Karine DilanyanDiscover Atmosphere Managed OpenStack: benefits, challenges, use cases & how it simplifies private cloud with no vendor lock-in.
As the OpenStack ecosystem grows, managed service providers are playing an increasingly critical role in enabling scalable, cost-effective deployments. VEXXHOST, for example, reported a 40% year-over-year increase in managed OpenStack service contracts in 2023, driven by demand from sectors like healthcare and education.
With many organizations choosing managed OpenStack solutions to streamline operations, reduce overhead, and improve scalability, a fully managed platform like Atmosphere offers a powerful path to modern cloud adoption.
This guide explores what Atmosphere offers, its benefits and considerations, common use cases, and how it can help businesses modernize their infrastructure and scale with confidence.
What Is Atmosphere Managed OpenStack?
Atmosphere is a fully managed OpenStack platform from VEXXHOST, purpose-built to accelerate the adoption of private, hybrid, and on-premise cloud environments. It provides the scalability and flexibility of OpenStack without the complexity of managing it in-house.
Backed by certified OpenStack and Kubernetes experts, Atmosphere offers advanced capabilities like GPU support, live migration, and integrated Kubernetes—ensuring performance and reliability for demanding workloads.
Whether deployed in a hosted environment, within your own data center, or as part of a hybrid cloud strategy, Atmosphere delivers production-ready, open-source infrastructure with enterprise-grade support.
Why Choose Atmosphere? Key Benefits
When it comes to deploying cloud infrastructure, businesses today face a complex matrix of trade-offs: cost, control, scalability, compliance, and speed. Atmosphere Managed OpenStack is built to resolve that complexity with a clear, enterprise-grade path forward.
Here’s what makes Atmosphere truly stand out:
Managed Infrastructure Without the Overhead
Atmosphere takes full responsibility for the deployment, lifecycle management, upgrades, and optimization of your OpenStack environment.
This means no more late-night patches, version compatibility headaches, or costly staffing just to keep the lights on. You get cloud infrastructure without the operational drag. With Atmosphere, you won’t need to take care of any of these since the team has got it covered.
Built-In Cost Efficiency
Hiring OpenStack engineers, buying monitoring tools, and managing high-availability infrastructure adds up. For many businesses, this complexity is exactly what they aim to avoid when turning to open-source technologies.
Atmosphere streamlines this with a clear, usage-based pricing model that includes 24/7 support, platform maintenance, and performance tuning—so you always know what you're paying for, and why.
Performance-Driven Cloud
Atmosphere is engineered to deliver enterprise-grade performance for the most demanding workloads. It offers support for GPU-powered instances, live migration, and both x86 and ARM architectures—making it a perfect choice for AI/ML, big data analytics, financial simulations, and more.
As noted in one of our recent blogs on the Future of High-Performance Computing:
“Atmosphere enables direct PCI passthrough for GPUs, ensuring unrestricted access to hardware acceleration. Unlike public cloud GPU instances with rigid pricing models, this approach gives organizations full control over resource allocation, optimizing for both performance and cost-efficiency.”
This means your workloads can run at native speed, with dedicated access to powerful GPUs and the flexibility to maximize efficiency—without the typical constraints of public cloud environments.
No Vendor Lock-In
Atmosphere is built entirely on upstream OpenStack and Kubernetes, ensuring your infrastructure stays fully open-source, portable, and future-proof. You avoid restrictive licensing fees or proprietary lock-in, giving your team the freedom to evolve, integrate, and migrate on your terms.
Effortless Scalability
Scalability isn’t just about adding resources—it’s about doing it seamlessly, without interrupting services or increasing complexity. Atmosphere is designed to scale horizontally and vertically as your needs evolve.
Whether you’re expanding compute capacity for a major product launch, increasing storage for growing datasets, or supporting multi-region deployments, Atmosphere ensures that your cloud grows in sync with your business—automatically and efficiently.
Enterprise-Grade Security and Compliance
As data privacy regulations tighten globally, compliance is more than a checkbox—it's a competitive differentiator. Atmosphere enables organizations to deploy in specific geographic regions or within their own data centers, supporting jurisdictional compliance with standards like HIPAA, GDPR, and PCI-DSS. With encrypted communication, role-based access control, and audit logs as standard features, Atmosphere empowers businesses to build secure cloud environments without compromise.
In fact, reclaiming control over your data is a major value proposition of Atmosphere. Check out our recent blog highlighting how Atmosphere helps businesses regain digital sovereignty, avoid vendor lock-in, and maintain compliance through secure, open-source infrastructure.
Kubernetes, Natively Integrated
Atmosphere isn't just compatible with Kubernetes—it delivers production-grade container operations fully integrated into the OpenStack ecosystem.
Leveraging OpenStack Magnum and Cluster API (CAPI), Atmosphere enables you to provision CNCF-certified clusters declaratively. You get automated management for scaling, rolling upgrades, auto-healing, and persistent storage—all built-in.
Your workloads benefit from seamless features like:
- CSI-backed volumes
- Cluster auto-scaling and self-healing
- Zero-downtime rolling upgrades
- Endpoint isolation and multi-tenancy support
Challenges of Managed OpenStack and How Atmosphere Solves Them
While Managed OpenStack offers significant benefits, some common challenges may arise when adopting this type of solution.
