Red Hat CloudForms is a robust management platform that integrates seamlessly with open-source technologies like Kubernetes and Docker. It offers flexibility with diverse infrastructures, scalability, and dynamic catalog creation.
| Product | Mindshare (%) |
|---|---|
| Red Hat CloudForms | 1.9% |
| VMware Aria Automation | 5.5% |
| IBM Turbonomic | 4.7% |
| Other | 87.9% |
| Type | Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Cloud Management | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Product | Reviews, tips, and advice from real users | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Red Hat CloudForms vs VMware Aria Operations | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Red Hat CloudForms vs Nutanix Cloud Manager (NCM) | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Comparison | Red Hat CloudForms vs VMware Aria Automation | Jun 23, 2026 | Download |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM Turbonomic | 4.4 | 4.7% | 98% | 205 interviewsAdd to research |
| VMware Aria Automation | 4.0 | 5.5% | 94% | 172 interviewsAdd to research |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 3 |
| Large Enterprise | 4 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 32 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 22 |
| Large Enterprise | 43 |
Red Hat CloudForms supports service providers in UAE by offering a central console for infrastructure management. Known for its multi-tenancy and streamlined interface, it facilitates seamless integration with infrastructures like Nexus, Solaris, IBM, and VMware. Despite its strengths, challenges such as complexity and user-friendliness have been noted, with users requesting predefined modules, enhanced dashboards, and improved customization. The cost and platform lifecycle remain concerns, especially when compared to competitors like VMware. Permission refinement and provisioning engine improvements are also needed, as well as better cloud service integration and stability.
What features make Red Hat CloudForms stand out?In industries, Red Hat CloudForms serves as a central hub for service providers, managing and orchestrating platforms like NETGEAR, KVM, Hyper-V, and VMware. Automation of infrastructure code, server management, and cloud infrastructure evaluation are core use cases, with users integrating technologies like Ansible Tower for daily task management and access delegation.
| Author info | Rating | Review Summary |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud Services Automation Technologies Manager at Garanti Teknoloji | 3.5 | I use Red Hat CloudForms primarily for server provisioning and find its ability to create dynamic catalogs impressive. However, the provisioning engine requires improvement. I have not explored other solutions or cloud providers, and no ROI is noted. |
| System Administrator Tech Lead at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees | 4.5 | We implemented Red Hat CloudForms as a pre-defined server and internal cloud for automation but faced difficulties creating a comprehensive dashboard and lengthy approval cycles. While it integrated well with various vendors, it was eventually replaced by VMware Cloud Director. |
| Senior Manager at Wipro Limited | 4.0 | I find Red Hat CloudForms stable, scalable, and value its collective functionality, open integration, and easy setup. However, report customization needs coding, multi-cloud compatibility could improve, and IBM's acquisition adds uncertainty. I rate it 8/10. |
| Infrastructure & System Administrator at a tech company with 1-10 employees | 3.0 | We manage platforms like NETGEAR, KVM, Hyper-V, and VMware, so Red Hat CloudForms helps us effectively handle mixed infrastructures and delegate access. However, it struggles with network associations and requires timely maintenance, and support responses need improvement. |
| CCO at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 1.5 | I found Red Hat CloudForms complex, expensive, and frustrating to configure with poor support and limited functionality. It offered no ROI, so I strongly advise others to find a better cloud management solution. |
| Virtualization Engineer at a healthcare company with 5,001-10,000 employees | 2.0 | I am impressed with Red Hat CloudForms' reporting features, but I find its permissions system lacking, as it doesn't support folder-type permissions like VMware. We chose this product over VMware due to cost considerations. |
| Professional Services Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees | 3.5 | I value CloudForms for its multi-tenancy, openness, and scalability, preferring it over VMware. However, I'm concerned about update stability, initial compatibility issues, and unclear future support under IBM, leading to a 7/10 rating. |
| CoOwner & CTO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees | 2.5 | I've used this solution for three years. While it offers good optimization and stability, it's immature, expensive, and requires extensive programming for customization, making it feel incomplete. I rate it a five out of ten. |
| Principal Solutions Architect at Tech Mahindra Limited | 3.5 | I find this a mature and stable product with good integration and customer service. However, its complex setup and configuration make it less user-friendly than alternatives like VMware, needing more plug-and-play functionality. |
| Principal Solutions Architect at Tech Mahindra Limited | 3.5 | I find Red Hat stable with seamless open-source integration, making it a top choice for microservices. However, its complexity, particularly compared to VMware, and initial setup are significant drawbacks for me. I rate it 7/10. |
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 there are about 300-400 users for the solution in my company.
