Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs OpenNebula comparison

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

OpenNebula and Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) compete in cloud management solutions. NCM has an upper hand due to its advanced features and performance, which justify its higher cost for enterprise-focused capabilities.

Features: OpenNebula offers simplicity, flexibility, and native support for multiple hypervisors, making it ideal for smaller deployments. NCM provides an integrated infrastructure, hybrid cloud support, and deep analytics, excelling in complex, scalable environments.

Room for Improvement: OpenNebula could improve by offering more streamlined deployment processes and expanded support services. Additionally, a more user-friendly interface could enhance its appeal. NCM might address its higher initial cost, broaden customization options, and improve user training resources.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nutanix Cloud Manager offers streamlined deployment with comprehensive customer service and an all-inclusive platform. OpenNebula, while more customizable, may require more manual setup, with support primarily community-driven.

Pricing and ROI: OpenNebula's low initial setup cost is attractive for budget-conscious projects, with ROI improving as deployment scales. In contrast, NCM requires a higher initial investment but offers a better long-term ROI through its comprehensive features and performance.

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

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. OpenNebula

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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

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)

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenNebula is 5.8%, down from 7.3% 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%
OpenNebula	5.8%
Other	89.0%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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.

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FOURES Jean-Philippe

Products Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Reliable, simple to manage, and offers great technical support

The support of VXLAN fits with our network management. Thanks to this we can propose mixed solutions using virtual resources on OpenNebula and bare metal servers hosted in our facilities linked to each other on the sale network. This use case is very useful when some applications need bare metal power (Kubernetes workers, huge databases, AI models computations, et cetera). The cluster management is very useful for splitting our different clusters (mutual vs dedicated). We can manage deployments and capacity planning without pain. The API is also really simple and it helped us to develop the Terraform provider to manage OpenNebula like any other cloud infrastructure.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The way it aggregates all the accounts and lets me do math across all the accounts, even across multiple vendors or multiple cloud providers, is valuable. The other part is Chargeback. We use that to validate our bills."

"Using X-Play is simple. In three steps you can define things and there is also a wizard to guide you... The wizard is the simplest way to automate and the resulting automation saves us time."

"Moreover, the deployment process was so easy and smooth that post rack and stack and management IP configuration, it just took less than 2 days to configure the cluster of 40 nodes, upgrade the firmware, create file service and VM space and integrate with our infrastructure."

"We have a local partner and all the support from the vendor. It has been a remarkable experience. The product is very easy to use, and the roadmap has been executed transparently. The administration has been quite fast."

"The most valuable features of this solution are visibility, the single console, capacity planning, the VM efficiencies. We have a recovery plan, security, policies policy security. That's why we implement it with your customers."

"The best part of it is that when you use the product, there's no secret proprietary magic that you experience as a user. The real genius is under the covers, so it makes the user experience very straightforward and easy. It's a wonderful solution to teach partners about. The ease of use is something a lot of suppliers talk about, but Nutanix does it better than anyone else."

"Nutanix Cloud Manager is easier for technicians than VMware, so fewer people are needed to do the same tasks. It's critical because if we do things faster, we do them at a lower price, especially if we use fewer human resources."

"The most valuable features are the compliance features and the chargebacks."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."

"With a single click, we could set things up and initiate them."

"I also like the ability to build custom functions. I can define a function where I have two types of views and configure the dependencies. The virtual data centers concept allows me to define users. If a user wants to join certain kinds of machines, the host and the other user won't see them. It gives me the flexibility to define multiple views and data centers in one place."

"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."

"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."

"The ability to use it almost like a public cloud for an organization is a big asset, as it will create a value proposition and can control costs in a great way."

"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."

"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."

More OpenNebula pros

Cons

"I think the Prism Center needs to include more functions. I know that they're including the Nutanix Era, which is the database management and disaster recovery tool. I think that Era should include everything on a single tool where you can manage everything you need inside your organization."

