The zones need to be more stable. During moving and first deployment there were a lot of issues."

"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."

"With all that simplicity come limitations that need to be understood and planned for: Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."

"For time consuming operations like storage migrations, volume Snapshot restore and the like, we faced issues like MySQL operations timing out and status update failures. Those areas needs improvement."

"Multi-deployments."

"The main reason why we started looking for another solution: backups, replication, HA, and dependency on secondary storage. CS is quite sensitive for infrastructure, and any kind of network disruption between CS and secondary storage leads to VM hanging."

"I think that container technology in CloudStack is an area that needs to be improved."

More CloudStack cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The solution is open-source and free."

"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."

"Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer."

"CloudStack is an open source solution, so you don't need to pay anything for it. When our company develops something specially for CloudStack, it is donated to the Apache Software Foundation and provided to anyone that wants to use it."

"As far as I know, CS is still free of charge. If you want to pay some money, Citrix Cloud Platform is based on CS, I think. As for hypervisors – everything as usual, you need to pay for VMware and vCenter. As for XenServer, recently they changed the free feature list, so you may need to pay some money to get useful features like XenMotion."

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."

"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Cloud Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CloudStack?

CloudStack is open-source, so there is no cost apart from learning. Billing solutions, if outsourced, come at a moderate cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CloudStack?

Enhancements for CloudStack can focus on integrating more hypervisors, as mentioned regarding current features. We're working on a new feature that will allow for certain limited functions, but ove...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CloudStack?

My usual use cases for CloudStack involve an AWS style private cloud or public cloud. I can deploy an AWS style cloud using the open source tool that is CloudStack. The use case depends on the cust...

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Aria Automation vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 15% of the time

Abiquo vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 14% of the time

IBM Turbonomic vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 11% of the time

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control vs Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL]

Compared 5% of the time

More Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] Competitors

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 12% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

CloudCheckr vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Management

June 2026

Download Cisco Piston Enterprise OS [EOL] product report

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

June 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Also Known As

Piston Enterprise OS

Vmops, Cloud.com

Overview

Piston Enterprise OS (pentOS) is an enterprise grade cloud operating system meeting the security and governance needs of enterprises wanting to use OpenStack for their infrastructure services. pentOS is an OpenStack distro that builds on top of the OpenStack codebase adding some proprietary features to meet the security and governance needs of the enterprise customers.

Cisco

CloudStack offers an easy-to-manage platform compatible with multiple hypervisors, enabling seamless networking and efficient workload scaling. Its advanced APIs and open-source nature facilitate automation and customization, making it ideal for extensive cloud environments.

CloudStack is recognized for ease of setup, robust networking, and hypervisor compatibility. Supporting a range of workloads, it scales efficiently, offering flexible features like VM migration, private networking, and multi-zone support. Its user-friendly open-source design aids troubleshooting and customization, making it ideal for managing broad cloud deployments. Despite needing upgrades in interface and integration with third-party vendors and container technology, CloudStack remains a strong choice for businesses seeking effective virtualization solutions. Improvements in documentation, regional management, and emerging tech support would enhance usability and performance.

What are CloudStack's notable features?

Hypervisor compatibility: Supports diverse virtualization technologies for flexible deployment.
Robust networking: Ensures reliable and scalable network infrastructure management across zones.
Advanced APIs: Facilitates automation and integration to streamline cloud operations.
VM migration: Enhances operational flexibility with seamless virtual machine relocations.
Private networking: Provides secure and isolated network environments for critical tasks.
Multi-zone support: Offers scalable solutions for distributed cloud management.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Open-source model: Allows extensive customization without licensing costs, enhancing ROI.
Ease of management: Simplifies operations, reducing time and resources spent on maintenance.
Scalability: Enables growth and adaptability, fostering agility in expanding businesses.
Flexibility: Supports various workloads and environments, meeting diverse operational needs.

CloudStack is implemented across industries, used in managing virtual environments, offering IaaS in public, private, and hybrid cloud models. Companies use it for internal virtualization and customer service, integrating with hypervisors across data centers to orchestrate virtual machines and support development and testing globally.

Apache

Sample Customers

Kuwait Petroleum Italia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000

Find out what your peers are saying about Broadcom, Nutanix, IBM and others in Cloud Management. Updated: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our list of best Cloud Management vendors.

We monitor all Cloud Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.