Documentation – OpenMetal Cloud

These guides cover usage and management of the OpenMetal Cloud product and are intended for:

  • Administrators of an OpenMetal Cloud Core and any expansion nodes
  • Any system administrator running their first OpenStack and Ceph public or private cloud
  • Users of the cloud resources (projects/virtual private cloud) within your public or private cloud
  • Users who will be automating against a project/virtual private cloud

New to OpenMetal?

Explore the power of your own cloud. See it in action as a hosted private cloud, for SaaS companies, for hosting and cloud providers and much more. Check out transparent pricing, and even try a free trial.

Product Manuals

Manuals are available for cloud operators, users of projects/virtual private clouds, and more.

Product Manuals

Specific Goal Tutorials

Included in the documentation is a collection of tutorials, helping guide you through common use cases of the OpenMetal platform, including how to provision a Kubernetes cluster.

View the Tutorials

Educational Articles

The manuals should be your first stop when using an OpenMetal cloud but we also have more general OpenStack content.

Here are a set of articles that can help you determine the makeup and size of your clusters.

Kubernetes

These guides are intended to be used as a reference for how to deploy Kubernetes clusters on OpenStack. We’ve documented the steps we took to deploy Kubernetes clusters with the major Kubernetes distributions on OpenStack.

Engineer’s Notes

The OpenMetal team is often doing things that have not been done commonly or may not have documentation online. We are going to publish these notes from those engineers solving real world problems as they occur. These notes are only a first cut on a subject area that can help get a key technical question answered.

 

 

OpenMetal private clouds use two powerful open source tools, OpenStack and Ceph. OpenStack provides the control plane, compute, networking, and APIs. Ceph supplies high-availability block storage, object storage, and, optionally, file storage.  Explore the power of an OpenStack private cloud, check out transparent pricing, and even try a free trial.

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Browse All OpenMetal Education Categories

We are always looking for suggestions to improve our Learning Center. Just email us at learn-suggestions@openmetal.io with yours!

New Educational Content

Aug
15

Choosing the Right Infrastructure for Privacy-Centric Blockchain Apps

Privacy-first blockchain applications need infrastructure that supports confidential computing, network isolation, and regulatory compliance. Discover how bare metal and private cloud solutions provide the foundation for zero-knowledge proofs, confidential smart contracts, and secure multi-party computation.

Aug
14

How Root Access to Your Ceph Cluster Improves Performance

Most cloud storage operates as a black box – you can’t tune the underlying mechanics for your specific workloads. OpenMetal gives you full root access to enterprise Ceph clusters, letting you optimize replication, caching, and performance settings for databases, analytics, and object storage.

Aug
13

Architecting Your Predictive Analytics Pipeline on OpenMetal for Speed and Accuracy

Learn how to architect a complete predictive analytics pipeline using OpenMetal’s dedicated infrastructure. This technical guide covers Ceph storage, GPU training clusters, and OpenStack serving – delivering superior performance and cost predictability compared to public cloud alternatives.

Aug
12

How Hidden Cloud Costs Quietly Erode Portfolio EBITDA

Hidden cloud costs are silently destroying SaaS profit margins. PE firms lose billions in portfolio value due to unpredictable usage fees, resource waste, and egress charges. Learn how private cloud infrastructure delivers 30-50% cost savings and predictable EBITDA improvement.

Aug
12

How a Unified Private Cloud Storage Architecture Saves Money

Traditional storage silos drain budgets through vendor lock-in and complexity. Unified Ceph architecture consolidates block, file, and object storage into one platform, cutting costs up to 50% while simplifying management. OpenMetal’s pre-configured solution delivers immediate ROI.

Aug
12

OpenMetal’s Fixed-Cost Cloud Pricing vs. RUM Pricing: Financial and Strategic Advantages for IT Leaders

Discover how OpenMetal’s fixed-cost private cloud pricing eliminates the unpredictability and hidden costs of usage-based RUM models. Get predictable monthly costs, reduced egress fees, and enterprise-grade performance on dedicated infrastructure. Perfect for IT leaders managing steady workloads and budget certainty.

Aug
11

How PE Firms Can Reduce Cloud Costs Across Their SaaS Portfolio with OpenMetal

PE firms face mounting cloud costs across SaaS portfolios. Learn how OpenMetal’s private cloud delivers 30-60% cost savings, predictable pricing, and improved margins that directly boost portfolio valuations and exit multiples.

Aug
11

20 Gbps NICs and Free Internal Traffic Matter: The Hidden Power of OpenMetal’s Private Networking

Learn how OpenMetal’s private networking architecture delivers 20 Gbps per server, free internal traffic, customer-specific VLANs with VXLAN support, and predictable egress billing. Perfect for AI training clusters, database replication, and high-throughput workloads requiring performance without bandwidth constraints.

