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OpenNebula vs VMware Aria Operations comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

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
15th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations
Ranking in Cloud Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
376
Ranking in other categories
Virtualization Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.9%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations is 4.1%, down from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Operations4.1%
OpenNebula1.9%
Other94.0%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

FOURES Jean-Philippe - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
AldoDomini - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Network Analyst at Net spa
Have faced limitations due to high costs but have maintained reliability over time
The primary issue is the pricing, which is very expensive for my company's budget. We cannot afford to pay such a large fee. We are not Microsoft or BMW; we are a small company. As a small company, I have no power to negotiate directly with VMware. Perhaps larger companies have more opportunity to contract directly with VMware, but I do not have that leverage. The only path I can follow is to change solutions. Net.spA is a company working in the field of waste management. We are not a technological company, so we do not have a large margin to justify purchasing and maintaining the VMware infrastructure at current costs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For our use case, we found the solution to be the best fit when dealing with infrastructure services."
"OpenNebula is lightweight, stable, and easy to customize."
"It is quite easy to deploy."
"It makes maintenance very easy and stress-free for our teams."
"I'll definitely recommend OpenNebula because it's an open-source solution that's effortless to set up, and the total cost of ownership is low."
"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."
"It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%."
"OpenNebula freed my customer from doing the maintenance operations of the servers because now that can be done by his clients."
"There are many valuable features. The top feature is historical trending analysis and future workload predictions. There's a workload forecaster/predictor model in there and it's very helpful for capacity planning."
"It helps us to stay on top of recent risk allocation based on a recommendation from what we're reviewing."
"I think it's the best solution on the market in terms of capacity monitoring."
"It allows me to see how my entire infrastructure is performing in a simplified manner."
"It speeds up time for troubleshooting and it gives simple-to-use dashboarding for executives and managers to be able to see what the issues are in an easy way, so they can escalate or question. From an operations side it lets you get to the core of the apple and figure out the problem quickly."
"VMware Aria Operations has positively impacted incident response times, making it easier to solve problems with virtualization."
"One of the most beneficial features is a single pane of glass as well as the interoperability that it comes with additional features."
"The most valuable features are performance troubleshooting and performance monitoring of VM CPU, storage latency, storage throughput, basic uptime, downtime."
 

Cons

"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"Most of the competitors are offering some sort of billing software to transform their installation to work as a small-sized public cloud, but those offerings from OpenNebula are still missing."
"Most of the competitors are offering some sort of billing software to transform their installation to work as a small-sized public cloud, but those offerings from OpenNebula are still missing."
"There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula."
"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."
"The storage feature that they have is a bit confusing."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"Adding some intelligence to VMware Aria Operations, such as event correlation, and some level of AI apps will improve the solution, similar to what we see with the more advanced monitoring solutions that we don't currently have."
"The solution could improve by having more APIs, customized alerts, and documentation."
"I'd like to see more integration with other applications."
"We've had stability issues with the underlying PostgreSQL database; it's very chatty, it fills the logs up, it fills the drives up."
"There is room for improvement in asset management and resource usage."
"When I try to make it run in containers, it doesn't work."
"For me, more examples of the configuration of the solution in specific use cases would be better."
"When it comes to policies, they need to fine tune things to make it easier. It is a bit difficult setting up policies."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is open source so is free."
"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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"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."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"The value that we get from vROps is okay. It could be cheaper."
"As we continue to implement it across multiple environments, it reduces costs as well."
"Bundle it in with your license rather than buying it as a separate product. It saves a lot of money that way."
"The solution has helped to reduce the time to troubleshoot issues."
"We have seen good ROI results. It has made our lives easier."
"Five or six years ago, when we took it, it was a very good option. Now, I think I have to reevaluate, to be honest."
"If the VMs were trimmed, then we wouldn't have to buy as much software/hardware, and this means less licenses. While most of it is VMware licenses, which are relatively cheap, there are SQL licenses for Microsoft, and this is where we could start saving a lot of money."
"If one is low price and ten is high price, I rate the product price a ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Marketing Services Firm
7%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise62
Large Enterprise278
 

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...
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...
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.
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is VMware Aria Operations a user friendly solution?
In terms of user-friendliness, VMware Aria Operations is one of the best solutions out there. It is not overly complex to set up and you can rely on the technical support to provide you with assis...
What is the most useful new feature of VMware Aria Operations?
For me, the alerts features are the most unique part of this product, no matter the current name it uses. When they introduced the new version of VMware Aria Operations, they also introduced more a...
 

Also Known As

No data available
VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), vCenter Operations Manager (VCOPS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.
Science Applications International Corporation, Tribune Media, Heartland Payment Systems, Telkom Indonesia, Columbia Sportswear, iGATE, CSS Corp, Angel Broking, Adira Finance, Hipskind, Beiersdorf Shared Services, Innovate Mas Indonesia, Adobe, Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi , Join Experience S.A, Borusan Holdings, Department of Transport - Abu Dhabi
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenNebula vs. VMware Aria Operations and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.