Best VPS for Single Node OpenShift hosting in 2026
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OpenShift is an enterprise-grade container application platform. However, unlike standard container hosting options, OpenShift requires considerably more hardware resources and a higher level of installation control. To ensure stability and performance, you need a hosting environment that supports custom ISO installations, flexible scaling, and system-level configuration. A simple consumer-oriented VPS provider will not be enough.
In this article, I analyze and recommend the best cloud VPS and dedicated server options for single-node OpenShift cluster hosting. The Cybernews research team and I evaluated these providers based on whether they meet OpenShift's minimum resource requirements, support custom operating system images, offer easy scaling, and are overall reliable for production or lab deployments. Whether you are building a learning environment or a production cluster, our selections will help you find the infrastructure you need to succeed.
6 best VPS for OpenShift
- Contabo – best overall VPS for OpenShift
- Kamatera – most flexible option for OpenShift
- Vultr – best for custom ISO installation
- Scaleway – best for European single-node hosting
- Hetzner – best bare metal option
- OVHcloud – best semi-managed cloud option
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Best VPS for OpenShift – detailed reviews
The Cybernews research team and I evaluated numerous VPS providers according to whether they offer plans and resources that fit at least the minimum OpenShift requirements. We also considered scaling opportunities and pricing, as well as ease of setting up.
1. Contabo – best affordable OpenShift lab
| Rating: | |
| CPU: | Up to 24 cores |
| RAM: | Up to 96GB |
| Storage: | Up to 720GB |
| Starting price: | $37.60/month |
| Recommended plan: | Max Performance VPS: Cloud VDS M, from $47.20/month |
| Money-back guarantee: | ❌ No |
| Special deal: | Get Contabo for just $5.28/month! |
A cloud VPS provider, Contabo, much like Kamatera and Vultr, provides multiple server types and instances for all kinds of purposes. The Cloud VDS plans from the Max Performance VPS tiers offer at least minimal resources for an affordable price, starting from $47.20.64/month. This tier is good for hosting an OpenShift lab – production-grade deployments require higher tiers or different providers.
Contabo supports custom ISO mounting, which makes it a good choice for OpenShift. In terms of scalability, the Cloud VDS plans go up to 24 vCPUs and 96GB RAM, with up to 720GB NVMe storage and the option to add more. For even bigger projects, you can migrate to Contabo’s dedicated servers. What makes Contabo an attractive choice is that even the highest Cloud VDS tier costs just $133.60/month, which is half the price of Kamatera’s or Vultr’s plans.
The Cloud VDS M plan from the Max Performance VPS line meets the minimal OpenShift requirements. It includes 8 vCPUs, 32GB RAM, and 240GB NVMe storage for $47.20/month.
1. Kamatera – most flexible option for OpenShift
| Rating: | |
| CPU: | Up to 104 vCPU cores |
| RAM: | Up to 512GB |
| Storage: | Up to 16 x 4TB NVMe |
| Starting price: | $9.00/month (Type B) |
| Recommended plan: | VPS Type B or D, custom configuration |
| Money-back guarantee: | ✅ 30-day free trial worth up to $100 of services |
| Special deal: | Get Kamatera now, starting at only $4.00/month |
Kamatera is a VPS provider with highly customizable plans. It’s my second choice for OpenShift because of this customizability and because it offers ways to diagonally scale as your project grows – to add both hardware resources and additional servers to your system. The server type availability and high customization options make Kamatera the most versatile OpenShift hosting choice.
Kamatera supports custom ISO installations, so you will be able to install and run OpenShift on Kamatera’s VPS servers. Further, the provider offers four types of servers – availability based, general purpose, dedicated, and burstable. For OpenShift, I recommend general purpose (Type B) or dedicated servers (Type D). In terms of resources, you can have up to 104 vCPU cores, up to 512GB memory, and up to 4TB NVMe storage. You can add extra storage and choose an OS, as well as networking addons like load balancers and similar. Plus, a managed server option is available.
An example OpenShift server configuration with minimal required resources would cost $289.00/month, or $0.396/hour, with 8 vCPU cores, 32GB memory, and 150GB NVMe storage. For more details, read our Kamatera pricing breakdown.
