Private Cloud with OpenStack: When AWS or GCP Is Not an Option

Why some companies skip the public cloud

AWS, Google Cloud and Azure are the default for good reasons, but they are not the right fit for everyone. Some businesses have clients or contracts that limit where data can be stored and who can administer it. Others have steady workloads where a monthly bill that follows usage costs more than owning the hardware. And some simply do not want the platform their business runs on to belong to someone else.

What a private cloud actually is

A private cloud is not just a few virtual machines. It is the same self-service model people like about the public cloud: your team creates servers, attaches storage and sets up networks on demand, within quotas you control, with each project isolated from the others. The difference is that it runs on servers you own or rent, in a place you choose.

OpenStack is the open-source platform most often used to build this. It has no licence fee, runs on standard Linux and KVM, and is developed in the open on a regular release cycle, so you are not tied to a single vendor's pricing or APIs.

What you gain

The reasons we hear most often: The primary economic driver is predictable cost at scale, directly addressing the hidden fees examined in our AWS Cost Creep Checklist.

• Control over where data lives and who has administrative access to the platform
• No dependence on one provider's APIs, services or pricing changes
• A cost that stays flat for steady, always-on workloads, instead of following usage and data transfer
• Workloads that can move to other hardware or another OpenStack provider on your timetable

What it costs you

OpenStack is not a product you install once and forget. Networking, storage, monitoring and release upgrades all need ongoing care, and a production cluster needs several servers. For a handful of virtual machines, Proxmox VE is usually simpler and cheaper to run. Spiky, short-lived or globally distributed workloads are often better off on a public cloud. A private cloud pays off when the workload is large and steady enough to justify the platform and someone to operate it.

Where this fits into our work

We design, deploy and operate OpenStack clouds as part of our server and cloud services, and we build on the same Linux and KVM foundations we already administer for clients. The first step is a review of your workloads and capacity, and we will tell you plainly if a public cloud or a simpler Proxmox setup suits you better. Through our OpenStack private cloud deployment services, we build and support private cloud architectures with predictable CapEx.