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CloudStack vs Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) 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

CloudStack
Ranking in Cloud Management
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)
Ranking in Cloud Management
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (8th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
CloudStack2.6%
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)1.2%
Other96.2%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Tharun Kumar Reddy Thamatam - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
JY
Manager, Information Technology Engineers at IBC Bank
Enables us to grow at the speed of business and be ready for whatever is coming
What I admire most about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is its scalability; that option that everybody seems to eventually go to is cloud, and we're ready for that when we decide. This scalability feature has improved my company because we can grow at the speed of business, and that's very important. We're not limited by the hardware that we have. We allow ourselves room for growth, and we can literally grow from today to tomorrow to ensure that we're handling our growth. The scalability is critical for us, especially in the banking industry, where we just get bigger every year.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product gives us the ability to orchestrate large virtual environments and is flexible enough to allow us to configure it for what we need. We value the flexibility of the networking feature set as well as the ability to build virtual private clouds."
"The initial implementation process was quite good."
"It has become easy to deploy new devices with no or minimal hardware changes. Now, a user can be ready to use a firewall within a few minutes, as compared to the traditional physical model which involved purchase, shipping, hardware configuration, cabling, power, etc."
"CloudStack has greatly helped integrate our existing infrastructure because we manage a massive cloud platform with thousands of VMs and around 1,200 to 1,500 hypervisors."
"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."
"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."
"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."
"The API with CloudStack made integration into various external facing web applications simple enough."
"I've been very pleased with their support overall."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the redundancy on all levels."
"Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is a great product and it's a good option for companies that want to be both in the cloud and have a physical data center."
"Its performance and speed are valuable. Its performance has helped me reduce costs."
"Nutanix has the best customer service."
"There is ease of use. It is very important for our customers to have one centralized management console. Scalability is also very important for our customers."
"The scalability is good."
"The most valuable features of Nutanix Clusters are Prism Central, Micro-segmentation, and cluster scaling automation."
 

Cons

"We recognize that CloudStack is an easy-to-use cloud management platform and, in my opinion, there has been a large number of improvements in the past few years, particular when it comes to the modern UI and overall ease of management. However, I believe that CloudStack needs to grow their marketing in the commercial side. They don't have a great piece of market share right now."
"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"The numerous, multi-layered drill-down menus make it difficult to find one simple knob to turn."
"The installation of CloudStack can be quite challenging because you need a good understanding of the product before starting."
"I encountered some stability issues. When I tried to remove high-capacity virtual machines it took a long time to update, and sometimes the VM status failed to update properly in the cloud database. This occurred multiple times, even though I had sufficient resources."
"Accounts, domains, and user accounts are set up with public cloud in mind, not private."
"​The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."
"We did encounter issues with stability, and the main issue was secondary storage. When it is not available, XenServers and hypervisors are affected. And CS doesn’t do anything to reboot, or fix. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t, considering their approach – CS just orchestrates everything else on the hypervisor and storage level."
"The product could be improved in scalability and support services."
"The interface organization can be better. If we can, for example, organize virtual machines by groups, folders, and sub-folders, it will be easier to administer and monitor."
"We've had some challenges with the implementation."
"My suggestion would be getting up to speed on ransomware and evolving, as attackers are always one step ahead of what's out there."
"Improvement is obviously needed in pricing; I cannot pinpoint where else I would suggest improvements. The one thing that stands out is the costing, especially if you check the NCM module, where you see the cost of the VM, which is defined by the customer rather than how the calculations work if that VM is a reserved instance."
"Networking is one of the biggest improvements. They have a great stock already, but some use cases, particularly around incrementally spinning up workloads, haven't been considered closely enough."
"Improvement is obviously needed in pricing; I cannot pinpoint where else I would suggest improvements."
"In the current version, we've noticed many false positives when we check the alerts in the morning. For example, it told us that services stopped working, but there was nothing wrong when we checked it out. We've already raised the issue with support. They told us it's a bug in the version we use. We're about to upgrade to the recommended version, so it should be fine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no license, so the product is free unless you are buying professional technical support services."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"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."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"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."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"The licensing model of Nutanix is complex."
"I feel that the prices could be improved, but the truth is that I am very happy. The license price keeps increasing, but I am confident that it is much more reasonable than other brands."
"I'm not familiar with the contracts, but I thought the process was pretty seamless. Licensing for the Nutanix part was the same as licensing something on-prem, and since it runs on bare metal EC2, there was no new process we had to go through—it fits into our existing procurement processes nicely. I appreciate Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)'s license portability."
"The price is high."
"The solution has been more costly at this point. We do not see any cost savings."
"The solution's licensing can be very pricey."
"The transition from the perpetual license to what they have now is, from a business perspective, understandable, but from an operational and cost perspective, for me, it is really expensive. However, our partners at Nutanix did work with us recently and reduced a huge licensing cost for us."
"The licensing portability can be very interesting. At the moment, I am working with Nutanix Appliances with the AHV as a hypervisor. I did not have a chance to ask for portability between platforms, but it will be good if you can have portability between multiple types of platforms."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
23%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
I'm not familiar with the contracts, but I thought the process was pretty seamless. Licensing for the Nutanix part was the same as licensing something on-prem, and since it runs on bare metal EC2, ...
What needs improvement with Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
From an improvement perspective, I cannot see anything at this point because I used those Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) at that moment, but I am currently not using it. The pricing could be lower.
What is your primary use case for Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)?
I use the workload migration feature between clouds, such as migrating from VMware to Nutanix. I use Nutanix Move to migrate workloads from Nutanix Move. However, in some cases with our failover cl...
 

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com
Nutanix Clusters
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GreenQloud, Exoscale, TomTom, ASG, PC Extreme, ISWest, Grid'5000
The Home Depot, JetBlue, Hyundai, ShiftLeft
Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.