OpenNebula Reviews

I've deployed OpenNebula a few times, primarily for public cloud hosting providers who want to get into the cloud business.

An excellent example of how OpenNebula improves an organization is with one of my clients who had fifteen to twenty-five customers, and he had to manage all customer needs by himself. If a client called him and said, "I need more disk space on this server," my customer had to log in and increase the disk space for that client. Another client would say, "I want a new IP on my server." My customer would have to log in, go into the server, then adjust it for the client.

When my customer migrated to OpenNebula, he gave each client a login credential and a dashboard so each client could log in to a specific dashboard and manage that instead of asking my customer to manage that dashboard.

OpenNebula freed my customer from doing the maintenance operations of the servers because now that can be done by his clients. For example, his client could go in and create a new digital machine, assign more disk space, increase memory, etc.

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 user-friendly UI of OpenNebula is also its most valuable feature.

An area for improvement in OpenNebula is the number of features it has. The solution doesn't have that many cloud features compared to other solutions. You'd say, "Okay, simplicity over a rich feature list?" Some say, "No, I need a big machine or a cloud interface for my customers to manage resources. I don't have to go and do it for them." Some people do it that way, and it works, but I'd like to improve the limited features in OpenNebula.

Template management also needs improvement in OpenNebula because it's inferior right now. I speak from experience because I've worked with multiple private cloud solutions, and most of those solutions have template management and networking all figured out, making it easier for new users to start immediately.

With OpenNebula, you'd need a networking expert to have a full-fledged cloud. The OpenNebula team assumes that you know this. Still, most developers don't because they don't do networking, so you'll end up with a half-configured cloud or an OpenNebula that needs many inner workings to run. It would be great to have an OpenNebula assistant to guide users in configuring the servers. Otherwise, the solution may need to be rebuilt.

In the next release of OpenNebula, I'd like it to have an automatic network provisioning feature.

I've been working with OpenNebula since 2016, but most of my experience with it started in 2017. I've worked with the solution within the last eighteen months when a client requested an OpenNebula installation.

OpenNebula is a stable solution.

OpenNebula is scalable, and you can manage multiple servers, have various hosts, and configure redundancy.

My rating for the OpenNebula technical support is eight out of ten because I raised a question, but it took a while for support to reply. One of my customers was waiting on an answer, but then nobody responded, so I had to open a new question, and eventually, someone from support reached out to answer my question.

Positive

Deploying OpenNebula is extremely easy, and you can get an OpenNebula cloud in the morning.

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.

I evaluated CloudStack, but I prefer OpenNebula because of its simplicity, and setting it up is quicker.

I'm a system integrator for OpenNebula.

My customers use the PaaS version of OpenNebula and build a cloud using the solution. Customers build the hardware and then install OpenNebula. You can install instances of the host on Amazon or Google because OpenNebula integrates with other cloud providers. Still, in the four or five deployments I've done, I haven't seen any case of people bringing OpenNebula to a competitor. Instead, my customers build OpenNebula as a competitor to Amazon or Google.

Maintaining OpenNebula isn't difficult. Once you've set up the solution, it works. You don't need to spend a lot in terms of maintenance costs. Setting up OpenNebula could be challenging the first time because of all the networking and templates you need. Still, after you set up OpenNebula, nobody needs to touch it because it works fine.

I advise anyone who wants to start implementing OpenNebula to learn Linux and how the solution works first.

My rating for OpenNebula is eight out of ten.

My company provides system integration services for different clients based on OpenNebula. I'm a systems architect. 

OpenNebula has very good integration with SAP Storage. This is its primary valuable feature. In addition, it's easy to use, has a good UI, and is very scalable. Compared to other open-source hypervisors like OpenStack, installation is very easy as is administering, managing, and configuring the solution. For someone who has never worked with hypervisor virtualization, OpenNebula is a good place to start.

The protocol for clusterization is rough and doesn't work well. We stopped using that feature because we had problems. It's not always easy to find answers on the forums if you're using the open source product. 

We've been using this solution for over two years. 

The solution has been very stable since we moved to pacemaker plus. If you put in some redundancy then you should add more servers so that if one goes down, it doesn't degrade the cluster.

