CloudStack vs VMware Cloud Director comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Apache and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.2, while Broadcom is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.2. Apache holds a 2.1% mindshare in CM, compared to Broadcom’s 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

CloudStack

Read 34 CloudStack reviews

3,963 Views
3,804 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

VMware Cloud Director

Read 71 VMware Cloud Director reviews

6,400 Views
5,568 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

CloudStack

VMware Cloud Director

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

VMware Cloud Director and CloudStack compete in the cloud services platform category. VMware Cloud Director seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive suite of features and strong integration within the VMware ecosystem.

Features: VMware Cloud Director offers scalability and a robust platform for cloud services. It integrates well with VMware's ecosystem, providing advanced automation with vRealize Automation and detailed monitoring with vRealize Operations. CloudStack supports multiple hypervisors, provides strong networking and virtualization features, and is known for its flexibility as an IaaS tool.

Room for Improvement: VMware Cloud Director could improve its integration with third-party services, enhance ease of deployment, and address pricing concerns. Users also mention the need for better hyperscaler integration and enhanced billing features. CloudStack requires improvements in stability for virtual routers, enhanced documentation, and better promotion to increase market presence. Simplifying rolling updates and maintenance operations is also needed.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VMware Cloud Director supports diverse deployment environments like hybrid and private clouds. It features commendable customer service, although technical support can be inconsistent. CloudStack requires more user involvement during deployment and troubleshooting, with less extensive support networks. This makes VMware more appealing to businesses seeking comprehensive support.

Pricing and ROI: VMware Cloud Director is expensive, with high licensing costs that can impact smaller companies. Despite the cost, some users find the investment justified by its features. High total costs of ownership can affect its ROI in budget-sensitive projects. CloudStack, being open-source, is cost-effective, with no licensing fees and lower operational costs, offering potentially higher ROI if support needs are minimal.

To learn more, read our detailed CloudStack vs. VMware Cloud Director Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Cloud Director

September 2026

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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

VMware Cloud Director

Ranking in Cloud Management

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of CloudStack is 2.1%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Director is 2.4%, down from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
VMware Cloud Director	2.4%
CloudStack	2.1%
Other	95.5%

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.

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KuldeepSingh4

Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Experienced users benefit from resource isolation and valuable self-service portal while seeing potential in enhanced infrastructure visibility

VMware is not going further with VMware Cloud Director. They are integrating the VMware Cloud Director feature with Aria Automation only for the upcoming versions, primarily with the VCF 9, and slowly they are integrating some of the parts they have already integrated, and they might not continue with VMware Cloud Director in the future. They can make it more granular to ensure hardware-level segregation, the underlying infrastructure level of segregation for the end user, and a separate security boundary where users can access the end-to-end layer. End-to-end layer means my software layer along with the hardware layer. If they want to do a certain level of troubleshooting primarily on the ESXi part, that is what I feel is lacking for now because for an end user accessing the SSP, the underlying infrastructure is a kind of black box for them. For VMware Cloud Director, it can be more comprehensive if we enable public cloud integration as well. In today's date, customers are adopting a multi-cloud environment where VMware Cloud Director is much feasible to leverage the underlying VMware backend architecture. If VMware Cloud Director could be made to have more integration with the public cloud and do the day one, day two jobs for public cloud interface as well, that would be beneficial. Additionally, I recommend leveraging the VMware Cloud Director layer if a customer has a multi-cloud environment and is planning some cross-cloud migration capability. Cross-cloud migration refers to if a customer has something on Azure, wanting to bring it up on VMware or maybe from VMware to AWS, vice versa. In that case, VMware Cloud Director should provide some cross-cloud migration capability as well.

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 use a single API to get things done, rather than multiple APIs on multiple modules."

"Over the years, we have valued CloudStack for its stability."

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

"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."

"I have also explored setting up with OpenStack and I found it harder to use than CloudStack."

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

"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."

More CloudStack pros

"I like the functionality that's available with Orchestrator. The platform stability stuff that I would be involved in worries me from the automation side because you have a lot less hands-on control of things. Price point, it kind of puts us off."

"It helps us provide private cloud solutions to our clients."

"The solution has more capabilities than OpenStack and integrates well with NSX and vCenter."

"It has helped us develop a better way of selling services to customers, evolve from the typical housing, and make revenues for the Telefonica company."

"We’ve already deployed three-tiered applications with just a push of a button to deploy from dev to staging to production."

"It helps ensure security across our cloud environments."

"Product is mature enough to support huge loads: the underlining technology is the best in class to meet many customer needs."

"This is the go-to tool for anyone looking for standard out-of-the-box capabilities in a fully multitenant public cloud software that they can leverage to offer services to their customers."