The tool's tech support is good.
The tool's setup is not difficult. You can complete the basic installation in an hour.
The product's licensing is based on the number of servers.
I would rate the product a seven out of ten.
Our company used the solution as a pre-defined server and internal cloud. We automated infrastructure as a code and delivered it to the user portal to meet logins and request machines.
After the machine was created, we integrated with Ansible Towers to install applications or services that sat on top of the machine.
The intent was to see our entire environment and replace all manual processes. We wanted one dashboard to handle all daily tasks. We had 10,000 users with 1,000 of them engaged in installation and testing.
Users found the solution simple to use but it never launched as a production. Five team members handled development and management before the solution was decommissioned.
The solution was beneficial because it gave us a full view of our infrastructure and the ability to calibrate each team's requests or machines.
The solution is compatible and integrates with various infrastructures or vendors. You provide APIs and integration occurs, even with vendors that are not out-of-the-box partners.
For example, integrations are possible with Nexus, Solaris, RBC via an Oracle API, IBM, VMware, OpenStack, and Red Hat.
In contrast, other solutions dictate which vendors you are permitted to connect with or administrate.
It is difficult to create a complete dashboard that includes all the needed features or catalogs. To compete with other vendors, much development is needed such as including predefined plug-and-play modules
It takes a lot of development to integrate with Remedy and request new machines or create tickets.
The approval cycle for deployment and implementation is too long.
I used the solution for two years.
We did not experience a lot of time in production but configuration and deployment was stable in our environment.
I handled implementation and that did not include expanding our environment or scalability.
We used technical support to assist with installation.
We previously used Ansible to automate machines.
The setup and configuration was very straightforward.
We utilized partnerships with OpenStack and third parties for implementation.
Deployment took some time because there was a lot of development work to design and set up regions. We have a huge network with multiple regions, sites, and security protocols. Each item needed to be installed and OVA or OVF files needed to be configured.
Once everything was opened from the firewall perspective, deployment took one or two days.
Other work included pre-installing the post implementation applications or services, developing the dashboard and service catalogs, and integrating with Remedy.
We did not review other products prior to choosing the solution.
Based on internal decisions, the solution was decommissioned and replaced with VMware Cloud Director.
I rate the solution a nine out of ten.
The most valuable features of Red Hat CloudForms are the benefit of the collective functionality.
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.
I have been using Red Hat CloudForms for more than three years.
The stability of Red Hat CloudForms is good. It has high availability.
Red Hat CloudForms can scale well.
I have used the support from Red Hat.
I rate the technical support from Red Hat CloudForms a four out of five.
The initial setup of Red Hat CloudForms was straightforward. There are aspects of the implementation that will take time, such as report customization. However, the initial setup does not take very long.
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.
CloudForms has been acquired by IBM from Red Hat. IBM has no technical support under its portfolio. It's not been officially announced by IBM where they stand. It is confusing. There are other tools in the market, such as ServiceNow or Micro Focus CMP, which are direct competitors to Red Hat CloudForms. However, when Red Hat CloudForms is compared to the others, I prefer to use just Red Hat CloudForms because of the features, such as scalability, openness with integration, and other self-onboarding services.
I rate Red Hat CloudForms an eight out of ten.
We manage platforms like NETGEAR, KVM, Hyper-V, and VMware. Therefore, we need an orchestration platform to manage all of these platforms. After researching and evaluating several products in the market, we found that Red Hat CloudForms can help us resolve this issue. We understand that it is a good platform that allows us to manage mixed platforms, create virtual machines, and monitor our infrastructure efficiently. It also enables us to delegate access to other administrators for creating cloud solutions with the tenant platform.
We can annotate CRM data with discounts for each tenant and separate the platforms from the tenants. However, there are some limitations in terms of network association. We cannot associate a tenant's network with the available network in the upper sector, which is a significant issue. Additionally, the Webex platform is not currently being maintained, and there are no viable alternatives to Red Hat CloudForms that are as secure and reliable.
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. Such areas need to be developed by Red Hat's team members.
One of the other areas that need improvement in the solution is that I need to get a proper response from the technical support.
I have been using Red Hat CloudForms for four years. I manage a multi-cloud platform with CloudForms. I am a customer of the solution.
Red Hat CloudForms is a stable product. There is no issue with the stability.
The solution is scalable. It can be a little scalable.