We have six engineers in the company that work with OpenNebula, and we have a partner company with 10 users that receive more advanced technical support and they help us solve some problems with deployment and maintenance of OpenNebula that we provide to our clients. So it's like that, but we separate, so we have a group of engineers that works only with OpenNebula. 

Because we're putting OpenNebula into a container, we get support from the people who implemented the product. They, in turn, receive support from OpenNebula. We provide technical support for clients on L1 and L2. We get support on L3 from our partner company which developed the deployment into a container environment. The support is very good, they're experts in OpenNebula. 

If you're deploying the classic OpenNebula, then the initial setup is straightforward. I was able to deploy three nodes with one node for SQL and one management node and it took two to three hours the first time. The website instructions are very clear. Some initial maintenance was required because of errors in the SQL deployment, but since then we haven't needed any external assistance. 

There isn't much difference between the open source product of OpenNebula and the enterprise one. The free version has full distribution potential. The price of the integration is not included in the price of the software so it's very cheap. If you compare it with VMware, there are different costs of integration because you pay a lot of money for different kinds of licenses. You only pay for privileged features like enterprise repository and technical support. 

In comparison to OpenNebula, OpenStack is very complicated. In OpenStack you deploy nodes that have a lot of models and when you deploy for the first time, it's unclear where to start. Those issues don't exist with OpenNebula. OpenStack is preferable for enterprise companies that already have experienced engineers in virtualization who understand how to transform the cloud from VMware to OpenStack. OpenNebula is easier to integrate into infrastructure in smaller organizations.

I would suggest testing the solution, trying it on-prem and in the cloud. Be clear about your use case and why you're looking to change your virtual environment It's important to understand the risks. We plan to increase usage of OpenNebula.

I rate this solution eight out of 10. 

In my previous role at a system integration company, we used OpenNebula to deploy private clouds for our clients. My current company uses it for our own needs. 

OpenNebula is easy to deploy and manage compared to other solutions like OpenStack.

Backup features are only available in the enterprise edition. The community version lacks a good solution for making backups. 

I have worked with OpenNebula for more than three years.

I rate OpenNebula nine out of 10 for stability. I've never experienced any critical failures or lost data. 

OpenNebula has the potential to be highly scalable, but I've never done a massive deployment. My deployments have never had more than fifteen nodes. 

I can compare OpenNebula to OpenStack and VMware. OpenStack is also free, but it's too complicated to deploy into a production environment without specialized knowledge. It's okay for a testing environment but almost impossible to deploy in production. 

Setting up OpenNebula is simple. We deploy it on on-premise servers in our data centers. 

We use the free community version of OpenNebula.

I rate OpenNebula eight out of 10. 

We have been actually giving demonstrations and other things surrounding the solution. OpenNebula in these parts is not so well known. There are a lot of people who could be using it without our knowledge. We are trying to showcase it to big customers to show them how to create a private cloud using OpenNebula. It's a cloud management tool.

It can be used as a Cloud Management Platform to manage different clouds using one dashboard, or you can actually create a private cloud, something similar to Amazon or AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud, on your own premises.

It's GP based and is constantly being developed. It's open-source.

It is quite easy to deploy. 

It is actually worth it when it is for most organizations who are looking for how to set up a perfect Cloud.

The documentation is great and the community is active. 

It's very tough, depending on the requirements. There are small things that are hard. For example, making sure that it is going to be installable on public clouds so that you can have different drones on public clouds and different public clouds, and making sure that everything is going to work seamlessly whether on-premises or on the cloud. Right now, on public clouds, you cannot actually install OpenNebula. 

We are community champions for OpenNebula. We have been using OpenNebula for quite some time. It's been around seven years.

This is a highly stable product. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

This solution can scale up or down according to the need.

This is a GPL-based product. That means anybody can make use of it without taking any support. 

It is like Linux. Technically speaking, it all depends. We have not actually bought any software, this is a community product. Based on the community, there's a lot of information out there. It is being managed by highly competent people and the support you get from the community is going to be really good.

Positive

I haven't been involved with other cloud management tools. 

