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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

"CloudStack, by default, gives us a zone-based setup which makes it easier to manage datacenters located in different geographical areas."
"My company could implement a lot of customizations and integration with load balancers and DNS. When we started using CloudStack, we didn't have that integration, so we developed that. We could fix anything missing in the solution."
"The platform is very simple to scale-out.​"
"The API with CloudStack made integration into various external facing web applications simple enough."
"Multiple types of hypervisor support, multi-zone support, and VPC are great valuable features."
"It was easy to deploy, both for PoC and production (with HA)."
"The APIs for automation in CloudStack are excellent; everything is API-driven, and while the API is very rich and hard to learn, you can do everything you would want to do, including everything in the user interface and more."
"CloudStack supports every operating system that supports hypervisors, which makes the product more attractive, compared to vCloud Director or Azure."
"The overall infrastructure is the most valuable part of Nutanix Cloud Clusters."
"The features I appreciate most about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) are that we don't need to manage the hardware to start up with, and it is being managed by Microsoft currently, so that is hands-off."
"I've been very pleased with their support overall."
"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 feature of scalability has improved my company because we can grow at the speed of business, and that's very important."
"In terms of dealing with our business-critical workloads, Nutanix is a highly scalable, highly resilient, and very high-performing solution."
"The most valuable features of Nutanix Clusters are Prism Central, Micro-segmentation, and cluster scaling automation."
"Nutanix has the best customer service."
"We're not limited based on the hardware that we have."
 

Cons

"I would like to see support for native VLAN, and fault-tolerance."
"It would be a good to have more specific error messages within administration processes (e.g. problem with creating new instance)."
"CS has very descriptive logging, and every time I faced issues and asked for help, I didn’t get any reply from the community. Reason? Its quite obvious. CS runs on specific environments, unique to each case. So, unless it is a functional issue of CS, nobody can help you. All issues were resolved by myself going through logs. This is another reason why you need smart enough people to manage it. Engineers must have knowledge of hypervisors and understand how CS interacts with them."
"​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."
"Environment is sensitive, so, unlike VMware, you can not afford middle-skilled engineers, they will ruin everything."
"A technology upgrade is one item which could be improved upon a lot."
"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."
"The pricing can be better."
"Some of the interfaces aren't as intuitive as they should be."
"Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is a very costly solution compared to on-prem. Customers are not moving to Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) because of the price, the license cost, and everything."
"From an operational and cost perspective, for me, it is really expensive."
"The biggest weakness with Clusters at this point is that the adoption rate is low because customers don't know enough about it."
"My suggestion would be getting up to speed on ransomware and evolving, as attackers are always one step ahead of what's out there."
"We cannot use Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) for data center extension or scaling workloads on demand right now based on the way that we have our network configured, but in the future, the plan is to build a greenfield site and re-engineer some of those features."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The Apache CloudStack is open source, so you do not have licenses to purchase."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"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 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.​​"
"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."
"The price is high."
"The licensing model of Nutanix is complex."
"The solution's licensing can be very pricey."
"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."
"There are positives and negatives to licensing. It all makes sense now, but it took a while. When the licenses first changed, it was a bit confusing."
"The solution has been more costly at this point. We do not see any cost savings."
"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.