Aug
07

Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud for Confidential Workloads: A Risk and Control Comparison

Public cloud confidential computing promises security but retains provider control over critical trust components. Private cloud infrastructure eliminates third-party trust dependencies, providing genuine confidentiality for sensitive workloads through dedicated hardware and transparent attestation.

Aug
07

Modernizing EAM Delivery with Hosted Private Cloud: A Strategic Infrastructure Play for Asset Management Service Providers

For EAM consultants and system integrators, hyperscaler and colocation infrastructure limits delivery agility. Discover how hosted private cloud helps modernize service delivery with client-isolated environments, better margins, and predictable costs.

Aug
07

How to Tune Ceph for Block Storage Performance

Master Ceph block storage performance with OpenMetal’s production-proven strategies: enterprise hardware selection, system-level tuning, and architectural optimizations that deliver measurable results.

Aug
06

Cutting Cloud Costs in Your SaaS Portfolio: Private vs Public Cloud TCO

SaaS companies backed by private equity face mounting pressure to control cloud costs that often reach 50-75% of revenue. This comprehensive analysis compares private vs public cloud TCO, showing how infrastructure optimization can improve gross margins and company valuations.

Aug
06

Powering Your Data Warehouse with PostgreSQL and Citus on OpenMetal for Distributed SQL at Scale

Learn how PostgreSQL and Citus on OpenMetal deliver enterprise-scale data warehousing with distributed SQL performance, eliminating vendor lock-in while providing predictable costs and unlimited scalability for modern analytical workloads.

Aug
05

Compliance Best Practices for an OpenStack Private Cloud

Master OpenStack private cloud compliance with proven strategies for meeting HIPAA, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and FedRAMP requirements. This comprehensive guide covers essential security controls, automated monitoring, audit preparation, and practical implementation tips to ensure your private cloud infrastructure stays compliant and secure.

Aug
04

AI-driven Smart Contracts: Running Intelligent Blockchain Applications in Isolated Environments

AI-driven smart contracts require dedicated infrastructure to handle real-time inference, protect sensitive data, and maintain blockchain consistency. Shared cloud environments introduce performance variability and security risks that compromise both AI accuracy and blockchain reliability.

Aug
04

Seizing ASEAN Growth with Private Cloud: A US CTO’s Guide to Scalable, Strategic Infrastructure

US companies expanding into ASEAN face critical infrastructure decisions. OpenMetal’s Singapore-based private cloud eliminates colocation’s 6-12 month delays and public cloud’s escalating costs, offering quick deployment with predictable OpEx pricing for Southeast Asian market entry.

Aug
01

5 Steps for OpenStack Data Migration

Migrating to OpenStack doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Our five-step guide walks you through the entire process, from initial assessment and planning to final cutover and performance tuning. Learn the best practices for a smooth transition to your new private cloud infrastructure.

Jul
31

Beginner’s Technical Guide: Migrating from VMware ESXi to OpenStack

Discover how to successfully migrate your virtual machines from VMware ESXi to OpenStack with this comprehensive beginner’s guide. Learn the complete process from planning through execution, including export procedures, disk conversion, and OpenStack deployment. Perfect for system administrators facing VMware licensing cost increases and exploring open-source alternatives.

Jul
31

Secure Oracles and Smart Contracts: The Role of Confidential Computing in Decentralized Trust

Explore how confidential computing transforms blockchain security by protecting oracle data feeds and smart contract execution. This guide covers implementation strategies, performance optimization, and deployment best practices for building secure decentralized applications on OpenMetal’s bare metal infrastructure.

Jul
30

5 Blockchain Workloads That Absolutely Should Not Be on Shared Public Cloud

Discover five blockchain workloads that demand dedicated infrastructure over shared public cloud. From validator nodes to MEV systems, learn why bare metal servers and private cloud provide the performance, security, and control these critical operations require.

Jul
30

Building High-Throughput Data Ingestion Pipelines with Kafka on OpenMetal

This guide provides a step-by-step tutorial for data engineers and architects on building a high-throughput data ingestion pipeline using Apache Kafka. Learn why an OpenMetal private cloud is the ideal foundation and get configuration examples for tuning Kafka on bare metal for performance and scalability.

Jul
29

Confidential Computing AI for Healthcare: Protecting Models, Data, and IP at the Infrastructure Layer

Learn how confidential computing infrastructure protects PHI, AI models, and proprietary algorithms during processing. Discover implementation strategies for HIPAA-compliant AI workloads on OpenMetal’s secure bare metal platform, including real-world healthcare use cases and deployment guides.

