Service by service
Machina is not a drop-in: there is no Nova or Neutron API, so tools move to Machina's REST API or its EC2-compatible API, and guests move as disk images. There is no OpenStack importer. Read the migration guide →
| Machina | OpenStack (typical IaaS) | |
|---|---|---|
| Services to run | 4 Rust services: daemon, controller, agent, machina-bpfd | 9+ services: Keystone, Nova, Neutron, Glance, Cinder, Placement, Horizon, Heat, Octavia |
| Backing infrastructure | Embedded SQLite, or PostgreSQL for large fleets; NATS only if you want it | MariaDB/Galera, RabbitMQ, Memcached |
| Install | ./machinactl deploy on one host; deploy-remote.sh for the next | Kolla-Ansible or OpenStack-Ansible deployment project |
| Smallest useful footprint | A single KVM host | A multi-node control plane |
| Self-service primitives | Flavors, images, volumes, security groups, keypairs, stacks, load balancers in Fleet Cloud | Nova, Glance, Cinder, Neutron, Heat, Octavia |
| Load balancer data plane | Maglev XDP service LB + iptables member rules; no amphora VM | Amphora VMs (Octavia) |
| Network datapath and security | Native eBPF (XDP, TC, cgroup, BPF-LSM): CNI, DDoS shield, VM isolation, lease-gated enforcement | Neutron agents with OVS/OVN; security groups via iptables or OVS flows |
| Browser consoles | noVNC, SPICE, serial and SSH built into the daemon | noVNC/SPICE proxy services |
| HA failover and DRS | Built into the controller | Separate projects: Masakari (instance HA), Watcher (rebalancing) |
| AI operations | Zyra AI: diagnostics, incidents, rightsizing, approvals | Not included |
| Containers and Kubernetes | Podman containers and pods; KubeVirt inventory and migration | Zun / Magnum (separate projects) |
| Implementation language | Rust (backend), React (UI) | Python |
Choose Machina when
- You own the fleet: a lab, a branch, a sovereign region, an edge site.
- You are leaving VMware and want HA, DRS and live migration on open KVM.
- One or two people need to install, understand and upgrade the whole stack.
- You want AI-assisted operations with a human approval in the loop.
Choose OpenStack when
- You run thousands of tenants with hard multi-tenant isolation at hyperscale.
- You need Neutron-grade SDN breadth (many ML2 drivers, complex overlays).
- You depend on its ecosystem of distributions, vendors and integrations.
- You already staff a team that operates it well.
Moving off VMware or OpenStack?
h2kvm and Transiva convert guests into KVM, and GuestKit checks them offline before cutover. Machina imports the result as ordinary libvirt domains.
OpenStack is a trademark of the Open Infrastructure Foundation. The OpenStack column describes a typical IaaS deployment; individual deployments vary.