Deploying Hybrid Clouds with OpenStack: A Technical Guide

Learn how to deploy hybrid clouds with OpenStack and Atmosphere for flexibility, control, and enterprise-ready scalability.

Hybrid cloud has rapidly become the de-facto cloud strategy for enterprises, blending the control of private infrastructure with the scalability of public cloud. In fact, 73% of organizations employ a hybrid cloud approach. OpenStack plays a pivotal role in these hybrid architectures by serving as a flexible on-premise foundation that integrates seamlessly with public clouds. This guide will walk you through the technical considerations of deploying a hybrid cloud with OpenStack, from planning and setup to networking, identity, and security.

Industry data shows hybrid cloud is now the primary deployment strategy for many organizations, outpacing single-cloud or purely multi-cloud approaches (39% of surveyed companies identified hybrid cloud as their primary strategy, vs. 33% multi-cloud and 27% single-cloud).

Why Choose Hybrid Cloud with OpenStack?

Hybrid cloud refers to using a mix of private cloud (or on-premises infrastructure) and public cloud services, with interoperability between the two. This model lets you run sensitive or steady-state workloads in your private environment while “bursting” or offloading other tasks to public cloud resources when needed. The appeal is clear: greater flexibility, cost optimization, and avoidance of vendor lock-in. OpenStack is uniquely suited to hybrid deployments for several reasons:

Open-Source and No Lock-In: OpenStack’s open-source nature means you aren’t tied to proprietary vendors. It’s a reliable choice for building private or hybrid clouds without relying on proprietary solutions. This prevents the kind of platform lock-in that often comes with purely public cloud use – a major motivator for hybrid strategies.
Flexibility and Customization: OpenStack’s modular architecture (Compute, Network, Storage services, etc.) gives you granular control to tailor your cloud to specific needs. You can optimize the private cloud side for performance, compliance, or legacy integration, while still interfacing with the public cloud side for on-demand resources. This “best of both worlds” approach lets you, for example, keep sensitive data on a private OpenStack cloud for compliance, while using a public cloud’s massive compute power for bursty workloads.
Growing Adoption and Support: OpenStack is battle-tested at scale. By 2025, the OpenStack services market is estimated to reach $30.1 billion USD, reflecting its widespread enterprise adoption. A vibrant community and broad industry support mean abundant tools and expertise are available. Atmosphere OpenStack further simplifies hybrid cloud adoption by providing managed OpenStack with expert support and integration tools.

In summary, OpenStack offers the control and security of private infrastructure while still enabling the agility of public cloud, making it a strong foundation for hybrid cloud deployments. Below, we delve into the key steps and technical considerations for deploying your hybrid cloud using OpenStack.

Steps to Deploy a Hybrid Cloud with OpenStack

Building a hybrid cloud with OpenStack involves bridging two worlds – your OpenStack-powered private cloud and one or more public cloud environments. The following steps outline how to design and implement this, with best practices at each stage:

Step 1: Plan Your Hybrid Cloud Architecture

Any successful deployment starts with planning. Assess your workloads, compliance requirements, and performance needs to decide what runs where. This approach lets you optimize costs by running predictable workloads on private infrastructure and leveraging public cloud for surges. Identify data that must remain on-premises for regulatory reasons (and plan to keep it in OpenStack) versus data that can reside or be backed up to the public cloud.

Also design the topology: will your OpenStack cloud act as just one region in a multi-region setup? Many organizations treat OpenStack as an on-prem region and use a public cloud as another region for disaster recovery or bursting. Document network addressing, identity management, and how applications will communicate across the environments. A clear architecture blueprint will guide the subsequent steps.

Step 2: Deploy Your OpenStack Private Cloud Environment

With a plan in hand, proceed to deploy the OpenStack cloud that will serve as your private side of the hybrid. You can set up OpenStack using various methods or leverage a managed OpenStack platform to speed up deployment. Atmosphere OpenStack accelerates this step handling the OpenStack installation, configuration, and day-2 operations for you.

