Canonical vs OpenMetal

Philosophies and Core Offerings

Get a quick overview of each provider’s fundamental approach and what they primarily offer in the OpenStack space.

OpenMetal

Focus: On-demand, hosted private clouds powered by OpenStack and Ceph built on dedicated bare metal.

Core Idea: Delivering the power, control, and predictable costs of a private cloud with the rapid deployment and ease of use often associated with public clouds. They emphasize transparency in pricing, full hardware access (root access), and no licensing fees due to their open source foundation.

Key Offering: “Cloud Cores” – starting with three or more hyper-converged dedicated servers running OpenStack and Ceph, deployed on-demand for a customer. They also offer dedicated bare metal, Ceph storage, and GPU servers and clusters.

Canonical

Focus: Providing flexible and efficient OpenStack solutions, from tools and support for do-it-yourself (DIY) private clouds to fully managed OpenStack services, all underpinned by Ubuntu.

Core Idea: Empowering organizations to build and operate OpenStack clouds with varying degrees of management and customization, using open source operational tools (like Juju and MAAS) for automation and lifecycle management.

Key Offerings:

• Managed OpenStack (formerly BootStack): Canonical designs, deploys, operates, and manages OpenStack on your hardware (on-premises or colocation) or in select partner data centers. This includes monitoring, patching, upgrades, and incident response for the OpenStack services.
• Charmed OpenStack (for Self-Managed): A collection of Juju “charms” (software operators) that automate the deployment, scaling, and management of OpenStack services. This allows organizations to build and operate their own OpenStack clouds with Canonical’s tooling and optional enterprise support.
• MicroStack (based on Sunbeam): A snap-based OpenStack distribution designed for small-scale, edge, development, and testing environments. It offers a simplified OpenStack experience, installable in minutes, and can be managed by Kubernetes operators. It can run on a single node or in a small multi-node cluster.

Core Technology and Hardware

Delve into the underlying OpenStack versions, supporting technologies, and hardware strategies each provider utilizes.

OpenMetal

OpenStack: Provides a production-ready version of OpenStack, deployed using tools like Kolla Ansible for containerized services. Ceph is the standard for hyper-converged storage (block, object, file), integrated into the Cloud Core.

Hardware: Offers a catalog of pre-configured, dedicated server options (e.g., varying CPU, RAM, NVMe/HDD storage ratios). These servers are owned and maintained by OpenMetal. Customers receive dedicated, non-oversubscribed resources, ensuring predictable performance. Multiple storage tiers, from local NVMe to distributed Ceph clusters with NVMe and HDD, are available.

Canonical

OpenStack: Supports recent stable releases of OpenStack. Charmed OpenStack uses Juju charms for deploying and managing each OpenStack service, often in LXD containers for isolation and optimized resource usage. It integrates with Ceph (via Charmed Ceph) for storage and supports various SDN solutions like OVN.

Hardware:

• Managed OpenStack: Canonical provides hardware recommendations and can work with a wide range of vendor hardware chosen by the customer or as part of the solution design.
• Charmed OpenStack (Self-Managed): Agnostic to specific hardware vendors. MAAS automates the discovery, commissioning, and deployment of operating systems (like Ubuntu) on a wide variety of physical servers, allowing customers to use their preferred hardware that meets OpenStack compatibility.
• MicroStack: Optimized for a minimal footprint and can run on devices with limited hardware resources, including a single server or even a developer’s workstation.

Pricing and Cost Structure

Compare how each provider structures their pricing and what cost factors you should consider for your budget.

OpenMetal

Model: Primarily a fixed monthly recurring cost based on the dedicated hardware resources allocated to your private cloud. Hourly, monthly, and up to 5-year agreement terms are available, with discounts for longer commitments.

Transparency: Aims for highly predictable billing with publicly accessible pricing calculators. The cost is fixed for the chosen hardware configuration.

Bandwidth: Includes a substantial egress bandwidth allowance. Overages are billed using a 95th percentile method, which can be more cost-effective for bursty traffic than per-GB charges.

Licensing: No additional OpenStack software licensing fees due to being open source. Costs are for infrastructure and support.

Canonical

Managed OpenStack:

• Model: Typically a per-host, per-day, or per-month fee for the comprehensive management service. This is in addition to the customer’s costs for hardware and any data center/colocation fees.
• Transparency: Aims for transparent pricing for the management service suite.

Charmed OpenStack (Self-Managed):

• Model: The core tools (MAAS, Juju, Charmed OpenStack) are open source and free to use.
• Ubuntu Pro subscriptions provide security maintenance, kernel live patching, and optional support for the underlying Ubuntu OS on the OpenStack nodes.
• Optional OpenStack support contracts (via Ubuntu Advantage for infrastructure) are available at various tiers, priced based on factors like the number of nodes or overall cloud size.

MicroStack:

• Model: The MicroStack software itself is open source. Costs would be associated with the underlying hardware. Commercial support is available through an Ubuntu Pro subscription attached to the nodes.

Scalability and Flexibility

Discover how each solution accommodates growth and allows for customization to meet specific evolving requirements.

OpenMetal

Scalability: Scale by adding more dedicated hardware nodes (servers) to your private cloud cluster. This is typically managed through the OpenMetal portal or API. The architecture is designed for both horizontal and vertical scalability of compute and storage resources.

