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OpenNebula vs VMware Cloud Director comparison

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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
26th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Cloud Director
Ranking in Cloud Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of OpenNebula is 1.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Cloud Director is 2.5%, down from 5.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Cloud Director2.5%
OpenNebula1.5%
Other96.0%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

AB
CTO at Encha
A highly scalable solution that gives good value for money, but it does not have payment gateways
OpenNebula's templates are weak, and it could do something to make template creation a lot easier to use. The solution has a template for every single VM you create, which is not clever. You should be able to use a template for many different virtual machines. There are no payment gateways in OpenNebula.
KuldeepSingh4 - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Experienced users benefit from resource isolation and valuable self-service portal while seeing potential in enhanced infrastructure visibility
VMware is not going further with VMware Cloud Director. They are integrating the VMware Cloud Director feature with Aria Automation only for the upcoming versions, primarily with the VCF 9, and slowly they are integrating some of the parts they have already integrated, and they might not continue with VMware Cloud Director in the future. They can make it more granular to ensure hardware-level segregation, the underlying infrastructure level of segregation for the end user, and a separate security boundary where users can access the end-to-end layer. End-to-end layer means my software layer along with the hardware layer. If they want to do a certain level of troubleshooting primarily on the ESXi part, that is what I feel is lacking for now because for an end user accessing the SSP, the underlying infrastructure is a kind of black box for them. For VMware Cloud Director, it can be more comprehensive if we enable public cloud integration as well. In today's date, customers are adopting a multi-cloud environment where VMware Cloud Director is much feasible to leverage the underlying VMware backend architecture. If VMware Cloud Director could be made to have more integration with the public cloud and do the day one, day two jobs for public cloud interface as well, that would be beneficial. Additionally, I recommend leveraging the VMware Cloud Director layer if a customer has a multi-cloud environment and is planning some cross-cloud migration capability. Cross-cloud migration refers to if a customer has something on Azure, wanting to bring it up on VMware or maybe from VMware to AWS, vice versa. In that case, VMware Cloud Director should provide some cross-cloud migration capability as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is quite easy to deploy."
"OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack."
"OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage, is easy to use, has a good UI, and is very scalable."
"It's easy to integrate OpenNebula with our IT systems."
"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."
"The service feature appeals most to us, thus it is the most valuable."
"The live migration feature has been great and is something we use very often."
"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."
"vCloud Director is a stable solution."
"If a customer is looking for disaster recovery at a cheaper price, this is the best solution."
"The product allows us to add or remove features."
"vCloud Director is a scalable solution, and we have 10 customers who use it."
"vCloud Director works and makes my life easier, as its self-service capabilities allow us to give resources to our customers so they can spin up as many or as few machines as they like, and it works."
"We use the infrastructure as a service cloud, that is, we use the features as infrastructure for this. We are not using any platform services."
"The most valuable feature of vCloud Director is the scaling architecture that they have built."
"It is a great product."
 

Cons

"Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now."
"Hosting platforms are limited so the deployment process needs improvement."
"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."
"Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups."
"They should add more features like object storage."
"The front-facing API can be improved to support lots of requests when the platform is huge with lots of virtual resources."
"As with all enterprise software licensing, the pricing is not intuitive and must be negotiated; grandfathered contracts are better than anything offered today."
"Better GUI as they don’t hold with the programs that well. Better user interfaces in general. Both the administrative and user interfaces need to be better."
"There are some shortcomings. There are bugs with opening support."
"The stability of vCloud Director has some hiccups, as there are compatibility issues."
"I had issues with the support, but I also learned from the support. There is room for improvement in the response time."
"The first thing that I would say if someone asked me for what nice feature I would like to see, it would be a billing feature."
"There didn't seem to be any type of integrated path on how to do the initial setup. There seemed to be different bits of paperwork or instructions available from various places. We always had to go looking for what to do next."
"One of the elements lacking in the product is integration with the hyperscalers."
"The tool needs to add more features to improve the console."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"VRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free."
"OpenNebula gives good value for money."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"We use the Community Edition, rather than the Enterprise Edition."
"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."
"If ten is very expensive, I rate the tool's price as a four out of ten."
"The solution's price is the market standard and depends on usage."
"It runs our company in the millions of rand every month."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We are able to provision new clients faster. Every month, we take on more customers."
"vCloud Director is a very expensive solution."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other vendors."
"It enables us to provision new clients more quickly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business24
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

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Would you change anything about VMware vCloud Director if you could?
VMware vCloud Director works very well and there are not many things that I would like to see changed. However, a single thing comes to mind when I think of improvements and that is integration. In...
What is the biggest improvement you saw at your company after you started using VMware vCloud Director?
For my company, VMware vCloud Director noticeably increased operational efficiency. When I started working here a few years ago, my organization was using another cloud management tool. We switched...
Is vCloud Director convenient for building applications?
When it comes to building applications, vCloud Director offers you various methods to create cloud-ready ones. For example: Your DevOps team is supported through Infrastructure as Code services w...
 

Also Known As

No data available
vCloud Director
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Akamai, BBC, Fermilab, Terradue, Surf Sara, Produban, Netways, ESA, China Mobile, BlackBerry, Deloitte, Fuze, Telefonica, Trivago, Nokia, Encore Tech, Beeks.
MicroStrategy, National Democratic Institute, and NYSE Euronext.
Find out what your peers are saying about OpenNebula vs. VMware Cloud Director and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.