OpenBao Competence Center Switzerland

OpenBao is an open-source secrets management solution hosted by the Linux Foundation. It is a community-driven fork of HashiCorp Vault, created in response to the licence change from MPL to BSL. OpenBao provides identity-based secrets management, encryption services, dynamic credentials, and secure key-value storage. It retains full API compatibility with Vault, so existing integrations, tooling, and workflows continue to work without modification.

OpenBao is a direct fork of HashiCorp Vault, maintaining full API and protocol compatibility. The key difference is licensing - OpenBao uses the MPL 2.0 open-source licence while Vault moved to the Business Source License. OpenBao is governed by the Linux Foundation, ensuring community-driven development and long-term open-source sustainability. Existing Vault clients, integrations, and Terraform providers work with OpenBao without code changes.

VSHN provides end-to-end OpenBao consulting covering architecture design, deployment, Vault-to-OpenBao migration, high-availability configuration, and ongoing operational advisory. Our engineers and our partner bespinian contribute code upstream to OpenBao, so we understand the platform at the source code level. Engagements range from a one-day architecture review to multi-week implementation projects with 100 GB or more of secrets data.

Yes. VSHN and our engineering partner bespinian actively contribute to the OpenBao open-source project. Our engineers commit code upstream, review pull requests, and participate in the Linux Foundation community that governs OpenBao. This direct involvement means we can influence the roadmap, resolve issues faster, and provide authoritative consulting. bespinian brings deep Go and security engineering expertise to the partnership.

Yes. VSHN deploys OpenBao on Swiss cloud providers by default, including cloudscale.ch and Exoscale, both of which operate data centres exclusively in Switzerland. We also support deployment on APPUiO, Managed OpenShift, Enterprise Private Cloud, and on-premises infrastructure in your own data centre. Your data sovereignty requirements are documented in the service agreement.

A fully managed OpenBao service on the VSHN Application Catalog is currently in development. Once available, it will include automated provisioning, backups, monitoring, and SLAs up to 99.99% availability - the same quality as our other managed database and application services. In the meantime, VSHN offers consulting, deployment, and operational support for your own OpenBao installations. Contact us for early access to the managed service.

VSHN support plans include best-effort response during office hours and priority 24/7 support with one-hour response time for critical incidents. Once the managed service is available on the Application Catalog, guaranteed availability SLAs up to 99.99% with automatic failover will be offered. All SLA commitments are documented in a written service agreement.

We plan the migration with you, covering secrets engine mapping, policy migration, authentication method configuration, and integration testing. Since OpenBao maintains full API compatibility with Vault, most clients and automation work without changes. We run parallel environments during the transition to ensure zero downtime and validate that all secrets are accessible before decommissioning the old Vault installation.

Contact us using the form below. Describe your project - whether it is a Vault migration, a new OpenBao deployment, an architecture review, or operational support for an existing installation. We provide a written scope and CHF cost estimate within one business day. There is no commitment at the scoping stage.