Jul
29

Why Retail Organizations Need Private AI Infrastructure for Image Generation

Retail brands face a dilemma: AI image generation tools offer unprecedented speed, but public APIs expose intellectual property, violate compliance, and create unpredictable costs. Private AI infrastructure solves these challenges while delivering superior ROI.

Jul
28

5 Failover Strategies for OpenStack Clouds

Downtime isn’t an option. This guide details five failover strategies for OpenStack clouds: active-active, active-passive, cold standby, storage replication, and automated disaster recovery. Understand the trade-offs in cost, recovery time, and complexity to choose the right approach for your needs.

Jul
25

Beyond the VMware Crisis: The CFO’s Complete Migration Checklist

Escape VMware’s pricing crisis with this comprehensive CFO checklist. 12-week framework includes cost analysis, vendor selection & migration planning.

Jul
25

Blockchain Infrastructure for Regulated Finance: Why Bare Metal Matters for Compliance and Performance

Regulated financial institutions need blockchain infrastructure that balances innovation with compliance. Discover why bare metal servers deliver the control, performance, and security that enterprise blockchain demands—from validator nodes to tokenization platforms. No compromise required.

Jul
25

How to Benchmark Ceph Storage Performance

Learn how to effectively benchmark your Ceph storage cluster. This guide covers everything from preparing your test environment and choosing the right tools (like FIO and RADOS bench) to running tests and analyzing results, ensuring your storage is optimized for performance.

Jul
24

VMware Migration – From CapEx to Opex: CFO’s Guide to Predictable Cloud Spending with OpenMetal

CFOs are facing volatile IT costs from VMware renewals and public cloud bills. Learn how shifting from CapEx to OpenMetal’s fixed-cost OpenStack private cloud can turn cloud spending into a predictable Opex line item and deliver cost stability.

Jul
24

Achieving Data Sovereignty and Governance for Big Data With OpenMetal’s Hosted Private Cloud

Struggling with big data sovereignty and governance in the public cloud? This post explains how OpenMetal’s Hosted Private Cloud, built on OpenStack, offers a secure, compliant, and performant alternative. Discover how dedicated hardware and full control can help you meet strict regulations like GDPR and HIPAA.

Jul
23

Confidential Computing for Multi-Party Computation: How Bare Metal Infrastructure Enables Secure Collaboration

MPC lets multiple parties compute together without sharing private data — but infrastructure matters. Learn how confidential computing on OpenMetal bare metal servers with Intel TDX helps secure MPC deployments for blockchain, fintech, and privacy-first apps.

Jul
22

Why Modular Blockchains Need Custom Infrastructure: A Bare Metal Perspective

Modular blockchain networks like Celestia, Cosmos, and Polygon CDK are redefining infrastructure needs. This post outlines why bare metal servers and private clouds offer the control, performance, and predictability that modular blockchains require.

Jul
22

How to Set Up a VPN in OpenStack

Ready to lock down your OpenStack cloud? This complete guide walks you through setting up a VPN using VPNaaS. Learn to configure networks, create thorough IPsec security policies, and establish encrypted tunnels with step-by-step CLI commands, plus troubleshooting and security best practices.

Jul
18

Hardening Your Stack: How Confidential Computing Supports End-to-End Trust

Confidential computing is the missing piece for full-stack security. Learn how OpenMetal helps technical teams build end-to-end trust with hardware isolation and open source infrastructure.

Jul
18

How to Use Rally for OpenStack Testing

Testing OpenStack can be complex, but Rally makes it easier. Rally is an open source tool designed to test, benchmark, and validate OpenStack deployments. It helps you identify performance bottlenecks, evaluate scalability, and improve system performance. Learn how to use this powerful tool to help you confidently manage and optimize your OpenStack deployments.

Jul
16

Integrating Your Data Lake and Data Warehouse on OpenMetal

Tired of siloed data lakes and warehouses? This article shows data architects how, why, and when to build a unified lakehouse. Learn how to combine raw data for ML and structured data for BI into one system, simplifying architecture and improving business insights.

Jul
16

How to Host Reliable and Secure Blockchain Validator Nodes on OpenMetal

Validator uptime matters. Learn how to host blockchain validator nodes with OpenMetal’s bare metal and hosted private cloud for performance, security, and full infrastructure control.

Jul
15

Leader-Based vs Leaderless Replication

Leader-based vs. leaderless replication, which to choose? Leader-based systems offer strong consistency through a single leader but risk downtime. Leaderless systems ensure high availability by distributing writes, trading immediate consistency for resilience. Find the right fit with our guide!

