Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Nutanix and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Virtualization Management Tools category. Nutanix is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.8, while SolarWinds is ranked #6. Nutanix holds a 7.6% mindshare in VM, compared to SolarWinds’s 8.7% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Nutanix users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 71% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Read 126 Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) reviews

14,894 Views
1,936 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

Read 7 SolarWinds Virtualization Manager reviews

1,801 Views
1,585 Comparison Views

71% willing to recommend

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 15, 2026

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager and Nutanix Cloud Manager compete in virtualization and cloud management. Nutanix Cloud Manager holds the upper hand thanks to its robust features and scalability, offering greater value for its price.

Features: SolarWinds offers comprehensive monitoring, performance metrics, and reporting that aid in optimization. Nutanix Cloud Manager provides scalable infrastructure management, strong integration across hybrid environments, and superior automation capabilities.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds could improve its scalability, enhance its integration with hybrid environments, and offer more robust automation features. Nutanix could work on reducing its initial deployment complexities, provide more affordable pricing options, and improve its user interface for beginners.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds is known for straightforward deployment, backed by good documentation and responsive support, making setup easier. Nutanix Cloud Manager emphasizes cloud-centric deployment with extensive support options, better suited for scaling needs.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds offers competitive pricing, promising a quicker ROI due to lower setup costs. Nutanix Cloud Manager, though potentially more expensive upfront, provides high ROI over time with features that users find justify the investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

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

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools

1st

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

126

Ranking in other categories

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Suites (5th), Cloud Management (1st), Cloud Cost Management (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (10th)

SolarWinds Virtualization M...

Ranking in Virtualization Management Tools

6th

Average Rating

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Virtualization Management Tools category, the mindshare of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is 7.6%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is 8.7%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Virtualization Management Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)	7.6%
SolarWinds Virtualization Manager	8.7%
Other	83.7%

Virtualization Management Tools

Featured Reviews

Vijaykumar Talreja

Global Group CIO, CTO, Cdo & CISO at a real estate/law firm with 201-500 employees

Centralized multi-cloud management has simplified automation and boosted operational efficiency

Some downsides of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) are that it has very high cost and licensing complexity, particularly for smaller environments, making it more suited for larger environments. On the learning curve and support, while Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is user-friendly in some areas, the initial setup is complex and sometimes requires very specialized expertise, creating a steep learning curve. There is also limited third-party integration, as it has very limited non-native integrations compared to competitors. The documentation has gaps, particularly for advanced features, requiring some improvement, and certain advanced configurations and troubleshooting still require heavy reliance on the command-line interface rather than having a GUI.

Read full review

Ravi Khanchandani

Founder Director at Techsa Services

Optimizing virtual environments by reclaiming and allocating resources efficiently

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization. It provides me with recommendations for resource allocation, indicating if a virtual machine is under-provisioned or over-provisioned. This allows me to reclaim resources, such as reducing the number of CPU cores or RAM, which is beneficial. Its capacity planning feature is also very useful for me. The GUI is highly simplified, cutting across various virtualization platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, and Nutanix environments.

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

"I like being able to expand my workload with Nutanix Cloud Manager at the best cost."

"It has allowed us to easily manage multiple clusters in multiple locations through Prism. We have multiple sites that we use to manage and run VMware at which could be a bit cumbersome with Vsphere. Since we made the migration to Nutanix we now only have active servers at three locations, and we can manage them through Prism Central with ease."

"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 capacity planning, forecasting, and Runways are worth their weight in gold and NCM has saved us time in IT, and that's money."

"The design is very intuitive; it's easy to find information in the different menus and things like that. The user experience is much better compared to other products."

"The solution's support for scripts... has reduced the man-hours it takes to deploy and support applications because we don't have to rewrite all the scripts."

"The best feature of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is Life Cycle Manager."

"The scripting, where you can use libraries, is a valuable feature. We don't really make the blueprints, as we have a third-party company that makes them for us. But it enables calling APIs in the blueprints. When we create a machine, we use IPAM from Infoblox and we can get an IP address. It's one platform to script and we can then use all the APIs to complete the scripts. It gives us a central management tool from which we can do a lot of things automatically."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pros

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager optimizes VM performance and virtualization."

"SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is a great tool that is easy to use...It is a stable solution."

"This product is so helpful out-of-the-box."

"If you’re looking to get a lot more insight into your virtualization environment and more than just basic information, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager is the choice you should make."

"Virtualization manager’s cost analysis comparison report identified areas in which specific customers were being grossly undercharged for their resource consumption levels, as compared to rates available through AWS."

"Alerting expands, and makes, our monitoring and management much more efficient."

"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager are the non-Windows servers' monitoring and capacity planning."

Cons

"I think Nutanix Xi Beam can be more cost-effective."

"We would like to be able to provision virtual machines at the computing level, as that would give us an added value against the competition."

"One thing that comes directly to mind is how they manage version control. I would love to see Calm create a built-in source control feature, one that we could tie into a repository and it would self-manage changes in versions. All the version control is built within Calm right now. I would love to see that integrated with an external repository and make it easy to tie it into GitHub or Git repositories."

"The stability of Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"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."

"Nutanix's costs tend to be quite high...Indian customers don't like high-priced hyper clouds, so they invest in VMware, which offers the same features at a lower base price."

"For my use case, it's fine. There could be slight improvements in support because sometimes they are not able to understand the issue."

"Cost Governance's one shortcoming is a lack of support for specific environments."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) cons

"Out of the box support for a wider array of hardware vendor/device-specific SNMP mibs could be improved upon."

"Adhoc reporting takes time to get used to – due mainly to the fact that the team I am on are all admins, and not necessarily accustomed to query reporting in the manner utilized by Solarwinds Virtualization Manager."

