How a Public Cloud Provider Increased Density, Modernized Hardware, and Slashed Costs With OpenMetal Bare Metal

RamNode built its reputation on delivering cost-effective, high-performance cloud hosting to a diverse global customer base. Public cloud is the backbone of its business, which means reliability, consistency, and predictable performance matter deeply, especially as customers deploy production workloads, developer environments, and mission-critical applications across RamNode’s regions.

To maintain those standards, each data center must operate on modern hardware, efficient configurations, and flexible infrastructure that can scale without straining operational budgets.

The Challenge

By the time RamNode began considering a transition, the Netherlands region had become one of its most difficult environments to maintain. The servers provided by its long-time leasing partner were increasingly outdated, often eight to ten years old, and each request for new hardware resulted in older-generation systems with lower performance and limited capacity. This aging infrastructure constrained density, strained performance, and ultimately held back the public cloud experience RamNode wanted to deliver.

Cost pressures made the problem worse and remained sustainably high given the quality of hardware being delivered. Returning some of the equipment helped marginally lower some of the costs, but with little to show in terms of modernization. 

The combination of high costs and limited density created a ceiling on growth. On a common 8GB VDS plan, RamNode could support only four customers per node on this aging hardware. Scaling the public cloud required physically adding more servers, which simply increased monthly costs without corresponding improvements in performance.

RamNode knew it needed a modern foundation. But replacing the existing environment meant risk: their public cloud stack, including orchestration, APIs, automation, and customer-facing systems, had been refined over years. A complete replatform was out of the question. They needed a way to modernize the hardware without changing the cloud.

Why RamNode Chose OpenMetal

After evaluating options, including colocating new servers with another provider in Amsterdam, RamNode determined that OpenMetal offered the ideal balance of modernization, cost efficiency, and operational continuity. By moving to OpenMetal’s enterprise bare metal servers, RamNode would gain access to newer-generation hardware without incurring colocation fees, long-term facility contracts, or the burden of supporting physical infrastructure.

Just as importantly, OpenMetal’s bare metal model fit directly underneath RamNode’s public cloud platform. The migration would not require modifying automation pipelines, APIs, customer provisioning systems, billing logic, deployment scripts, or networking at a software level. This “drop-in compatibility” made modernization far less risky and allowed the RamNode team to focus on a phased migration that avoided disruptions for customers.

The combination of modern hardware, predictable monthly costs, and unparalleled compatibility made OpenMetal the clear path forward.

The Solution

RamNode deployed eight high-performance OpenMetal bare metal servers in Amsterdam, configured to support the full weight of the company’s public cloud environment. The hardware include OpenMetal v4 and v3 hardware, and NVMe Gen4 storage that dramatically improved I/O throughput compared to the previous SSD-based infrastructure. RamNode also included a custom spinning-disk server for specialized workloads.

Although most of RamNode’s cloud platform remained untouched, the team made targeted architectural adjustments. In other regions, storage services were distributed across dedicated storage nodes. But OpenMetal’s powerful controllers, which come equipped with high-capacity NVMe drives allowed RamNode to consolidate storage functions on a smaller set of machines without sacrificing performance. Network configurations were adapted for OpenMetal’s design philosophy, but the transition was smooth and did not require major redesign.

Architecture Enhancements for Public Cloud Operations

• Storage services consolidated onto two powerful controller nodes
• Controllers run NVMe-backed volumes supporting high I/O for cloud workloads
• Network configurations adapted for OpenMetal’s environment
• Automation, APIs, and public cloud orchestration remained identical to RamNode’s other regions

Most importantly, the core of RamNode’s public cloud: its orchestration, APIs, automation, and user-facing experience, remained exactly the same. Customers received newer, more capable infrastructure while the cloud platform that powered their workloads continued operating uninterrupted.

Before & After: The Transformation