Equinix Triples Investment in CNCF to Fuel Open Source Innovation

Collaboration with the CNCF Community Infrastructure Lab Enables Open Source Projects to Access USD$1 Million Annually of Globally Interconnected Equinix MetalTM Infrastructure

Equinix, Inc., the world’s digital infrastructure company, announced it has tripled its investment in the cloud native community with an expanded commitment to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Community Infrastructure Lab (CIL). Innovators from throughout the CNCF community can now access up to USD$1 Million of powerful on-demand infrastructure resources per year across Equinix’s global footprint.

The CIL was established in 2017 by Packet (acquired by Equinix in March 2020) with an initial monthly commitment of free bare metal infrastructure for open source and community projects. Since its founding, the Lab has provided short- and long-term resources to dozens of well-known open source community projects, including Longhorn, CoreDNS, Fluentd, Linkerd, Prometheus and Falco. The CIL has also been used extensively for scale testing and performance work by Red Hat (Deploying 2048 Openshift Nodes) and Vitess (Continuous Performance Testing), and is where the CNF Testbed and the CNCF.ci projects live.

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The growth of the cloud native community has resulted in increased demand for the CIL. With a focus on building ecosystems and providing interconnected digital infrastructure, Equinix Metal  provides a uniquely neutral, open environment for cloud native development. Equinix Metal does not impose multitenancy, virtualization or an overlay network by default, enabling users to bring the tooling of their choice and to accurately develop for hybrid and edge environments.

CIL participants can leverage all Equinix Metal features, including both x86 (Intel and AMD) and Arm (Ampere) infrastructure.

To apply for access to free resources on the CNCF CIL, visit the GitHub page.

Highlights/Key Facts:

• With Equinix Metal, digital leaders have the option to deploy the physical infrastructure of their choice at software speed across Equinix’s trusted platform. Together with other digital infrastructure building blocks in the Equinix portfolio, customers now have a broad range of physical and virtual deployment alternatives to place infrastructure wherever they need it and connect to everything they need to succeed.
• Equinix Metal features native integration with Equinix Fabric, the first real-time interconnection technology built especially for digital infrastructure, enabling low-latency access to thousands of networks, enterprises and clouds on Platform Equinix.
• Equinix Metal is available today in Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX^®) data centers across four global metros (Amsterdam, New York, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C.), and is expected to be available in 14 global metros by early 2021.
• The CNCF Community Infrastructure Lab (CIL) provides free access to state-of-the-art computing resources for open source developers working to advance cloud native computing.
• The on-demand infrastructure resource is contributed and managed by Equinix Metal as part of Equinix’s commitment to cloud native and open source communities.
• CIL currently offers access to both x86 and ARMv8 bare metal servers for software builds, continuous integration, scale testing and demonstrations.
• CIL also allows developers to continuously test and build out their infrastructure with the automation and consistency of the public cloud without needing to use virtualization. It can be leveraged to curate server configurations for different use cases, test new protocols without layers of complexity, and integrate with leading cloud and developer tools. Carrier-grade features like the ability to announce dedicated IP space, BGP/Anycast and native IPv6 support are also included.

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Quotes:

• Darren Shepherd, CTO & Co-founder, Rancher
  “CNCF Infrastructure has made it possible for the Longhorn community to collaborate on the entire CI and release process, ensuring continued quality in the project.”
• William Morgan, CEO & Co-founder, Buoyant
  “Linkerd is the world’s fastest, lightest service mesh. Accomplishing that difficult goal is only possible thanks to the CNCF CIL, which allows us to run rigorous and extensive benchmarks on modern hardware with Equinix Metal with the confidence that our results are always consistent and reliable. We applaud Equinix’s commitment to fostering the CNCF open source community with this crucial resource.”
• Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation
  “We are grateful to the Equinix Metal team for their support and dedication to the cloud native community, for continuing Packet’s commitment to the Lab after its acquisition, and now tripling the resources available to the community. The CIL is where some of the most exciting innovation for cloud native lives and breathes, advancing what’s possible with open source and cloud native infrastructure.”
• Zachary Smith, Managing Director, Bare Metal, Equinix
  “Everyone is invited to apply and join other digital leaders in advancing open source and hybrid cloud innovation on the CNCF CIL. We believe that open source innovation on specialized, software-defined bare metal infrastructure is the key to unlocking the potential of hybrid and multicloud architectures. Our investment in the CNCF’s CIL demonstrates our commitment to the cloud native and open source communities at large. We hope you join us.”

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