5 things I wish I had known earlier about OpenStack

In November 2024, I joined this team as a DevOps Engineer and worked for the first time with OpenStack worked. I had hardly any practical experience with this technology beforehand. Looking back, there are a few things I wish I had known earlier. If you're just starting out with OpenStack, these five insights might help you get started faster.

1. OpenStack is powerful, but not beginner-friendly

It took me a while to understand the structure and components of OpenStack. It's not a tool that you can "just" get to grips with in an afternoon. The documentation helps, but trial and error (and a good team!) made all the difference.

2. Full control comes at a cost

Unlike large cloud providers who do a lot of the work for you, OpenStack gives you complete control over your infrastructure. That's great, but it also means more responsibility and a steeper learning curve. Nevertheless, the flexibility you gain pays off.

3. Infrastructure as code works seamlessly

OpenStack's architecture allows full programmatic access, and the command line proved to be much more efficient than the web console. This developer-centric approach makes scripting and automation easy. Combined with Terraform, this enables a smooth infrastructure-as-code experience with support for almost all key resources and actions. For DevOps teams, this means faster iterations, clean configurations and full reproducibility.

4. Migrating providers? Easier than expected

During a migration to another provider, the OpenStack environment proved surprisingly adaptable. The existing Terraform code only had to be adapted minimally, which significantly reduced friction losses and downtime. This portability speaks strongly in favor of OpenStack in dynamic, changing environments.

5. Some features are missing and that’s okay

Compared to hyperscalers, some things are missing, such as serverless functions or native autoscaling. There were times when we missed these features, especially with dynamic workloads. But what OpenStack offers instead is complete control, cost efficiency and the ability to tailor the infrastructure to your exact needs. For many of our real-world scenarios, this trade-off was more than worth it. It allowed us to build exactly what the customer needed - with full transparency and flexibility.

My conclusion:

OpenStack has a steep learning curve, but for teams that embrace it, the platform offers great benefits: Flexibility, control and a solid foundation for scalable, customized infrastructure.
However, this does not mean that OpenStack is suitable for every project. If managed services, serverless capabilities or rapid scaling are critical, other platforms may be a better fit. But for use cases that benefit from transparency, cost efficiency and full control, OpenStack is a strong alternative.
For me, it was the start of a steep but rewarding learning curve - and a technology that is definitely worth exploring further!

OpenStack is just one part of our daily work and it's precisely these experiences that we want to share in our blog. If you want to find out more about how we use technologies, overcome challenges and develop solutions together, take a look at our other posts, e.g. on our practical experience in the Use of OpenStack in customer projects. Maybe you'll find just the inspiration you need there.