The initial setup is very straightforward and simple. It's not hard at all. 

That said, you need to know what you are doing. It is not like Windows where you are going to just click through and are done. You need to know how to actually handle the product, and how to implement it. For people with a rich knowledge base, it is easy. If a user is comfortable with Linux, they should find it pretty straightforward. 

I'd rate the ease of setup for knowledgable users four out of five.

This is an open-source product.

We're integrating various solutions, including VM and KVM.

This is an excellent open-source, community-driven solution. 

New users should explore the solution and see if it can solve their issues. It's not a well-known product just yet, however, it is quite useful. New users just need to know what they are doing. Otherwise it may not meet their expectations. Having prior understanding of the product goes a long way towards making it a successful tool.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten. 

OpenNebula has better simplicity than vRA. It is designed perfectly for the end-user. OpenNebula has many features for the end-user in the private cloud and you can convert into the public web with some development. It's very user-friendly and very easy to use. We use it to provide the private cloud enterprise data center.

It has enabled us to decrease the optics by around 55 to 60%. We can do automation for all the aspects of the data center. It gives more control to the whole organization, like marketing and technical departments with the ESP and admin layer. These are completely divided and we can manage our finance budget at the beginning of the year. 

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

They should add more features like object storage. They should improve some management feature for the storage, for example, they should put third party staff. The integration features should also be improved but I believe they are working on it. 

They should add HDM and HDS features. 

It is stable. 

We have around 1,200 users using this solution. This solution is used daily. 

I haven't had to contact their technical support yet. 

We previously used OpenStack. It's good for the services provider but not the cloud. OpenStack could be used for a data center. vRA is really good and better than OpenNebula but the license is really expensive. 

The initial setup was straightforward. The integration took around three weeks. The finalization takes three days between the security tests. The entire process will take less than one month. 

My team and I deployed the solution ourselves. The deployment required four staff members. 

vRA is very expensive but OpenNebula is free.

It's free. You only need to pay for technical support but we can't use it anyway because of sanctions. 

It's really easy to use. If you already have infrastructure based on VMware and you don't want to pay for the license you should use OpenNebula but if you do have the budget you should use vRA. 

I would rate it between seven or eight out of ten. If they add certain features I would rate it a nine. 

We have implemented it for internal purposes and more for learning.

Integrated with KVM and VMware Hypervisors and on meager resources, just to check whether it works or not. We started this approximately five years back and it worked flawlessly.

A YouTube video shows the details of our implementation.

This can be used as a private/hybrid cloud and there are many well-known organizations that are using OpenNebula. These include the European Space Agency (ESA), BBC, China Telecom, TransUnion, and Trivago.

OpenNebula can also be used for High-Performance Computing.

OpenNebula has given us tremendous knowledge about cloud computing and about Cloud Management platforms, commonly known as CMP.

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.

Moreover, it will be advantageous for any organization, as this can be local to all of its users and obviously faster compared to a public cloud because there are no latency problems.

It is also possible to integrate a Software-Defined Storage solution like LINBIT with OpenNebula, which brings a lot of agility to the solution.

The most valuable features are ease of use and easy installation.

It has all the features that will be required by an Organization and supports various Hypervisors.

With a detailed billing module, this can be used as a complete public cloud implementation, and we are waiting to see that module from OpenNebula.

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.

With the addition of this module, it will bring completeness to the overall offerings. We hope that OpenNebula listens to this and bring quickly the module.

We have been using OpenNebula for more than five years.

The stability is rock-solid.

This product is highly scalable.

We have not taken it, as we were able to do it on our own without any problems.

The initial setup is simple and straightforward.

We complete the deployment in-house.

Return on investment is extremely quick.

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.

We evaluated CloudStack before choosing OpenNebula.

vOneCloud is another interesting product from OpenNebula that can transform a normal VMware installation to mimic a full-blown public cloud. The best part is that this can be implemented on a VMware environment by just downloading an appliance.

Within 5-6 minutes, one can experience the power of VOneCloud.

This sort of product offerings from OpenNebula shows the ability of the Engineering Team of OpenNebula. Kudos to the OpenNebula team.