3. Vultr – best for custom ISO installation
| Rating: | 4.1 |
| CPU: | Up to 16 vCPUs |
| RAM: | Up to 58GB |
| Storage: | Up to 1024GB NVMe |
| Starting price: | $2.50/month |
| Recommended plan: | Cloud Compute High Frequency 16vCPUs, from $320.00/month |
| Money-back guarantee: | ❌ No |
| Special deal: | Available now for only $2.50! |
Vultr offers cloud VPS services for a number of use cases, including high-frequency cloud computing instances for hosting platforms like OpenShift. Vultr is an unmanaged cloud VPS provider, so it is crucial to have someone on your team to manage both the server and OpenShift.
Vultr supports custom ISO mounting and offers a library of pre-built ISO images. Further, you can always scale to higher-tier cloud compute plans, bare metal servers, or even managed Kubernetes clusters. Underlying resources like block storage or bare metal servers can offer up to 10TB NVMe storage, 256 CPU cores, 3TB RAM, and dedicated GPUs for high-performance workloads.
My recommended configuration for OpenShift is the Cloud Compute High Frequency plan from $320.00/month. It includes 16vCPU cores, 58GB RAM, and 1024GB of NVMe storage. Unfortunately, Vultr does not offer a money-back guarantee.
4. Scaleway – best for European single-node hosting
| Rating: | |
| CPU: | Up to 64 dedicated vCPUs |
| RAM: | Up to 256GB |
| Storage: | Up to 15TB NVMe (purchased separately) |
| Starting price: | From ~$0.027/h (~$19.71/month), original price €0.023/h (~€16.79/month) |
| Recommended plan: | Virtual Instances General Purpose BASIC2-A8C-32G |
| Money-back guarantee: | ❌ No |
Scaleway is a European cloud computing provider, focusing on AI service hosting. However, it’s also a good fit for OpenShift. Specifically, its General Purpose Virtual Instances offer the needed resources for running single-node OpenShift.
Scaleway supports custom ISO mounting on its instances. There should be no problems with installing and running OpenShift. In terms of resources, the General Purpose Virtual Instances include up to 64 dedicated vCPUs and up to 256GB RAM – similar to Kamatera. A downside is that block storage has to be purchased separately – up to 15TB is available.
An example Scaleway instance that meets the minimum OpenShift requirements would be the General Purpose Virtual Instance BASIC2-A8C-32G for approx. ~$0.16/h (original price €0.1378/h). Scaleway offers only hourly pricing and only in euros, but a monthly price would amount to around $116.88/month. The instance includes 8 vCPUs and 32GB RAM, and does not include block storage.
5. Hetzner – best bare metal option
| Rating: | |
| CPU: | Up to 48 vCPU cores |
| RAM: | Up to 512GB |
| Storage: | Up to 2 x 15.36TB NVMe |
| Starting price: | $69.00/month |
| Recommended plan: | AX42 for $119.00/month |
| Money-back guarantee: | ❌ No |
| Special deal: | Available now for only €1.60! |
Hetzner is a German hosting provider specializing in dedicated and cloud servers. It’s the best, possibly most affordable option for hosting OpenShift on a bare metal server. The advantages of dedicated servers are that you get full control and the entire server resources to yourself. On the other hand, it requires expert server management knowledge.
Naturally, Hetzner supports custom ISO installations, but it takes a bit of work. You can either ask Hetzner to mount your ISO file or request a KVM Console for your dedicated server and mount the ISO through there. In terms of resources, Hetzner AX server series offer servers with up to 48 vCPU cores, up to 512GB RAM, and up to two 15.36TB NVMe drives.
An example server for OpenShift would be the AX42, starting from $119.00/month or $0.1907/h. The resources included are 8 vCPU cores, 64GB RAM, and two 512GB NVMe storage drives. It’s good to keep in mind that Hetzner charges a one-time setup fee, ranging from free to $359.00, depending on the server.
6. OVHcloud – best semi-managed cloud option
| Rating: | |
| CPU: | Up to 64 vCPU cores |
| RAM: | Up to 128GB |
| Storage: | Up to 400GB NVMe |
| Starting price: | $33.51/month |
| Recommended plan: | Compute Optimized Virtual Machine Instances c3-32 from ~$267.25/month |
| Money-back guarantee: | ❌ No |
| Special deal: | Get OVHCloud for just $4.54/month! |
OVHcloud is a French dedicated, VPS, and semi-managed cloud hosting provider. It offers a variety of plans for market-average prices and plenty of room to scale up or down according to your OpenShift project needs.
