CloudStack vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) comparison

Apache and Nutanix are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Nutanix is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8. Apache holds a 4.0% mindshare in CM, compared to Nutanix’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Nutanix users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

1,964 Views
1,768 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Read 108 Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) reviews

6,086 Views
3,895 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

CloudStack

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

CloudStack and Nutanix Cloud Manager compete in the cloud management solutions category. While CloudStack is noted for its cost-effectiveness, Nutanix Cloud Manager has the upper hand with advanced features that justify its higher price.

Features: CloudStack offers high scalability, diverse hypervisor support, and strong community backing. Nutanix Cloud Manager provides integrated hyper-converged infrastructure, streamlined management capabilities, and advanced analytics.

Room for Improvement: CloudStack could enhance its customer service response and simplify network management. Nutanix Cloud Manager might benefit from reducing deployment complexity and allowing more customization flexibility for nuanced user needs.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CloudStack tends to facilitate deployment through its open-source nature and extensive documentation but primarily offers community-driven customer service. Nutanix Cloud Manager, although potentially more complex to deploy, provides a structured model and professional customer service.

Pricing and ROI: CloudStack offers a compelling ROI due to its low setup costs, which is beneficial for price-sensitive businesses. Nutanix Cloud Manager offers competitive ROI by enhancing operational efficiencies, justifying the higher initial investment for organizations seeking comprehensive solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

September 2025

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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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Ranking in Cloud Management

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

108

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (3rd), Virtualization Management Tools (2nd), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 4.0%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)	5.2%
CloudStack	4.0%
Other	90.8%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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

Kumargaurav Kadam

Senior Information Technology Advisor at Dell Technologies

Offers centralized management, cost-effectiveness, and scalability

The licensing is much cheaper than other competitors such as VMware, Cisco UCS, or Microsoft Hyper-V for on-premises data centers. It is very user-friendly and can be managed through Prism Central, a centralized console that allows management of multiple clusters. Due to the recent conversion from VMware to Broadcom, Broadcom has increased their prices five times the existing rates. Most customers are transferring to Nutanix infrastructure because it is scalable, reliable, and performance-focused. The main differentiator from competitors is its cost-effectiveness, and customers have been running and upgrading their technologies for 10 to 15 years. In terms of client satisfaction, performance, upgrades, or protection against ransomware attacks and vulnerabilities, they are regularly releasing patches and upgrading the system. These activities contribute to customer satisfaction and differentiate them from competitors.

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

"You can build your own cloud and make it customizable with APIs."

"It is very easy to install and manage. It has the all modules in one node, unlike other software (OpenStack). The product allows a customized look and feel, and the ability to add custom workflows."

"CloudStack helped us showcase our features through process visualization and functional solutions."

"I have been impressed by CloudStack's most recent updates around Kubernetes. In particular, they have worked with Kubernetes to support the Cluster API, and you can now easily integrate Kubernetes into CloudStack and get access to a lot of good features."

"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."

"We had a relevant reduction of bureaucracy tasks."

"The most valuable feature from my point of view is access to environment via console through separate browser window."

"Everything in CloudStack works effectively."

More CloudStack pros

"We use Calm's one-click self-service feature and it's really transforming the team's efficiency. The teams are used to being reactive, which is typical of what you find in IT organizations and service providers. Customers run into problems and teams react. What we're trying to do is reduce that slope and be more proactive in approach. The one-click ability is enabling us to take some of those activities and put them into operation, versus people manually responding."

"It is a scalable solution."

"I really like the Nutanix Marketplace a lot. We publish standard workloads there and that, in combination with the Projects, allows for self-service, which is the most powerful feature of Calm."

"We are using a Nutanix cluster to increase availability because it is a very good product with everything in one box: storage, network, and compute."

"The most valuable feature is less or no implementation time. It should be up and running at any point in time so I don't spend time in transformation."

"The most valuable feature for me is being able to find a machine, regardless of which cluster it's located in, as quickly as possible, and being able to work on it. A lot of times we are called upon to troubleshoot an issue. That usually means there's a problem that needs quick attention. Being able to find machines, ascertain their status, and do so in a timely manner, are processes that are very critical to our business needs."

