Yep, we’re wholeheartedly jumping on the year in review train! There’s a lot we’re proud of accomplishing in 2024, less than three years out from OpenMetal launching as an independent entity after being incubated under InMotion Hosting. This year, we’ve been heavily focused on improving our hosted private cloud powered by OpenStack and bare metal IaaS solutions, along with growing our community participation and support.

Let’s take a trip down memory lane and revisit some of our favorite highlights from 2024!

Product and Platform Updates

OpenMetal Central

We’ve released numerous updates to OpenMetal Central, our custom user dashboard and management portal. These helped streamline the user experience with a focus on checkout enhancements, improve resource management, and provide a new and improved organization-level dashboard. Highlights include:

  • Revamped checkout process with features like order IDs, additional user controls and options, and semaphore UI improvements (February, April, May, September)
  • Bandwidth usage tracking and notifications (February)
  • Detailed billing information and support ticketing options (February)
  • Introduction of FinOps dashboards (April)
  • New product tiers including v4 hardware and bare metal options (June)
  • Launch of the HTML5 IPMI web console (October)
  • Transition to organization-based view with consolidated billing and resource management (October)

Private Cloud Core v3

This major release brought some big updates to our underlying infrastructure, including:

  • CentOS Stream 9 as the new base OS (April)
  • OpenStack 2023.2 (“Bobcat”) with support for Kubernetes v1.26.8 (April)
  • Enhanced memory management and overcommit options (April)
  • Built-in Let’s Encrypt support for automatic certificate updates (April)
  • Migration to Ceph Reef for improved storage management (April)

Community and Partnerships

Foundation Support

We boosted our participation in the open source and cloud communities through:

  • Joining the Linux Foundation, Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and FinOps Foundation (January)
  • Renewing our membership with the OpenInfra Foundation (January)
  • Supporting the OpenInfra Foundation’s CI/CD cloud with our latest OpenStack release (July)

Building Relationships

We became more active within our industry and community by:

Customer Success and Support

Customer Case Studies

We love showcasing our awesome customers and telling their success stories in using our platform. Customer case studies published this year include:

Startup Support

  • We launched the Startup eXcelerator Program to provide early-stage businesses with cloud credits, consulting, and technology assistance to support and help grow their fledgling organizations (July)

Looking Ahead

We are so thankful for the continued support of our customers and community. In 2025, we’re committed to further pushing the boundaries of private cloud innovation and delivering even more value to our users. Stay tuned for exciting announcements in the new year (of which there will be MANY!)


Read More on the OpenMetal Blog

What Hybrid Cloud Networking Actually Costs

Oct 14, 2026

In a hybrid setup, every byte between AWS and your private cloud is billed on one side or the other, depending on direction. This explains where those charges come from, a simple way to estimate them, and design patterns that keep them small.

What Happens When You Add a Node to a Private Cloud Core v4

Oct 12, 2026

Adding a node to a Private Cloud Core v4 uses the same automation that built the cloud. This walks through each step from order to usable capacity, what changes for Ceph and security, and what to plan before you grow.

What the Private Cloud Core v4 Host Firewall Blocks by Default

Oct 09, 2026

Every Private Cloud Core v4 node ships with a host-level firewall that denies inbound traffic on its external interface by default. This explains what’s open, what’s trusted, how to grant access in Central or through the API, and how it differs from security groups.

Choosing Between OVN and OVS Before Your Private Cloud Deploys

Oct 07, 2026

New Private Cloud Core v4 clouds use OVN for OpenStack networking by default. The choice between OVN and OVS is made once, before deployment, and decides which load balancer features you get. This covers the tradeoffs and how to choose.

How to Run the Same OpenStack Tests We Used to Validate Private Cloud Core v4

Oct 06, 2026

We validated Private Cloud Core v4 with OpenStack’s Tempest suite and published the run guide, configuration, and exclusion list. This walks through running it on your own cloud, reading the results, and understanding why each exclusion exists.

Provisioning Bare Metal Through an API Without Opening a Ticket

Oct 02, 2026

The OpenMetal Central public API covers the full bare metal lifecycle: inventory checks, orders with deployment configurations and saved SSH keys, provisioning status, scaling, power control, and decommissioning, with a sandbox for testing before you touch production.

Managing Bare Metal VLANs and IP Blocks as Code

Sep 29, 2026

OpenMetal Central lets you create, assign, and tear down VLANs and IP blocks through the public API. This walks through the object model, a scripted private network between an application cluster and a database cluster, and the rules that prevent accidental deletions.

How to Run Bare Metal Servers That Boot Entirely From Memory

Sep 28, 2026

OpenMetal bare metal can now boot an OS entirely into memory from a kernel and initramfs you host, then configure itself through cloud-init and a node-local metadata service. This covers how it works, image requirements, and where it fits.

Why Growing Businesses Self-Host Odoo ERP on Dedicated Bare Metal

Sep 23, 2026

As Odoo deployments grow in users and modules, shared cloud hosting and managed platforms hit performance and cost ceilings. This article covers why dedicated bare metal changes the picture, how to size hardware against Odoo’s actual resource model, and when to split the application and database onto separate servers.

Running Windows Server and Hyper-V on Dedicated Bare Metal

Sep 22, 2026

OpenMetal bare metal servers support custom OS installs via IPMI, including Windows Server. This article covers the installation path, edition selection and core licensing on dedicated hardware, Hyper-V setup for VM consolidation, and which hardware configurations suit different Windows workloads.