HashiCorp went proprietary. Your Vault doesn't have to.

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, PKI certificate management, 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. Vault Enterprise charges per client identity or managed secret, creating unpredictable costs as you scale. OpenBao has no per-client fees, no feature gates, and no metering. OpenBao is governed by the Linux Foundation, ensuring community-driven development. Existing Vault clients, integrations, and Terraform providers work with OpenBao without code changes.

OpenBao itself is free — licensed under MPL 2.0 with no per-client or per-secret fees. Vault Enterprise typically charges based on client count, which grows unpredictably as your platform scales. VSHN consulting for OpenBao architecture, deployment, and migration is billed at CHF 250 per hour. For ongoing operations, VSHN provides 24/7 support and managed operations at predictable monthly rates without metering your secret count or client identities. You pay for operational expertise, not for how many applications consume secrets.

VSHN provides end-to-end OpenBao consulting covering architecture design, deployment, Vault-to-OpenBao migration, high-availability configuration, and ongoing operational support. Our engineering partner bespinian brings deep Go and security expertise to the partnership. Engagements range from a one-day architecture review to multi-week implementation projects with 100 GB or more of secrets data.

VSHN follows the OpenBao project closely and participates in the Linux Foundation community that governs it. Our engineers work with the OpenBao codebase daily — debugging, extending, and integrating it into customer environments. This deep familiarity means we can diagnose issues at the source code level, assess new releases for production readiness, and provide authoritative consulting based on hands-on experience rather than documentation alone.

A support subscription gives you phone and ticket access when something breaks — you still architect, deploy, patch, and operate OpenBao yourself. VSHN managed operations goes further: we design the architecture, deploy HA clusters, configure auto-unseal, run automated backups, monitor health, and respond to incidents 24/7. If you stop working with us, your OpenBao deployment keeps running unchanged — no migrations, no infrastructure changes.

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. VSHN is Swiss-owned with no foreign parent company — all contracts are governed by Swiss law. See our sovereignty assessment for details.

VSHN deploys OpenBao on Swiss cloud infrastructure (cloudscale.ch, Exoscale, or your private cloud) with encrypted storage at rest, strict operator access controls, and audit logging. Auto-unseal is configured so OpenBao restarts without manual intervention. Because VSHN controls the full infrastructure stack — not just a support contract — we enforce operational boundaries that support-only vendors cannot provide.

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 full operational support for your own OpenBao installations. Contact us for early access to the managed service.

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.