Purpose: Explain the GA provider choices and the trade-offs between them.
Quick Recommendation
| If you need… | Choose… | | --- | --- | | Fully automated private-cloud provisioning | OpenStack | | Existing vSphere investment and pre-provisioned VMs | VMware | | Local development or CI clusters | Kind | | Physical hosts you already manage | Baremetal |
Capability Summary
| Provider | Provisioning | Operational Model | Drift Support | Best Fit | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | OpenStack | Automated | Cloud-owned infrastructure plus GitOps-managed platform services | Detect + limited reconcile | Production private cloud | | VMware | Pre-provisioned | Infrastructure team owns VM lifecycle; openCenter owns cluster/service lifecycle | Detect only | Existing enterprise virtualization | | Kind | Built-in local runtime | Disposable developer cluster | Not applicable | Workstations and CI | | Baremetal | Pre-provisioned | Hardware lifecycle outside openCenter | Not applicable | Edge sites and physical estates |
Non-GA Infrastructure Providers
AWS is no longer part of the GA infrastructure-provider story. Keep using AWS-backed service integrations where platform services need them, but do not treat AWS as a supported cluster provisioning target.