Beneath their common use as lightweight structures, cellular metals show additional potential for catalytic and damping applications, whereas the mechanical stability is highly required. Therefore it is very important to determine the relationship between the structural parameters and the mechanical performance of the cellular material. Metallic hollow spheres (MHS) manufactured by a powder metallurgical route of a stainless steel 316L have shown new quality of structural parameters concerning density, cell wall thickness and cell wall morphology. The influence of these features on the mechanical properties and the deformation behavior, especially the ductility, has been studied in compression and in tension tests. There are several parameters that have a great influence on the ductility like the cell wall material, cell wall defects, the sphere to sphere contact (sinter neck) etc. Numerous experiments and supporting finite element modeling (FEM) and calculations have shown that the particular geometry of the sinter neck has a large influence on the deformation behavior in tensile straining. The material data for the FEM calculation has been obtained from tension tests on a micro porous cell wall like specimen. The results achieved from different levels of the hierarchical structure of this cellular metal are evaluated and recommendations for the design of cellular materials with improved deformation behavior and ductility are suggested.