"The Nutanix stack is hyper-converged. I don't need to buy expensive SAN storage because it's integrated into the hardware appliance. That's the best part. We get excellent latency by leveraging local storage."

"The ease of use is a valuable feature. For us, it's a consistent interface. It's very easy to train our employees on it, and it's a newer generation interface. It's homogeneous, and every product and subset tie together, giving a very similar look to everything."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

Cons

"A technology upgrade is one item which could be improved upon a lot."

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

"There are some minor things that can be improved even more such as, perhaps, a bit more polishing on the GUI side to catch up with the API possibilities (which are really extensive) but otherwise nothing critical."

"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."

"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."

"It is not widely used so Google does not help very much when you are troubleshooting, and the CloudStack forum is not very active."

"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."

"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."

More CloudStack cons

"It is important to mention that while Nutanix claims improvements in licensing over the past couple of years, I find it a bit annoying, as it still does not work as intended."

"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) could continue to improve its network with micro-segmentation, as their current solution for East-West traffic is not as mature as VMware's NSX, and they need to develop this area to better support the infrastructure."

"We have clusters not only with HPE. We have some with VMware to use Cisco Call Manager for VoIP. That only runs on VMware. They upgrade the ESXi host but not vCenter, which manages the ESXi host. It would be great if there is a way to include vCenter on the VM because you run the updates, but you do not update vCenter."

"I would like to see a desktop application for administration of the solution. That's the thing I missed the most. Other solutions have a client that you can install on your computer. You can actually connect to and do the administration from an application instead of using a web portal, which is what Nutanix provides."

"We are probably the customer who has the least number of problems. However, costs are always a concern."

"Its licensing can be better."

"They should include more use cases for automation in administering the environment."

"I cannot say Calm is providing centralized control of all our applications because we have some legacy systems. We have IBM iSeries, which is another technology. But with Calm we can centralize all our x86 machines."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open-source and free."

"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."

"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 product."

"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."

"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."

"For Ecuador, this is a sensitive issue. It is a small economy, so the issue of budget is very sensitive. You find many small businesses and government clients who do not renew, for example, support or guarantees, which raises the risk level for them. We are always advising them that it is necessary to renew the services or infrastructure."

"The product is very cheap."

"Prism Pro is a bit more upfront. It costs a bit more for some of the features that you get. We have four clusters, and two of them don't have Prism Pro because they weren't even available with what we bought. Those two clusters also run well, but they don't have all the features."

"Licensing is always a hot topic. We haven't had any challenges around licensing and costs. Everything was within budget and our expectations. It's a hot topic because renewals and licensing costs are high. Managing costs is always a concern, as we're always being asked to do more with less."

"Compared to Dell HCI, Nutanix is a lot cheaper."

"Nutanix has good central management tools where one guy can manage the entire system. Looking at other systems, I need a guy to manage the servers and another guy to manage the cell network and storage. I need a bigger team for other solutions compared to Nutanix where I can use a small team and reduce my operations to manage the cluster. Sometimes what you hear with this solution is, "It is so expensive," but the cost and benefits that Nutanix has inside are really good."

"Compared to UCS and the NetApp storage, Nutanix is actually cheaper."

"I rate Cost Governance an eight out of 10 for pricing. There are different plans, so you can pay monthly or yearly. You can also sign a three-year contract. It's quite flexible. I can't give it a perfect 10, because customers always want a cheaper solution."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

18%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

31%

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	24
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	64

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CloudStack?

The initial implementation process was quite good.

See all answers

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

Which set of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) features do you find to be the most useful?

For me, the features related to cost savings are the best part of NCM. Of course, the whole product is worth using and when it comes to cloud management, there is a reason why it is favored by so m...

See all answers

Are the setup process and further maintenance of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) difficult?

When I came into my current organization, NCM was already set up. According to the team that dealt with it, the product was fairly easy to set up. Compared to other products, our IT rates are set u...