Jul
13

Chennai Private Cloud, Bare Metal, and Dedicated Servers – Data Center and Colo

Chennai businesses benefit from hosting their applications on OpenMetal’s dedicated servers and cloud infrastructure located in Singapore.

Jul
11

When to Choose Private Cloud Over Public Cloud for Big Data

Are unpredictable bills, high egress fees, and performance throttling hurting your big data operations? Learn to spot the tipping point where a move from public cloud to a private cloud becomes the smart choice for predictable costs, better performance, and full control.

Jul
10

Confidential Computing for VPN Security: Protecting Data Beyond Transit

VPNs protect data in transit—but what about when it’s being processed? Discover how confidential computing closes the gap and how OpenMetal makes it deployable.

Jul
09

Ceph RBD Mirroring for Disaster Recovery

Ceph RBD mirroring offers a streamlined way to handle disaster recovery for private OpenStack clouds. RBD mirroring also reduces downtime and supports business continuity by enabling a smooth failover to secondary clusters during primary site outages. This functionality lays the groundwork for a resilient disaster recovery strategy and ongoing improvements.

Jul
03

Microsoft SQL Server on Azure vs TiDB Self-Managed Using Ephemeral NVMe on OpenMetal

Choosing a database? We compare traditional Azure SQL with a distributed TiDB cluster on OpenMetal. See how TiDB’s distributed design is able to fully tap into the power of ephemeral NVMe for speed and resilience, offering huge TCO savings by eliminating licensing and high egress fees.

Jul
03

Confidential Computing for AI Training: How to Protect Models and Data on Bare Metal

This guide makes confidential computing practical. Explore how to reduce deployment complexity using OpenMetal’s secure, TDX-enabled infrastructure.

Jul
02

Automated Multinode OpenStack Deployment with Kolla-Ansible

Kolla-Ansible simplifies multinode OpenStack deployments using Docker and Ansible automation. This guide walks you through the entire process, from hardware needs to final validation, helping you build a scalable private cloud faster and with fewer errors.

Jun
27

Architecting High-Speed ETL with Spark, Delta Lake, and Ceph on OpenMetal

Are you a data architect or developer frustrated by slow and unreliable data pipelines? This article provides a high-performance blueprint using Apache Spark, Delta Lake, and Ceph on OpenMetal’s bare metal cloud. Escape the “hypervisor tax” and build scalable, cost-effective ETL systems with direct hardware control for predictable performance.

Jun
25

5 Best Practices for Kubernetes and OpenStack Integration

The integration of Kubernetes and OpenStack is a mature strategy for building powerful, flexible, and cost-effective private and hybrid clouds. Success depends on understanding their complementary roles and taking advantage of integration points to create a cohesive system. This guide provides an analysis of five best practices for architecting, deploying, and managing Kubernetes on OpenStack.

Jun
24

Hong Kong Private Cloud, Bare Metal Servers, GPU Servers – Data Center and Colo

Hong Kong businesses benefit from hosting their applications on OpenMetal’s dedicated servers and cloud infrastructure located in Singapore.

Jun
22

Kuala Lumpur Private Cloud, Bare Metal Servers, GPU Servers – Data Center and Colo

Kuala Lumpur businesses benefit from hosting their applications on OpenMetal’s dedicated servers and cloud infrastructure located in Singapore.

Jun
20

Bangkok Private Cloud, Bare Metal Servers, GPU Servers – Data Center and Colo

Bangkok businesses benefit from hosting their applications on OpenMetal’s dedicated servers and cloud infrastructure located in Singapore.

Jun
20

Guide to All-NVMe Ceph Cluster Performance

When you combine Ceph’s smart, distributed software with storage that can handle millions of operations per second with near-zero delay, you get a solution that can go head-to-head with high-end, specialized systems. But it’s not as simple as swapping out your old hard drives for NVMe ones. Here’s how to do it right and all the potential performance benefits you can enjoy using an all-NVMe Ceph cluster.

Additional Resources

Account Management

If you are a current customer and need to connect with your account manager or dedicated support engineer, please log in to your OpenMetal Central account and navigate to the account services section.

OpenMetal Central Login

Pricing Estimator

Are you new to OpenMetal and need to estimate or compare costs? We stand for transparent pricing free of hidden costs and unnecessary license fees. Check out our online pricing estimator and then contact us if you have any questions.

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The Next Generation of Cloud Infrastructure Solutions

Cloud Cores

Start with all the top OpenMetal features in a highly available configuration.

Explore Cloud Cores

Cloud Expansion Nodes

Scale your cloud with flexible building blocks that fit your business.

Explore Cloud Expansion

Storage Clusters

Get high performance object, block, and file storage with fair egress at simple prices.

Explore Storage Clusters