More VMware Cloud Director pros

Cons

"Companies need to be knowledgeable about cloud technology. It's not for novice users."

"From time to time there is a bug in calculating limits of resources for customer domain/account. Maybe it’s a problem with 4.9.2."

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

"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."

"CloudStack lacks a billing solution which would complete it as a full 360-degree product."

"It's really hard to delete zones, clusters, datacenters. You need to follow strict rules, which were not properly documented at the time."

"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."

"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."

More CloudStack cons

"At Layer 7, the load balancing does not have many features compared to other technologies such as NetScaler from Citrix or F5."

"In the next release, we would like to see improvements with the pricing. It could be reduced."

"The tool needs to add more features to improve the console."

"Initially, the setup was complex."

"I'm rather mixed. It is dead simple, but it still feels like duct taped solutions in a lot of aspects."

"The stability is good but not excellent because of the interoperability between different components of VMware products, which form a private cloud."

"There are new updates every quarter, so we need to purchase new support deployment services and some new products."

"One of the elements lacking in the product is integration with the hyperscalers."

More VMware Cloud Director cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

"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."

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

"The solution is open-source and free."

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

"CloudStack is an open-source product."

"The price of the solution is expensive."

"The license could be less expensive and we are on a perpetual license."

"The licensing costs are pretty high, but it might depend on the size of the company."

"We are able to provision new clients faster. Every month, we take on more customers."

"vCloud Director is an expensive solution."

"I believe the pricing is reasonable."

"My company has no problems with the pricing of the product as we got good discounts from VMware."

"The solution is costly, efficient, and robust versus alternative solutions."

More VMware Cloud Director pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Outsourcing Company

15%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

University

Outsourcing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Construction Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

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	13
Large Enterprise	39

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.

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

Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?

VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a single thing comes to mind when I think of improvements and that is integration. In...

See all answers

What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?

For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few years ago, my organization was using another cloud management tool. We switched...

See all answers

Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?

When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For example: Your DevOps team is supported through Infrastructure as Code services w...

See all answers

Comparisons

OpenNebula vs CloudStack

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs CloudStack

Compared 8% of the time

Turbo360 (Formerly Serverless360) vs CloudStack

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs CloudStack

Compared 5% of the time

AWS Control Tower vs CloudStack

Compared 2% of the time

More CloudStack Competitors

BMC Cloud Lifecycle Management vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 8% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 5% of the time

CloudCheckr vs VMware Cloud Director

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Cloud Director Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack

September 2026

Download CloudStack product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Cloud Director

August 2026

Download VMware Cloud Director product report

Also Known As

Vmops, Cloud.com

vCloud Director

Overview

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

VMware Cloud Director is a versatile platform renowned for its multi-tenancy, automation capabilities, and ease of use. It integrates with platforms like Amazon and Azure, enabling networking flexibility, scalability, and efficient virtual data center deployment with a resilient and intuitive interface.

VMware Cloud Director empowers organizations by offering a self-service portal for independent resource management, robust security features, and efficient orchestration. Its integration with Amazon and Azure enhances cloud functionality, while scalability allows seamless addition of resources. Despite its strengths, there is a need for improved integration with AWS and Azure, a more intuitive UI, better private cloud support, advanced automation, simplified installation, and competitive pricing. Users seek built-in billing, seamless networking, stable updates, detailed documentation, robust technical support, and open-source compatibility.

What are the key features of VMware Cloud Director?

Multi-tenancy: Supports multiple tenants with resource isolation.
Automation: Enables automated deployment and management of resources.
Integration: Compatible with platforms like Amazon and Azure.
Security: Offers robust security features to protect data.
Self-service portal: Empowers users to manage resources independently.
Networking flexibility: Facilitates efficient network management.
Scalability: Allows easy resource expansion.

What benefits or ROI should users expect from VMware Cloud Director?

Resilience: Ensures reliable cloud infrastructure management.
Clear dashboarding: Provides transparent oversight of resources.
Service extension: Expands capabilities to enhance customer satisfaction.
Resource optimization: Maximizes resource utilization and efficiency.

In industries such as cloud infrastructure hosting, VMware Cloud Director supports the creation and management of virtual data centers. Organizations leverage it for delivering public and private cloud services, enabling the deployment and management of applications. Service providers utilize its capabilities to streamline customer onboarding and foster infrastructure segregation, catering to diverse cloud requirements.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.

Buyer's Guide

CloudStack vs. VMware Cloud Director

September 2026

Free Report: CloudStack vs. VMware Cloud Director

Find out what your peers are saying about CloudStack vs. VMware Cloud Director and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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