Key Features

OpenNebula offers a simple but feature-rich and flexible solution to build and manage data center virtualization and enterprise clouds. This page provides a summary of its key features(*).

To learn more about the infrastructure platforms and services supported in each version of OpenNebula, refer to the Platform Notes for each version.

For high-level overviews and in-depth technical guides, please refer to OpenNebula’s White Papers.

INTERFACES

  • Simple, clean, intuitive GUI, with different views for cloud admins and end users

  • Powerful command-line tools resembling typical Unix tools

  • API in multiple languages

APPLICATION MANAGEMENT AND CATALOG

  • Easy self-provision of containerized and virtualized workflows from a catalog

  • Secure sharing of applications with other cloud users

  • Multi-tier applications with auto-scaling

  • Gain insight into applications to query their status and metrics, and use them in auto-scaling

APPLIANCE MARKETPLACE

  • Public Marketplace with pre-built applications ( PaaS, K8S, CI/CD…)

  • Build your private Marketplace to share and distribute applications within your organization

  • Integration with third-party public or private Marketplaces such as Linux Containers

CHARGEBACK

  • Fine-grained accounting and monitoring

  • Showback capability enabling integration with chargeback and billing systems

CAPACITY AND PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

  • Fine-grained ACLs for resource allocation

  • Resource Quota Management to track and limit resource utilization

  • Dynamic creation of Clusters as pools of Hosts

  • Dynamic creation of Virtual Data Centers as fully-isolated virtual environments

  • Federation of multiple Zones for scalability, isolation or multiple-site support

  • Powerful and flexible Scheduler - deploy your workload in different locations

HIGH AVAILABILITY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY

  • High-Availability architecture

  • Persistent database backend with support for high-availability configurations

  • Configurable behavior in the event of failure, for cost-effective failover solutions

VIRTUAL INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGEMENT

  • Virtual infrastructure management adjusted for enterprise data centers

  • Complete life cycle management of virtual resources

  • Powerful hooking system

  • Full control, monitoring and accounting of virtual infrastructure resources

  • Fine-grained multi-tenancy

TRUE HYBRID AND EDGE CLOUD

  • Dynamically grow your private cloud with remote cloud providers

  • Automatic provision of remote resources

PLATFORM

  • Fully platform independent

  • Broad support for commodity and enterprise-grade infrastructure platforms

  • Packages for major Linux distributions

SECURITY

  • Fine-grained ACLs and user quotas

  • Powerful user, group and role management

  • Integration with enterprise and open source user management services

  • Login token functionality

  • Fine-grained auditing and support for isolation at different levels

INTEGRATION WITH THIRD-PARTY TOOLS

  • Modular and extensible architecture

  • Customizable plug-ins for integration with any third-party data center service

  • API for integration with higher-level tools such as billing, self-service portals…

LICENSING

  • Fully open source software released under the Apache license

UPGRADE PROCESS

  • Automatic import of existing environments

  • All key functionalities for enterprise cloud in a single install

  • Long-term stability & performance through a single patching and upgrade process

QUALITY ASSURANCE

  • Internal quality assurance process

  • Technology matured through a large, active and engaged community

  • Scalability and performance tested on many massive scalable deployments

PRODUCT SUPPORT

  • Best-effort community support

  • SLA-based commercial support directly from the developers

(*) Because OpenNebula leverages the functionality exposed by the underlying platform services, its functionality and performance may be affected by the limitations imposed by those services.

  • The list of features may change on the different platform configurations

  • Not all platform configurations exhibit a similar performance and stability

  • The features may change to offer users more features and integration with other virtualization and cloud components

  • The features may change due to changes in the functionality provided by underlying virtualization services