Whether self-deployed or managed, ensure your OpenStack cluster is production-ready: configure it for high availability (controller node redundancy, database clustering, etc.), set up storage backends (e.g. Cinder volumes and Swift or Ceph for object storage), and integrate any needed enterprise systems (e.g. LDAP/AD integration for identity if needed). Verify that your OpenStack cloud is functioning (launch some test instances, allocate network resources) before proceeding.

Tip: It’s wise to deploy OpenStack with the same version and configurations that your managed service or distribution supports across environments. Upstream OpenStack is fully open-source – a benefit since Atmosphere and other providers use upstream OpenStack with no proprietary forks. This ensures compatibility and avoids any vendor-specific limitations when extending to hybrid.

Step 3: Establish Network Connectivity Between Environments

A hybrid cloud depends on secure, reliable connectivity between your private OpenStack and public cloud environments.

Private Network Extension: Use a VPN or dedicated connection to link both clouds. OpenStack’s Neutron VPNaaS allows site-to-site IPsec tunnels so OpenStack instances can securely communicate with public cloud resources as if on the same network. For higher bandwidth or lower latency, consider dedicated connections alongside VPN encryption.
Networking Setup: Assign non-overlapping IP ranges and configure routing so each environment can reach the other (commonly via the VPN gateway). For example, after establishing a VPN, you must add routes on both sides to direct traffic properly. Neutron’s routing and gateways simplify this process.
Security & Segmentation: Mirror security groups and firewall policies across both environments. Limit open ports, enforce segmentation, and use Neutron FWaaS or cloud firewalls to ensure hybrid traffic remains seamless yet secure.

Though networking can be one of the more complex steps, once established, your hybrid cloud functions as a unified environment. Always test connectivity (ping, curl, etc.) to confirm proper routing.

Step 4: Unify Identity and Access Management

Managing hybrid environments shouldn’t force users to juggle separate credentials. Atmosphere simplifies identity and access with built-in federation, aligning with OpenStack’s Keystone but adding automation and enterprise integration.

Keystone-to-Keystone Federation (SSO Across OpenStack Clouds): When both private and public clouds use OpenStack, Atmosphere enables Keystone federation to seamlessly link them. Your users can sign in once and gain access across both environments—no redundant logins needed. This delivers a unified Single Sign-On (SSO) experience across your hybrid cloud. Keystone supports federation via SAML or OpenID Connect protocols for these scenarios.
Federation with Enterprise Identity Providers: Atmosphere integrates with corporate identity systems (e.g., LDAP, Active Directory, Keycloak) using SAML or OpenID Connect. Both clouds trust the same external IdP, ensuring consistent identity management. Keystone can operate as a Service Provider trusting external IdPs for authentication, which enables centralized user provisioning and SSO.
Unified Access Policy Management: Atmosphere supports streamlined mapping of external identity attributes to Keystone roles, so organizational roles like “admin” or “project member” are consistently enforced across both environments. This alignment ensures governance is simplified and administration remains centralized.

By handling federation and policy mapping automatically, Atmosphere reduces friction—and operational burden—while boosting security and usability. With built-in SSO, IdP integration, and consistent RBAC, user onboarding and access control become smoother and more robust.

Step 5: Implement Consistent Orchestration and Management

One challenge in hybrid cloud is managing two environments without doubling your effort. The solution is to use common orchestration and automation tools that can interface with both OpenStack and public cloud APIs. This ensures you deploy and configure infrastructure in a uniform way across the hybrid cloud:

Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Tools like Ansible support providers for OpenStack as well as all major public clouds. You can write Ansible configurations to, for example, deploy a network and VM instances on your OpenStack private cloud, and in the same config file define cloud resources for the public side. Ansible will then provision all in one go, giving you a single source of truth for hybrid infrastructure. Atmosphere OpenStack leverages these approaches. Embracing IaC means any changes to your hybrid environment can be version-controlled, reviewed, and rolled out reproducibly.
Workload Portability: Consider using container orchestration to abstract workloads from the underlying infrastructure differences. For instance, you might run Kubernetes clusters on both OpenStack (using Magnum or Kubernetes-on-OpenStack solutions) and on the public cloud, then use a multi-cluster management strategy. This is exactly why OpenStack integrates with Kubernetes – Magnum allows deploying K8s on OpenStack, and Atmosphere’s design even runs OpenStack itself on Kubernetes for greater flexibility. Containers can make it easier to move applications between clouds or run concurrently, since you’re shipping the app environment consistently. This isn’t required for hybrid cloud, but it aligns well with cloud-native practices if your team is heading that direction.
Unified Management Interfaces: Where possible, use monitoring and management tools that aggregate across clouds. OpenStack’s monitoring can be extended to include public cloud metrics, giving you a single pane of glass. Logging can be centralized with solutions that pull from both OpenStack and public cloud logs into one system. The goal is to avoid siloed operations – your operators should be able to see the health, performance, and costs of the entire hybrid cloud easily. Surveys indicate organizations typically use 3.4 public clouds and 3.9 private clouds on average, so without unified management, complexity can skyrocket. Take advantage of tools that help visualize and control multi-cloud environments.

In short, treat your hybrid cloud as one environment from a DevOps perspective. By deploying and managing resources with common toolsets and practices, you’ll minimize errors and ensure consistency across your OpenStack and public cloud components.

Step 6: Ensure Security, Compliance, and Cost Management

Operating a hybrid cloud introduces additional considerations around security and governance, but OpenStack provides features to address these:

Consistent Security Posture: Extend your security policies to both clouds. Use OpenStack’s security groups and role-based controls in tandem with public cloud security groups/IAM roles. Many tech leaders favor hybrid approaches specifically to avoid relying on a single provider’s security – 59% of IT leaders use hybrid or multi-cloud for security reasons, feeling that data is safer spread across multiple platforms.
Compliance and Data Sovereignty: If you have regulatory requirements (GDPR, HIPAA, etc.), architect your hybrid cloud to meet them. OpenStack allows data locality – you can guarantee certain data never leaves your private cloud or a specific geography. Many organizations also use hybrid cloud to satisfy jurisdictional compliance, keeping a foothold in-region privately while still using global cloud infrastructure for less sensitive tasks. Document where data resides and flows, and take advantage of OpenStack features like Keystone federation with SAML to enforce enterprise authentication policies even on the public cloud access.
Cost Monitoring and Optimization: Hybrid clouds can help control costs (e.g. avoiding the “sticker shock” of running everything in public cloud), but they also introduce multiple billing sources. Track usage on your OpenStack cluster and monitor public cloud spend with equal diligence. Analyses show cloud waste is a common issue, so utilize cost dashboards or tagging to attribute workloads to respective environments. A hybrid approach allows you to choose the most cost-efficient venue for each workload (for instance, run stable workloads on owned infrastructure to reduce ongoing cloud bills). Revisit these decisions periodically – you might find over time that certain services should migrate one way or the other for cost reasons.

Summary: Hybrid Cloud Best Practices with OpenStack

Deploying a hybrid cloud with OpenStack may seem complex, but breaking it down into these steps and considerations makes it manageable. Below is a quick recap of key technical considerations and how OpenStack addresses them:

By following these best practices, you can deploy a hybrid cloud that maximizes the strengths of both OpenStack and public platforms—delivering greater control, flexibility, and resilience. This approach lets you run workloads where they fit best, while relying on open standards and modern tooling.

Deploying hybrid clouds with OpenStack is a journey, but one that pays off with agility, cost optimization, and freedom from vendor lock-in. With the right planning and tools your organization can achieve a seamless hybrid experience powered by open-source technology.

Get in touch with our experts today and see how Atmosphere can power your hybrid cloud strategy.