platform-eng
The OpenShift Alternative for GPU Clouds
OpenShift was not built for multi-tenant GPU infrastructure. vCluster creates fully isolated, CNCF-certified tenant clusters on shared bare metal without the licensing overhead.
Trusted by the fastest-growing AI cloud providers
Problem
Why OpenShift Falls Short
Platform engineers and GPU cloud operators are hitting the same walls with OpenShift.
Namespace Isolation Is Too Weak
In standard namespace-based deployments, tenants can see cluster-wide agents and other tenants' resources. Namespace partitions were not designed for strong tenant isolation.
Licensing Costs Kill Unit Economics
OpenShift's per-node licensing model erodes margins on shared GPU infrastructure where density and efficiency determine profitability.
Slow Provisioning Delays Revenue
Heavy installation requirements and slow cluster spin-up times mean delayed onboarding and lost GPU revenue every month.
Solution
A Purpose-Built OpenShift Alternative for AI Clouds
vCluster virtualizes the Kubernetes control plane itself. Every tenant gets a real API server, etcd, RBAC, and CRDs as a lightweight pod on shared hardware. CNCF-certified, production-proven across 100K+ GPU nodes and 50+ GPU clouds and Fortune 500 customers.
Built for the Isolation OpenShift Wasn't Designed to Deliver
vCluster delivers the full isolation spectrum from shared nodes to dedicated bare metal, with every tenant cluster fully CNCF-certified.
Tenant Isolation
Real Tenant Clusters in Seconds
Each tenant gets a fully isolated Kubernetes control plane running as a lightweight pod. Own API server, etcd, scheduler, and RBAC with no shared blast radius and no OpenShift licensing overhead.
- Full API server per tenant
- Spins up in seconds not hours
- Zero shared control plane risk
Standards Compliance
100 Percent CNCF-Certified Kubernetes
Every tenant cluster is a fully conformant Kubernetes distribution. Not a proprietary fork, not a partial implementation. AI teams coming from AWS or GCP get the standard Kubernetes APIs they already know.
- Full Kubernetes API compatibility
- No proprietary lock-in
- Drop-in for existing tooling
Hardware Isolation
Dedicated Physical Nodes Per Tenant
Tenants requiring hard hardware boundaries get fully dedicated physical nodes with their own CNI and CSI. No workloads from other tenants, no noisy-neighbor GPU contention, no shared kernel exposure.
- Dedicated GPU nodes per tenant
- Own CNI and CSI per tenant
- Zero cross-tenant workload overlap
Tenant Control
Full Cluster Admin Per Tenant
Every tenant gets cluster-admin within their own environment. They can install CRDs, configure RBAC, and deploy operators without a ticket to your platform team and without impacting other tenants.
- Install CRDs without platform tickets
- Full RBAC control per tenant
- No blast radius to other tenants
Platform Operations
Central Fleet Management at Scale
Manage hundreds of tenant clusters through a single UI, CLI, and API. SSO, quotas, templates, and auto-sleep are built in — capabilities that typically require additional tooling in OpenShift.
- Unified UI CLI and API
- Built-in SSO quotas and templates
- Auto-sleep to reduce idle cost
Why vCluster
This isn’t a side project. Behind every vCluster deployment is 5+ years of deep K8s engineering, security hardening, and battle-tested infrastructure work at massive scale.
100K+
GPU Nodes Powered
50+
GPU Clouds & F500s
<45
Days to Launch
30K
GitHub Stars
Get Started in 3 Steps
1
Schedule a Demo
Talk to our team about your stack
2
Deploy vCluster
Deploy vCluster on your infra in minutes
3
Onboard Your Tenants
Go live with a hyperscaler-grade tenant experience in days
FAQs
Why is vCluster considered an OpenShift alternative?
OpenShift is a full Kubernetes distribution with a heavy operational footprint and per-node licensing that was designed for enterprise application delivery, not multi-tenant GPU infrastructure. vCluster virtualizes the Kubernetes control plane itself, giving each tenant a fully isolated, CNCF-certified cluster as a lightweight pod on shared hardware. This means stronger tenant isolation, lower overhead, and no proprietary lock-in — making it a practical OpenShift alternative for GPU clouds and platform teams alike.
Does vCluster pass Kubernetes conformance testing like OpenShift does?
Yes. Every tenant cluster created by vCluster is a CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution with 100% API compatibility. There is no proprietary fork or partial implementation. Tenant workloads that run on standard Kubernetes will run on vCluster without modification, and the platform has been validated in the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD reference architecture.
How does tenant isolation compare between vCluster and OpenShift?
OpenShift relies on namespace-level isolation as its primary tenant boundary, which means tenants share a control plane, can see cluster-wide agents, and have a shared blast radius. vCluster gives each tenant a dedicated API server, etcd, scheduler, and RBAC running as isolated pods. For GPU workloads requiring stronger boundaries, vCluster also supports private dedicated nodes and kernel-native workload isolation through vNode (currently in private beta).
Can I deploy vCluster on bare metal GPU servers without existing Kubernetes?
Yes. vCluster Standalone runs as a single binary directly on bare metal Linux with no dependency on k3s, kubeadm, or any external Kubernetes distribution. vMetal extends this with zero-touch bare metal provisioning covering PXE boot, OS installation, machine registration, and network automation — giving you a complete path from GPU racks to managed tenant clusters.
How quickly can teams migrate to vCluster from OpenShift?
Because every vCluster tenant cluster is a fully CNCF-conformant Kubernetes environment, existing workloads and tooling migrate without changes to application manifests. Customers like Boost Run launched a managed Kubernetes offering in less than 45 days. The migration timeline depends on your existing infrastructure, but the standard Kubernetes API surface eliminates the re-tooling cost that proprietary distributions typically require.
Is vCluster suitable for enterprise compliance environments?
Yes. vCluster supports air-gapped deployments and FIPS-compliant environments for organizations with strict compliance requirements. Tenant clusters can be deployed with dedicated nodes, VM-level control plane isolation, and kernel-native workload isolation through vNode (currently in private beta) — providing defense-in-depth across control plane, network, and workload layers without the proprietary audit surface of OpenShift.
See the OpenShift Alternative in Action
Find out how GPU clouds replace OpenShift with fully isolated tenant clusters.
