Daily Post July 9 2025
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OpenNebula
This is a FOSS solution for organizations looking for a unified, flexible, and cost-effective platform to manage private, hybrid, and edge cloud infrastructures.
Think of this as a cloud computing platform designed to simplify and centralize the management of virtualized data centers, helping organizations build and operate enterprise clouds. It orchestrates compute, storage, and networking resources, allowing businesses to deploy and manage virtual machines (VMs) and Kubernetes clusters across on-premises, public cloud, and edge environments from a single control panel.
Known for its flexibility, scalability, and simplicity. OpenNebula does support KVM, LXD, and Firecracker, and can integrate with public cloud providers such as AWS and Equinix. This makes it possible to create a hybrid or multi-cloud environment tailored to an organization’s specific needs. OpenNebula is also recognized for its vendor-neutral approach, helping organizations avoid lock-in and maintain control over their infrastructure.
Open Source Point of View
The Community Edition is released under the Apache License 2.0, allowing anyone to use, modify, and distribute the software freely for non-commercial purposes. This open approach fosters innovation, transparency, and an active community of contributors and users. For enterprises requiring advanced features, commercial support, or guaranteed service levels, OpenNebula offers an Enterprise Edition with additional capabilities and professional services.
The open source foundation of OpenNebula make sure that organizations can adapt the platform to their unique requirements, integrate with existing tools, and avoid the high costs and restrictions associated with proprietary solutions.
Compared to Proxmox
Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE) is another popular open source virtualization platform, that is chosen for its user-friendly interface and straightforward setup. There are differences between the two platforms, especially when it comes to scalability, flexibility, and advanced cloud features. OpenNebula is designed for enterprise-grade cloud and edge computing, excelling in managing complex, multi-tenant environments. It offers features such as federation, hybrid cloud integration, automation, and orchestration. OpenNebula supports large-scale deployments, multi-site management, and networking and storage options, this makes it suitable for organizations with demanding cloud management needs.
Proxmox, on the other hand, is well-suited for small to medium-sized data centers, home labs, or businesses seeking a reliable and easy-to-use virtualization solution. It provides high availability clustering, backup tools, and a strong community, it lacks some of the features found in OpenNebula, such as multi-tenancy, federation, and deep hybrid cloud integration. Proxmox’s scalability is more limited, and it relies on third-party tools for certain functionalities.
In terms of pricing, OpenNebula’s model is based on the total number of servers rather than CPU sockets, which can be more predictable and cost-effective for organizations as they scale.
Compared to VMware
VMware has long been a leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, but its proprietary nature and licensing costs have prompted many organizations to find alternatives(Especially recently). OpenNebula is a viable open source replacement, offering a lower total cost of ownership and greater flexibility.
OpenNebula provides native support for VMs and containers without the need for additional management layers, simplifying operations and reducing overhead. Its modular, customizable architecture allows businesses to tailor the platform to their needs, integrate with public cloud providers, and manage distributed clusters across multiple data centers. The focus on simplicity, vendor independence, and open standards makes it a good option for organizations looking to future-proof their cloud infrastructure and avoid vendor lock-in.
Is this good for Small Businesses?
The open source nature of OpenNebula means there are no upfront licensing fees for the Community Edition, allowing small businesses to experiment and deploy cloud solutions without significant financial risk. The platform’s lightweight footprint and graphical interfaces make it accessible to organizations with limited technical resources, its automation and orchestration capabilities help streamline operations.
For small businesses looking to expand or integrate with public cloud providers, OpenNebula’s hybrid and edge cloud features offer flexibility and scalability without vendor lock-in. The ability to manage VMs and containers in a unified environment enables businesses to support a wide range of applications and workloads as they grow.
The pricing model and lower TCO compared to proprietary solutions like VMware make it a good choice for small businesses aiming to maximize their IT investments. The availability of commercial support and professional services makes sure that even small organizations can access the expertise needed to maintain and optimize their cloud environments.
This is an interesting tool we will admit that mintarc is a big PROXMOX fan even still this is worth a look https://opennebula.io/