Canonical OpenStack vs CloudBolt

Canonical OpenStack lets organizations run applications in their own data centers while giving teams self-service access to computing resources on demand. It is based on upstream OpenStack code and described by Canonical as 100% open source. Automation uses MAAS and Juju, spanning bare-metal provisioning through applications. Its architecture uses Kubernetes, OCI images, and snaps; Canonical says this decouples OpenStack from the underlying Ubuntu operating system. Canonical Ceph is included by default and supports up to 128 TB of data per node. The stack also includes an expandable Kubernetes layer, observability, Landscape system management, and MAAS bare-metal automation. Listed workloads include HPC and AI/ML, telco NFVI, sovereign clouds, local or regional public clouds, and edge infrastructure. Organizations can deploy the cloud themselves or have Canonical design, build, test, and validate it. The plan costs nothing, with no license or subscription charge; commercial support and consulting are separate. Support includes 24/7 phone and ticket coverage, with a stated one-hour response for Severity 1 issues. On-demand Kubernetes is currently in beta.

CloudBolt provides cloud management and Kubernetes rightsizing for teams governing and optimizing hybrid environments. CloudBolt CMP offers self-service provisioning under policies and standardized workflows. It supports more than 25 cloud providers and hypervisor platforms, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix, OpenStack, OpenShift and Kubernetes. Its integration library contains more than 200 tools spanning IT service management, infrastructure-as-code, identity, security and backup. CMP governance includes role-based access, granular permissions, approvals, policy enforcement and audit trails. For cost oversight, it offers cross-environment visibility, budgets, quota enforcement, forecasts and optimization recommendations, along with cost allocation, budget alerts and commitment management. StormForge checks Kubernetes optimization recommendations against performance data and can apply validated changes automatically, with health checks and rollback. Its free trial covers full optimization on one cluster for 30 days. CMP Free costs nothing and includes core CMP capabilities for up to 100 resources, forever. CloudBolt also lists custom billing, paid support packages and professional services.