MAAS installation: bare metal provisioning is easier than ever

MAAS brings cloud-like automation to physical servers. It helps teams discover, commission, deploy, and repurpose machines from a central control plane, turning bare metal into a programmable resource.

But to experience that value, users first need to get MAAS up and running. That path is now cleaner and easier to follow. We’ve created new documentation to help you get started, providing a more direct installation and configuration workflow, using the MAAS snap and the PostgreSQL snap to simplify the setup of a complete MAAS environment.

This improvement makes it easier to try MAAS in a lab, build a proof of concept, or prepare a small deployment before moving to larger production environments.

In this blog, we’ll walk through what has changed, why it matters, and how the new documentation helps users start exploring MAAS faster.

Installing MAAS: where we came from

There are several ways to start with MAAS, depending on what you want to achieve. For a quick first look, the “Build a MAAS and LXD environment in 30 minutes with Multipass” tutorial provides a fully sandboxed environment that runs on a PC or laptop. This is a great way to understand MAAS, explore the UI, and see the basic machine lifecycle without affecting a real network or connecting physical servers. In this workflow, users rely on the maas-test-db helper – however, this doesn’t reflect production workflows.

At some point, users need to experience MAAS with real hardware. Bare metal automation is about discovering, commissioning, deploying, and repurposing physical machines, and that is where a more realistic installation becomes useful.

The new process: a clearer first step into bare metal provisioning

The new documentation focuses on provisioning actual machines through a series of how-to articles. The core installation model remains familiar: users install MAAS, provide a PostgreSQL database, initialize the service, create an administrator account, and access MAAS through the CLI or the web UI. 

The “Get started” guide walks you through using the MAAS snap and PostgreSQL snap directly for a single-machine deployment in region+rack mode. This creates something closer to a standard MAAS setup than our previous workflows enabled, as well as being  a practical setup for a homelab, a small proof of concept, or a small production environment. By following the steps, you’ll create a complete MAAS environment, without needing to design a more complex topology from the beginning.

This workflow is more direct, reducing the amount of manual package and service setup. The result is a smoother first experience: users can spend less time assembling the platform, and more time exploring what MAAS actually does. 

After installation, users can move directly into the “Configure MAAS” guide, which explains the basic configuration needed to make MAAS useful: logging in, setting up the initial network services, and preparing the environment to manage machines. For a first deployment, this usually means setting an upstream DNS server, identifying the subnet that MAAS will manage, selecting the rack controller that will provide DHCP, defining a dynamic IP range, enabling DHCP on the relevant VLAN, and setting the gateway for the subnet.

This keeps the first deployment focused on learning the MAAS workflow, instead of making early architectural decisions that may only matter in larger environments.

These are foundational steps. They connect MAAS to the network where machines will boot, receive addresses, and later move through discovery, commissioning, and deployment. By presenting them as part of the same getting-started flow, the documentation makes the first real-hardware experience easier to follow from beginning to end.

Start your MAAS journey

Getting started with MAAS is now simpler. The new documentation gives users a clearer path from installation to initial configuration, and from there to the first real experience of managing physical machines.

For many users, this is the right first step: the new documentation is a series of how-to articles, simple enough for a lab or proof of concept, but realistic enough to understand how MAAS works with real hardware. And when the environment needs to grow, the documentation also covers more advanced options, such as configuring PostgreSQL for remote connections.

If you want to try MAAS, start with the new “Get started with MAAS” guide. Install MAAS, configure the basics, connect your machines, and begin exploring bare metal automation.