I rate the solution's scalability a seven out of ten.
I had some issues with technical support because of a network-related issue. For instance, when I try to create a tenant, there is no association with the network, and it doesn't return anything. In this case, the network configuration is not properly guaranteed by the platform.
The initial setup is not difficult.
With the menu, we can easily proceed by selecting 'Next' multiple times. We can configure the appliance without any issues.
Red Hat CloudForms is a bit expensive.
I think I would recommend other products since Red Hat CloudForms isn't maintained well if I am not wrong.
Overall, I rate the solution a six out of ten.
We were using Red Hat CloudForms for testing and evaluation of construction and deconstruction of cloud infrastructure.
Red Hat CloudForms did not help the way our organization functions.
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.
In a future release, Red Hat CloudForms could improve by offering to support all the five major cloud services. It only supports Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure. It has some support for Google Cloud, but no support for Oracle Cloud, and no support for IBM Cloud.
I have been using Red Hat CloudForms for approximately four and a half years ago.
Red Hat CloudForms is stable once it is up and running.
The scalability of Red Hat CloudForms is good.
We had approximately 40 or 50 people using the solution for testing and evaluation.
Red Hat CloudForms is a solution that Red Hat poured some money into, and then when IBM merged with Red Hat, all the people who knew anything about it went on to do other things, and IBM doesn't have enough technical expertise to offer. I don't think they want to support the product either.
I rate the support of Red Hat CloudForms a one out of five.
Negative
We used a couple of different solutions for cloud management previously.
The initial setup of Red Hat CloudForms is very complex. Nothing works out of the box and you have to configure everything to have it work. It was simple to have the solution deployed but difficult to get it running.
The deployment of Red Hat CloudForms was done in-house. I worked for IBM and we were using Red Hat employees to try to get Red Hat CloudForms running.
It shouldn't take more than about two or three people to support Red Hat CloudForms. However, the solution was so cumbersome that, it has to be the right two or three people.
We have not seen a return on investment. It would have taken too much development cost to make it worthwhile.
The price of Red Hat CloudForms was not competitive, it was expensive.
What we evaluated were CloudForms, VRA, CloudBolt, Flexera, Morpheus, and vRealize Automation.
Red Hat doesn't support CloudForms anymore, IBM now does because they traded CloudForms to IBM for a different solution. IBM doesn't have enough people that know the solution well enough to support it. IBM has neglected the solution to the point where now it's becoming more and more unusable every day.
We did the pilot on Red Hat CloudForms and we did the test and evaluation, but we decided against pursuing it.
My advice to others is to look for another solution. There are a lot better solutions in the market. The solutions we did evaluate were better. VRA is not as good as it could be but it was better than Red Hat CloudForms.
I am impressed with the product's reports.
I have issues with the solution's permissions. Unlike VMware, the product doesn't allow folder-type permissions.
The product is stable.
The solution is scalable and my company has five users for the product.
The product's self-provisioning part was difficult. However, platform installation was easy and didn't require much programming.
We had evaluated VMware but it was too expensive for us. Hence, we decided to use the product.
I would rate the product a four out of ten since its implementation is not as good as it sounds.
We are a system integrator, and this solution is used by our clients. They are system service providers in UAE, and they provide infrastructure as a service to their end customers. CloudForms acts like a central console for them to provide the service. It is a central interface.
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.
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.
My clients have been using it for almost two years.
We are very happy with its stability, but it can be better. In terms of stability, I would rate it a seven out of ten.
Scalability is not at all a challenge. It is very easy to scale. Our clients are big companies.
Our clients are not really clear about its support going forward. They are not sure about whether it is under IBM or it is still Red Hat. Currently, they're getting support from Red Hat, but going forward, what would be the life cycle of the product is a worry for them.
We also use VMware. CloudForms is more open. In VMware, everything has to go back to VMware services, which is a pain point.
There are also a lot of open resources available for CloudForms. If you have just one guy dedicated to it, it becomes much easier as compared to what we have to do with VMware. VMware is very closed, and that's the reason why our clients chose Red Hat over VMware.
It was pretty straightforward. The full deployment took two weeks. The product itself requires just a day. After that comes the actual work of configuring everything, which sort of takes time.
It was set up by Red Hat. We provide a lot of other services, but for Red Hat, we take the services directly from Red Hat. It is a bit challenging when we have to get our guys to develop the competency to be able to deliver for this particular solution.
In terms of its maintenance, clients have to handle the updates. They have technical resources for this.
