Top OpenStack public cloud providers worldwide

OpenStack has been very popular among big enterprises for building their own private cloud. However, this doesn’t mean OpenStack can’t be used as a public cloud solution. There are some brave companies out there that tackled the security challenges of exposing their OpenStack clouds publicly, placing them in a market dominated by hyperscalers.

We’ve compiled a list of public clouds based on OpenStack where you can open an account in minutes and start using the OpenStack API or CLI right away.

Note: this is not necessary a top based on the company size or performance, but mostly based on the popularity of the particular cloud platform.

1. OVH Cloud

OVH was founded in 1999 and they’ve been big players in the dedicated servers industry (and they still are). Starting with 2018, they shifted their focus to the cloud area and started contributing to OpenStack, as well as deploying probably one of the biggest OpenStack cloud in Europe.
Their OpenStack deployment spans across 6 regions:

• BHS5 – Beauharnois, Canada
• DE1 – Frankfurt, Germany
• SBG5 – Strasbourg, France
• WAW1 – Warsaw, Poland
• GRA11 – Gravelines, France
• UK1 – London, United Kingdom

Regarding the networking, OVH has been developing its own setup and allows you to create one single network that spans all the 6 regions. Basically, this allows you to create failure domains at a much wider level. By creating such networks, you can have instances in different countries that can communicate over a private network.

2. Open Telekom Cloud

As the name suggest, Open Telekom Cloud is a public cloud created by Deutsche Telekom. Their main focus is data security and complying with the GDPR regulations, so customer who take data privacy very serious may choose Open Telekom Cloud to have the guarantee that their data won’t cross the EU borders.
Open Telekom Cloud currently operates 2 main regions / datacenters:

• Germany – Magdeburg and Biere in Saxony-Anhalt
• Netherlands – Amsterdam

Each region is divided into 3 physically separated availability zones so that customers can create redundant setups that benefits of the OpenStack AZ feature.

3. Acvile Cloud

It’s a new player in the game but have a refreshing design and thrive to be optimised for performance. Acvile Cloud is founded by the Romanian company with the same name. Currently it has one single region:

• Timisoara, Romania

Acvile Cloud operates vanilla OpenStack and always keeps up to date with the latest releases. They offer various services from the upstream OpenStack

• Nova, Cinder, Neutron (base)
• Object Storage with support for S3 API
• Load Balancers

4. Fuga Cloud

Branched out from its mother company Cyso.com, Fuga Cloud is an important OpenStack provider in Netherlands. Their public cloud operates a single region for now:

• AMS2 – Amsterdam, Netherlands

Their regions is, however, split in 3 separate Availability Zones. They have plans of adding a new region in Frankfurt, Germany, however they still have that in pending with no ETA about it.

5. VexxHost

VexxHost is a Canadian company that contributed to OpenStack since the very beginning. They have their own Public Cloud based on OpenStack hosted in 3 regions:

• ca-ymq-1 – Montreal, Canada
• sjc1 – Santa Clara, California, US
• ams1 – Amsterdam, Netherlands

VexxHost is offering OpenStack Horizon as a management dashboard to their customers. Horizon is the default dashboard for OpenStack, however it’s based on a legacy tech stack and is definitely not as smooth as a modern OpenStack control panel.

6. RamNode

Originally bootstrapped as an affordable VPS provider in US, RamNode has expanded its services to the cloud area. Currently, they operate a quite big OpenStack deployment that spans across 6 regions:

• NYC – New York, US
• ATL – Atlanta, US
• LA – Los Angeles, US
• SEA – Seattle, US
• NL – Amsterdam, NL

RamNode offers access to the OpenStack API so you can create automations using tools like Terraform or simply manage your cloud using the CLI.

7. IntoVPS

Derived from its mother Romanian company Hosterion, IntoVPS started early as a VPS provider. They are still operating on a few countries only as VPS provider, however they started their own public OpenStack cloud with one single region for now:

• Cluj Napoca, Romania

They are offering the upstream-version of OpenStack services: Nova, Cinder, Octavia and Magnum. They have been developing their own dashboard for OpenStack, called Fleio.

I hope this list will be useful for you in finding the appropriate cloud provider for your next project. We are aiming to keep this post up to date with new cloud providers that are offering OpenStack.