Next week, we’re launching OpenNebula 7 Next Generation, our most powerful release yet—bringing enterprise-grade features like DRS-like scheduling, integration with Veeam and NetApp, and our new OneSwap migration tool to make your transition from VMware seamless. But the real story is how OpenNebula dramatically lowers your infrastructure costs while increasing flexibility and performance.

Here are three reasons why OpenNebula is now the go-to VMware alternative:

1. A Subscription Model That Makes Sense

Unlike VMware’s complex, per-feature and per-core subscription pricing, OpenNebula’s subscription is per hypervisor—and includes everything you need to run and manage your private or hybrid cloud. No need for additional subscriptions—we bundle it all in.

2. Lightweight Control Plane

VMware’s control infrastructure often requires a large amount of resources just to function.

With OpenNebula, you can run the entire control plane on a single VM, scaling effortlessly to thousands of servers. That means fewer resources, and a lower total cost of ownership.

VMware’s control plane can be a serious overhead—both technically and financially. OpenNebula offers a much more streamlined alternative.

3. Higher VM Density, Better Utilization

Thanks to its lightweight architecture and performance optimizations, OpenNebula achieves higher VM density per server, allowing you to run more workloads on the same hardware.

That’s real value—fewer servers, lower power consumption, and reduced rack space.

See, for example, how Beeks Group—a UK-based fintech cloud provider operating over 20,000 virtual machines and more than 3,000 bare metal servers—successfully migrated most of its VMware workloads to OpenNebula. Beeks Group faced a massive cost increase under Broadcom’s new VMware pricing, alongside concerns about vendor lock-in, reduced support responsiveness, and a heavy management overhead that was limiting their infrastructure efficiency. Their teams rebuilt key integrations and extended OpenNebula’s open source capabilities to meet their demanding performance needs, especially for low-latency financial trading. The result? A 200% increase in VM density per server and significant savings on licensing costs—allowing Beeks Group to deliver more computing power to customers while keeping infrastructure spending under control. “Migrating from VMware wasn’t simple, but OpenNebula gave us the freedom to tailor our stack to our needs and maximize resource efficiency,” says Matthew Cretney, Head of Production Management at Beeks Group. Today, the majority of Beeks Group’s cloud runs on OpenNebula, proving that open source cloud platforms can outperform legacy virtualization stacks—at a fraction of the cost.

Finally, OpenNebula is open source, removing vendor lock-in and significantly reducing the risks of unpredictable pricing, discontinued features, or restrictive contracts.

With OpenNebula 7, we’re not just catching up with VMware—we’re helping you leap ahead, introducing innovative automation and AI-driven features specifically designed for hybrid enterprise cloud environments. This major release is the result of over 15 years of experience working with leading companies on their cloud deployments, and of our close collaboration with key cloud enterprises within the framework of the €3B IPCEI-CIS initiative.

Ready to re:Virtualize?

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