"We use Nutanix only for our dev and test environments. Our production environment is VMware, and that is totally separate. But we do transfer data between them. That's a challenge because we need to frequently bring the production data into our test environment and that's a big transfer. If we could do a cross-storage transfer, like a transfer from NetApp or Nimble Storage into Nutanix with automation, that would greatly help us."

"We are still learning about cloud usage and the integrations we are targeting right now at the event. I believe there is room for improvement, especially with the prices, which are not very friendly."

"We need to get more training and achieve much more consistent training. There is training, and there are courses, but in local terms, we are missing something that would allow us to have a more widespread training program."

"LCM could be our second favorite feature right up there with One-Click Upgrades if it worked as smoothly but We have had a few issues with LCM but those appear to have been related to OEM hardware vendor not in sync with Nutanix software, not sure how this could be improved in the future."

"I consider it a very complete platform, for now, I believe it is very good. It could be advanced and more updated over time. I would like to see updates like the creation of basic applications for monitoring through tables, telephones, external updates, sending manuals, or informational brochures by mail to go hand in hand with the platform and its updates."

"There are some cases when there are multiple alerts for the same issue. For example, if I forget to put it in hosting maintenance mode, then I start getting multiple, duplicate alerts for the same host, which we don't want. If I have already received an alert, I don't want another alert. So, there are sometimes false positive alerts because of update activity where we forgot to put it in maintenance mode, then we get multiple alerts or emails."

"Better AI would be a feature I would want to see in the next update."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

"They have been saying for the past two and a half years that they would develop a feature to hot-add RAM and CPU, but it does not work."

"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."

"The UI, monitoring, and alerting could benefit from further improvements."

"The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well."

"It should have a simple REST API like most other tools. It's the industry standard format. An XML-RPC API gives you an XML document that you have to convert and then do something with that. REST API endpoint provides outputs in a JSON document. I would also like to see support for user data or heat templates, which OpenStack offers, but OpenNebula doesn't have this yet."

"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."

"There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds."

More OpenNebula cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive...When I have to sell the tool to a customer, I would say that it is not very expensive and can be termed priceless."

"Its acquisition and support cost is nominal. It is not too high, and it is not too low. It is within the budget, and there are no issues on that part."

"The pricing has been reasonable."

"Nutanix changes its licensing models frequently, and it is difficult to figure out how and what is included in which package."

"The product is very cheap."

"The tool is expensive."

"The solution is a bit high in price for what we are receiving as features. I feel they are overcharging us at approximately 25 percent. That is something that they should change."

"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."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

"The solution is open source so is free."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"OpenNebuoa has recently come up with a new subscription model that is economical and a lot of new customers are choosing this as it is an easy subscription model."

"The licensing for OpenNebula used to be free, but now it's no longer free. A customer contacted me asking to move to another provider because of the changes in the licensing terms for OpenNebula. I have no information on how much the OpenNebula license is because the customer pays for it, and I only do the integration."

"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

31%

Financial Services Firm

Marketing Services Firm

Government

Computer Software Company

19%

University

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

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...

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...

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...

What do you like most about OpenNebula?

The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenNebula?

OpenNebula gives good value for money.

What needs improvement with OpenNebula?

The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement. Another area for improvement is the integration with hardware to manage the lower layer of the n...

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Comparisons

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

Nutanix Prism vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 9% of the time

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) Competitors

CloudStack vs OpenNebula

Compared 44% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 9% of the time

Morpheus vs OpenNebula

Compared 6% of the time

Sangfor HCI - Hyper Converged Infrastructure vs OpenNebula

Compared 4% of the time

More OpenNebula Competitors

Product Reports

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

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Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

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

OpenNebula provides the most simple but feature-rich and flexible solution for the comprehensive management of virtualized data centers to enable private, public and hybrid IaaS clouds. OpenNebula interoperability makes cloud an evolution by leveraging existing IT assets, protecting your investments, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

OpenNebula is a turnkey enterprise-ready solution that includes all the features needed to provide an on-premises (private) cloud offering, and to offer public cloud services.

Sample Customers

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

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. OpenNebula