It is definitely cheaper than VMware. Everything is included. There is no challenge there.
Its deployment was done by Red Hat for us. We had help from the best experts. I would advise others to get a few days of services from Red Hat so that they are able to get technical expertise from them if required.
I would rate Red Hat CloudForms a seven out of ten. If they had made it a little bit more stable and easier, I would have easily given it an eight.
The optimization of the solution is quite interesting. It means we can prepare a bunch of VMs, and of course with self-service provisioning.
The solution is still quite immature.
Those CloudForms and similar products are very capable if you are some sort of programmer. It has the infrastructure, however, to actually make it work, you have to program it yourself inside the platform. It's okay as a platform, however, it is not a ready-made product. You have to do a lot of work.
The product is expensive. It would be ideal if they could work on their pricing model.
What I expect from Red Hat is for it to make configurations for common use cases. Red Hat CloudForms allows you to integrate with external sources. Yet, if you want to integrate something, then you have to program it in Ruby in order to integrate. If you want some features with this integration, they also have to be programmed. I know that with other products, it is more of a point and click integration. Often, also, there are knowledge bases or use cases that are already present as point-and-click functionality.
I've been using the solution for about three years at this point. It's been a while now.
The stability has been very good so far. We haven't had to deal with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's good.
While we haven't tried to scale the VMs just yet, for us the scalability has been okay. An organization that needs to expand it should be able to.
Currently, in our company, we only really have four people on the solution that administer it.
We don't use technical support very much due to the fact that we are a very open-source company and are accustomed to doing our own self-support.
We did not previously use a different solution.
The initial setup is not too complex. It's pretty straightforward and simple. We didn't face any complications during implementation.
The pricing of the solution is quite high. It's something that could be worked on.
We evaluated a few other solutions. We knew the products of VM-Ware and others like Oracle VM and so, however not so much about their cloud management.
We have looked into the OpenStack and implemented some OpenStack, however, it is not quite in the same territory. With CloudForms, for example, we can manage OpenStack, however, OpenStack can manage itself only, and not other platforms.
We're partners with Red Hat.
I'm not sure of which version of the solution we are using. It's some aspect of version four.
We use both hybrid and on-premises deployment models.
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate the solution at a five.
The integration with other open-source tools is pretty good. It integrates particularly well with Kubernates Docker.
They are a very mature product.
Because the solution needs to integrate with other products that surround it, there is a lot of configuration required, and this can be quite complex. It's not as easy as it is with, for example, VMware.
The solution needs to be more user-friendly. They need to make it more plug-and-play.
I've been working with Red Hat for a long time. It's been about ten years.
The solution is stable, that's not an issue. We haven't had problems with bugs, glitches, or crashes.
We've been in touch with technical support. Most of the time, they are good. We haven't had any problems with them. We're satisfied with the level of service they provide.
I also use VMware. Each has it's own pluses and minuses, although I do find that VMware is easier to configure and integrate with other solutions.
The initial setup can be a bit complex. Once it's sorted out initially, and Red Hat's professional services are aligned, it's okay.
I'd advise an organization considering implementing the solution to first, before selecting a product, finalize their business department. They should create a list of all of their requirements to ensure they get fulfilled. That needs to include compliance.
I'd rate the solution seven out of ten. If they made it more user friendly and plug-and-play it would really help people adopt it faster.
Since it is an open-source software, the integration with other open-source components is seamless. If you're going in, it all depends on which stack you're selecting. If you're selecting open stack, if you want to use microservices, or you want to integrate Kubernetes Docker with Red Hat, this solution is probably the first choice to go with.
The complexity of the solution is a bit high in comparison to VMware.
The solution should be made more user-friendly with plug-and-play functionality. It will help companies adopt it quicker.
I've been working with Red Hat for a long time. It's been about ten years.
The stability of the solution is very good. We haven't had any issues with it.
Technical support, most of the time, is good. We haven't had issues with it. We're satisfied with the level of support we receive.
We also use VMware. VMware is very user-friendly and the integration is seamless. Red Hat has good integration with various other components and products as well. The complexity is also higher than VMware's.
The initial setup is a bit complex. It gets sorted out, however, if users are aligned with Red Hat's other professional services.
We're a Red Hat partner. I work as a Principal Solutions Architect.
I'd advise other organizations that, before selecting a product, they must finalize their business department. They should only make a call on the solution if all of their requirements get fulfilled - including compliance. Various products have a level of support compliance that matches with Red Hat, but it's important to check.
I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.
