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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
8th
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
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (6th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.3%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is 1.3%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2)1.3%
CloudStack2.3%
Other96.4%
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

"When compared to OpenStack, CloudStack is also an open-source platform that is continuously improving its features and capabilities with each new version release. Having worked with CloudStack 4.7, 4.14, and most recently, 4.17, I have noticed significant enhancements in the platform's features and customer experience, such as the introduction of a new user interface in the latest release. Notably, the latest versions have made major improvements to VM live migrations, making them more efficient and effective."
"The initial implementation process was quite good."
"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."
"CloudStack manages infrastructure with 2-4 thousands of hosts easily."
"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."
"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."
"You can build your own cloud and make it customizable with APIs."
"The feature I find most valuable about Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) is the portability."
"On a scale of one to ten, I rate Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) a ten."
"The overall infrastructure is the most valuable part of Nutanix Cloud Clusters."
"I'm not an AWS expert at all, but I can totally manage my Nutanix clusters, the same as I do on-prem. The fact that I can quickly and easily stand up servers or nodes instantly has been an amazing help."
"Nutanix has the best customer service."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"The main reason why we started looking for another solution: backups, replication, HA, and dependency on secondary storage."
"The area of Apache CloudStack that could stand the most improvement is the functionality/features around the virtual routers. They can be somewhat cumbersome to deal with at times and are the least stable piece of the product."
"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."
"Lack of support for third-party software vendors such as Veeam and Zerto creates limitations on comprehensive offerings which would include backup and disaster recovery."
"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."
"A technology upgrade is one item which could be improved upon a lot."
"The user can't upload SSH keys from the UI. We have to use the API for this, and it is not always convenient."
"The number of contributors to this solution is relatively small compared to other solutions. However, if more frequent users of CloudStack contribute to the open-source community, it will significantly enhance the overall community experience and make it more useful for everyone involved."
"Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) could be improved with some more tools that could help synchronize on-prem and cloud stuff better."
"Improvement is obviously needed in pricing; I cannot pinpoint where else I would suggest improvements."
"The biggest weakness with Clusters at this point is that the adoption rate is low because customers don't know enough about it."
"Some features that people say Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) lacks could be simplified to make it easier, such as a single pane of glass, and getting more into Google Cloud would be very helpful for our team as we're working on GCP interfaces."
"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."
"Our biggest complaint is that we constantly need to open support tickets about bugs when we upgrade to the latest version. For example, our static IPs failover into Azure but switch to DHCP."
"Some of the interfaces aren't as intuitive as they should be."
"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

"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."
"It is a 100% open-source solution needing just an Apache license. Also, there are no hidden fees to be paid."
"The solution is open-source and free."
"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."
"CloudStack is an open-source product."
"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."
"​Give an effort to planning. If possible, contract a specialized consultant company for the initial setup and knowledge transfer.​​"
"The price is high."
"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."
"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 licensing model of Nutanix is complex."
"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."
"The solution's licensing can be very pricey."
"I am working on one configuration that is priced at $50,000 USD, whereas another one that I'm working on is estimated to cost $250,000 USD."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

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: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.