Here’s how Atmosphere addresses these concerns and ensures a seamless cloud experience:
Reduced Operational Control
Some organizations worry that managed services could limit their ability to fine-tune configurations or reduce visibility into their infrastructure.
How Atmosphere Solves It:
Atmosphere provides full access to APIs, logs, and dashboards, ensuring complete visibility into your environment. Customizations are supported for networking, storage, and compute, including features like custom VM flavors and advanced configurations. The infrastructure is fully managed, but you retain control over essential aspects of your cloud.
Dependency on the Provider
Relying on a third-party provider for infrastructure management raises concerns about uptime, incident resolution, and long-term reliability.
How Atmosphere Solves It:
Atmosphere is backed by SLA-driven support, ensuring high availability and rapid incident response. Supported by certified OpenStack and Kubernetes experts, Atmosphere delivers enterprise-grade reliability. Its open-source foundation guarantees vendor neutrality and long-term flexibility, avoiding any risk of proprietary lock-in.
Cost of Dedicated Environments
Hosted or On-Premise Managed OpenStack deployments may seem expensive compared to do-it-yourself (DIY) setups.
How Atmosphere Solves It:
While upfront costs for dedicated environments may be higher, Atmosphere includes enterprise-grade features like advanced security, compliance readiness (e.g., HIPAA, PCI-DSS, GDPR), and fully managed operations. These reduce long-term risks, streamline staffing requirements, and optimize operational efficiency—providing excellent return on investment.
Limited Flexibility in Shared Clouds
Shared environments may not meet the needs of businesses requiring highly customized setups, such as GPU passthrough, dedicated hardware, or specialized VM configurations.
How Atmosphere Solves It:
Atmosphere offers Hosted and On-Premise editions for businesses that need complete flexibility and control. These editions allow for custom hardware configurations, private networks, and advanced tuning while still benefiting from fully managed operations.
Hardware Requirements for On-Premise
Managed services for on-premise deployments still require compatible hardware and network infrastructure, which can add complexity.
How Atmosphere Solves It:
Atmosphere provides infrastructure assessments, onboarding guidance, and ongoing support to simplify the transition to on-premise deployments. The platform is vendor-neutral, enabling you to choose hardware that meets your needs while maintaining flexibility and scalability. Remote operations ensure smooth management without increasing your team’s workload.
Why Atmosphere OpenStack Is the Right Choice?
Atmosphere provides a future-proof, open-source cloud infrastructure that eliminates proprietary restrictions, licensing traps, and vendor lock-in. It empowers organizations to innovate, integrate, and scale seamlessly, all while benefiting from a constantly evolving open-source ecosystem.
By addressing these challenges head-on, Atmosphere ensures businesses can fully leverage the power of Managed OpenStack without compromising on control, flexibility, or long-term sustainability.
Use Cases for Atmosphere Managed OpenStack
Atmosphere is designed to serve a wide range of use cases across industries and organizational sizes—whether you're just beginning your cloud transformation or looking to optimize a complex, distributed environment. For businesses without internal cloud expertise, Atmosphere offers a fully managed OpenStack and Kubernetes solution that eliminates operational complexity while giving teams access to cutting-edge infrastructure.
It’s particularly valuable for companies pursuing hybrid or multi-cloud strategies, enabling seamless interoperability between on-premise infrastructure and public cloud platforms. With native support for GPU acceleration, SR-IOV, and high-performance networking, Atmosphere is also well-suited for compute-intensive workloads in AI/ML, big data, and research-driven fields. Organizations in regulated sectors such as healthcare, finance, and government benefit from Atmosphere’s Hosted and On-Premise editions, which support data sovereignty and compliance with standards like HIPAA and GDPR.
Additionally, for teams adopting containers, Atmosphere’s built-in Kubernetes support simplifies orchestration with features like auto-scaling, rolling upgrades, and persistent storage. Combined with robust disaster recovery capabilities and built-in high availability, Atmosphere delivers a versatile, production-ready cloud platform that adapts to your unique business needs.
How Atmosphere Stands Out
Atmosphere combines the flexibility of open-source technologies with the convenience of a fully managed solution. Here’s how it compares to other approaches:
Atmosphere’s focus on open-source innovation and enterprise-grade management makes it a versatile solution for businesses of all sizes and industries.
Final Thoughts
Atmosphere Managed OpenStack offers a powerful solution for organizations looking to leverage the flexibility, scalability, and innovation of OpenStack without the complexity of managing it internally. Whether you need a public cloud, a hosted private cloud, or an on-premise deployment, Atmosphere provides a fully managed experience backed by open-source technologies and enterprise-grade features.
From simplifying operations to enabling compliance with industry regulations and supporting advanced workloads, Atmosphere empowers businesses to modernize their infrastructure, reduce costs, and innovate faster. With built-in Kubernetes integration and a rich feature set, it also serves as a future-proof foundation for cloud-native applications.
Ready to simplify your cloud operations and unlock the potential of OpenStack? Atmosphere offers a tailored solution for every business need. Reach out to our sales team to explore how Atmosphere can fit your unique requirements.
With Atmosphere, you don’t just get a cloud—you get a fully managed platform designed to grow with your business while simplifying operations and reducing costs. Take control of your cloud journey today.