See all answers

Is Nutanix Cloud Manager’s Intelligent Operations feature effective?

Yes, this is a highly effective feature and the rebranding only made things better as they introduced more improvements. You can benefit from Zero coding task automation Automated optimization Tic...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 77% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 7% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs CloudStack

Compared 4% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

VMware Cloud Director vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 17% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 15% of the time

Morpheus vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 13% of the time

OpenNebula vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 9% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

September 2025

Download Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

Nutanix Cloud Manager Intelligent Operations, Nutanix Cloud Manager Self-Service, Nutanix Cloud Management Cost Governance, Nutanix Cloud Manager Security Central

Overview

Apache CloudStack is open source software designed to deploy and manage large networks of virtual machines, as a highly available, highly scalable Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing platform.

Apache

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is a cloud management tool that drives consistent governance across private and public clouds for its users. The solution brings simplicity and ease of use to managing and building cloud deployments by providing a unified multicloud management that addresses common cloud adoption challenges.

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers four key value drivers:

Intelligent operations: They include monitoring, insights, and automated remediation.
Self-service and orchestration: This capacity category of the product includes tools for managing application and infrastructure workloads across multicloud environments.
Cost governance: NCM offers cost governance through accurate visibility into public and private cloud metering, cost optimization, and chargeback.
Security central: The solution facilitates users' security operations through alert automations with intelligent analysis and compliance controls.

Nutanix Cloud Manager provides coverage for Nutanix private clouds as well as for VMware's. The solution also supports several popular public cloud providers, including Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). NCM provides additional flexibility for users, as it is also available as a fully managed Software as a Service (SaaS). This product allows companies to benefit from all of Nutanix multicloud self-services, application automation, security compliance, and governance, without depending on Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Features

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) has features in the four key categories already mentioned. Some of the main capacities of the solution include:

Codeless task automation: This Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) feature allows IT teams to build automation and improve productivity with zero coding required.
Automated optimization: This feature detects the performance of VM deviates and raises an anomaly alert automatically without the need for configuration.
Capacity usage and scenario analysis: This feature’s runways enable pay-as-you-grow scaling and improves capacity usage with optimizations.
Self-service provisioning: This feature allows users to publish blueprints directly to end users through Nutanix Marketplace.
Application lifecycle management: Through this NCM feature, users can provision, configure, scale, upgrade, and delete applications across cloud environments as well as provide access to multiple teams at a time.
Hybrid multicloud orchestration: This Nutanix Cloud Manager feature allows users to automate the provisioning of hybrid cloud architectures from a single control plane.
Showback, chargeback, and budgeting: Nutanix Cloud Manager uses this feature to allow users to automatically create cloud consumption reports, define chargeback policies, and set up budget alerts.
Automated right-sizing and intelligent purchases: Through leveraging machine learning (ML) algorithms, users can benefit from the automatic detection of anomalous spending patterns.
Security monitoring and remediation: This feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager allows users to utilize over 250 audits for public clouds and over 500 for Nutanix on-premises.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Benefits

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) provides its users with several benefits. These include:

Nutanix Cloud Manager offers intelligent operations through the automation of operational tasks.
NCM gives users self-service opportunities and centralized role-based IT governance, which allows them the freedom to control their processes better.
Companies can benefit from cost and security governance with intelligent analysis and regulatory compliance.
The product has been made available across all regions in 2022, allowing worldwide access to its services without limitations.
NCM is suitable for beginners, as it offers low to no code actions.
Nutanix Cloud Manager provides real-time security, ensuring the cloud data of companies is protected at all times.

Reviews from Real Users

An IT Operations at an energy/utilities company likes Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) because the product provides visibility, simplifies operations, and saves time and cost.

Drew P., a network systems administrator at Moda Health, rates NCM highly because the product saves man-hours with excellent speed on outcomes and provides a continuous validation process.

Nutanix

Sample Customers

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

JetBlue, International Speedway Corporation, Volkswagen SAIC, Brighton and Hove City Council, Foresters Financial, Janus International Group, Cloud Comrade, Serco

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

September 2025

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