Alternatives to OpenNebula

An open-source platform for building private and hybrid clouds that manage virtual machines and Kubernetes. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.

Replacements

Listings that take over the same core job as OpenNebula.

  • OpenStack

    A set of open-source components for running cloud infrastructure with virtual machines, bare metal and containers.

    FreeOpen sourceWebSelf-hosted

    OpenStack covers compute, storage and networking for large private or public clouds through many components, which makes deployment and upgrades more complex than a single platform.

  • Apache CloudStack

    An open-source infrastructure-as-a-service platform for deploying and managing large networks of virtual machines.

    FreeOpen sourceWebSelf-hosted

    Apache CloudStack is a free IaaS platform bundling compute, networking, accounts and accounting, with an API compatible with AWS EC2 and S3, and no paid subscription tier.

  • Proxmox VE

    A bare-metal server platform that runs KVM virtual machines and LXC containers from one web interface.

    FreemiumOpen sourceLinuxSelf-hosted

    Proxmox VE runs KVM virtual machines and LXC containers from one web interface on a smaller scale, suited to home labs and small businesses rather than multi-site clouds.

  • oVirt

    Centralised management platform for KVM virtual machines across a cluster.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxWebSelf-hosted

    oVirt provides centralised KVM cluster management with live migration and high availability, but development has slowed considerably since Red Hat Virtualization reached end of life.

  • Harvester

    Hyper-converged infrastructure that runs virtual machines on top of Kubernetes.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxSelf-hosted

    Harvester runs virtual machines on top of Kubernetes with shared storage, installing on bare metal and expecting at least three nodes for a production cluster.

  • XCP-ng

    Open-source bare-metal hypervisor built on Xen, managed through Xen Orchestra.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxSelf-hosted

    XCP-ng is an open-source Xen-based bare-metal hypervisor managed through Xen Orchestra, focused on host pools rather than full private cloud and Kubernetes management.

  • Ganeti

    An open-source cluster manager for running virtual machines on Xen or KVM across several servers.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxSelf-hostedCommand line

    Ganeti is a deliberately lower-complexity cluster manager for Xen or KVM virtual machines across about 3 to 100 nodes, without full private cloud features.

Also worth comparing

These listings name OpenNebula as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.

  • KubeVirt

    A Kubernetes add-on that runs and manages traditional virtual machines alongside containers.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxSelf-hostedCommand line

    OpenNebula manages virtual machines and Kubernetes in one private cloud platform with scheduling and federation, rather than running VMs inside Kubernetes itself, and offers paid subscriptions.

  • LXD

    Canonical's open-source manager for system containers and KVM virtual machines on Linux.

    FreeOpen sourceLinuxWebSelf-hostedCommand line

    OpenNebula manages virtual machines and Kubernetes across a private or hybrid cloud with federation and high availability, but is built for data centres rather than one server.

  • WebVirtCloud

    A self-hosted web interface for managing KVM virtual machines through libvirt, for admins and users.

    FreeProprietaryLinuxWebSelf-hosted

    OpenNebula is a larger open source private cloud platform managing VMs and Kubernetes with high availability, built for data centres rather than a few hosts.

Similar software

Related functionality, not a direct replacement.