OpenNebula vs Red Hat CloudForms comparison

OpenNebula and Red Hat are both solutions in the Cloud Management category. OpenNebula is ranked #9 with an average rating of 7.0, while Red Hat is ranked #35. OpenNebula holds a 2.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of OpenNebula users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 66% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

OpenNebula

Read 15 OpenNebula reviews

2,864 Views
2,749 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat CloudForms

Read 10 Red Hat CloudForms reviews

955 Views
945 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

OpenNebula

Red Hat CloudForms

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Red Hat CloudForms and OpenNebula are competing tools in the cloud management platform space. Red Hat CloudForms is favored for its pricing satisfaction and support, while OpenNebula is often preferred for its robust feature set.

Features: Red Hat CloudForms excels in hybrid cloud management, automation capabilities, and offers advanced monitoring and reporting, whereas OpenNebula impresses with integrated multi-cloud orchestration, a focus on scalability, and simplicity.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat CloudForms can improve by simplifying its initial setup processes, enhancing ease of use, and expanding flexibility in integration. OpenNebula could benefit from enhanced support options, expanding its feature documentation, and increased focus on advanced analytics.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenNebula is known for straightforward deployment and efficient, tailored customer service. Red Hat CloudForms offers comprehensive support but may require more complex initial setup, which can be beneficial for enterprises needing deep customization.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat CloudForms generally presents a higher initial setup cost with significant ROI through its extensive feature suite, while OpenNebula offers a cost-effective entry with lower scripting overhead and operational expenses, delivering faster ROI due to streamlined deployment.

To learn more, read our detailed OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms

February 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

OpenNebula

Ranking in Cloud Management

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat CloudForms

Ranking in Cloud Management

35th

Average Rating

6.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 2.9%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat CloudForms is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
OpenNebula	2.9%
Red Hat CloudForms	1.8%
Other	95.3%

Cloud Management

Featured Reviews

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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Ilhami Arikan

Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji

A stable solution that helps to provision servers

We use the solution to provision servers. I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs. The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved. I would rate the solution's stability an eight out of ten. I would rate the product's scalability a seven out of ten and…

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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

"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage."

"For the entire data center, as a private cloud, I believe that user management, expert management, and the virtual data center is completely magic for the users."

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

"The most valuable feature of OpenNebula is that it scales very well."

"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."

"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."

"What's best about OpenNebula that people like is that it's easy to deploy. It's also easy to manage. It's interesting because people choose OpenNebula over other solutions because of the ease of management."

More OpenNebula pros

"Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability."

"The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality."

"The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't had any issues with it."

"Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running."

"I am impressed with the product's reports."

"The multi-tenancy feature has been very helpful for our clients. It has been working fine and seamlessly for them. Its interface is also very simplified, and it is also an open and easy-to-scale solution."

"The optimization of the solution is quite interesting."

"I am impressed with the product's ability to create dynamic catalogs."

More Red Hat CloudForms pros

Cons

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

"The web interface could be better. It's not very difficult to use, but there's room for enhancement."

"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."

"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."

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

"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."

"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."

More OpenNebula cons

"The problem is that the platform requires it to be maintained and updated. Also, a few cases are still pending with the Red Hat support team since they are not closed yet."

"It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs."

"Our clients had challenges or issues with the updates. Its updates should be better managed. They should provide quicker and more stable updates. Its stability can also be better. We initially faced ease-of-use and compatibility issues while integrating it. We had a lot of compatibility issues with other products. Our clients are concerned about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Clients are not very clear about the support, and they're not really happy with it. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, they're not really clear about what would be the life cycle of the product, which is a concern for them."

"The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware."

"Red Hat CloudForms could improve by allowing more customization of reports. We have to do a lot of coding to accomplish what we want. Additionally, the compatibility with the multi-cloud could improve. The latter versions of the solution removed Google support and the cost comparison between other clouds was high."

"The solution is still quite immature."

"The solution's provisioning engine needs to be improved."

"All of the areas of Red Hat CloudForms could improve. It doesn't do half of the things that it says it can do out of the box. It takes configuration to make any of it work, which is not uncommon for solutions similar to this. However, it is frustrating."

More Red Hat CloudForms cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"OpenNebula gives good value for money."

"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."

"The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive."

"The product's licensing is based on the number of servers."

"Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive."

"Red Hat CloudForms has a subscript-based pricing model. The cost is approximately $20,000 annually which allows you to use as many users as you want."

"It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

10%

Marketing Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for OpenNebula?

Previously, we were using VMware, but recently, we've started using OpenNebula for cloud management. As a big cloud provider, it helps give customers increased control over their clusters. We use L...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering OpenNebula?

I recommend it, especially if you need a management interface for a small to medium private cloud. I would rate OpenNebula an eight out of ten.

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Compared 30% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs OpenNebula

Compared 7% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs OpenNebula

Compared 6% of the time

CloudCheckr vs OpenNebula

Compared 3% of the time

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VMware Aria Automation vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 11% of the time

VMware Cloud Director vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Aria Operations vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 9% of the time

CloudStack vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 7% of the time

CloudCheckr vs Red Hat CloudForms

Compared 6% of the time

More Red Hat CloudForms Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula

January 2026

Download OpenNebula product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat CloudForms

January 2026

Download Red Hat CloudForms product report

Overview

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.

OpenNebula

Manage container, virtual, private, and public cloud infrastructures

Managing a complex, hybrid IT environment can require multiple management tools, redundant policy implementations, and extra staff to handle the operations. Red Hat® CloudForms simplifies IT, providing unified management and operations in a hybrid environment.

As your IT infrastructure progresses from traditional virtualization toward an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, CloudForms evolves, protecting your investments and providing consistent user experience and functionality.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

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

Cox Automotive, Penn State, FICO, G-ABLE, Seneca College, ITandTEL, The Paris Lodron University of Salzburg (PLUS), MyRepublic, Macquarie, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, CBTS, Network Data Solutions (NDS)

Buyer's Guide

OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms

February 2026

Free Report: OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms

Find out what your peers are saying about OpenNebula vs. Red Hat CloudForms and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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