MAAS documentation

What is MAAS? MAAS (Metal as a Service) is Canonical’s private cloud infrastructure management system. It enables physical servers to behave like cloud instances: deploy, manage, and scale your infrastructure through automated, repeatable processes.

How does MAAS work? MAAS discovers your hardware and allows you to configure and deploy operating systems with API-driven workflows. It integrates tightly with DNS, DHCP, and image management, and supports complex networking and storage scenarios.

Who is MAAS for? MAAS is built for DevOps teams, system administrators, and data center architects — anyone provisioning bare-metal at scale.

Where does MAAS fit? Use MAAS to:

  • Replace manual provisioning with repeatable, scriptable deployments.
  • Build your own cloud foundation using Juju, Kubernetes, or OpenStack.
  • Automate fast provisioning in telco, enterprise, and high-performance compute settings.
  • Simplify testing pipelines with fast, disposable hardware labs.

In this documentation

Tutorial
Hands-on introduction to MAAS features
How-to guides
Step-by-step guides covering key operations
Explanation
Detailed theory on the inner workings of MAAS
Reference
Technical specifications

Project and community

MAAS is a member of the Ubuntu family. It is an open source project that warmly welcomes community projects, contributions, suggestions, fixes and constructive feedback.

Considering MAAS for your next project? Get in touch


Last updated 5 days ago.