OVHcloud supports custom ISO uploads on the Public Cloud and dedicated servers, which include the Compute Virtual Machine Instances. These compute instances also come as Optimized and offer up to 64 vCPU cores, up to 128GB RAM, and up to 400GB NVMe storage, so scaling will not be an issue. It’s worth noting that while the cloud instances are managed by OVHcloud regarding hardware, virtualization, and networking, you choose the operating system, configure the environment, and handle system administration and security patching.
My recommended minimum-requirement OpenShift plan is the c3-32 Optimized Virtual Machine Instance, starting from ~$267.25/month (excluding taxes). It includes 16 vCPU cores, 32GB RAM, and 400GB NVMe storage. Monthly and hourly pricing, as well as a 1-year plan, are available.
What type of server does OpenShift require?
The minimum server requirements for OpenShift Container Platform hosting are as follows:
- CPU: 8vCPU cores
- RAM: 32GB
- Storage: 120GB
These are the minimum resources required. It’s good to keep in mind that minimum resources do not equal comfortable operating requirements. In truth, the minimum resources will be enough for a test lab. Production-grade OpenShift hosting requires much more, depending on your project needs. Considering that most consumer-facing (as opposed to enterprise) VPS providers offer these resources with the highest subscription tiers, a dedicated server might be a better choice. In any case, when you choose a provider, it’s good to plan for the future as well as overhead.
Additionally, besides hardware requirements, the OpenShift Container Platform base OS must be Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) v7.5 or later, or RHEL Atomic Host v7.4.5 or later.
VPS vs dedicated server for OpenShift
You can run OpenShift on both VPS and dedicated servers, but there are major differences and advantages to each. Below, I discuss issues with resources and scaling, costs, and server configuration requirements.
VPS is usually cheaper than dedicated servers, but costs can add up with scaling needs. Plus, many consumer VPS providers are not designed for the level of control OpenShift requires and rarely support the required networking and virtualization features. Further, regular VPS providers have resource limits that rarely meet even the minimum OpenShift requirements, including CPU, memory, storage, and bandwidth. The highest VPS subscription tiers are often only enough for small test workloads, not production environments. As such, a high-end VPS is an option for Single Node OpenShift hosting but will fall short for production-grade deployments.
A dedicated server offers more headroom, fully dedicated resources, and more control over hardware and software configuration. A dedicated server is a more practical choice for production-grade OpenShift hosting. Of course, a dedicated server also has resource limitations. However, these more often come from hardware rather than limits imposed by a specific hosting plan. The drawback is that dedicated servers are more expensive and hard to manage without operational expertise.
Final thoughts
Running OpenShift requires significantly more resources than standard container hosting – at minimum 8 vCPU, 32GB RAM, and 120GB storage. Whether you are setting up a Single Node OpenShift (SNO) lab for learning or deploying a production-grade cluster, the primary challenge is finding a provider that offers custom ISO support, good scaling options, and the necessary infrastructure stability. While high-end VPS instances can support testing environments, dedicated servers often provide the reliability and control essential for production.
Here are my final recommendations:
- Best overall: Contabo for cost-effective, high-performance VDS plans
- Best for flexibility: Kamatera for highly customizable plans and diagonal scaling
- Best for custom ISO and high-frequency compute: Vultr for unmanaged, high-performance cloud instances
- Best for European hosting: Scaleway for solid single-node hosting within Europe
- Best for bare metal: Hetzner for maximum control and resource allocation
- Best for semi-managed services: OVHcloud for a balanced managed cloud option
FAQ
Can OpenShift run on a VPS?
Yes, OpenShift can run on a VPS if the provider supports custom ISO installation and meets its specific hardware requirements. While many people use VPS providers to build OpenShift labs or testing environments, dedicated servers offer better control and reliability for production-grade deployments.
How much RAM does OpenShift need?
The recommended minimum is 32GB of RAM. While it might be possible to start with less for very constrained testing environments, 32GB is the standard benchmark for stable operation. Production-grade workloads typically require significantly more memory.
Can I run OpenShift on a single server?
Yes, this is known as Single Node OpenShift (SNO). It allows you to run both the control plane and worker nodes on a single server. SNO is a common deployment method for testing, demos, and isolated environments, although it lacks the high availability of multi-node clusters.
What is the cheapest VPS configuration for OpenShift?
Providers like Contabo and Scaleway are the most affordable options that offer plans capable of meeting OpenShift's resource requirements.
Is 16GB RAM enough for OpenShift?
No, 16GB RAM is not enough for OpenShift. The minimum requirement is 32GB RAM. I strongly recommend choosing a plan with more than 32GB RAM, especially if you plan to run production-grade workloads.
