Proxmox and Ceph in the Deutschland-Stack

What the Deutschland-Stack is about

The Deutschland-Stack is a German initiative aimed at creating a sovereign, open, and interoperable cloud and infrastructure ecosystem for public administration and regulated environments. Its core objective is to reduce structural dependence on proprietary hyperscalers and closed platforms by relying on open-source technologies, open standards, and transparent operating models.

While rooted in Germany, the principles behind the Deutschland-Stack are broadly applicable: digital sovereignty, data control, auditability, and long-term independence from Big Tech providers. At the infrastructure level, these goals require carefully chosen building blocks—particularly for compute and storage.

Two technologies stand out in this context: Proxmox as the virtualization and compute layer, and Ceph as the software-defined storage backbone.

Digital sovereignty starts with infrastructure choices

Modern digital services require cloud-like capabilities—but relying on proprietary platforms often means surrendering control over data, costs, and long-term strategy. The Deutschland-Stack addresses this challenge by promoting infrastructure components that can be operated on-premises or in sovereign data centers, without vendor lock-in.

True sovereignty is not achieved through policy alone. It is the result of concrete architectural decisions that favor openness, transparency, and operational autonomy. Proxmox and Ceph exemplify this approach.

Proxmox: Open virtualization for sovereign compute

Proxmox is an open-source platform for virtualization and containers, built on Linux, KVM, and LXC. It enables highly available clusters without relying on proprietary hypervisors or cloud-specific compute layers.

Within the Deutschland-Stack context, Proxmox offers:

• full control over operations, updates, and lifecycle management
• independence from proprietary licensing models
• deployment in on-premises or sovereign colocation environments
• a transparent architecture based entirely on open standards

This makes Proxmox a strong alternative to both traditional proprietary virtualization platforms and Big Tech compute services.

Ceph: Software-defined storage as a sovereign backbone

While Proxmox provides the compute layer, Ceph delivers the storage foundation. As a fully open-source, software-defined storage platform, Ceph provides object, block, and file storage from a single, distributed system.

Ceph aligns closely with the goals of the Deutschland-Stack because it:

• avoids vendor lock-in through open source and open interfaces
• runs on commodity hardware instead of proprietary appliances
• scales horizontally and is designed for high availability
• integrates seamlessly with virtualization platforms and Kubernetes

As a result, Ceph is suitable both for classic data center workloads and for cloud-native platforms operated under sovereign conditions.

Proxmox and Ceph as an integrated sovereign stack

The real strength emerges from the combination of Proxmox and Ceph. Proxmox integrates Ceph natively as a storage backend, creating a unified infrastructure stack where compute and storage scale independently yet operate cohesively.

This enables:

• high availability without proprietary add-ons
• flexible scaling across multiple clusters or sites
• a clean separation between infrastructure and platform layers
• operation in private or sovereign data center environments

When extended with Kubernetes, this stack supports modern, containerized workloads. Ceph provides persistent storage via CSI, while Proxmox ensures a stable and controllable infrastructure foundation.

Independence from Big Tech through control and transparency

Big Tech platforms often rely on closed APIs, opaque service dependencies, and pricing models that change beyond the user’s control. Over time, this can limit strategic flexibility and increase operational risk—especially for public-sector and regulated environments.

The Deutschland-Stack approach, built on Proxmox and Ceph, follows a different philosophy: open standards, transparent architecture, and full data sovereignty. Infrastructure behavior is auditable, costs are predictable, and long-term planning is no longer constrained by external vendor roadmaps.

Conclusion: Proxmox and Ceph as foundations of the Deutschland-Stack

Proxmox and Ceph are key building blocks for the Deutschland-Stack and for any organization seeking independence from Big Tech infrastructure. Together, they form a scalable, resilient, and fully open infrastructure stack—without sacrificing modern cloud capabilities.

Hostzero supports organizations in implementing this approach:

• as a service provider for on-premises deployments of Proxmox, Ceph, and Kubernetes
• or on managed infrastructure in our Frankfurt data center
• from architecture and migration to secure, long-term operations

Digital sovereignty begins with infrastructure. Proxmox and Ceph provide a proven foundation for building it—within the Deutschland-Stack and beyond.