Flexibility: High flexibility within your dedicated OpenStack environment. Full control over projects, networking (VLANs, VxLANs), and storage configurations using Ceph. Users have root access to the bare metal, allowing for significant customization. Customization of the underlying OpenStack services themselves is generally open, as users have full control.

Canonical

Scalability:

• Managed OpenStack: Scaling is planned and executed by Canonical as part of the service, typically involving adding more customer-approved hardware which Canonical then integrates into the managed environment.
• Charmed OpenStack (Self-Managed): Highly scalable. MAAS automates the provisioning of new bare metal nodes, and Juju with Charmed OpenStack allows for the dynamic scaling out (and in) of individual OpenStack services in a model-driven way. Designed for deployments from small to very large.
• MicroStack: Can scale from a single node to a multi-node cluster, providing resilience and increased capacity for smaller environments. High availability for the control plane and data plane is achievable with a minimum of three nodes.

Flexibility:

• Managed OpenStack: Flexibility in terms of workload deployment and supported OpenStack services is defined by the managed service agreement.
• Charmed OpenStack (Self-Managed): Extremely flexible. Customers choose their hardware and network topology and can integrate a wide array of OpenStack projects and third-party plugins. Full control over all OpenStack configurations.
• MicroStack: Offers sensible defaults for core OpenStack services (compute, network, storage) for a simpler experience, making it less complex but also less customizable than a full Charmed OpenStack deployment.

Target Use Cases and Ideal Customer

Identify the common scenarios and types of organizations that typically find the best fit with each provider’s OpenStack solutions.

OpenMetal

Organizations requiring the isolation, performance, and control of a private cloud without the complexities of managing physical data centers or undertaking lengthy OpenStack deployments from scratch.

Users needing predictable, transparent, and often lower cloud costs, especially for stable, scaled workloads.

Businesses with high bandwidth consumption looking to minimize egress fees.

MSPs, SaaS providers, software developers, AI/ML workload operators, blockchain companies, research institutions, and companies with performance-sensitive applications, specific data sovereignty concerns, or strict security/isolation requirements.

Teams comfortable managing an OpenStack environment (or willing to learn) but prefer to offload hardware management and initial setup.

Canonical

Managed OpenStack: Enterprises that want the benefits of a dedicated OpenStack private cloud but prefer to outsource all infrastructure operations, management, and maintenance to focus entirely on their applications and services. Organizations with existing hardware investments or specific colocation needs.

Charmed OpenStack (Self-Managed): Organizations with in-house technical expertise (or aiming to build it) that want full control over their private cloud environment, from hardware to software. Suitable for those who value automation, model-driven operations (via Juju), and the flexibility to deeply customize their OpenStack deployment. Common in telcos (NFV/NFVI), finance, research, and large enterprises building scalable private or public IaaS.

MicroStack: Developers, testers, and educators needing a quick, simple OpenStack environment. Organizations deploying small-scale edge computing solutions or requiring a lightweight private cloud for specific applications or remote offices. CI/CD environments.

Which Solution Makes Sense For You?

The choice between OpenMetal and Canonical’s OpenStack offerings depends on your organization’s specific priorities, in-house expertise, desired level of control, and operational model.

OpenMetal’s OpenStack-powered hosted private cloud may be a good choice when:

• You need rapid deployment of a dedicated, isolated OpenStack private cloud with predictable, hardware-centric costs.
• You want full root access to bare metal servers and your OpenStack environment but prefer not to manage the physical data center or hardware lifecycle.
• Your workloads have significant or bursty bandwidth needs, and you want to avoid high, unpredictable egress fees.
• You value an open source solution without vendor lock-in at the software layer.
• You want to mix and match an OpenStack private cloud with other hardware options like bare metal, GPU servers, and Ceph storage clusters.

Canonical Managed OpenStack may be a good choice when:

• You want a production-grade OpenStack private cloud but prefer to offload all day-to-day infrastructure operations, management, patching, and upgrades to a team of experts.
• You have existing hardware resources or specific colocation requirements and need a proven operator to run OpenStack on top.
• You require strong SLAs for OpenStack infrastructure uptime and operational support, managed by a third party.

Canonical Charmed OpenStack may be a good choice when:

• You have (or are building) the in-house expertise to operate a private cloud and desire maximum control, flexibility, and customization over your OpenStack environment.
• You want to leverage powerful, model-driven open-source tools (MAAS for bare metal, Juju for service orchestration) for robust automation and lifecycle management on your own hardware.
• You need the option of enterprise-grade support, security updates (via Ubuntu Pro), and expert consultation for your OpenStack deployment and the underlying Ubuntu operating system.

Canonical MicroStack may be a good choice when:

• You are a developer, tester, or running a small lab and need a quick and easy way to get a functional OpenStack environment up and running in minutes.
• You are exploring OpenStack functionality without the complexity of a large-scale deployment.
• You have edge computing use cases that require a lightweight, autonomous cloud infrastructure with a minimal footprint.

Ultimately, both OpenMetal and Canonical provide capable and trusted paths to harnessing the power of OpenStack for your business. We recommend working with sales and technical teams from either provider, discussing your specific use case, performance needs, operational capabilities, and budget to make the most informed decision for your IaaS strategy.