"The problem or issue with the product is related to its pricing."

"The UI is a little cumbersome at first, but the more you use it and get accustomed to it, the simpler it becomes."

"SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems."

"I had some stability issues. I lost my environment."

"The SolarWinds Virtualization Manager platform in general can have a better response time in the performance."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's always difficult to discuss Nutanix pricing because the cost varies wildly depending on the customer and the region. Desktop virtualization is simpler because there is a defined scope. You can tell the Nutanix salesperson how many users you have. In a more traditional environment, it's always best to have NCM for monitoring because you'd be crazy not to."

"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."

"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."

"Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) is cheaper than VMware and other products."

"The pricing was quite competitive and a lot lower compared to other solutions. It wasn't cheap, but it was not as expensive."

"You will see great value from it if you utilize the self-service part of Calm. The price you pay for it will only give you equal value if you use the self-service part to enable other teams. If you only use it as a deployment mechanism, I think it's rather expensive."

"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."

"While the product may seem to be more expensive at first, it ultimately pays for itself within a short time frame due to the hours saved on maintenance."

More Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) pricing and cost advice

"The is an annual subscription needed to use this solution."

"The maintenance and support are a part of the package, meaning it is included in the product's price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Marketing Services Firm

13%

Construction Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Outsourcing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Healthcare Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	27
Large Enterprise	75

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
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...

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

This solution delivers significant cost savings, especially from a capacity perspective. Consistent monitoring is essential in a virtualization environment, and Virtualization Manager, or VMAN as i...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

SolarWinds needs to support integration with other virtualization platforms like KVM or Linux-based systems.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

We predominantly work with financial organizations such as large banks, stock exchanges, and insurance companies, as well as IT-enabled services (ITES). I use SolarWinds Virtualization Manager at o...

See all answers

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VMware Aria Automation vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

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Nutanix Prism vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 37% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Dell OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter vs SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

More SolarWinds Virtualization Manager Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM)

October 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Virtualization Management Tools

October 2026

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager report

Download SolarWinds Virtualization Manager product report

Also Known As

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

SolarWinds VMAN

Overview

Nutanix Cloud Manager streamlines hybrid cloud management by offering centralized control, automation, and workload optimization across platforms. It improves operational efficiency while reducing IT management complexity.

Nutanix Cloud Manager is designed for comprehensive hybrid cloud governance, providing tools for virtualization, resource allocation, and compliance. Its features include one-click upgrades, dynamic dashboards, and the seamless automation of tasks through X-Play. Users can efficiently manage virtual machines, ensure secure storage, and enhance productivity with predictive monitoring. Self-service capabilities allow users to reserve resources easily, while central management via Prism Pro and automated reports enhance oversight and decision-making. Challenges include UI simplicity, pricing transparency, and licensing efficiency, with users seeking improvements in VM organization, blueprint customization, and collaborative support for hybrid environments.

What important features define Nutanix Cloud Manager?

One-click Upgrades: Simplifies the process of updating and maintaining systems.
Intuitive Interface: Offers a user-friendly experience with a low learning curve.
Prism Pro: Central management for streamlined control over environments.
Dynamic Dashboards: Provides real-time insights and monitoring capabilities.
X-Play Automation: Facilitates seamless and efficient task automation.
Capacity Planning: Assists in optimal resource allocation and future growth planning.
Compliance Monitoring: Ensures adherence to industry standards and policies.
Efficient VM Management: Enhances control and monitoring of virtual machines.
Self-service Capabilities: Empowers users to manage and allocate resources independently.
Cost Governance: Allows organizations to maintain budgetary control and efficiency.

What benefits should be considered when evaluating Nutanix Cloud Manager?

Enhanced Productivity: Streamlines tasks and improves efficiency through automation.
Predictive Monitoring: Proactively addresses potential issues before they impact operations.
Robust Disaster Recovery: Provides reliable solutions to recover data and maintain continuity.
Automated Reports: Generates timely insights for informed decision-making.
Unified Cloud Management: Offers comprehensive control across multiple environments.

Nutanix Cloud Manager finds utility in industries requiring robust hybrid cloud strategies like finance, healthcare, and manufacturing. It excels in centralizing management for secure and compliant operations, optimizing workloads, and providing scalable solutions for resource allocation and compliance monitoring, thus enhancing cloud operations in diverse markets.

Nutanix

SolarWinds Virtualization Manager streamlines the monitoring and management of virtual environments by offering comprehensive visibility and actionable insights for IT professionals.

Designed to handle complex virtual systems, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager aids IT teams in tracking application performance, optimizing resource utilization, and identifying potential issues before they impact operations. The robust features ensure efficient operation and continuous system health, fostering an environment where virtual infrastructures can be effectively monitored and managed without significant manual intervention.

What are the key features of SolarWinds Virtualization Manager?

Performance Monitoring: Tracks system health and alerts users to potential bottlenecks.
Capacity Planning: Analyzes trends to predict future resource needs.
Sprawl Control: Identifies and manages VM sprawl to optimize resources.
Storage Monitoring: Provides insight into storage utilization and performance.
Customizable Dashboards: Allows personalized views of critical data.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Increased Efficiency: Streamlines virtual environment management.
Cost Savings: Reduces resource wastage and prevents overspending.
Improved Uptime: Proactive identification of issues minimizes downtime.
Enhanced Planning: Data-driven insights support effective resource allocation.

In industries such as healthcare, finance, and manufacturing, SolarWinds Virtualization Manager supports infrastructure maintenance by ensuring reliable performance and aiding compliance management through detailed monitoring capabilities. It adapts to specific industry requirements, facilitating seamless integration and operational excellence.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

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

Elliot Health System

Buyer's Guide

Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) vs. SolarWinds Virtualization Manager

September 2026

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